Perineum

Ye Olde Gwalia

2011-03-10T22:19:00.000-08:00

This is a sordid tale, and like so many disreputable stories in this part of the world it concerns the former gold-mining town of Gwalia.

Gwalia, you see, was a thriving centre from the mid 1890s until 1963 and blah, blah, blah…

The town – consisting mostly of tin-clad timber-framed houses – has since been designated a historical site, a large outdoor museum. Weeds have been pulled from front yards and plaques put up: “The butcher’s shop, est. 1898,” “Post Master’s House, built 1902.” That sort of thing.

All this industry occurred in the 1990s. We can’t possibly know how people thought back then. There is an epistemological disconnect between modern humans and those from the 1990s. They had a very different Weltanschauung, if you will. Among the few things we do know about the 1990s is that people thought Friends was cute. I think this proves my point.

It also helps explain the following.

In the 1990s, as they gussied up and promoted their ghost town, the good folk of the Gwalia Historical Progress Society made the monumental decision to acknowledge the seamier side of life in Olde Gwalia.

One of the houses on Gwalia’s main street is a large, many-roomed affair. It was obviously a brothel, back in the day, but admitting this was a step to far for the GHPS. Rather than stick up the required plaque saying something like, “House of Nasty, est. 1896,” it was decided that there would be a much more subtle allusion to the building’s former use.

They set up one tiny room, off the rear courtyard, with a very small sign indicating this room was used by a single sex-worker.

And then it gets messy.

In the spirit of outdoor, living museums, the GHPS wanted to show what life was like for the first settlers. In the case of Gwalia’s sex industry, they chose to represent a Goldrush ho’s life by placing a mannequin in the room’s wrought iron bed, on its back, with the covers pulled up to ‘her’ chest. When I say mannequin, it’s a blouse wrapped around straw stuffing, with a hessian bag head, also filled with straw, and buttons sewn on for eyes.

Truly, it’s ghastly, but perhaps it can still serve a useful purpose, by providing a modern-day lesson. Fathers could take their errant daughters to Gwalia, and show them the mannequin, and say, “Now look, Lotta, darling (it doesn’t matter if the daughter’s name isn’t Lotta – that just makes the lesson much more apposite)… Lotta, dearest, if you continue to freebase crack and pay for it by selling sexual favours, this is how history will remember you.”

Button eyes.

Wise in the Ways of Science

2011-02-21T18:39:00.000-08:00

Ducks have been much on my mind of late. An impeccable source has alerted me to an interesting piece of trivia concerning the Montgolfier brothers, those titans of early flight.

The poor Montys; their early experiments were the source of much derision. And when you’ve been derided by the French, well… there’re no finer exponents.

Perturbed at the catcalls they were receiving on the streets of Paris, the siblings decided to commit to a public demonstration of their latest invention, ze balloon. Before a crowd of more than four thousand (actually, I have no idea how big the crowd was, and history has failed to record it, so I’m getting all post-modern on your arses and making it up) in a central Parisian square, they prepared their globe of taffeta, alum and sackcloth, lit the burners, and stood back. As this marvel strained at the tie-ropes, the Montgolfiers called for volunteers to man the basket. At that point, each of the more than four thousand French persons muttered something about his/her croissants burning and disappeared into the nearby narrow alleyways.

The king somehow missed the cue and was asked if he would care to take his royal personage up into the air. Non! He promptly ordered that criminals be press-ganged into the role, giving the Montgolfier brothers such a look as to suggest he considered them to fit the description.

Remarkably (this being France), no criminals could be found. In a desperate search to find suitable subjects to take the maiden flight, the Montgolfiers hit upon the idea of putting animals in the basket; to see how they might cope. After much debate on the appropriateness of various critters, they settled upon sending aloft – on the 4th of June, 1783 – a sheep, a rooster, and a duck.

And this is true.

The French wanted to see if living creatures could cope with the rigours of flight, so they sent up a duck.

Thus was born the great age of Enlightenment scientific discovery-through-experiment.

Some two decades on, methods of investigation and reason now dominated the scientific discourse. The thirst for empirical knowledge led to the funding and organisation of great scientific maritime expeditions.

