Reminiscin'

This journal is most at ease when discussing the dead, but not the recently departed. The news today of the demise of Mr Rowland S. Howard is cause for great sorrow. His contribution to history is immeasurable. I gather he did something musical, but that is of little consequence. (OK: he wrote Shiver, one of the all-time great songs.) A man of integrity, in a world that knows not the meaning of the word. An alternative to the alternative. A man who refused to have anything further to do with Nick Cave when Cave went all mainstream. A man who stayed true. Man.



Mr Howard’s death got me thinking about the 1980s. How we loved that stuff: that crazy alternative music and life, that dressin’ in black and going to see the touring punk and post-punk bands (not that they were called post-punk then folks)(at one such gig at the Grosvenor I recall, distinctly, Mr Howard {touring with his then special friend Lydia Lunch} telling me - me, personally - to fuck off: Lor' I was proud) and living near Hyde Park and taking acid and scaring folk in Hyde Park and such and so on. Well, you may recall my earlier mention of movan, and now you know I moved back to the environs of my youth. The house was built in the 1920s – very old by Skinny City standards: its age being a second enticement for this preticular (very competent) historian. I imagined (in addition to being somewhat scared of the weirdos that hang out in Hyde Park these days) that a house so steeped in history (verily dripping with the stuff) would have stories. And indeed it does. But not from the early days (at least, not as I have yet discovered). No, a friend I had not seen in years recently returned to Skinny City for a visit and when we caught up I discovered he had known the house well, back a coupla decades. He knew some of the former residents and their various peccadilloes: I don’t recall all his stories but there was mention of heroin addiction, prostitution, theft and general fuck-ups.

I was extremely pleased.

More (another) conspiracy

As you know, this particular journal of history is not afraid to call it when necessary, and, gentle readers, it is again necessary: CONSPIRACY (and not a Hildebrandt to be seen).

This time the sinister tentacles reach to the highest level: the West Australian state government. OK, as highest levels go, the WASG is a bit of a non-event, but here goes anyways.

The West Australian government department in charge of telescopes gave a talk at my boy's school. It was tremendously exciting and now many of the area's five and six year olds know how many moons Saturn has. But that's not all. In the course of this talk the boffin at the mic stated that it was necessary - again, 'necessary' - that 'we'** land manned flights on Mars by 2030 and begin mining certain valuable minerals thereon because deposits of said minerals on Earth will have run out by that date.

Now, staff at the West Australian government department in charge of telescopes are officially the last government employees to be updated on any issue you care to name. If they know WA's minerals are gone in twenty years so does the gov itself. And they've kept mum. For yer foreign brains, WA's economy is in boomtimes, based entirely on (a) our cleverness in having settled a land that has stuff in the ground that makes the world's mobile phones work; (b) the fact we thieved said ground off the blackfellas, without so much as a 'excuse me'; and (c) our unsurpassed ability to dig holes (of which i have written previously).

Now, the boomtimes have an endtime.

The cheap, rapidly erected pre-fabricated concrete apartment blocks, the jet-skis, the inordinate numbers of Pajeros, the oversized Ferris wheels, the freeway extension and, dammit, the very big holes in the ground: these are all things we have grown used to pointing at excitedly and saying 'we did that.'

The historically-minded among you will know that European settlement in WA has known two decisive eras: the 1830s to the 1890s, when the lack of what we now call venture capital stymied the dynamic, adventurous, entrepreneurial colonists, when there were plenty of good ideas but no money to implement them; and the 1960s until now, when there's been nothing but stupid ideas but all the money in the world to make them happen.

And now? We have twenty years left. But don't tell anyone.

** By 'we' i suspect he meant not the employees of the West Australian government department in charge of telescopes nor even West Australians in general, but the worldwide brotherhood of Boffins, Inc. (that's a mixed metaphor but this is too important to get hung up on trivial details).

death by one cut

SUMMER

I do love this season of increasingly hostile weather, but summer brings its own peculiar issues, foremost of which, to my mind, is the question: what is the technical term for a fear of ceiling fans?

Hmmm, gentle readers?

Holden vs Ford

At the newsagent at Skinny City's fine airport a young lad - of some nine summers - in front of me in the queue (and let me just say, airport queues are among the finest queues known to humanity) laid down on the counter the magazine he wished to purchase. It was a motoring magazine and had on the cover a picture of the new Commodore. I was overjoied to see a new generation of footsoldiers in the Holden vs Ford wars was on the way. Some had told of the demise of this particular cultural conflict back in the nineties, but clearly 'tis not so.

