Andrew’s recent post about graffiti reminded me of a time
when graffiti, though vandalism, was at least witty.
Just one
of the great chestnuts:
--What
would you do if Jesus came to Hawthorn?
--Move
Peter Hudson to centre-half forward.
No credit
to me for the following, but they prove that people can have witty exchanges
without destroying property – if they have the right workmates, that is.
It’s
confession time, folks: I’m rather fond of ANZAC biscuit tins. Running out of
places to stash them, I’m thinking of moving some out of the kitchen. Perhaps
one or two could be put to better use as a place to keep photos?
Maybe one
could hold all those postcards I’ve collected [an obscene number of which seem
to be of churches]. Seriously, I've just been looking for an excuse to use a new expression Grace introduced me to, so I shall say these tins are just 'the dog's bollocks". He he.
Thinking
that if I could find more uses for them I might find excuses for them, I had a
peek on ebay. [- at the tins, not the bollocks -]. Check this out:
Q1. If I bought stuff online from an overseas
source would this be
(a)unAustralian
(b)cheaper
(c)easier
(d)just to upset Harvey Norman
Answers to Question 1
a) is incorrect. Making
purchases online from overseas sources is NOT Un-Australian – everyone is doing
it, just ask Harvey.
b) is correct. The
high Aussie dollar and the cost of petrol are too high a price to pay for
buying locally
c) incorrect. I can’t
even work out those Live Mail enquiry thingies that keep popping up, and I can
never think of/ remember passwords
d) this is also
correct, but is worth six points more than b)
Q2. If I went into a local retail store, looked
around and then left without buying anything, would this be
(a)cause I have no money to spare
(b)didn’t see anything I wanted
(c)knew
I could buy it cheaper elsewhere
(d)because it was “house-wife hours”
and there were 340 people queued up at each of the only two check-outs open and
I had an important appointment the next morning I didn’t want to be late for
Answers to Question 2
a), b) and d) are all
correct.
c) is a trick answer.
I only went in there hoping to find a toilet.
Q3. If I went into a local electrical goods store
and a staff member asked if they could help, would I
(a)keel over in shock
(b)immediately twit a tweet thingy to
tell everyone I know to come on down
(c)get
any real help if I said “Yes please, I need your advice”
(d)use their advice to decide what to
buy on-line
Answers to Question 3
a) is the only
correct answer. Give yourself an extra 4 points if you immediately thought of
Myer
b) is highly
unlikely. We all know a twit is a pregnant fish.
Q4. If the government imposed a GST on goods
bought online from overseas suppliers this would
(a)make me more likely to shop
locally
(b)not generate any revenue for the
government because the two employees left in the public service can only do so
much in one day
(c)make
Harvey’s day
(d)lead to a definitely/ might/ maybe
written in stone policy announcement from Tony Abbott
Answers to Question 4
a) is incorrect. See
answers to Question 1 re high Aussie dollar and, in light of this high exchange
rate, the puzzlingly high cost of petrol. In fact, add to this the cost of
parking, and the possibility of having my vehicle “car-parked” – the auto
equivalent of tagging.
b), c) and d) all go
without saying.
Q5. If a store wanted to charge me $5 to browse,
this would
(a)be reasonable
(b)be Julia Gillard’s fault
(c)be
$2 cheaper with a supermarket voucher
(d)make me more reluctant to shop
Answers to Question 5:
c) is a strong
possibility.
a), b) and d) are
incorrect. Score an extra 62 points if you chose d) – nothing on earth could
possibly make me loathe shopping more than I already do.
Q6. The thing most likely to influence my
purchasing decisions is
(a)what I want
(b)after sale service
(c)whether
the little miss behind the counter can tear herself away from her mobile phone
some time in the next 10 minutes]
(d)low price
Answers to Question 6:
None of the above.
a) I have no idea
what I want or what I am supposed to do with half the crap I already have.
b) is incorrect as
there is no such thing
c) highly improbable
d) next time you are
in a car park, take a look around. Count how many makes, models, colours,
features and extras each car has. What proportion are the cheapest car on the
market?
[a necessarily
over-simplified version] here's why 2 looked at the evolution of western ideas that are totally incompatible with Aboriginal culture: Savings; Planning; Accumulation of Wealth; Permanent Settlement; Individual Responsibility;
-----------------------
There are
many different indigenous peoples in Australia, as well as a range of
different ecosystems and micro-climates.
aboriginal languages map
rainfall in oz
--------------------------
most orstraylyuns live where there is water
a lot of aboriginals don't live in urban areas
The
Gunditjmara people Near Lake Condah in Victoria,
lived a settled life, capturing and breeding eels and fish in a series of man
made weirs. They built permanent stone dwellings.