On a calm morning in April 1802, the navigator-scientists Matthew Flinders and Nicolas-Thomas Baudin met along the southern coast of Australia. Legend has it that it was a peaceful encounter – and since, at the time, Britain and France were at war, this was taken as a sure sign of the rationality of men of science in this golden age.

But legend is a capricious dame, not always given to being truthful. Certainly, the meet began well enough. Flinders and Baudin shewed one another their ships and pored over maps together, sharing the benefits of their exploration and acquired knowledge. There were shoals at two fathoms here, averred Baidin, while bountiful fresh water could be found a kilometre in from the shore at this point. Well, Flinders replied, the natives are friendly along this stretch of coast, but much more difficult in their dealings here.

And so it went on. And would have continued, but for a disturbance that broke out among the idle sailors, milling about as they were on first one ship’s deck and then the other. As Baudin and Flinders stood with heads together over a freshly drawn map of the Yorke Peninsula, one particularly bored Jack Tar asked the Frenchy standing next to him, “‘ere, seen any flyin’ ducks lately then, ‘ave you Pierre?” It took a while before the insult was translated through the mass of French enlisted men. The captains remained oblivious to the gradual angry murmuring, but within minutes, there was an almighty stoush afoot.

Of course, official French accounts called it a melee. And it set back Anglo-French relations by, oh, some three minutes.

Sometimes, the most obvious pun is the best

2011-02-18T06:10:00.000-08:00

As expected, Decoy Britney has contacted me vis a vis my proposal to write her biography. I must confess our relationship did not begin as cordially as I might have hoped. We agreed that we needed about 300 hours of face-to-face interviews to provide enough background to do this epic justice. So far we have had, I think, 26 seconds. I say ‘I think’ because the subject turned up to the first interview wearing a Groucho Marx mask, which she refused to remove.

Figuring that the interview process was not going entirely swimmingly, I pitched another idea I had: that the two of us jointly manufacture and market the first Decoy Britney parfum, as a counterfoil to the products of that upstart Spears woman. I want to call it, simply, Duck, by Decoy. I suggested to my potential partner that as base for this scent she could use the fine estuarine waters that lap gently onto Skinny City’s foreshores. But we need to act fast. The very latest – in a thirty-year saga – of Waterfront Redevelopment Plans is even now being pitched to some of our most supportive overseas investors. Unfortunately, the very richest and most promising backers are also the most olfactorily delicate. They want the rotting blue-green algae and bird excreta cleared from the Swan – though I’ve argued these are merely an environmentally-friendly form of ambergris. To no avail. Patrons of riverfront baristas are known to like a bright blue sparkle to their watery vistas. We need to act before the tonnes of pool chemicals are poured in and the very essence of Duck is destroyed.

DB has just emailed a response: “ARE YOU OUTA YOUR FRIGGIN’ MIND, YOU DIPSTICK? DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN.”

Whatever that means. Well, first of all, in the unbridled excitement at my brilliant initiatives she clearly feels for our great business venture, the poor thing has accidentally left her ‘caps lock’ on. As to the content of her message, I do not understand it at all. It must be some kind of arcane hipster American slang.

It witnessed many a deed and vow, We must not change its colour now

2011-02-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, delivering the keynote address at the organisation’s Indigenous conference in Darwin, the national Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Jeff Lawrence, puffed out his chest (he may not have; that's just how i imagine it) and declared, “Australian unions have always stood by our Indigenous brothers and sisters.”

Indeed.

And that shame-faced figure slinking off into a shadowy corner? That’s Australian History. She’s very embarrassed.

‘Always’ is a definite term. In Western Australia (and the situation was mirrored in the other states), in the early twentieth century, “The white working class sought the removal of Aborigines from the labour force from a blend of humanitarianism, racial prejudice, and fear of cheap competition… working class politicians favoured measures which would restrict the employment of Aborigines.” (I owe Professor Geoffrey Bolton for this)

Under pressure from the unions, State Parliament implemented in the notorious 1905 Aborigines Act rulings that Aborigines not be paid cash wages and could only be employed under a permit system. Aboriginal people did not gain employment in any unionised industry in that time. Isolated from the rest of the labour force, and unsupported by the unions, they had no chance to break out of the virtual slave labour conditions they found themselves living under for more than half a century.