Hallelujah

Decoy Britney

A youngish singer of popular tunes by the name of Britney Spears came to Skinny City recently to perform some of her better-known songs. Perhaps you have heard of her. I must confess I had not; an oversight for which I forgive myself. I found, however, a number of odd conditions attached to her visit.

Firstly, I’m told the youngish lady in question did not actually sing, but rather mimed her way through the show. Vicarious karaoke is a new concept to me, and I shall have to ponder its worth. By all means, convey your thoughts on this matter.

Secondly – and this I experienced first-hand, as Ms Spears stayed in a well-known establishment offering short-term accommodation opposite my place of employment – there was considerable media interest in the visitation. This led to Ms Spears employing subterfuge; to wit (and I quote Skinny City’s fine daily newspaper), using a “decoy Britney.”

Holyfuck.

A decoy Britney!

Friends, I want one. Oh, no, please: not for prurient reasons; nothing lurid here. I would set up the decoy Britney on my front veranda, to wave at passers-by and cause immense envy amongst the neighbours. A status symbol if you will. A decoy Britney. I just had to write it again.

James Moderate, citizen

One cold evening in mid June 1901 - the seventeenth, to be exact - it being too late to use the miraculous coming together of six disparate states to form the one indivisible commonwealth that would come to be known simply as Australia as an excuse, but with the death of good Queen Victoria (bless her) perhaps on his mind, one James Moderate was charged by Kalgoorlie police with being drunk.

Which can only mean, in this all too interconnecty world, that somewhere there's a chap by the name of Albert Pisshead who can think himself very lucky not to have a police record.

nude

Well.

Movan' did not turn out to be be quite the joi i had been expecting. That Beatnik thang about the journey being more than the arrival: that's bollocks. And, to introduce a historical perspective, let me say that when i write my 'History of the Real Estate industry' it will be a one-word affair. And that word? A noun; plural.

Here's a thing: Though it grieves me, as a very competent historian, to do this, i must. I read this mos' excellent book one time and now i forget the source. So i can't tell y'all... I can't cite, and that's upsetting. And unprofessional. But it's such a great story.

So here's what happened: This guy, from the Ravensthorpe district on the south coast of Western Australia, goes off to fight in the First World War. He goes through a bunch of shit, but survives, and comes back a changed man (no surprises there). In the early 1920s he self-publishes a book about his experiences, in which he, firstly, shreds the British officer he had served under (the aphorism that WWI Tommies were bulldogs under the command of rabbits comes to mind). Thus far, standard fare, very popular in Aust. But then he lays into the Aust Army - critical of their lack of organisation and rationale on the Western Front. The Aust Army tries to ban the book but people are having too much fun.

So this guy has, in time-honoured style, upset the authorities, including his assault on the Aust Army at a time when pride in our fighting guys was at its peak (didja know we started celebrating Gallipoli in 1916 - just twelves months after the landing took place). And i like that. But it gets better. In a fit of pique the guy returns to the Ravensthorpe district, takes up a returned soldier's land grant some miles out of town and stop there the rest of his life, doing the minimum amount of farming to keep himself alive. And he strips off. He spends the rest of his life out there on his block, naked. The locals joke about how you have to sound your car horn when you go visit, so he can put a shirt on (1920s car horn - toot, toot!!). It's a great story, and when i relocate the book i'll tell more.

I completely endorse the notion that we are pygmies, standing on the shoulders of giants. It just gets a little ick when one realises some of those giants were starkers.

movan!

Movan'!!!

Inquilinate no longer.

Above and beyond, I am concerned by Corinthians II:14 "If a man has long hair, he is an abomination unto nature." I entirely agree, but there is a fine line. What constitutes long hair? Collar-length? Shoulder-length? Arse-length? I mean, you might be thinking to yourself, 'I really do need to get a hair cut,' but you don't have time all week, leave it to Saturday etc etc, but at the three mm per week normal growth rate, by Saturday, voila, Y're an abomination. Meanwhile, nature (whether or not equated w/ god is up to the individual's conscience) is giggling, and preparing an especially heavy tree branch to teeter just thus, a block down the road from your house on the route y normally take to the newsagent.