-------------------------
A stereotypical Aboriginal is a desert-dwelling nomad. Perhaps because desert areas have been the least appealing to white settlers, some desert dwelling peoples have not been quite as “assimilated” as other Aboriginals.
Unfortunately, [former] desert nomads are possibly the most marginalised Aboriginals today.
--------------------
Whether the climate was kind or harsh, western style agriculture could not develop in Oz before white settlement.
In many areas, the soil is poor, and water supply unreliable.
There are no native plants suitable for cropping.
There are no native animals that could be domesticated except for the dingo.
With few exceptions, survival on pre-invasion Australia’s mainland required a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle.
Planning and saving and the accumulation of wealth – key aspects of western culture – were irrelevant and impossible.
Water was not saved, it was “stored” at its source. Game was hunted when needed, not hunted in quantities and then stored. Deferred gratification, or what westerners called “saving” was not just impossible, but counter-intuitive. People took what they needed while they could and, while there was no waste, feeding was opportunistic because tomorrow was uncertain. A successful hunter-gatherer existence means gratification cannot be deferred, people must live one day at a time and move purposefully from one area to another according to natural cycles.
A
hunter-gathering lifestyle necessarily involves co-operation and a team effort.
If a little tacker 4 years old manages to dig up only a small number of the
grubs or yams an adult could, then he was learning essential skills at a
reasonable pace.
Resources
were shared more or less on a basis of “from each according to his means, and
too each according to his needs”.
Life is a
series of “reciprocal obligations”. A gives B a kangaroo tail, and B shares
some grubs or seeds. Old look after young and vice-versa.
----------------
Sharing open
space at night when there is little shelter means no one has any chance of
privacy. Just one of the rules of Aboriginal society which had tragic
consequences was the idea that it is rude and invasive to look at any but the
most intimate relation when talking to them.
In a
white courtroom, Aboriginal witnesses or prisoners appeared downright shifty
and untrustworthy because they avoided eye contact.
[Today,
Judicial Bench Books provide a heap of information about communication issues,
but these inclusions were a long time coming, and other problems with language or legal
representation continue.]
Traditionally
individual responsibility meant that everyone was responsible for upholding the
law. If a law was broken, justice had to be swift. There were no circuit or
travelling courts, or judges who could split hairs about the severity of a crime,
criminal intent, the need for rehabilitation and so on.
What more
traditional Aboriginals point out is that
everyone knows the rules and
if
punishment is inflicted it is accepted,
punishment means the matter is done, and
the
law-breaker starts afresh with a clean slate.
In the context of a hard nomadic
life-style, this is just a practical application of John 20:23*.
There was no law to deal with living
off-country, or interacting with a white world. There is often a vacuum of
guidance or certainty about what is expected, replaced by a distorted and
inadequate set of inherited rules. Governor Davey's proclamation that if Aboriginals acted the same they would be treated the same by the law was a nonsense. It assumed that the benefits of agriculture and permanent settlement, of saving and of long-term planning to achieve change were self-evident, and assumed Aboriginals could readily understand western law.
------------------
Land was
not wealth, it was life. While westerners talk about “mother nature”, in
traditional Aboriginal culture, the landscape is literally mother. It is an
instruction book, and the relationship between land and the people who belong
to it carries the same reciprocal obligations as other relationships within a
group.
There is
a great deal about traditional Aboriginal culture to admire. But the
traditional lifestyles have been compromised by land titles, the degradation of
landscape and sacred sites by cattle or buildings, and “ownership” of water
rights, murders and forced evictions from peoples’ mother/landscape.
We cannot wind
back the clock.
------------------------
There
were extensive Aboriginal trade routes across the country, and there was
interaction with Macassans and other seafarers, but trade was a social and practical
business rather than something done for profit.
Aboriginals
have proven repeatedly that they are quite able to adopt and adapt new ideas
where
the resources exist and
the idea is useful to their
current reality
In the North West, Aboriginals took
to cattle farming with relish. Just one of the benefits was that cattle
stations offered them a chance to stay on their own country, often influencing
station managers’ decisions that might have affected dreaming sites.
They were
finally awarded "equal wages" for their work just as helicopters were starting to make
them redundant. Once they were redundant, they were usually evicted from
station properties.