There were union-driven protests against Aboriginal grave-diggers in Southern Cross in 1902, against the employment of Aboriginal shearers on Noonkanbah station in 1908, and against the use of women as labourers in the Toodyay district in 1911.

The climax of the unions’ campaign to exclude Aborigines from the workforce came in 1912, when the state executive of the Australian Labor Party moved a resolution banning the employment of Aborigines on private property. Prof. Bolton concluded, “It was no coincidence that the harassment of the south-west part Aborigines occurred under the Scadden Labor Government of 1911-16.”

So. How’s that again, Jeff? “unions… always… stood by” &c.

Enough, of course, is enough. Since about 1950, unions in Australia have been, increasingly, supportive of Aboriginal rights. It’s just that ‘always’ bit that raises a VCH’s hackles.

Ah, Australian History. Look at you; you look positively downcast. Your makeup’s all askew. And is that a graze on your knee, you poor thing? Sit down, you don’t look at all well. What’s that? A massage? Oh, no, absolutely not. There’s been far too much of that already.

I Heart Archaeology

2011-02-10T01:41:00.000-08:00

I heart archaeology, combining as it does the two things I love most; studying history and digging holes.

And truly, the practitioners of the art/science/scienceart, those fine, proud archaeologists, are the greatest; a noble, honourable, arcane bunch, admittedly given to well dodgy hats. I venerate the ground they walk upon – even when that ground has been disturbed by teeny, tiny, itty-bitty little spades.

An archaeologist hunched over a remarkable artefact known as Google Earth recently discovered a bunch of ancient sites in Saudi Arabia. He had to do it this way because there is a problem conducting field research in the desert kingdom. The rulers are “hostile to archaeology.”

Hostile to archaeology!!! The cads.

Apparently, there is little respect for ancient buildings on the peninsula. According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, “90 per cent of the archaeological treasures in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina had been destroyed to make way for hotels, apartment blocks and parking facilities.” Who knew this would become a feel-good story? To wit: in the ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ stakes, it turns out that the good citizens of Skinny City and the Saudi people have much in common. Well, one thing at least: they both love the unbridled joy that comes from bulldozing old buildings. Our built heritage is a thing to be obliterated to the maximum extent possible.

meet

Oh, look the truth is that historians become historians because they want to whinge about how much better things were in the past and they hope to get paid for it.

Meanwhile, we step up our endeavours to bridge the cultural gap. A committee of local plenipotentiaries has been waiting patiently in Riyadh to see one of the minor royals. It’s only been six months and I’m told they have already been absolutely promised a meeting with a brother-in-law of one of the second tier functionaries to a junior prince of the House of Saud. It’s very exciting. There is much we can teach one another in the ways of flattening old things.

Decoy Britney! Again!

2011-02-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

From the news wires, via The Age newspaper, i learn this:

"Britney Spears' publicist has dismissed rumours a body double was used in the video for the new single Hold It Against Me because the pop star hadn't learned the complicated dance routines."

By the way, newswires, it's "Spears's": don't be afraid of the second 's' with the possessive singular. But that's hardly the point here.

The point is that Decoy Britney (of whom i have written previously, here http://perineum-wa.blogspot.com/2009/11/decoy-britney.html and here http://perineum-wa.blogspot.com/2010/01/update.html) continues to make her redoubtable presence felt.

BORING:

INTERESTING:

Allegedly, this is Decoy Britney leaving rehab.

Rehab!

Why has Decoy Britney been in rehab? Has she been decoy drinking? Is it for decoy drug abuse?

Clearly, Decoy Britney lives a far more interesting life than does Ms Spears herself. I would like to offer my services as Decoy's biographer. I know she reads this blog - i'm awaiting the call.

Dorothea's lament

2011-01-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

Dorothea Mackellar’s famous (and totally Oz) poem is oft-cited, but it is always the second stanza that is quoted, the first four lines being imbued with a jingoistic fervour the truth of which Australians, even living a far more urban and coast-hugging life than myth allows, are constantly reminded:

“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of rugged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding plains.”