Or: some fucker takes intrusive photographs of you and sells them to A Current Affair, and you are = the new yeti

Congratulations.

BEWARE! IT'S OPUS DEI!

So at five the next morning I’m woken by a loud banging on the door. This irks me somewhat, but I have a golden rule. Always answer the front door.

It’s two men – dressed from head to toe in black; only not in the Johnny Cash cool kind of way. They speak with heavy accents.

“Did you go and see Steve Poltz last night?”

“Wha’ the fuck?”

“Did you go and see Steve Poltz last night?”

“Who the fuck are you?” I ask.

“We are, ahem…” They look at each other. “Representatives of Opus Dei.”

“Oh, right,” I say, “the shadowy ultra-right wing Catholic organisation founded by Josemaria Escriva in Spain in the 1930s. Why didn’t you say so?”

“How do you know about us,” one scowls.

“Ah, c’mon. Everyone around here has heard of you guys. Anyway, what the fuck do you want?”

“We want…” The one on the left pauses…

“Look, for fuck’s sake, it’s five in the morning. If I hadn’t been drinking last night and subsequently had the alcohol in my body convert to sugar while I slept giving me a strange energy boost, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Now, I repeat, what the fuck do you want?”

“We want to know if Mr. Poltz played the I got a handjob on the church bus song last night.”

That got me thinking. How I didn’t much like the look of these guys, and how I had no desire to accommodate them. How totally uncool it would be to rat on Steve Poltz. How morally bankrupt. How, let’s face it, un-Australian. And how, since I had really enjoyed the song, I was, as Mr. Poltz so correctly pointed out, complicit. No way was I telling them.

“Tell us, or we will be forced to take drastic and unpleasant measures.”

“Don’t threaten me, you cocksuckers.” So Deadwood. And I’m still thinking: morally bankrupt, un-Australian etc etc etc. And anyway, I enjoyed the song immensely.

The one on the right, now clearly the ‘bad priest,’ says, “Unless you tell us, we will torture you, torture your family, behead your cat and stick its head on a pole in your front garden so it’s the first thing you see each morning when you leave the house.”

This seems a little extreme, but I tell them, “Look my friends, I am not revealing anything. It would be immoral and cowardly. And this song you mention sounds like something I might have (theoretically) enjoyed very much.

Under no circumstances will I rat.”

“Well, this is our last offer. We are prepared to replace your scratched vinyl copy of Let It Bleed with a brand new shiny CD.”

“Ahhh,” I say, “One of the recently-released ABKCO remastered versions?”

They look at each other, one whispers something, and then after a pause, says, “Yes, all right.”

“Well, sure,” I say, “He played the I got a handjob on the church bus song. And, frankly, I found it to be quite disgusting.”

I mean to have it; even if it must be burglary

Now this aroused me from my afternoon torpor.

Ah, memories, and none of them mine.

I think i'll raise a toast in honour. Something even the wankers in the street wouldn't drink.

Hildebrandts!

Oh, my: there’s more to this Hildebrandt thing than first meets the eye. Sometime in the northern summer of 1904 (yes, kiddies, happier times - the signing of the Entente Cordiale) Karl Hildebrand set off to walk around the world.

Why?

Well, it could have been because this was the olden days, and most everyone back then was seriously fucking lulu, or;

He was “sent by a committee in London, the members of which were anxious to find out whether a man can possibly accomplish the tour on foot around the world without asking for any help on the way.”

People, I wouldn’t make this shit up. Well, I would, but I’d cough to it if I did.

On reflection, I think reasons 1 and 2 apply.

Seven and a half years later, he had reached Jerusalem. OK so far, except by then he had been across Europe, Africa and America. America? Between London and Jerusalem? How do you get that fucking lost? Karl, mate, you should have asked for help on the way. Your stupid fucking pride cost you three years of your life and an unnecessary side trip to the U.S. Particularly unfortunate as at that time it was mandatory, under the Ninth Amendment, that any person entering the United States allow the president teabagging rights.

















That’s not all: Karl Hildebrand had two masters. He was also reporting back to the German Labour party (remember them?) “with descriptions of foreign labour conditions as to housing, pay, and hours.”

