Australia - you're standing in it

@views , yes I knew lumo and he had a mate called mark with him who was lost at sea in a boating accident I believe . Victorians out numbered everyone. Queenslanders who now reside in Kalbarri were also there they passed the big cave onto me when they left . Phil Ogden was there but it wasn’t run as a camp then . No one was really staying at narloo we used to just go there for the day. I’ve never seen a bay like the bluff as far as sea life goes . Haven’t been back but never forget my time there. Have some great photos of lumo and mark fishing and surfing but they are at my place in Bali

Phew, a new page.

And it's Friday.

We should have a public holiday every week...

That last page was totes FAF.*

*Acronym Definition
FAF Forgive And Forget
FAF Fish and Fisheries (journal; Wiley)
FAF Fine Arts Festival
FAF Freedom Isn't Free
FAF Federação Angolana de Futebol (Portuguese: Angolan Football Federation; Angola)
FAF First American Financial Corporation (Santa Ana, CA)
FAF Family and Friends
FAF Friends Asking Friends (software)
FAF Fast and Furious
FAF First Amendment Foundation (Florida)
FAF Finnish Air Force
FAF Financial Accounting Foundation
FAF Forged Alliance Forever (gaming community)
FAF French Air Force
FAF Fuel Adjustment Factor (shipping industry)
FAF Freight Analysis Framework
FAF The Fast and the Furious (movie)
FAF Friendship Ambassadors Foundation
FAF Fire-And-Forget
FAF Fonds d'Assurance Formation (French: Insurance Training Fund)
FAF Find All Files
FAF Financial Aid Form
FAF Faith and Freedom (various locations)
FAF Film Arts Foundation (San Francsisco, CA)
FAF Final Approach Fix
FAF File and Forget
FAF Fifty Amp Fuse (band)
FAF Fine Arts Facility (Westlake High School; Austin, TX)
FAF FishAmerica Foundation
FAF Fédération des Aveugles et Handicapés Visuels de France (French: Federation of the Blind and Visually Impaired of France)
FAF Family Assistance Fund (various organizations)
FAF Find a Facilitator (Mid-Atlantic Facilitators Network)
FAF Family of the Americas Foundation
FAF Full Auto Frame (computer graphics)
FAF Farmworker Association of Florida
FAF Financial Aid Fund (various organizations)
FAF Families Are Forever
FAF Facility Failure
FAF Foreign Accumulation Fund (Australia)
FAF Fund for Arkansas' Future (Little Rock, AR)
FAF Fast, Accurate, and Friendly (McDonald's employee training)
FAF Fundación Angélica Fuentes (Spanish: Angelica Fuentes Foundation; Guatemala)
FAF France Aux Français (French)
FAF Forward Available Fleet (UK Royal Air Force)
FAF Family Assessment Form (Children's Bureau evaluation software)
FAF Family Arabian Foal (Breyer mold)
FAF Frost and Flame (online game)
FAF Forum Atomique Français
FAF Fast Access Format
FAF Flora Academic Foundation
FAF Free Art Friday
FAF Future Animators of the Future
FAF Friends Are Forever
FAF Foreign Assistance Framework
FAF fee assessment form
FAF Fondation Alliance Française (French: French Alliance Foundation)
FAF Feature Activation File
FAF Fuzing, Arming & Firing
FAF Forward Air Field (South African Air Force)
FAF Facts and Fables (speech database, Carnegie Mellon Universit)
FAF Forward and Aft Fuselage (aviation)
FAF First Appearance Facility (parking ticket cancellation guidelines; Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Faffing Angrily Forever.
That's what it feels like I've been doing whilst reading the last couple of pages of this thread.
Goodness me. Some of the posts!

Silly old stu wrote 'One last thing, and it's slightly off topic: Last year I received a distressing email from a sometime-commenter on here, who's Aboriginal though he's never identified as one on Swellnet. Old demons came out to haunt him after reading a misguided comment and that was something I was ashamed of. So to Indo, deadshit D'Rex and others, our free speech can have a cost - and most of the time we're not even aware of it.'
What about the white kids who read swellnet and see the hatred expressed for their ancestors, or those who are forced to listen to the 'evil white colonists/noble indigenous inhabitants' history 'lessons', 'welcome to country' and 'we respect elders past, present and future' delivered everyday of their school lives by white school staff and students, often in schools with zero/minimal aboriginal students, all flying aboriginal and torres strait island flags? Why do you think white kids being made to feel guilty/inferior is OK - because they don't suit your agenda or because you just don't care unless the kid's black?
You really are one racist editor, stu.