Dear old global warming is merely entrenching these erratic patterns of torment. The English, the first non-Indigenous inhabitants of this continent, took a long time, if at all, to adjust to their new physical surrounds. Mackellar loved the place, but her references to the ‘pitiless blue sky,’ ‘The hot gold rush of noon’ and the ‘thirsty paddocks’ are all revealing. The English came here, and they pondered, and mostly they cursed the place for not being England.

Mackellar’s poem contains a first verse that has been largely erased from the national recollection. She chides her fellow colonials for clinging to fond memories of the Mother Country’s gentle climatic ways:

“The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft, dim skies –
I know but I cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.”

Underneath it all, the English brought with them a language that is now used to describe this country, but which is eternally inadequate, and often wrong. A fine example can be given in the application of the word ‘river.’

Here’s a river:

It flow steadily and prettily from gently rain-soaked slopes to seaside.

Now, here’s an Australian “river,” in this case the Ashburton, in the north of Western Australia:

Forty nine weeks of the year, it lies a dry sandy bed, then a cyclone passes by the upper reaches, and in three weeks it empties an equivalent amount of water as sixty-two Sydney Harbours into the Indian Ocean (for those not metrically-inclined, this can also be explained using Planck’s Number: a shit-load of liquid to the power of three):

The word ‘drought’ is another misnomer. It means, obviously, the absence of expected rains, but when the rainfall pattern is by nature erratic, as it is across much of Australia, rain cannot confidently be expected, so how can there be ‘droughts?’

The inadequacy of the English language to describe the Australian environment is best illustrated with the continuing reference to the Northern Hemisphere seasons. ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’ are words regularly invoked here as though they had some rational meaning. In truth, ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’ are both dry and hot-but-not-quite-as-hot-as-mid-summer. They are not, respectively, times of gentle showers and budding flowers, nor of softly falling leaves. In the South-West of Western Australia, the Nyungar divide the year into six seasons, based in part on temperature and rainfall, but each defined by a wind direction (when one lives between the desert and the ocean, one really, really ought to pay particular attention to wind direction). The Nyungar season equating with mid-winter is Makuru, when the cold fronts begin crossing the coast further and further north, bring increased rains (right now, it's Bunuru; nasty hot and scorching north-easterly winds).

Well, that’s how it was. Our old friend G. Warming has caused the Makuru cold fronts to retreat further and further south. The south west of Australia, known as a great producer of wheat and wine, is now, seemingly, in the permanent grip of ‘drought.’ In the continued endeavour to make the Australian environment more English-like, some of our finest politicians have proposed solutions like a building a canal to bring water down from the north. It harks back to the great nineteenth century notion of turning the rivers inland (cf, oh, I don’t know, some article or other about the great nineteenth century notion of turning the rivers inland).

Check this out, in reference to the cold fronts retreating southward: it’s today’s weather chart (oh, BTW, last winter was the driest on record &c.):

See that front sweeping south of the South West? Wasted rain.

The answer is clear: we need to move the continent about 200 kilometres to the south. Shouldn’t be too hard – this state is home to a populous of the finest diggers of holes ever assembled in human history.

Politicians, are you listening?

totally Oz

2011-01-24T01:32:00.000-08:00

The game of ‘what if’ took another turn recently, when a colleague opined the desirability of going back in time and putting a premature end to the life of a certain mid-century bureaucratic tyrant, to the purported benefit of the nation’s Indigenous peoples.

It got me thinking.

To make a real change to Indigenous history it would be necessary to take out the explorers.

Willem Jansz, who may or may not have made landfall on Cape York but nevertheless saw much he wanted to report, arrives back at the overly gilded offices (don’t blame them – they invented the stuff) of the Dutch Admiralty, 1606, in a state of high excitement:

“Your excellencies, I found a…”

BLAM!

“Mijn god! What? What just happened?”
“Verdomme! He’s dead. Shot. But by whom?”

Seventeen years on, Jan Carstensz stands before the captains of the Dutch East India Company:

“Sirs, you won’t believe it, but south of Batavia there’s a huge…”

BLAM!

