Amazing Australian Situations
Airport security
Late 2002 Australia was bracing itself for a terrorist
attack, the fear was that intense the government even spent a few
million dollars on fridge magnets telling you what to do in the
event of an attack so Australian women would be reminded of it every
time they got their husband another cold beer from the fridge. Meanwhile
media widely published the fact that luggage on domestic flights
was not x-rayed and would not be for at least another year so the
fact that nothing happened is due more to terrorists not being bothered
or organized than actual security. When in late 2003 tighter security
measures were introduced they still did not include regional airports
where anyone can walk onto the plane carrying anything as nothing
is checked there. QANTAS did a check on its own security measures
and their undercover inspectors managed to walk from the terminal
into restricted areas at Australian airports 53 times in 2002.
Black birding
Many people are surprised to hear that Australia's
history includes the phenomena of "black birding", a local
version of the slave trade that occurred on American plantations
in the early days of settlement there.
When white settlers first started turning the landscape into sugar
cane plantations they found it hard going in the tropical heat and
honestly believed that white people could not work in such circumstances.
While the Dutch were succesful getting Indonesians to work hard
on spice plantations Australian settlers were not so succesful getting
Aborigines to do the same (though they proved their skills as horsemen
and workers on cattle stations). A solution was found in sailing
out to Pacific islands and kidnapping people to bring back to the
cane fields. Though officially they were not slaves the pay was
that ridiculous that they could not afford to return home and thus
had little choice other than to stay and work to survive and even
nowadays you can see dark skinned people in sugar cane areas that
are not Aborigines but descendants of Pacific Islanders that decided
to stay after the "slavery" was abolished.
Koala cull?
While koalas might be endangered in some parts of
Australia, in Kangaroo Island there are too many! This presents
a huge dilemma to local National Parks Rangers. If they are left
to multiply they will exhaust food supplies and this will cause
all koalas to starve, they are too cute and loved to start shooting
them, they are too uncooperative to feed them the birth control
pill, and you can not simply relocate them as they have quite a
complex family life.
No electricity in Cape Tribulation
Everywhere around Australia where you have an Aboriginal
community of 20 or more the authorities normally place a generator
and install a mini grid to distribute power to the houses. Cape
Tribulation in the Daintree area of North Queensland is one area
that misses out on this. When the area was originally subdivided
in the 1970s the developer was supposed to have put all the services
like power, water etc. in but thanks to corruption being rife at
the time none of this was done. In later years when the area was
finally recognized for its outstanding natural values authorities
decided that there was never going to be any mains power installed
to discourage settlement which would ruin this area. So now only
the mayor of the shire and a handful of his neighbours enjoy mains
power north of the Daintree river. There is merit in not supplying
the area of Cow Bay with mains power as full settlement there would
mean destruction of a huge area of rainforest as there are around
600 properties in that area, still mostly unsettled, and it would
severly affect the local wildlife, mainly the endangered cassowary.
Cape Tribulation however is a compact area with only two roads with
private properties, most of them already settled or about to be,
so discouraging settlement here is not an option. Almost all residents
of Cape Tribulation have solar power installed but in a rainforest
area with clouds, rain and lots of trees this is far from a practical
solution. In reality this ' renewable energy community' is running
on generators most the time burning lots of petrol and diesel. As
it is very in-efficient to run a generator for only one household
and there are about twenty of them running most nights it would
be far better for the environment to have one big generator in a
central location with a distribution network like every Aboriginal
community around the country has. But try to get the government
to see this.
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One of the issues that has frustrated Cape
Tribulation residents over the years is that the mayor
of their shire, Mike Berwick,
lives comfortably on mains electricity north of the Daintree
river, while he is against mains power to the rest of the
population that survives on solar and generators, only his
neighbours share this luxury that the rest of the western
world takes for granted.
On the left you see the warning sign for boats so they don't
hit the mayor's power line with their masts. |
No swingers in Cairns
The councillors in Cairns have some strange priorities.
On the one hand they are spending their rate payers hard earned
dollars on a 'Pink Guide' to attract gay tourists with big dollars,
on the other hand they have gone flat out closing 'Bella Vista',
locally well known for being a 'swinger B&B'. Now if you're
promoting your city to gay men, who will no doubt be having anal
intercourse between scuba diving and Skyrail, why stop straight
people from doing it with eachother?
Oil tankers and the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is recognized as the world's
largest living coral system and its uniqueness and value is undisputed.
So many people are surprised when they hear that shipping lanes
run right through the Marine Park. You would think it would make
sense to send ships right around the Marine Park at a safe distance
but as often happens in life commercial interests are more powerful
so now all sorts of ships from cargo to oil and fuel prefer to weave
their way through the 1600 reefs that run for 2300 km from Bundaberg
to the top of Cape York instead of just going in a straight line
around the outside of the Marine Park. Everytime a ship runs on
the reef, which has happened several times over the last few years,
people call for ships to be banned from the Marine Park but also
everytime nothing happens and the storm dies down again. Ships have
to use pilots supplied by the authorities but even that didn't stop
a fueltanker from running on the reef in 2002, luckily it did not
lose its cargo and so far it has only been sheer luck that no disaster
has happened that could do irreversible damage to this unique place.
Schapelle Corby
Unless you have just been in a Nullarbor cave for
the last year you would have heard about the holiday from hell that
Schapelle Corby is having in Bali. When she arrived at Bali airport
an airport official found 4.1 kg. of marijuana in her bag. Schapelle
claims to know nothing about this, which makes sense, as why would
you carry water to the sea? Normally drugs are smuggled the other
way, the street market value of this marijuana is far and far higher
in Australia than in Bali.