Steady on there D-Rex, your victim complex is showing - triggered!

Wow.
I have a white child.
Will be starting school next year in a small community with a healthy indigenous population.
We won't be raising him to feel guilty, just respectful of the past to encourage mindfulness for the future.
I don't think a responsible teacher would use the word 'evil' when referring to past white behaviours, methinks this is your own emotive language to promote whatever agenda it is you have in your mind.

Haha, great comment D-Rex.
Missing the point much?

What a potato.

D-Rex, daily dickhead award again mate. You’re on a roll!
My daughter has won the NAIDOC award at school several years in a row. White, no guilt, educated.

D-rex... So to Indo, deadshit D'Rex and others, our free speech can have a cost - and most of the time we're not even aware of it.'
What about the white kids who read swellnet and see the hatred expressed for their ancestors, or those who are forced to listen to the 'evil white colonists/noble indigenous inhabitants' history 'lessons', 'welcome to country' and 'we respect elders past, present and future' delivered everyday of their school lives by white school staff and students, often in schools with zero/minimal aboriginal students, all flying aboriginal and torres strait island flags? Why do you think white kids being made to feel guilty/inferior is OK - because they don't suit your agenda or because you just don't care unless the kid's black?
You really are one racist editor, stu.-rex....."

Free speech does not mean you can say anything you want, especially if it promotes violence .....like the Grampian 40 who recently walked to streets claiming white power/nazi salutes/burnt a crossAKA KKK......or in this day and age misogynist/racial comments...so you are not free to just spread anything that comes into your head...you have made incredibly hurtful comments here on this thread....very racist born out of ignorance.
I have not seen any hatred here of white ancestors , what I have read is when you start looking at history , which is a fluid subject, we are now just learning about past injustices and the affects which were and are being still being discovered and we have an obligation to history , and how we use past mistakes to be better people today!
Yeah there is now a strong movement in Australia through schools/sport/Arts etc that recognizes indigenous cultures , but actions speak louder than words , and this is where the white colonial Australia still has enormous issues in trying to integrate Indigenous culture into becoming the foundation of being Australian......if we can;t/won't even accept the ideas about past/present , how do you see being Australian and moving forward as a multicultural Nation we can ALL be proud....
I have spoken to Stu about some of harm that so called "Free Speech " causes as hurtful comments are just that........just because you think they are not, is irrelevant as its the person you are hurting that matters......so when I say some of your comments are hurtful , it's hurtful to me as an Australian..

In regard to Stunets comments of me possibly offending someone here in the past over their ethnicity..

Firstly if there is something i say here that breaches the rules of the forum, im 100% happy for my comment to be deleted although it would be nice if i was told why it was deleted so i dont go over that line again, im even happy to receive a warning and if keep breaking the rules be banded from the forum.

Although i must note i dont recall ever having any comment deleted, and i have never received any warnings, but im sure i have pushed the limits pretty close to having comments deleted (as have most of us).

I honestly try to not break the forum rules and id prefer not to offend people and id rather not take offence to things, but the reality is every week and almost everyday things are said here that offend people in some way and people often find hurtful..

Being a conservative im in a small minority here and i cop it as much as anyone, some comments i take offence too and even find hurtful, but hey thats life, life isn't perfect, i dont expect people to tell me what i want to hear and sugar coat everything and im sorry but as long as it doesn't break forum rules i will also tell you how i see things without a sugar coating, and im not going to be any softer or harsher on you because you are a person of a different colour, race, religion, or surf craft, my aim in life is to treat all equally in a positive way and a negative way.

"Although i must note i dont recall ever having any comment deleted, and i have never received any warnings..."

I wouldn’t even give him the pleasure of replying to him Brutus.
He’s one deranged fukwit.

I feel very sorry for your children drex if that’s the kind of logic you’re raising them on.

I dont think its a safe place as such, but you do need limits and some sort of rules, rather than total chaos, many forums become total shit shows and then become barely worth reading, IMHO Swellnet do a fairly decent job on moderation, although as i brought up a while back, the rules/guidelines they have i do think are regularly being broken...in particular name calling and personal abuse...but it does seem to have gotten a bit better in the last few weeks.

I'm assuming the D stands for Dickhead? Happy to be corrected.....

Delusional,deranged,despicable,deplorable..........

@views no didn't hang with the Vico's usually just with my WA mates or Carnarvon locals.
WA at the time was over run by Victorians both in the south west and north as a rule the boys could surf.