Abel Tasman, 1642:

BLAM!

And on to the British. William Dampier, 1688:

“Your worships, I don’t know how the Dutch missed it, but I have discovered…”

BLAM!

“I say; what on earth?”
“He’s been shot, poor chap.”
“But who; how???”

And so on and on. The whole continent and its inhabitants remain a secret.

Until, of course, Google Earth is invented. And then, Seattle, 1996:

“Holy shit, come look at this. Wha’ the fuck?”
“Jesus H. Christ. Look at that fucker. It’s enormous. Get me a coffee.”

The times they are a changin'

2011-01-06T00:33:00.001-08:00

There is much gnashing of teeth and wonton lamentation at the demise of the Hydey as an alternative music venue. In its stead stands a discount liquor supermarket. Surely this is a fair swap: when the equivalent dens fell by the wayside in the 1980s and 1990s they did so in far less fortuitous manner. The Shents – remodelled as a home for the elderly; The Shaftesbury – demolished; The Grosvenor and the Old Melbourne – yuppified; Canterbury Court – demolished. And so it went.

The Hydey rubs it in by displaying posters for gigs gone by (the posters are suitably frayed and torn – tres Rock’n’Roll). One such flyer brought to mind a show I managed to attend, an unexpected delight, a fine gig. Throughout the course of the evening, I was personal witness to at least eight patented Rock’n’Roll moves. The exact number is uncertain, in part because it remains a matter of great dispute whether 6 is distinct from or merely an extension of 5. This argument dates back to the early 1970s when Lester Bangs and Robert Christigau came to blows over the very topic at a rock writers’ convention the two were attending in NYC. There was of course no appearance of move 11, which to the best of my knowledge has been used but once, by Ronald S. Peno of the Died Pretty.

These musing brought to mind the Claisebrook Tavern, also a great venue of the 1980s, and host to the greatest gig ever, a Kryptonics show that deserves a post of its own.

drinking; not drinking

2010-08-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Through this last ‘winter,’ certain state government bods deemed it a good idea to try to encourage the citizenry to holiday in their own backyard. The Central Wheatbelt, a vast area of undulating, dry, salt-affected wheat-and-sheep farmland, was one of the fine destinations posited. Then just last week, as Skinny City celebrated some milestone or other, one of the main city streets, St. Georges Terrace, was festooned with banners also exhorting the proud regions of rural W.A. And which one did I espy first: you guessed it, that for the Central Wheatbelt. The banner itself seemed to be made of a hessian bag and featured a picture of… wheat sheafs and sheep.

Now, no one loves the Central Wheatbelt more than I do, but surely the state government needs to exercise a duty of care here. What none of this promotional material mentions is the evil that lurks ’neath these images of lusty wheat and wholesome sheep. You see, the good people of the Central Wheatbelt hide a dark secret: they don’t want you to drink.

Like so many of the stories that provide structure in this part of the world, it all started about a hundred years ago. And, again like so many stories in this part of the world, it’s mostly your fault. No doubt you’ve been told many times how your great-grandfather Bert was sent packing to the Wheatbelt in the early 1920s, where he met your soon-to-be great-grandmother Lillian.

Lillian was a god-fearing Methodist. She was all astir back then on two issues: first, the church being proposed for a site on the river next to the new bridge – one of the congregation had heard of a new building material called asbestos that would not burn and would keep out the heat and the cold (Praise be to the Lord for his bounty); second, the increased incidence of drinking and dancing. Great-grandmother Lillian didn’t brook either.

Now, it’s hard to police dancing – just ask the British troops in Ireland – but drinking, well, that’s first and foremost an economic transaction and Lillian knew this well. She and her cohorts fought the good fight for years, and in 1926 they succeeded in getting a temperance vote placed on the ballot in Western Australia.

It was, in hindsight (ah, hindsight), ludicrous, quixotic, dumb-arsed: there was never any chance it would succeed. As expected, the heavily populated areas of Fremantle and the Goldfields – rows of terraced-housed, blue-collar, beer-lovers through and through – voted by wide margins against the drink ban. The attempt to introduce prohibition was resoundingly defeated.