There are
reports that during the very early years of cattle stations, Aboriginals had
copied white ideas, building corrals and helping themselves to cattle. Spear
heads have been found that were made of porcelain insulators from the first
telegraph line.
-----------------------
In the
early 1970s, the Whitlam government implemented some land rights initiatives
which sought to give Aboriginals access to their land [or some of it] and
provide ongoing access to important sites.
In many
instances, portions of cattle stations where Aboriginals had lived [outstations] before helicopters made them redundant were returned. This restored access to country important to Aboriginals' spiritual and mental welfare.
These
land rights decisions marked the end of an era of “assimilation” [total
destruction of culture], without necessarily encouraging the compromise of
integration.
---------------------------
Fast
forward a few hundred years from settlement, and here is what we have:
people living on outstations
with little access to services, and little reason to integrate
people suffering cognitive
dissonance or anomie because their entire belief system is at odds with where and
how they must live
drunks and diabetics who
don’t understand that not all food or drink has been given to them by
benevolent landscape spirits
diabetics because people do
not understand the concept of deferred gratification, or do not have
access to decent food, or that it is possible to continually eat too much;
people who eat junk food and too much of it, but have no reason to walk it off;
people who are brutal to each
other when drinking, because the concept of summary justice has become
perverted
people who might integrate
except there is no point because they cannot save. Reciprocal obligation
has become corrupted, and now results in “humbugging” [you must share any
money you have, even if I’m going to use it to poison myself]
kids with no sense of
planning, and nothing to plan for so they use grog drugs or anything
available to numb their numb existence
people unaware of western
hopes/expectations and too often even incapable of communicating properly
in English
people who must travel long
distances to stay with family/relatives, sometimes to commune but mostly
to attend funerals following suicides, murders etc
One of
the unsurprising things about fringe dwellers is that they tend to congregate
in clusters which face the direction of their home country. Town Camps [townships] grew up
spontaneously to meet this need.
poor quality footage from 2010? - a lot has happened since then [and a lot hasn't]
In
town camps the number of people living in one house can fluctuate from 2 to 40
over the space of 24 hours, but hospitality is mandatory.
Imagine a
teenager who is literate and keen enough and lucky enough to land a job, trying
to turn up for work rested, showered and properly dressed if they live in
conditions like this.
Because
of the hospitality obligations and the noise levels when they congregate,
marginalised Aboriginals are rarely welcome when they move into houses within
urban areas.
In many
instances housing is destroyed because living in a house seems crazy. For
example, it’s often a lot cooler outside than it is inside when you live in a
very hot environment. There is no “school of life” inside a house. Outside, sand is the blackboard.
--------------
The idea
of “assimilation” – now taken to mean the total destruction of Aboriginal
culture - was cruelly misguided. Suggestions that we must allow Aboriginals
unfettered access to their own country, preserving every aspect of their
culture[s] without hoping for any adaption are equally misguided.
We must
stop assuming whites have no right to make decisions on behalf of Aboriginals,
and start accepting that in some cases we have no right to not make decisions.
Nothing
will improve until coming generations of marginalised Aboriginals grasp concepts
like savings, deferred gratification and planning. Where traditional law is
inadequate or there is no longer any “authority” within individual communities,
this must be replaced by the rule of personal responsibility.
*“If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained”
[This is
a sketchy opinion, not a PhD thesis. Hopefully there are no glaring errors of
fact.]
Western
culture emerged principally from the westerly areas on this map. Go figure.
1. The
Industrial Revolution began in Britain.
2. In Scotland,
Adam Smith observed that “self-interest” is part of God’s wonderful system to
ensure nobody goes hungry.
These two
key events occurred 250 - 300 years ago.
The
westerly part of this map also marks the birthplace of whitefellas’ most recent
“ages of empire” from Holy Roman, to Latin American, to the rush to claim a bit of Africa right through to putting red bits on a map to boast about how big the British Empire was.
----------------------
The other
parts included in the map are not all whitefella parts, but they show where a
lot of ideas originated that made the Industrial Revolution possible/likely.
Most of
the northerly areas on the map have something in common – similar climates and resources.
Mountains
and valleys, rivers and lakes, animals and plants, and four seasons.
For oodles of thousands of years,
Spring was the time when
some plants started to bloom or fruit, and when seeds were deliberately sown.
Summer was a time for moving
around, trading, collecting some food and firewood, making things,
building and hunting.