Don’t laugh, you bastards; two of his fourteen companions had died by the time they reached the big J. According to the account I read, this was from “their strenuous pedestrianism and the hardships they encountered.” I say it was more likely they reached a level of boredom where self-inflicted death was a gratifying alternative to Hildebrand’s endless recital of how much Nigerian workers were paid, how many hours Canadian abattoir workers put in each week and how small were the houses in Liechtenstein.

Little more than a century later, two of his great-great-great-great grandchildren are marrying each other.

Now, I’m prepared to call it: CONSPIRACY

don't ask; don't tell

According to an article in the Australian Journal of Popular Culture, there existed a homosexual sub-culture among Australian servicemen, particularly in Newcastle, during World War Two. And – this is now seared in my mind – one of the markers, one of the little signs they gave one another - to say “psst, Barry, I’m one of the under-the-streetlight-brigade too” - was wearing certain articles of clothing subtly different from what was then the norm. Yes, my friends, the love that dare not speak its name dared to wear argyle socks! Now, I read this in an article published c. late 1990s. The author failed to outline his/her methodology (or I conveniently skipped over that bit) but source information on such matters would be hard to find; there would be no contemporary newspaper articles, memoirs etc. And I suspect that given the timing of publication of said article the original source material may well have been army documents declassified under the 50 year rule. With a nod to Python/Blackadder, and anyone else I may have ripped off, I suspect these documents read something like:

TOP SECRET: FOR COLONEL AND ABOVE EYES ONLY

MEMO: MEETING, 16th JULY 1943

PRESENT: Colonels Barnaby, Carruthers, Smyth-Forbes, Captain Larkins

Larkins: “Sirs, I have finished the report into the men’s off-duty activities that you requested.”
Carruthers: “Jolly good, Larkins. What’s the gist of it, man?”
Larkins: “Well, sir, I’ll come right out with it. One very disturbing fact came to light. There appears to be a spot of un-Army like behaviour going on among some of the men in the 4th Light.”
Smyth-Forbes: “Un-Army like behaviour? Whatever do you mean, man?”
Larkins: “Uh, yes, sir, some of the men are doing things….”
Barnaby: “Yes, yes, doing things?”
Larkins: “Yes, sir, that is, they’re indulging in, shall we say, certain, uh, French activities.”
Smyth-Forbes: “Ah, well, that’s not so bad. Good soldier the Froggy. Just the officers give them a bad name. Gunga Din’d on cheap plonk by lunch time, most of ‘em.”
Larkins: “Quite, sir. But what I mean is, some of our men are, um, doing things in the French way.”
Barnaby: “Well, yes, can’t have that, I suppose. Very disorganised, is old Pierre. So tell the men to sharpen up.”
Larkins: “Yes, but sir, that is to say, that this is an after dark sort of French thing.”
Carruthers: “Damn it man, stop with the French. Fought alongside some of ‘em at Breton Woods. Not bad in a stoush, Jean-Paul. Like to stick it right up the old Bosch.”
Larkins: “Yes, sir, that’s exactly it.”
Smyth-Forbes: “I still don’t see what your concern is Larkins.”
Larkins: “Sirs, it’s just that, well, some of the diggers are doing things that are a little less than manly. Not wholesome, if you see what I mean.”
Carruthers: “Well, damn it Larkins, what are you implying? Less that manly? Not wholesome? You know I lost my leg at Villeneuve. Stepped on one of Jerry’s exploding tin cans. I suppose I’m less than less than manly, am I?”
Larkins: “No sir, that’s not it. Let me explain…”

&c.

*******

Gentle readers, I did not want to turn this into one of them conspiracy sites, but I’d like to draw your attention to a news item I espied today:

Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt of Florida is marrying Kelly Carl Hildebrandt of Texas.

Here’s the happy couple:





They met after she googled her own name, found Kelly Carl and began corresponding. Cupid took it from there.

“I totally think that it's all God’s timing,” says Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt said. “He planned it out just perfect.”

FUCK!!!

I totally don’t know about this. Can it be right? God’s plans for his flock include us marrying people with the same name? Where does it say this in the Bible? Did Thomas Aquinas know this shit? And how can I be expected to find – let alone marry – someone called a very competent historian?

Is Kelly Katrina some kinda holy mystic 33rd level Kabala priestess? Maybe she knows the secret names of Ya HoWa? Maybe she knows a whole lotta stuff and she aint tellin.’

