Goats are the new black

Well, here’s a thing: It’s 1899, London is swinging on account of the millions of pounds of Coolgardie gold flowing through the Bank of England, mining speculation is rife, while in Australia the political and social elite is abuzz with the impending federation of the disparate colonies. In many a busy antipodean market town, men parade down newly macadamised, bustling streets, money in their pockets and grand schemes in their minds. They check their fob watches against town hall clocks, adjust their pince-nez, and slap their right thighs with no little hubris. Their women companions wear the latest English fashions, twirl parasols resting on left shoulders, and meet everyone’s gaze in a manner that would have been deemed unseemly in the mother country.

In the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, it is waistcoats at twelve paces: Across the floor, Members A.P. Matheson and J.W. Hackett get into an argument. Matheson brandishes a recent government report: Acclimatisation Committee Paper №. 50.2 of 1899. Said paper, avers Matheson, discusses the establishment of a fertile race of hybrid animals: to wit, crossing sheep with goats. Is the Hon. Mr Hackett aware, in his official capacity, that the average period of gestation for sheep is 150 days, and that for goats it is 112 days and that for this, and no other reason, the idea is bunkum?

Now, Hackett is no fool: he runs the fine newspaper that today enjoys a monopoly in Skinny City, The West Australian. He will go on to champion the establishment of Western Australia’s first university, and have that university’s grand hall named in his honour. And he is not amused at Matheson’s malarkey. Or maybe he is. “I invite the House,” he thunders, “to bear witness that I have given every opportunity to the hon. gentleman to escape playing the fool. This branch of the business, however lucrative, the Committee do not propose to cultivate.”

And so this fine colony, this El Dorado, this haven for hole-diggers of every race and creed, escaped the ignominy of forever being branded a damn-fool place, in much the same way jurisdictions like Sudan are now deemed ‘failed states.’

Later, thanks to the Hon. A.G. Jenkins, the comments (both “undesirable and regrettable”) were officially expunged from Hansard, the record of the Assembly’s proceedings. And yet, of course, they weren’t.

Politicians are a funny lot, when you think about it.

(If’n y’all don’t believe me, and if you are lucky enough to have access, the source is, Hansard of the Western Australian Parliament, Vol XIV, 21st June to 28th September 1899 Perth, Australia, Government Printer, 1900, pp2977 and 2888)