81 was the start of the crowds remember a Victorian (John I think) living in the cave the start of 81 really good surfer knew the Bluff barrel well seen him surf for 8 hrs solid last wave as strong as the 1st, used to walk to Turtles when it was stinking hot with his old dog.

I think around 82 on wards I surf Gnaraloo mostly and when that got busy surfed further a field left the area in 85.

BTW this is like having a polite conversation in the middle of a war zone haha.

Social media and websites like SN rightfully get to write the rules and monitor what is said in their forums. More generally free speech comes with rights and responsibilities. I'm cool with posts or the post contributor being removed if the line is constantly cross. E.g. the world is a calmer better place for Trump being banned from social media. This week here was another example on SN where the contributions by some left me wondering what goes on in some people's brains. I reckon Stu came close to shutting it down on a couple of occasions and rightfully so.

@l focus , I went up to the bluff with Phil Kimberly and Mad Mick , met them in Margaret river , Phil was a bit of a Carnarvon legend as he was the only white fella in the east canarvon footy team , I watched a game once and they invited me to play , no thanks , man it was tough footy up there lol only 3 teams in town then. I stayed with Phil and his soon to be wife Evelyn for a short time in canarvon and worked with a bloke called stewie who was renovating the bowling greens . Do you know Phil ? Last I heard he was a school teacher in port hedland .

Supa Freak..I got to know Phil really well , when we had the billabong pro up at Gnaraloo.....I took Sunny Garcia and Johnny Boy Gomes , Like you said Phil was coach of the all Indigenous East Carnarvon... he was married to a local aboriginal girl , so we were invited to spend the day with them......it was hilarious.....firstly the locals were stunned by how big Sunny and JBG were , very proud Hawaiins .....so the EC crew put on a football lesson always coming thru the wind where we were , showing off ....from memory they kicked more than 20 goals.....I literally had to keep grabbing them both as they were screaming and yelling....they wanted to play, no pads, looked like no rules , and of course there was the odd heavy tackle (LOL) might have been a bit of biff.....Sunny and JBG....were even saying " fuck lets move here so we can play"....
It was "dry" event day....and we all had an incredible day.....lots of laughs and shit load of respect!

@Superfreak Stretching the memory now but I remember the names of both those guys was it Phil who coach East Carnarvon to win the grand final by more than 20 goals?

The guys playing for East Carnarvon were amazing but always getting into blues I think it was Phil who got them to focus on the game more and their talent just stood out.

Phil was very well known.

Was Evelyn an indigenous girl if so I knew her through other friends.

I used to hang out and work with indigenous guys from the Warriors team and same I wasn't up for a game either.

Did you run into the Victorian that stated shaping boards in town near the 4 square shop think I bough board number 5 it went alright.

Yeah Phil was a character alright , I met him at the tavern in Margaret river and got work building the local town hall , boss surfed so it was down tools when the surf was good . Did a quick trip to the bluff in early May then back to Margarets until early June we said F this it’s onshore and cold so back to the bluff . Mad Mick came along for the ride , this guy is famous for surfing the bluff on a catamaran and eventually flipped it snapping the mast in half , limping back to canarvon he got smashed at the blow holes and spent the night clinging to a rock before being rescued. He wasn’t the best surfer but absolutely fearless and always wanted to take of deeper than anyone. At jakes doing just this he got pitched headfirst and copped 18 stitches in his jaw. He used to surf turtles naked and one day at solid bluff I watched him take a bomb got smashed lost his board and repeated this 3 times over the next 4 hours. When we were leaving Margarets we were about 100klms up the road and Phil turned to mick and said how much money did ya bring ? Mick mumbled $10 and I pissed myself laughing. Both guys were great at living rough and we had a ball . Traveling Australia and Indonesia for about 15 years as a young bloke is something I will always cherish, the people you meet and the places ya see.

The last Australian Holden Commodore has just sold for $750,000 at auction:

https://www.caradvice.com.au/920002/last-holden-commodore-sells-for-7500...

The last one you could buy, anyway. VE/VF with the V8 was a world class platform at an affordable (then!) price.

Wonder if anyone will ever rebuild the last of the V8 interceptors ?

They’d probably have to use a ppppp piece from here and a pppppp piece from there.

@brutus , I spent a decade on and off working in the Pilbara on expansion projects for BHP Rio Tinto and FMG , we had many inductions and there was always a culture induction . We learnt about songlines which was how aboriginals navigated from waterhole to waterhole. It was absolutely fascinating how they achieved this . By singing a song as they marched through the desert and on reaching a certain verse in the song they would change direction, there were many verses and chorus lines to guide them which way to go. We also once had to dig up and move a rock that had been identified as a direction indicator , then once the job of railway line was done put the rock back . It looked like just some scratches on a rock but was a very important part of history so no expense was spared moving then putting it back , cost about $50,000 to do it . The Pilbara is an amazing place to visit and places like Karijini are a unique part of the world. Have you heard about songlines before ? And is my explanation right about them ?