Kellys [is that the plural?], give it up for the people.

Totally.

Cheers, Doctor King

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

Inspirational words from the great civil rights leader the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.

Dr King was a giant of the twentieth century - a selfless, brilliant figure whose legacy brightens the world even today.

It is just as well, however, that he didn't run a catering firm. Look, though i've been through parts of Georgia i don't recall the red hills, but i would think that being hills, they're kind of, well, slopey. Setting tables in such a place for anyone, let alone distrustful sons of former slaves and suchlike, just would not have worked. Obviously, the hillside thing would unbalance the tables and we'd have a serious race relations set-back. The hors d'oeuvre would be dropping onto the ground, the apples rolling off the end and the soup tureen - well, it doesn't bear thinking about. And if Dr King overlooked this simple fact, what chance is there that he would remember to put those clever little weights on the edges of the table cloths so that they didn't whip up in those ever-present hillside zephyrs and flick into the ice cream?

All in all, a logistics disaster.

clothing throughout history, part the first

1472AD



2009AD



yee haw

Idiots

Warning: This post contains cheap shots

I came across this article from September 1904. It really needs no explanation, but that won’t stop me:

Professor Von Wagner, of Vienna, who has been experimenting in the treatment of idiots with thyroid gland, has reported to the Austrian Home Office…

Austria/Australia; who can tell the difference? But I would like to know whether idiocy was a particular problem within the Austrian Home Office. I know it is in the Australian equivalent.

…that in time idiocy will belong to the category of curable diseases…

Now, one hundred and five years later, it may be time to assess the results of Prof. Von Wagner’s work. Let’s see: Far from being rid of idiots they have multiplied exponentially. And back in the prof’s day they didn’t give idiots drivers’ licences and orange Monaros(1). They do now.

He has treated 52 idiots ranging in age from two to twenty-three years during periods varying between 12 and 35 months with tablets of thyroid gland, and writes that already, after three month’ treatment, a growth in height was observable…

Oh yea! Bigger idiots!

…accompanied by an improvement in the quality of the blood and in increase of strength…

Oh crap! Stronger idiots!

Children very soon became lively, showed much more interest in the outside world, began to chatter and even to sing, and some were fit to attend school

Now this suggests the rigorous scientific testing of the good prof has failed him, if he is suggesting that children don’t chatter and sing if they’re still in the idiot stage. In fact, a lot of idiots sing; just ask Liam Gallagher. Also – moving out of the idiot stage isn’t a prerequisite for attending school.

(1) For yer foreign brains, this is an Australian muscle car, the equivalent say of a U.S., um, muscle car.

Security in the modern world

Now, there are people out there who seem to think there’s too much invasion of privacy and ‘do-you-have-your-identification-papers-on-you-sir’ going on. Nonsense, I sez. Bring it on. In fact, I propose further checking of true identity. But you can forget your fingerprints, DNA samples, eye scans and the like. I’m almost certain that the one truly individual characteristic of every one of the seven billion very pleasant human beings on this planet is to be found in the intricate patterns of the brown eye; the puckered lips; the bull's eye; the brown rose bud; the arsehole. I say ‘almost certain’ because, despite my well-known reputation as a strict empiricist, I have, in this case, worked from a rather small sample base; that is, zero, on account of I refuse to look at anyone else’s back door and I cannot see my own.

Gentle readers, this is no impediment: I know a lot of medical doctors and international pharmaceutical company execs read this blog, and no doubt they are arranging the necessary research programs even now.

So the next time you step into a bank, or go through customs at an airport (places of enormous import), you can expect to be asked to drop trousers (or, indeed, up skirts) and sit down to prove you are who you say you are. To you, sirs and mesdames, I say, “Ink the sphinc.”

A propos of this important security and medical breakthrough, I should add a couple of further details. Firstly, I have trademarked the idea as ‘Botty ID.’ Secondly, for the Gen Y among you – the texting crowd – I propose the asterix * as the appropriate character for expressing Botty ID. For example: “Hey, Chad, I cldn’t gt int th nghtclb lst nght bc th bncrs *ed me.”