Yet, one region of Western Australia was strongly in favour. Uh huh: the Central Wheatbelt. Nearly six in ten adults there affirmed their opinion that neither they nor anyone else should partake of the demon drink.

Thanks goodness, in those days rural, unrepresentative minorities did not have the power to hold the whole country to ransom.

Could the fifty million of you please, please be quiet

2010-07-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

The Town of Vincent – almost certainly the 14th finest local government jurisdiction I’ve ever lived in – recently sent us our rates assessment. I note that our reference number is something like 000000203857.

From this, I deduce a couple of things. Firstly, it suggests there are a little over two hundred thousand residential and business units in this fine part of Skinny City. I haven’t counted every office, shop, house and flat, you understand, but this tallies with my estimation. If one then deducts the commercial properties, but allows for more than one occupant per residential unit, it is clear that the reference number equates to the number of residents (for the mathematically inclined, the formula I’ve used is {∂⅞ x 4.86Ω + √ 6∑ ≠ ∞↓ less a derivative of 7Δ/13 x 0.0056θβ}).

So, there are about 204 000 people residing in the Town of Vincent. 'bout what I would have said.

The second point is that, ever the forward thinking local government (did I mention it is nearly the 14th finest local government jurisdiction I’ve ever lived in?), the Town has allowed for future population growth. The twelve digit reference number shows that the Town of Vincent expects that at some point in the future it will be home to a thousand billion people.

Cool.

This works out as approximately 4.8 million people per building (commercial and residential – and don’t you worry about the maths I’ve used here; it’s impeccable). Again, I’m down with that, though I expect that for my part I may have to remove an internal wall or two. I shall be applying for planning permission rather soon.

Hubris

2010-06-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

War, huh, yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Uh-huh.

Hindsight, on the other hand, can be fucked with, and how.

In May 1914, J.C. McKay’s, Drapers, of Kalgoorlie, declared by way of advertisement, their forthcoming sale was to be ‘The Greatest Event of 1914’. Well, you know, you can’t help it if you fail to predict the odd international conflagration. But to follow up two months later with yet another sale, this time trumpeted, ‘What a slaughter;’ that’s just plain carelessness.

Some seven months later, with Jerry now causing a fearful hullabaloo across Belgium, Sir Oliver Lodge, that well-known Edwardian boffin, stood before an expectant crowd to inaugurate science week in good old Blighty. Though such a doughty personage would never refer to the awful carnage on the Western Front – for security reasons, you understand – he did betray the emotional turmoil in which the nation was mired, a result of the horrendous casualty rates being chalked up in Flanders. Ollie claimed to have scientific evidence that life continued after death. Oh, sure, he never deigned to reveal that evidence, but imagine the reassurance given to the thousands who had just lost loved ones. Ollie, you see, had communicated with the dead. And, poor man, he had just lost his son on the Western Front. Spiritualism would, as a direct result of those many, many similar untimely deaths, become very popular in England during and after the Great War. But it took a Knight of the Realm to lend it a pseudo scientific basis. L. Ron Hubbard could have done well to have checked out the gravitas lent by hereditary qualifications.

Goats are the new black

2010-04-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

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)

LX an' Ron: Ron an' LX

2010-03-18T07:17:00.000-07:00

2010

Sometimes, years just plain suck. An' twenty-ten is shaping up as such a year. First, Ron Asheton and now LX Chilton.

For me, these are the guys, and always have been. The guys who did the coolest shit: the makers of the best music what affected me most.

I'm serious.

And i'm saddened.

Vale, you cool fuckers.

brothels and historians

2010-03-09T06:45:00.001-08:00

Long-time readers have urged me: 'VCH, you write so often about gold-town, why do you never mention its fourth most famous feature?'

Waaaallllll. It's tricky; but it is also an excellent lesson in the vagaries of language vis a vis its historical context: people, stuff is subjective.

Gold-town's fourth most famous feature is its sex workers' residences: its hos [hoes?] homes. Now, were i a not a very competent historian i might call them 'houses of ill-repute' and be done with it. But, as a VCH, it is essential to my professional being that i know stuff is relative. And who am i to say what is their repute? Some might argue said houses have the finest repute available.