Kick 'er in the guts Blowin.

Great film, got to teach my young one to drive on some of the roads in the film (Bacchus Marsh, Anakie Rds - how good a name is that last one?) in an old Aussie manual V8. It didn't have a supercharger but at certain revs the valve train would emit a bit of a scream, and you could pretend it did. So glad we have some classic Aussie Iron...

The original V8 interceptor was for sale last year apparently:

https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/original-mad-max-interceptor-hits-the-m...

You are a gutless wonder, stu. Circle jerk to your hearts content. Adios.

This discussion got me all keen for a bit of Max Rockatansky action. I’ve only got Stan for streaming at the moment and they only had the original- seen it too many times - and Mad Max Fury Road.

Put on Fury Road with the faint memory of disliking it the first and only time I saw it when it came out. I got about 5 minutes in and couldn’t continue. It’s freaking terrible. They’ve taken Max and turned him into a comic book character. All the saturated colour and weirdness it was like they’d handed the reigns to Baz Luhrmann to direct.

What a shame.

They should have gone even grittier than the original instead they went high camp.

lol mate I'll be watching "Margin Call" this weekend again, it's ahem... topical

Supafreak....there's actually a book called the Songlines , incredible read...and how they could actually communicate over thousands of K's.......I haven't read it in a longtime...but absolutely great reading.....educational , but an insight into the Worlds oldest culture , and how developed our indigenous people were

Written by Bruce Chatwin. an Englishman. Great read indeed.

Thanks Brutus and Matlock I will definitely have a read

Another one I’d strongly recommend is ‘The Dreaming and Other Essays’ by WEH Stanner.
Well ahead of his time in thought and expression, calling out the ‘great silence’ in Australia regarding the intended ‘fate’ of Aborigines. He was an anthropologist started his work in the 1930s, and wrote a series of essays up until 1973. A key advocate for constitutional recognition, voting and land rights, he neatly addresses many of the old stereotypes and tropes about Aboriginal Australia, contact and the adaptation of indigenous culture that seem to persist in our society and are reflected on these forums. It’s not a particularly easy read - some stodgy sections - but there’s threads of gold running through his essays.

This thread has inspired me to reread it - I’ll post some thoughts as I wade through it again. Oh, and +1 on Chatwin’s ‘Songlines’. Great book.

Thanks for sharing these readings folks. Look forward to checking them out.

Glad you recommended Songlines Brutus, it's a classic book and a great read.
I've heard a few comments here and there along the lines of "oh it's written by a white man" and "it's written through a colonialist lens" which I found disappointing because it'a a fascinating and beautiful book.

"Chatwin asserts that language started as song, and in the aboriginal Dreamtime, it sang the land into existence for the conscious mind and memory. As you sing the land, the tree, the rock, the path, they come to be, and the singers are one with them."

This is a true story of when I was working over west , I was driving into hedland from redmont and was about 150 klms out when I came across at a intersection with a dirt road which led to probably their camp , 4 black fellas standing next to their car . They waved me down and it’s a unwritten law that you pull over and help anyone given your miles from anywhere. They asked politely if I could give them a tow into town and I said yeah no problem . One of them jumped in with me and the other 3 sat back and cruised getting towed 150 klms. Can’t remember the blokes name but we chatted and swapped stories of how beautiful the Pilbara can be . Anyway when we hit hedland I asked which servo did he want me to drop him at and he said oh Woolworths please , I said why Woolworths and he replied because we want to do our shopping . I was really confused until when we pulled up he said come have a look at this , he lifted the bonnet and there was no motor , he said smiling , we get towed in and out of town all the time . I just cracked up laughing and thought , wow that’s a clever way of getting your needs met . We shook hands and laughing went on our separate ways . Majority of the indigenous Australians I’ve worked with have been real champions.

Fucken classic!

Haha, gold!

Stanner has an essay on Aboriginal Humour in that collection I mentioned earlier. Some parallels with that story supa.