Autumn was a time for
harvesting, collecting more firewood, doing more hunting, and preserving
food.
Winter was a time for huddling
in shelters, burning firewood, and surviving only because of what was saved when all that
hunting and harvesting and preserving was going on.
The two key
words in this simple outline are SURVIVED and SAVED.
If you lived in a temperate or arctic zone and you
didn’t save, you didn’t survive. If you survived by saving, you were really just asking for trouble, though. Sooner or later someone else who hadn't done their own saving would come raiding and raping, pillaging and pilfering. This made it even more important to save even more. If you managed to save/steal enough, this gave you power and made you even safer [unless you were the sibling of some ambitious royal]. The more you save, the better off you are and the more secure your future. Stuff that can be stored or used for money and trading for profit make sense in this sort of world. Money is light to carry if you suddenly need to escape an invading horde. ------------------------------
Most of the countries across the north of this map are joined together. Allowing for a couple of big hills, it is possible to travel from one end to another, or travel partway and move goods and IDEAS as part of some giant relay. Some one or some thing or some idea could travel from one end of the known world and back again along trade routes.
China came up with a way of printing; the Germans perfected printing, and the British gave us the Financial Times. East or west, people traded ideas and then tinkered with them to make them even better.
Crappy weather and the opportunities for millions to exchange ideas created two of the conditions necessary for an industrial revolution. The third and only remaining condition necessary was resources. Fertile soil, water, plants that could be cropped, and animals that could be domesticated. ------------------------- Savings is an idea so central to western culture that most countries have some sort of Little Red Hen Story, a story that's been used to justify
both capitalism and soviet collectivisation.
The plot of the story is about co-operation. The moral of the story is that if people don't do their own share of the work, then no one else is
likely to share their food. INDIVIDUALS are responsible for their own future.
The subtext of the story is this: You have to PLAN if you want to SAVE. You have to defer gratification, and not live "in the moment". You can't afford to live one day at a time.
---------------------
The
southerly part of this map did not give rise to the Industrial Revolution, but it was the birthplace of a lot
of IDEAS that had an enormous impact on the northerly bits.
Mathematics
Anatomy
Drama and Philosophy
Empire, and
The idea that knowledge could
be collected and stored
The first
Empires were built on theft. People, labour, goods, crops – there is no need to
save if you can just take what you want. If you couldn’t save, then you had
to help yourself. Empire after Empire came and went but in each of them there was a single idea that was not questioned. People are a commodity, and life is cheap.
Slavery
is a time honoured tradition that still goes on today.
the floggings will continue until morale improves
Not all
parts of the middle east are "Arable" [sorry, just had to say it] and some people relied on herding and a
semi-nomadic life to survive. For them, animals were an investment, a means of
production, a measure of wealth and a means of saving. But resources were limited. The usefulness of some other peoples' ideas was limited. Plans weren't changed and improved all the time because the most sensible thing to do was keep recycling the same ones: move yer goats and sheep around in search of feed.
------------------------- The most useful thing about the Bible is that it is a great history book. The Middle
East was the birthplace of Monotheism – the Jewish/Christian idea
that there is only one god, that god is all powerful, and that we will be
punished if we don’t do what he says.
And, as
the king is appointed by god then by god you’d better obey the king.
The Bible
reflects/approves of lots of western ideas, including:
Some people are more entitled
to land than others
Some people are superior to
others
War is okay
Slavery is okay
Saving is important
God takes sides
Agriculture is important
Men are more important than
women
Whites are more important than blacks
Be nice to each other.
On the
plus side, the Bible gave us the Ten Commandments and some other rules to live
by. On the not-so-plus side, these are open to interpretation. For example,
does “an eye for an eye” mean the punishment must fit the crime, or does it mean revenge is vital? Thankfully, organised religion exists to save us worrying about interpretation. Most of us need a messenger like Moses or a Pope to tell us what God really thinks. Not having to work out for myself what God really thinks helps me sleep at night. --------------
When
whites reached Australia
– at least, those who didn’t take one look at the place, laugh hysterically and
then sail off again – they brought with them a bunch of unquestioned assumptions about how the
world should work.
Governor
Davey’s Proclamation of 1816 sums it up nicely, I think:
The
natives and the whiteman are equal before the law. If they act the same they will be treated the same.
Facts: A lot of Aboriginals having a
drinking problem, a lot of Aboriginals seem to fight a lot, and Alice Springs is the knifing capital of the world [on a
per capita basis].