Of course, i will never be able to test this modest theory, because, while some of my Gen X colleagues tackle exciting subjects under the rubric of the history of sexuality, i am a prudish historian; best suited to drawing up tables of economic transactions and quoting Toynbee.

And these things are excitement enough.

Swamp

2010-03-01T06:43:00.000-08:00

Sacred Cowboys.

Remember them?

’80s band!

Rock writers getting all nostalgic for the late ’70s punk era like to relate some lead-singer usually named Joe Damage saying he was invited to become a member of the Sucky Toedogs even though he ‘couldn’t play his instrument.’ What is unmentioned is that all the other members of said band were former Prog musos, virtuosos who could play in 13/17 time but who were now hiding their abilities for the sake of appearing ‘orffentic.’

Bollocks to that (hey, situationist joke)!

If you want lack-of-musical-chops, go ’80s. There were fabulous bands then, none of whose members could play a lick.

The result? Massive reliance on the lumbering, dinosaur-slow thumps of the bass player (usually) or drummer (occasionally).

Cf. Scientists, Gun Club, (The Cure??? aw, crap), Tarantulas (Perth band fer yer interstate and foreign brains). Who else?

Dum dah, dum dah, dum dah…

They called it swamp music.

An’ it was good.

Cemeteries!

2010-02-15T05:14:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will know how very fond i am of cemeteries (and that i'm not a goth) and of glorious Kal-town. A coming together of these favourites provided me with a moment worthy of sharing (i think); a moment when the joi i derive from both was heightened. I was jogging, as is my wont when i need an alcohol substitute, on a Kal-town evening last week when the weather turned, frankly, nasty. Though six thirty p.m., it was still about 33C (about 8 million Farenhiet for yer foreign readers) and as humid as fuck, and there was lightening, and thunder, and big fat fuckin raindrops, and - as only the desert can provide - a massive dust storm comin' up with the rain.

My eyes were filling with grit (grit! it's been soooo long) and i couldnt see more than five metres and i was hot, and cranky as a result. And it just so happened i was at that time running along one side of Kal-town's fine cemetery. In this state i was overjoied to have a crimson (maybe maroon - as i said, visibility was poor) huge four-wheel-drive pull up on the road next to the footpath and the female driver sing out 'do you need a lift home?'

Kindness to strangers. I felt quite humbled. This is the sort of thing i mean: why Kal-town isn't like yer nasty ol' cities with their i'm-just-out-for-me-Jack attitudes. Why the very air exudes hospitality and neighbourliness.

Naturally, i requested the lady Samaritan to leave at once. Without question a serial killer.

It was a lucky escape. Within seconds, as i continued along the leeward side of the cemetery in this howling gale, i saw one of the freakingest sights i've seen in many a long &c.

The metal fence was stacked up with artifical flower arrangements; tumble wreaths.

I returned the next day to take these photos, but they fall miserably short of doing justice to the sight in the storm and the gloaming light (i am not a goth).

Now, i've done my best to paint an Apocalyptic picture. The question is: could the Apocalypse be decorated with artificial flowers? What about the other signs? Artificial locusts? Fake toads? Rat figurines?

I want catering rights to the End-of-days. But where do you get millions upon millions of plastic rats? I'm not talking about joke shop quantities. Not pink flamingo numbers. I mean as many plastic rats as balloons at a rich kid's party; as many as WA has big holes in the ground; as many as red rose petals on a metrosexual's bed when he thinks he might get lucky.

That many.

gonzo ergo sum

2010-01-31T05:40:00.000-08:00

Time for a little old-fashioned phrase-coining.

No doubt, you’re all familiar with the term ‘gonzo journalism.’ The idea that the writer inserts his- or herself into the mix. HST started it; Tom Wolfe championed it (was he afraid of an ass-whuppin’? Izzat the real reason?).

Latterly, I’m readin’ a lot of history where the writer follows in the footsteps of some historical figure, or figures, of greater or lesser fame, and writes not only about said figure/s but relates, too, the writer’s own feelings.

Ladies and gennelmens, this is BULLSHIT.