For the older readers, think of the obverse of the now defunct Australian 2¢ coin.

rumours reach Burke

Matters of the bowel, as you are no doubt aware, are omnipresent in my mind since the Excursion. Picnic be damned - it cost me half my right leg and the use of three fingers. Blasted wildlife accounted for the former; sheer boredom, the latter. Gumnuts Murphy claimed he heard rumours of de Breton's presence in the upper reaches of Cooper’s Creek: says a blackfeller – they’re Wilyakali out there, if memory serves – came in to Burke swearing he’d been told by one of the wild tribes from further out of a stranger, naked but for a pith helmet, sitting cross-legged on a stump in front of a fold-out table (no doubt the oak dresser the Earl left him, the old rogue – damn thing must weight four hundred pounds. Confoundit it, I admire him for lugging it that far. But good taste will always out, eh?) drinking his infernal home-distilled whiskey, reading half a novel (Murphy tells me the blackfellers picked up the other half near Bedourie) and taking the occasional shot at the more foolhardy of the crows out there (for this reason alone, Murphy reckons it took the blackfellers some days to approach de Breton close enough to where they could ascertain the manner of man he be.) “He made it,” I ejaculated immediately ‘pon hearing the description.

Needless to say, useful though he’s been, Murphy has since had his membership of the Club revoked. Damn fool, relying on hearsay instead of saddling up and going out to check the story personally. (I would have gone myself, of course, were it not for this problem with the gut). Ah, but I must admire the man’s moxie. He left the Club with three hundred guineas worth of stolen silverware stuffed up his arse, and it altered his gait not a whit.

Historical wanking (the only kind)

I note this article from the Mount Leonora Miner (a paper i much admire; a four page broadsheet that would give any Murdoch rag a run for its money) dated 12 October 1901:

“At the local Police Court on Thursday last, before Messrs Cale and Barker, Js. P., a young man, who admitted in court he was a victim of mastabation [sic], was, on medical testimony being given by Doctor Healey as to his inability to take care of himself, committed to the Fremantle Asylum.”

Heelllloooooo?

It seems to me the lad was well-versed in "taking care of himself," so I can’t see why the fuss. Also, can one really be a ‘victim’ of auto-stimulation? I guess they did things differently in them days.

Yrs in historical wonderment &c.

Did it move for you, baby?

At five thirty this mo', in a cheap motel room in Kal, i was awakened by an earth-shattering KABOOM. I staggered out, shook my fist, an', Stanley Kowalski-style, yelled into the dark desert sky, "Fuck you Superpit, fuck you all." I was thinking, of course, that it was the fluorescent orange brigade blowing unfeasibly large chunks of this goodly frame to Kingdom Come so as the extract a few grams of wedding ring. Why they had to wake me... ME, in this manner was beyond my 5:30 a.m. limits of tolerance and understanding.

turns out it was an earthquake.

It could end there, but i figure it is God, and not the be-mulletted 'solidly-built' crowd, who deserve my censure.

Are poor friends electric?

In conversation recently, a chappy told me that back in the '80s (remember them? I thought not.) he was in a two person synth band (remember them? I thought so.) that got a one-off write-up in the local paper. Therein they were described as 'a poor man's Gary Numan.'

Weeeelllllllllllll.

This raises as interesting question: Did the poor actually like Gary Numan?

Lance Corporal Martin, bless you

Spare a thought for Lance Corporal John Martin. And here I take an extract from the expedition diary of Charles Cooke Hunt, Superintendent of Convicts and explorer of the (now) Eastern Goldfields during one of Western Australia’s numerous attempts to better itself:

March 12, 1865. ‘Fine and hot. Corporal Martin left in charge of dray at Burracoppin.’ Hunt goes on to point out Lance Corporal Martin “had… only been in the country a few months.”

Picture, if you will, Lance Corporal Martin in this situation. According to the Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australian Biography, LC Martin arrived at Fremantle on the fifteenth of April, 1864. Thus, Hunt’s “few months” were actually eleven but, be that as it may, we can assume that sometime around February 1864, John Martin was sitting at the breakfast table in a small but clean and well-kept lower middle class row house in East Acton, UK, with his mother fussing over him, getting porridge and wiping up the mess he was making. She tells him she’s terribly worried about his well-being in the colonies, saying she has heard terrible tales of tigers and snakes.