Fact: Some whitefellas get very huffy
and judgmental about this, as if the problem is genetic or something. They
forget whitefella thugs sometimes mix pills and booze then “glass” somebody
else for no reason, or that Australia
in general has a culture that’s sometimes a little too focused on getting
pissed as if this is something only gifted over-achievers can do.
Fact: Some whitefellas get very huffy
and judgmental about people even talking about Aboriginal issues. If we can’t
acknowledge that a lot of Aboriginals have a drinking problem, or seem to fight
a lot, or that Alice Springs is a great place
for nurses to learn about stab wounds, then how in heck are we supposed to help?
My
question is this:
Why is it
Australia,
out of all the world’s successful former colonies, is finding it so hard to close
the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people?
What
follows is not addressed to the yobbos who are just racists. Only an idiot
argues with a total idiot. What follows is
addressed to anyone who genuinely cares about Aboriginal welfare.
To
understand how this situation came about and why it’s so hard to close the gap
in such an enlightened and rich country, we don’t need to indulge in a lot of
guilty breast beating. In fact, that approach is counter-productive.
Sure, our
early settlers were ignorant and horrible and a product of their time, and
anyone living a modern lifestyle here – including many westernised indigenous
Australians – is a beneficiary of that past.
We need
to acknowledge the truth openly and honestly.
But we
also need to understand the reality of what is holding us back today – guilt on
its own won’t change a bloody thing.
PS From
here on I’m going to use the word "Aboriginal" in a politically
incorrect way but only because it’s a lot less tedious than typing something
like “Aboriginal, Torres StraitIsland, Tasmanian and
other Indigenous Australian” culture[s].
A
whitefella is any non-Aboriginal.
--------------
Today’s
reality begins with understanding many aspects of Aboriginal Australia’s
traditional cultures are totally incompatible with western culture.
It’s all
very well to say it would be nice if we protected these cultures and kept them
intact, but this is a load of impossible bollocks. Should Aboriginal children
be exposed to smallpox because inoculation is not a 40,000 year old Aboriginal
tradition?
I’m not
for the cavalier eradication of Aboriginal culture, just for considered
adaption [or adaptation depending on your own political views]. Better
Aboriginal culture should adapt than disappear altogether.
While we
are at it, let’s acknowledge that when we accuse someone or are accused of
racist callousness because of Aboriginal living standards, today’s reality is being judged by western standards.
In other
words, if you want to leave what’s left of Aboriginal culture 100% intact, stop
bitching about the gap. You can't have it both ways.
Sometimes
the application of western standards is appropriate. Sometimes it’s
unnecessary. Personally, I’d rather sacrifice some aspects of remaining
Aboriginal culture than accept today’s reality.
As a
white person do I have the right to make this decision on behalf of Aboriginals? Do I have the right not to?
Cultures,
like people, adapt or die.
---------------
Fake
boomerangs made in China
and painted in ridiculous patterns and colours are not culture, they are simply
an ugly form of exploitation. Likewise the notion that all boomerangs are
supposed to come back, as if they were some kind of pre-industrial frisbee.
My focus
here is on Aboriginals in isolated [mainly desert] areas of Australia, on fringe dwellers, and on people
from Arnhem Land. These are the peoples who
had the least contact with early invaders, and who are the most marginalised
today.
-----------------------
Just what
is culture, anyway?
Culture
is about how we view ourselves in relation to the natural world, and to each
other. What are our personal rights or our responsibilities to each other, and
what should be our goals in life?
In a
totally westernised and capitalistic world, the individual is responsible first
and foremost to himself, and for himself. Greed [or at least some advantage] is
good. Although co-operation is good, competition is more important. And SAVING is
central to all of this.
In a
totally traditional Aboriginal context, culture is about the natural world and
“our mob” [group]. Co-operation is essential, while saving and competition are
suicide.
To
understand incompatibilities between Aboriginal and western cultures, and to
understand why an understanding of them is essential to closing the gap, we
need to understand how each evolved, and look in detail at what each culture
really is.
here’s
why part 2 = why whitefellas think and live the way they do
here’s
why part 3 = why Aboriginals think and live the way they do
Life expectancy in the Philippines is steadily improving [77 years compared to 99 in Australia] but, as we know, the gap between rich and poor is growing everywhere around the world.
I wonder why there are windows in
Imelda’s limo, when she’s blind to what’s on the outside?
There is
poverty everywhere in the world, and no one can help everyone. It is one thing
to look after oneself or share just a little, but quite another to steal from
hungry people.