An old friend / ex-girlfriend of mine spent some time in central Australia running after school programs on a remote community ‘close’ to Alice (4hrs drive i think). She’s got some crazy stories, and she’s not a lass who hasn’t seen a bunch of stuff in her travels / work in Africa, PNG and other places. They had a few of the famous desert artists living on that country and she got to know a few of them. One of the best stories she told related to the rich Americans who’d fly in from Alice on helicopters to buy artworks direct from the community. One of the pieces that was in hot demand was of a humanoid figure, short with long arms and an angular head. Rich Seppo turns up and starts rapping that he’s been looking for a painting of that aboriginal Dreamtime ‘god’ or whatnot for ages. He pays top dollar (circa $40K or something) and is already bragging as he loads his ‘one-off’ into his helicopter and takes off.
My mate started talking to the old lady, wondering what the painting was of as she’d never heard of this character in her time deeply embedded in the community. Old lady starts giggling and says ‘oh, dat fella. He’s that fella off the TV, you know, ET!’

Started pissing herself as she wandered off.

(Before usual characters getindignant about the $40k... in that community the profits from artwork was shared among the community largely, was spent of overpriced food at the exploitative community shop, frittered away by unscrupulous ‘advisors’ charging commissions on pointless financial plans etc etc)

That’s a light-hearted story among a range of experiences she had. Some truly heartbreaking.

A secret country by John Pilger also a good one Blue Diamond

Personally I think its good practice regarding people not to see colour at all. To just see good people and bad people who will hopefully become good people one day is best. Americans can't seem to get it and I hope we do. A slightly different amount of melanin is the only difference between us all and we all started off brown people.
I cant agree that aboriginal Australians are the oldest living culture on earth because we know from DNA testing that they came from Africa and through India having both genes, so wouldn't those original districts they came from be older? I don't know, but it makes sense to my limited understanding.

Cheers F.G. Will check it out. Love Pilger's work.

Optimist. You probably would find that cultures in the Eurasian/African landmass have been replaced and superseded by other cultures time and time again. This never happened to Australian Indigenous culture until the attempted genocide and replacement which commenced on 26 Jan 1788.

Here's a really good Science link that goes some way to describing the indigenous cultures (and species) of Europe over the last 800,000 years. H.Sapiens arrive about 45 to 40,000 years ago displacing or co-existing with Neanderthals. Neanderthal tools from 250,000 years ago.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/relics-washed-beaches-reveal-los...

This is to take nothing away from Australia's indigenous population and its record of time and culture on this continent. It shows that the picture of the past is revealing itself worldwide as the technology to uncover it gets better. If you do have ancestry indigenous to Europe, there's not a great deal of focus on it on these forums - you may find it interesting.

This is off the topic but I really like John Pilger , especially his reporting on the Middle East . Some of the interviews on RT have been excellent. This one from 2 years ago had some scathing remarks on today’s journalists . I’m surprised he hasn’t been bumped off .

Yes, a lot is being affirmed. And revealed. At the risk of swillnut Sunday Night Fever 10...

'For centuries, Aboriginal Australians have said they belonged to the oldest sustained civilization on the face of the Earth, citing their culture and history of oral storytelling that stretches back tens of thousands of years. Now, one of the most extensive analyses of Indigenous Australian DNA to date suggests that they've been right all along.'

'While the study appears to seal the deal on the world’s oldest society, it raises new questions. The genetic analysis also showed that the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans may have mated with a previously-unknown human species, just like ancient Europeans interbred with Neanderthals. Though scientists are just now getting hints at who these mysterious human species were, further genetic analysis could shed light on another ancient relative.'

'“This story has been missing for a long time in science,” Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Copenhagen, tells Hannah Devlin for The Guardian. “Now we know their relatives are the guys who were the first real human explorers. Our ancestors were sitting being kind of scared of the world while they set out on this exceptional journey across Asia and across the sea.”'

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dna-tests-suggest-aboriginal-a....

And despite being the first great modern Human seafarers and explorers, having undertaken the greatest sea and land voyage, Indigenous Australians have never declared war on anyone. Its a long time, 60,000 plus years. That's advanced thinking. The stuff of genius. Meanwhile, the rest of the planet...

Australia finally gets a mention. Guess who came to town... 'Gidday mmmmaaaayyyyteeee... wanna advance... yeh... well too farkin bad aaayyyeee!!! Piss orf... move orn even!!!

Love ya work MB.

Seeing as the topic is back on indigenous Australians a good read, at least for those interested in this topic, is The Ghost and The Bounty Hunter.

It meshes the stories of John Batman who was one of the first Europeans to make a land grab with the establishment of Melbourne, and of William Buckley, an escaped convict who was saved by and then lived with an indigenous tribe around the western port area for 32 years until the arrival of Batman and crew.

Well researched and a fairly good account of the whole episode of colonial impact and aboriginal way of life before white settlement.