“Little Jack,” she says, “you might be eaten by cantaloupe.” LC Martin’s education at the newly opened government school (the UK is flush with Victorian post-reform self-satisfaction at the time) unfortunately did not allow him either to recognise a malaprop when he heard one (it is likely Mrs Martin meant antelope, but I wasn’t there; I can’t be sure. However, both Mrs Martin and her son were almost certainly unaware of the herbaceous and other habits of an antelope so the intent of her comment may well remain), nor even, sadly, to know what was a cantaloupe. Nevertheless he wanted to reassure her. “Please Mumsie (he bore a resemblance both physical and in manner to Hugh Laurie), it’s ‘John’ now. You mustn’t call me Little Jack any more. I’m twenty-seven years old and the lads at the regiment will tease me horribly. Anyway, Mumsie, there are no snakes in Australia (Martin’s lack of understanding of the world is beginning to worry even me at this stage). I’m going to make my fortune and come back and buy you and daddy a brand new house. One with a garden. You’ll see. You’ll be so proud of me.”

Sadly, Martin really did imagine having one jolly huge adventure in the Colony. He pictured himself riding horses across dusty plains, engaging in sword play with swarthy tribesmen (which, in his mind, he always won – and this should be a pointer to his total unsuitability to even disembark the ship, let alone be nominally put in charge of half a dozen ticket-of-leavers – men of very low capabilities themselves), and rescuing a beautiful white woman captured by these dastardly sons of the soil. Martin, naturally, left out the finer details out of these daydreams, details which we, in this more demanding age, might refer to as continuity and believability. The point is, in the end, his fantasies always resulted in him returning home with the beautiful maiden and a bag full of diamonds. And here he was, at Burracoppin, Western Australia, in charge of a cart.

Worse yet, his superior (oho, yes, they still used – and believed in – such terms) Hunt, the officious prick, had sent the dozen or so convicts and TOLs off to sink wells and slash rudimentary tracks through the scrub. They would have taken with them the supplies the dray was carrying, leaving Martin in charge of a near-empty cart. Well, imagine the man’s despair. Even today, Burracoppin isn’t much. In fact (and, gentle reader, I remind you that I write from experience), it is the archetypal country town. One main street, a throughway, because country towns are only ever a place one passes through on the way to somewhere else, usually nearer the coast; they are never a destination. A general store (newsagent, post office, some hardware, basic foodstuffs, limited banking facilities, Chiko rolls), a pub (three white Holden utes parked haphazardly out the front, one with a blue heeler in the back, panting at passers-by; there aren’t many), a scattering of houses, all – despite the four trillion acres of empty country that surrounds the town – lined up facing the main road in perfect symmetry. A wheat bin just out of the town limits. Two gravel roads running off the main highway. One, on the west side of town runs north, adorned with an aluminium blue sign/white writing saying ‘rubbish tip.’ The other road, of course, is on the east side of town and runs to the south. Here there is a pre-metric wooden white sign/black writing giving the name of another country town and a distance that is invariably 38 miles.

(And incidentally the fact of the town having the name Burracoppin tells us much about how Europeans vs Aborigines read the landscape. Hunt (and all other members of his exploray fraternity) liked to name the important features – mountains and lakes – after people he was trying to impress, (career-wise, in the case of his superiors, or pants-wise, in the case of ladies). Silly little things like water holes, well, they could be appelled w/ the blackfella name. Imagine, say, Forrest’s reaction if he found he had funded Hunt and co. to wander aimlessly around the desert and upon returning C.C. proudly stated he had named a trickle of water in Forrest’s honour. Never mind that the trickle of water might be the only thing keeping thirty people alive out there.

Oh shit, the Dutch started it. That dickhead Vlamingh, mustering all the seagoing knowledge possessed in Europe at the time, managed to land off the Western Australian coast at 32º South imagining himself to be in Java. His men, sent to look for water on an offshore island came back and reported the place was dry and worse, it was populated by hundreds of bloody huge rats. Vlamingh retired to his cabin to drink schnaaps and doodle in the captain’s log, emerging four hours later with a wild look in his eye and declaring he had thought of a name for the island. “Rottsnest(sic),” he declared with slurred triumph. His men looked at him with the usual disrespect but thinking, almost to a man, what a genius was their captain. Only in first mate Boorsdag was that thought sarcastic. The rest actually meant it. OK so far, but Stirling, sailing into a sandbar at present-day Fremantle centuries later sent his own offsiders up the newly discovered river to explore. Stirling, like most who would live in the new colony over the next 180 years, had a keen sense of history (you know you do, fuckers), and was determined not to repeat the nomenclatural idiocy of the Dutch. Yet when his men paddled back down the river and gave their report, mentioning the inordinately large number of black swans on the river, and presented him with two recently deceased members of the species, well, to go on would risk over-clarification.