----------------------------
In my two
previous posts I’ve spoken about Muslim Terrorism on Mindanao in the Philippines,
and about JJ, our new house guest who is here on a student visa.
After
finally coming out of her shell, she’s revealed some snippets about her life
back home.
JJ speaks
a Spanish dialect at home, a different local dialect outside her home, another dialect from Cebu/Visaya, and Tagalog
with other Filipinos when all else fails.
But I
wondered how she came to have such an extensive English Vocabulary as well.
“We
receive all of our tuition in English, our books are from America” was an
answer that made sense. She hopes if she can migrate to Australia, her
daughter will have a chance to survive, and get a good education to boot.
JJ was only lucky enough to go to school herself because the village where she grew up was
sponsored by World Vision. Australian sponsors often sent postcards of
“Kangaroo, MountUluru, and Opera House”.
She
believes that she is very lucky. As a nurse back home she earns enough to pay
rent and bills and buy food and necessities.
Her
husband looks after their daughter, and works in a “drug store” belonging to
his family. Because there is so much poverty, if the average Filipino wants an
aspirin, they go to a drug store and literally buy “an” aspirin. If they can
afford it.
Many of
the poorer locals, she says, “eat rice, with salt as a side dish”.
---------------------
TO often
comes home from work, de-briefing by rabbiting on about patients, their conditions, and
treatments given at the hospital up the road. At first JJ was shocked.
In Zamboanga, no one goes outside after 5 or 6 pm. When the power goes out after dark [on rotation if not because of a breakdown] you will always hear gunshots.
In IsabelaCity, patients are rarely over 40. No
stents, pacemakers or oncology are given at the community hospital where JJ
works: If someone needs a defibrillator, the patient is loaded into a dinghy
with an outboard and taken to a bigger hospital.
In
Zamboanga if someone is diagnosed with cancer or other serious illness, they
are usually sent home because no one can afford to be in hospital. JJ says the
standard illnesses she deals with are diarrhoea, pneumonia and bronchitis,
knife wounds and gunshot wounds. She is an expert in gunshot wounds.
It seems many
Filipino hospitals don’t provide a lot of treatments that actually cure people.
---------------------------
If her mother was not here would JJ
have thought about migrating to Australia?
Everyone
wants to go to America,
she says, but it’s very hard. There are more tests to pass than for Australia, the
US English test is harder than the IELT*, and they are too expensive for most
Filipinos. For one of the USian tests, the closest place to sit the test is
Macau, Hong Kong.
*IELT is
the International English Language Test, set and controlled by CambridgeUniversity. A pass in each of four test
parts is mandatory for immigration applicants, but she needs a minimum of 7 in
each category before she can do a bridging course to register as a Nurse in Australia. In
one reading task she has only managed 6.5 both times she took the test at home,
though her overall score has been 7.5 .
---------------
The
nearest place to re-take the IELT test here is at the Clayton campus of Monash. While I was looking for details, I discovered Monash University run a
special coaching course in Melbourne's CBD. It only costs $790, for 32 contact hours.
One of
her class-mates had already signed up for a similar course at a TAFE, and it
cost $3,100 - for 20 contact hours.
I guess
the TAFE system can afford the pay increases recently granted to TAFE Board
members.
-------------
Most
mornings she leaves home around 7 am. From TAFE she then goes into the city for
her IELT coaching. To kill time she visits St Francis’ church in the city.
As
generations of Irish Catholics have stopped going to Church, Vietnamese and
Filipinos are replacing them. I’m now a committed atheist, but Catholicism is
a heritage which informs the way I think, and St Francis’ is the best Catholic
Church I’ve ever walked into.
the Ladye Chapel
It’s a community sanctuary and a great place to
just be quiet.
-----------------
Although
she is quite independent about changing buses and working out train lines, I
suggested JJ get off the train at Mordialloc when coming home so late after her
English Coaching, and I pick her up from there.
She sits
in the front carriage near the driver’s door, and there are still heaps of "normal" people on the train when it arrives at Mordialloc. Personally, when I’ve
taken trains late at night to Franger I’ve been stressed out every time.
At first I had no
idea that she would be so relaxed about late night trains, or why.
Her
English is improving, but more importantly she has learned heaps of tips about
how to score higher marks in the tests, and is positive and confident.
She just
prays God will help her, and one way of praying is to work hard.
We are,
as the USians say, rooting for her. She’s more than earned a break.
