Category: Australia

‘Let’s sit around a fire’

Went to a workshop held by Richard Downs, one of about 30-40 Aboriginal Elders who took part in the Ampilatwatja walk-off in June last year – they walked away from their community in the NT to set up camp in the bush. He’s the spokesman for the Alyawarra people  living at the township of Ampilatwatcha, 350 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.

They’re planning to install a bore and make the camp entirely self-sufficient with solar energy and permaculture.

Richard Downs. Photo: The Juice Media

Everyone wants to go and visit the camp, but he said they can’t have visitors until they’ve got water. Now they’re carting water from the nearby township. They’re looking for donations and are getting some union funding.

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UN Human Rights Day

Professor Colleen Hayward at UN talk.

Went to the United Nations (WA branch) Human Rights Day recently and the guest speaker was Professor Colleen Hayward* on “The UN and Indigenous Peoples – Our Rights and Getting the Wrongs of the Past Righted’’.

Professor Hayward is a senior Aboriginal woman of the Noongar nation in the south-west of Western Australia and is Head of Centre of Kurongkurl Katitjin at Edith Cowan University.

She said the UN’s ideas on rights for all indigenous people are relevant to and could be used by Aboriginal people here as leverage to gain more recognition for past wrongs and getting those fixed.

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Visit to Perth

Kings Park, from War Memorial.

I visited Perth recently and paid homage to the statue of ACDC singer Bon Scott, which is near the Fish Markets in Freo. Also, Kings Park for lunch and a visit to the War Memorial.

Govt-wise, Perth is the only State with Liberals (conservatives) in power, and they have all the top former-Howard people there (all top guns, I’ve heard).

Bon Scott statue, Freo

Also, chit chat about the UK and how that’s going. Apparently when Lehman collapsed last year, for six weeks the HM Treasury peeps spent 24/7 at the office, sleeping under their desks and sending people out to buy underwear.

The Queen was FURIOUS and called in the Governor of the Bank of England (first time she’d ever had an audience with him) for a “please explain” meeting on why the ‘brightest minds in the country” had stuffed everything up.
Then she visited the London School of Economics and they showed her diagrams of how everything had gone bad. Theories of “herd” behaviour and “irrational” behaviour had been ignored. Instead, finance people had gone for their own “incentives” and ignored the bigger, global picture. Just looking out for themselves. Also, with derivatives maturing in 5, 10, 15 years, more shocks could be ahead.

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Pollywaffle to become extinct!

The best chocolate bar ever.
50 grams of scrumpliciousness.

Yum! But no more Pollywaffles. 😦 A favourite Aussie chocolate bar with marshmallow in the centre. They were sold for 62 years here. Nestle is going to stop making them cause Kit Kats are more popular.

This is what happens when a multinational takes over an Aussie company — they don’t bother promoting the Aussie products and then ditch them. Thanks Nestle!

ABBA jigsaw: Australia-only product

abbafest 003
This TV special outrated the July 1969 moon landing in Australia.

Just thought I’d add this pic — I did my 160-piece puzzle when I got home from the Gourmet Viking dinner. This puzzle was a still from an Australian TV appearance on  Bandstand in 1976 and released by Reg Grundy as a puzzle only in Australia. So it’s very rare and one of my favourite items. Priceless to me — and it features their cat costumes, which the ladies often ripped off during Waterloo to reveal a mini-skirt version.