Invariably, when one has finished reading this sensitive ‘discovery of self’ (one author – my personal vote for most fucking annoying – put it thus: “I wanted to travel across the land that the people had walked over, measuring its distance with my eyes and soul”) one is massively under-whelmed. Who cares? The fact is that Thompson worked - was so very popular - mainly because he told a good, good story. All we get from being subjected to this latter-day hubris, these ‘journeys of discovery,’ is the discovery that the writer is, in fact, a boring twat.

I give you “non-gonzo journalism” and I consign it to the rubbish bin.

TV vs Shakespeare: who will win?

2010-01-21T05:45:00.000-08:00

Oh, oh, Oh. Speaking of television: I think my recall is right - Shakespeare stated there were only seven basic possible plots in story-telling, but he knew not of the stuck-in-a-lift episode.

Eight, Bill, eight.

Dead meat

2010-01-20T04:54:00.000-08:00

So I’m just quietly watching television when an ad comes on for a cooker – a griller, if you will – that sizzles meat while a series of ridges in the pan below allow the fat to run off.

It's a generic brand product.

This makes me so very, very angry.

HOW DARE YOU! YOU CHEAP-SKATE COPYCATS! YOU CHEATING, LYING, RIP-OFF MERCHANTS! YOU MENDACIOUS CONNIVING TRADEMARK-DODGING TAIWANESE PLAGIARIST WANKERS!

GEORGE FOREMAN INVENTED THAT.

After a while the rage subsides, and I get thinking: What a fabulous career George is having. For thirty years he spent his days punching blokes in the head. Then he decided to take up inventing cookware. And I start to wonder. Surely footage of every World Heavyweight Championship boxing match survives: both those sanctioned by the Nevada Gaming Commission and the Don King dodgy ones.

So could one go back and watch these tapes very closely, until one catches the exact moment when the light comes on in George’s eyes, when he is busy teaching some hapless young pup how to box, when he is throwing yet another bone-crunching blow into the face of a callow, incapable, bloodied semi-combatant, causing great joy to baying crowds and local capillary surgeons. There: we can actually see the moment. One second George is thinking about how to tease out his easy win: “Boy, you’re too dumb and too weak to fight an old pro like me. And dammit boy, you’re too fat. Way too fat.”

And then: “OHMYGOD!!!”

And as the crowd is left hooting and hollering and demanding more blood, as ring-side confusion reigns, at the end of the seventh round, when later analysis would reveal George held a 42-0 lead, he turns to his seconds and says, “take my gloves off, boys. And get me a sketch pad.”

An update

2010-01-05T06:33:00.001-08:00

People, it appears that Skinny City's economic boom may rest on shifting sands. Now, bearing in mind (extremely competent) historians make for much better readers of all things economic than, well, economists, my pronouncements on this can be taken as certain. For the evidence i note that one of our most enduring and endearing department stores has taken to displaying bottles of Britney Spears's very own perfume at a greatly reduced price.

I must confess that despite recent attempts to 'bring myself up to speed' - as hip folk are wont to say - on matters Britney i was unaware she had - personally - alchemised four perfums.

Here is some information from her website:

Britney Spears is back. She's got a new fragrance on the shelves, a limited-edition perfume called Believe. It is the 4th fragrant release from the mega-star, following stratospheric sales of her 2004 Curious, 2005 Fantasy, and 2006 In Control. Believe is a sensual and warm blend of exotic florals and seductive amber. It is also available in a beautiful Spray gift set and Body Soufflé.

Phew: there's a lot there to digest.

I for one am delighted that Ms Spears is so sure in how she thinks people should smell that she has spent years refining whale intestines and rose dew in just such a way for our benefit, but something is missing in all of this.

A more important question needs to be asked: What perfumes does Decoy Britney want us to wear?

Reminiscin'

2009-12-30T03:37:00.000-08:00

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) conspircay

2009-12-16T06:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-13T03:51:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-25T18:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-27T01:13:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

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.

*******

2009-07-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

"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

2009-06-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

1472AD

2009AD

yee haw

Idiots

2009-05-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-09T04:15:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-05-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-04-08T03:58:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-04-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-24T06:46:00.000-07:00

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.