And this continued, with the exception of a period of naming places after Stirling and Darling and Carling, thus, incidentally, setting up a legacy of ‘lings’ which would long resonate in this place where the most to which one could aspire was to be a little fish in a little pond. What we have learned is that Stirling and his British successors, through to Hunt and beyond, showed themselves to be as unimaginative as the Dutch – and this is a rum condemnation indeed. This in a period when American explorers and malcontents were wandering around naming places such as ‘Busted Knee,’ Dead Man’s Gulch,’ ‘Tendonitis,’ ‘Nearly Dead but Got Better’ &c. And that, of course, is why they got Hollywood and we did not. This lesson, unfortunately, seems to be this: If you want to find water in the desert, consult Aboriginal wisdom; if you want to know the bleedin’ obvious, look at European cartological efforts. Mind you the French fauxbourg could be applied, by law, to most of this (fair) city and I wouldn’t complain. God, I love the French. But you knew that.

Well, to return. For Martin, even modern day Burracoppin would have been something to enjoy. He begins writing a terribly painful letter to his parents, “dear mummy and dad, I’m doing really well. You won’t ever believe this, but we (Mr. Charles Hunt who I told you about and some of the men) are hundreds of miles from the settlement. No, Mumsy, we haven’t even seen any tigers but Carter (he used to be a convict!) says he saw a snake but he is not the most reliable man. Well, anyway, things are going really well. In fact, Mr. Chas. Hunt has put me in charge of…” Here Martin’s writing falters, and you, dear reader, won’t be surprised. What can he say? His mother is sure he will never return to dear old England and his dad is secretly proud of him. And here he is, if he is truthful, having to tell them he’s in charge of an empty cart. Could it get any worse. Yes! (hands up those who spotted the lazy literary device there – ah, me. The author as author). He screws up the letter and as he looks up to toss it into the scrub he realizes that not ten feet from him stands a group of a dozen Wongi men, their spears shipped.
To be continued (oh, OK, probably not.)

buggery

ANZAC day approaches and I anticipate – with joi – the crusty old RSL types I shall meet, on the day, mumbling through sherry-soaked moustaches about the great men who pioneered this harsh and unforgiving land and how the namby-pamby youth of today are not worthy of licking their bootlaces. And, in public, I shall agree, but reserving the knowledge that an unhealthy percentage of these afore-mentioned pioneer types rooted horses. I am a historian, and I know these things. Let me example you the following, from the police occurrence books of a certain seaside town in the mid-1890s: R-----d P---e, 29, tailor, charged: “You did attempt at E-------e on the 26^th day of December to commit buggery with a certain animal to wit a mare against the order of nature” – committed for trial, and then sentenced to two years hard labour.

Weeelllllll.

Note it was attempted buggery. And this, my friends, demands investigation.

At this very time and in this very place, Aboriginal people were copping similar sentences for ‘stealing’ sheep, ie, merely procuring a meal they might have thought rightfully theirs.

Justice, colonial-style. Obtaining food vs. horse-fucking. There was a time, ladies and gentlemen, in this very state, where the law said the two equated. And maybe that’s right. Anyway, historians are interpreters of the past (so you don’t have to, you lazy fuckers) so here’s what I say happened:

P---e is standing in front of the mirror whistling and bouncing around a little in delighted anticipation. The tune, which he holds but poorly, is recognisable as “My Bonnie is over the Ocean, my Bonnie is over the Sea…” P---e, though, has, in his head, substituted the words “My Bonnie is out in the paddock, my Bonnie is out in the field…” He combs his hair – heavily Brylcreamed – and waxes the ends of his moustache. He wants to look especially good tonight. He adjusts his cravat, something he is not used to wearing; a cravat, in fact inherited from his uncle, without his uncle’s knowledge. It bears a large gravy stain. And this is poor form for a tailor, but customers are few and, truth be told, P---e is not a very good tailor. “My Bonnie is out in the paddock…” he finishes with the mirror and sits down on the side of the bed to pull on his boots… “My Bonnie is out in the field…”

Corporal McGlade is very interested.