roc_abilly
Member
Fishalt brings to mind this Ozzie racist I encountered in the "outback", a tiny town, well north of Fishalt.
I had camped up in the garden behind the lone pub and then settled myself down in this pub for a drink.
(I had been on the road for three days, forty five degree heat, not encountering one soul, covered with dust, my bike needing repairs having been shaken to bits through the road corrugations. I sure needed a few beers).
So there were both aborigines and white chaps in this pub, and I was flitting between all the various drinkers over the course of the day.
Anyway this man in his sixties or thereabouts was talking absolute shit about the aborigines. Telling me not to talk to them, that they were scum, and so on.
Now one thing I like about Australia is that they appreciate being straight up. "Aw, straight up, mate", etc.
So therefore, in keeping with custom I said to him something along the lines of, "... honestly mate, I don't give a fuck what you or anyone else here thinks. I've been chatting to them and they seem like fine people to me, and if they're not, then I'll find that out for myself. So I don't want to listen to your shit about them, eh...".
"Fair dinkum" he says (or something like that).
But he nevertheless continues to bitch his head off about them, absolutely poisonous racism. And telling me to give them a wide berth etc.
He had the appearance of a "respectable" kind of chap, you know, silver haired, washed and combed to the side, clean clothes, maybe a tie or at least a collar.
Anyway, the evening goes on. I'm invited to an aborigine party up in some chap's house. A nice house; we're all in a beautiful conservatory, guitars out, and the chap is a good family man, very well spoken, educated and a great host. A non-drinker.
You see that's the thing. No doubt there is a dissoluteness in many aborigine communities, but it is not that they are markedly differently constituted from European people, aside from physical appearances, even being one of the longest isolated communities out of the whole brotherhood of man, 65,000 years or so.
It's alcohol that has destroyed them. They can't handle it at all.
Well after the party was over in that chap's house, I got to see first hand some of that side of things. Appalling drunkeness. Of a type that would give even the likes of Brendan Behan or Jambo from Arsefields a run for their money.
Now here's the twist in the story. After roving here and there through the night, god knows where, we arrived at an aboriginal house, around dawn. Not a traditional aborigine house, or anything like that, just an ordinary concrete breezeblock house, large enough.
But inside were the most appalling living conditions. Stained mattresses strewn on the floor, families sleeping. It was a vista worse even than anything you'd see in a Rathmines bedsit inhabited by country lads up from the likes of Loughrea or Roscommon, studying engineering in DIT.
In the middle of all this, I see from one of the matresses a chap lifting his head up, and who was it?
It was our friend, this white Ozzie who had been bending my ear earllier, sleeping with one of the aborigines. Not looking so "respectable" either, bloodshot eyes, hair all over the place.
So there's a bang of that off of Fishalt. Don't you pick up something like that from him? Do you know what I mean?
I had camped up in the garden behind the lone pub and then settled myself down in this pub for a drink.
(I had been on the road for three days, forty five degree heat, not encountering one soul, covered with dust, my bike needing repairs having been shaken to bits through the road corrugations. I sure needed a few beers).
So there were both aborigines and white chaps in this pub, and I was flitting between all the various drinkers over the course of the day.
Anyway this man in his sixties or thereabouts was talking absolute shit about the aborigines. Telling me not to talk to them, that they were scum, and so on.
Now one thing I like about Australia is that they appreciate being straight up. "Aw, straight up, mate", etc.
So therefore, in keeping with custom I said to him something along the lines of, "... honestly mate, I don't give a fuck what you or anyone else here thinks. I've been chatting to them and they seem like fine people to me, and if they're not, then I'll find that out for myself. So I don't want to listen to your shit about them, eh...".
"Fair dinkum" he says (or something like that).
But he nevertheless continues to bitch his head off about them, absolutely poisonous racism. And telling me to give them a wide berth etc.
He had the appearance of a "respectable" kind of chap, you know, silver haired, washed and combed to the side, clean clothes, maybe a tie or at least a collar.
Anyway, the evening goes on. I'm invited to an aborigine party up in some chap's house. A nice house; we're all in a beautiful conservatory, guitars out, and the chap is a good family man, very well spoken, educated and a great host. A non-drinker.
You see that's the thing. No doubt there is a dissoluteness in many aborigine communities, but it is not that they are markedly differently constituted from European people, aside from physical appearances, even being one of the longest isolated communities out of the whole brotherhood of man, 65,000 years or so.
It's alcohol that has destroyed them. They can't handle it at all.
Well after the party was over in that chap's house, I got to see first hand some of that side of things. Appalling drunkeness. Of a type that would give even the likes of Brendan Behan or Jambo from Arsefields a run for their money.
Now here's the twist in the story. After roving here and there through the night, god knows where, we arrived at an aboriginal house, around dawn. Not a traditional aborigine house, or anything like that, just an ordinary concrete breezeblock house, large enough.
But inside were the most appalling living conditions. Stained mattresses strewn on the floor, families sleeping. It was a vista worse even than anything you'd see in a Rathmines bedsit inhabited by country lads up from the likes of Loughrea or Roscommon, studying engineering in DIT.
In the middle of all this, I see from one of the matresses a chap lifting his head up, and who was it?
It was our friend, this white Ozzie who had been bending my ear earllier, sleeping with one of the aborigines. Not looking so "respectable" either, bloodshot eyes, hair all over the place.
So there's a bang of that off of Fishalt. Don't you pick up something like that from him? Do you know what I mean?