Another Australian has testified that he overheard prisoners talking
that it was in internal shipment gone wrong, baggage handlers at
the airport meant to move the drugs from Sydney to Brisbane using
her bag but somebody forgot to remove it in Brisbane and it continued
to Bali where it was found.
Since then more hard evidence has surfaced and arrests made amongst
baggage handlers that were involved in drug shipments.
Just after the verdict many furious Australians rang
aid-organizations to demand back their money they had generously
pledged to Indonesia after the tsunami, though when it was explained
to them that this would only hurt people not related to this case
they changed their mind again.
Soon after the verdict of 20 years the website Banbali.com
came online where you could register your pledge not to go there
. They suggested you go to Fiji or Hawaii instead, we'd like to
say stay in Australia, the north of Australia has
the same climate, thanks to Richard Branson the flights are cheap
now, the food won't give you Bali Belly and if baggagehandlers use
your bags to ship drugs at least you can spend your time in a comfy
Aussie jail close to home! Australia has some great destinations!!!
The Banbali website only lasted a couple of days as
governments were very unhappy with it and hackers kept putting rude
images on it so it is now no longer online, but you can go to the
website her family set up; Dontshootschapelle.com
Mabo case
In 1982 Torres Strait ( North Queensland) resident
Eddie Mabo and a few others of the Meriam tribe took their case
to the High Court to clarify their right to their own traditional
land. Up till then Australian law had worked on the principal of
Terra Nullius, presuming nobody owned Australia at the time of Cook's
landing, perhaps because Aborigines were nomadic and did not fill
the landscape with fences,houses and all the infra structure ususall
visible where people live.
The Mabo case ran for ten years and Eddie Mabo died before then
but the granting of rights to their traditional lands sent shock
waves through Australia's farmers and mining companies as ownership
of land was suddenly not so secure anymore. To calm investors the
Federal Government came up with the Native Title act a year later
which basically said that any Aborigines who could prove a continuous
occupation of an area since the arrival of the European setlers
could be granted ownership of this area or be compensated for the
loss of it, all this to be decided by a specially set up Native
Title Tribunal.
Medical indemnity crisis
We still need to do some research on this but the
basic story is that through major mismanagement a huge insurance
company that insured just about all Australian doctors and anyone
to do with the medical business suddenly collapsed and many people
in the medical profession refused to work, or went into early retirement
not wiling to work without insurance.
( If you're reading this and you know about this saga please send
us your version of events.)
Missing Rockhampton teenager
Rockhampton teenager Natasha Ryan disappeared from
her home in August 1998.
Despite intense police investigations no trace of her was ever found,
causing great distress to her parents. Several years later in 2003
serial killer Leonard John Fraser was in court charged with her
murder when police received a tip off and went to the house of Natasha's
boyfriend Scott Black. They searched the house and found Natasha
hiding in a cupboard! While her parents thought she had disappeared
and probably been murdered, for five years she had been hiding in
a house just around the corner! Her parents were, after recovering
from the shock, happy to see her and Scott Black was charged with
perjury for misleading police, they may also seek restitution for
the half a million dollars the search for Natasha was estimated
to have cost.
Pilot strike
Another one we still have to do some research on to
get the exact facts together but the basic story is that somewhere
in the late 1980s all pilots in Australia ( on the big airines anyway)
wanted a payrise. As usually happens the employers weren't too keen
on it and it developed into a huge standoff coming to a point where
the airlines said; right, tomorrow you're back at work or you're
fired. Guess what, they didn't come to work the next day so they
were all sacked and for quite some time there were no domestic flights.
The tourism industry, especially in remote places like north Queensland
and Northern Territory, went into a huge crisis and many people
spent many hours and days taking the bus across Australia. Bit by
bit the airlines managed to hire new pilots from overseas and from
previous employees that broke ranks with the unions, and were wiling
to risk death threats from angry ex-colleagues.
Sheep ship saga
Australia exports live sheep to the Middle East so
the Muslims there can be assured they are slaughtered the halal
way but in august 2003 Saudi Arabia refused a shipment because they
were of the opinion the sheep were diseased. The Australian government
swung into action and tried unsuccesfully to find another buyer
but in the end the poor sheep spent 11 weeks at sea while they were
offered free of charge to 57 different countries until finally Eritrea
accepted them on the condition Australia paid for their food and
another million dollars for unloading expenses. More than 5000 sheep
died in this saga that cost Australia about $10 million. If this
solution had not been found then the sheep would have been brought
to the Cocos Islands, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean
with no real port or unloading facilities to speak of, so that could
have been interesting too.
Before the next lot of sheep could be loaded animal rights activists
opposed to live sheep exports contaminated their feed with pigmeat
which led to a two week delay. Ralph Hahnheuser, 39, of Semaphore
in South Australia was arrested and could face a $1.4 million compensation
claim if convicted. This saga also inspired the website www.savethesheep.com
The Aussie "terrorist"
24 year old Melbourne boy David Hicks was looking
for adventure back in 2000 and went to do a bit of military training
in Afghanistan. He was enjoying himself until the Americans invaded
and dragged him off to Guantanamo Bay where he spend the next eight
years. When the Americans finally came to the conclusion that David
was not a terrorist the Aussie Government paid over half a million
dollars to fly him home in a private jet!
You heard of ( or are involved ) in some amazing
Australian situation? Then contact us!
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