I'M GOING TO MARS ... YIPPY YIY YAY
MARCH 2016

Australia: an American's view  

  https://www.facebook.com/pbaker3460?fref=photo

Interesting set of observations from a visitor from the other side of the Pacific.'Value what you have and don't give it away.' There's a lot to admire about Australia, especially if you're a visiting American, says David Mason. More often than you might expect, Australian friends patiently listening to me enthuse about their country have said, ''We need outsiders like you to remind us what we have.'' So here it is - a small presumptuous list of what one foreigner admires in Oz.

1... Health care. I know the controversies, but basic national health care is a gift. In America, medical expenses are a leading cause of bankruptcy. The drug companies dominate politics and advertising.
Obama is being crucified for taking halting baby steps towards sanity. You can't turn on the telly without hours of drug advertisements - something I have never yet seen here. And your emphasis on prevention - making cigarettes less accessible, for one - is a model.

2... Food. Yes, we have great food in America too, especially in the big cities.
But your bread is less sweet, your lamb is cheaper, and your supermarket vegetables and fruits are fresher than ours.
Too often in my country an apple is a ball of pulp as big as your face.
The dainty Pink Lady apples of Oz are the juiciest I've had. And don't get me started on coffee.
In American small towns it tastes like water flavoured with burnt dirt, but the smallest shop in the smallest town in Oz can make a first-rate latte.
I love your ubiquitous bakeries, your hot-cross buns. Shall I go on?

3... Language. How do you do it?
The rhyming slang and Aboriginal place names like magic spells.
Words that seem vaguely English yet also resemble an argot from another planet.
I love the way institutional names get turned into diminutives - Vinnie's and Salvos - and absolutely nothing's sacred.
Everything's an opportunity for word games and everyone's a nickname.
Lingo makes the world go round.
It's the spontaneous wit of the people that tickles me most.
Late one night at a barbie my new mate Suds remarked, ''Nothing's the same since 24-7.'' Amen.

4... Free-to-air TV. In Oz, you buy a TV, plug it in and watch some of the best programming I've ever seen - uncensored.
In America, you can't get diddly-squat without paying a cable or satellite company heavy fees.
In Oz a few channels make it hard to choose.
In America, you've got 400 channels and nothing to watch.

5... Small shops. Outside the big cities in America corporations have nearly erased them.
Identical malls with identical restaurants serving inferior food.
Except for geography, it's hard to tell one American town from another.
The ''take-away'' culture here is wonderful.
Human encounters are real - stirring happens, stories get told.
The curries are to die for. And you don't have to tip!

6... Free camping. We used to have this too, and I guess it's still free when you backpack miles away from the roads.
But I love the fact that in Oz everyone owns the shore and in many places you can pull up a camper van and stare at the sea for weeks.
I love the ''primitive'' and independent campgrounds, the life out of doors.
The few idiots who leave their stubbies and rubbish behind in these pristine places ought to be transported in chains.

7... Religion. In America, it's everywhere - especially where it's not supposed to be, like politics.
I imagine you have your Pharisees too, making a big public show of devotion, but I have yet to meet one here.

8... Roads. Peak hour aside, I've found travel on your roads pure heaven.
My country's ''freeways'' are crowded, crumbling, insanely knotted with looping overpasses - it's like racing homicidal maniacs on fraying spaghetti.
I've taken the Hume without stress, and I love the Princes Highway when it's two lanes.
Ninety minutes south of Bateman's Bay I was sorry to see one billboard for a McDonald's.
It's blocking a lovely paddock view. Someone should remove it.

9... Real multiculturalism. I know there are tensions, just like anywhere else, but I love the distinctiveness of your communities and the way you publicly acknowledge the Aboriginal past.
Recently, too, I spent quality time with Melbourne Greeks, and was gratified both by their devotion to their own great language and culture and their openness to an Afghan lunch.

10. Fewer guns. You had Port Arthur in 1996 and got real in response. America replicates such massacres several times a year and nothing changes.
Why?
Our religion of individual rights makes the good of the community an impossible dream.
Instead of mateship we have ''It's mine and nobody else's''.
We talk a great game about freedom, but too often live in fear.
There's more to say - your kaleidoscopic birds, your perfumed bush in springtime, your vast beaches.
These are just a few blessings that make Australia a rarity.
Of course, it's not paradise - nowhere is - but I love it here.
No need to wave flags like Americans and add to the world's windiness.
Just value what you have and don't give it away.

David Mason is a US writer and professor, and poet laureate of Colorado.

Whale Watching outside Sydney Harbour, Sydney, Australia

OzWhaleWatching 270615 AMWobblecam from this morning's cruise, best in HD. One of the whales of this  minimum configuration competition pod surged to the surface regularly, sometimes with its mouth partially open, whilst the Humpback with white flanks had distinctive upturned tail flukes with the tips missing. Ignoring the commentary, some of the different sounds of the blows are audible in the 2nd half. The footage needs colour correction but this morning's guests might enjoy.
Posted by Biggles Csolander on Saturday, 27 June 2015

I went early this month to watch the whales in the Tasman Sea just outside Sydney Harbour. What a magnificent sight that was. Incredible mammals.

VIVID SYDNEY 2015

I will be going into to Sydney to see this stupendous display in June. What a lovely time to take photos of Sydney.

Heavens, it is May already. I have been quite busy this year. Huge changes in my life.

I have worked in aged care for 5 days a week for the last 12 years. I have been able to handle my poor old dears passing.away as it is a natural progression through life. But when my brother died last year after 10 years battling cancer. I felt as if I had hit a brick wall.

I decided to take long service leave to give me some time-out. Two days back at work I got up at night to to get a glass of water, not turning the light on, and I stubbed my toes on a chair I had moved earlier in the day. Next day I dropped into work to say I would not be able to work the rest of the week as my foot was so sore (my work involves a lot of standing). Next minute I am telling them I am retiring. Wow!

I don't know who got the most shock, it was totally unplanned.

I had the office workers coming from all directions saying you can't retire. All your clients would be so upset. The assistant manager suggested I get my foot x-rayed to determine if there was more than a sore toes and then make a decision.

TARONGA ZOO GORILLAS

Sydney, Australia

Photo by Suzie Lemon

https://www.facebook.com/tarongazoo?fref=photo

My local New Years Eve Picnic.

on the Waterfront, Gosford, NSW

New Year's Resolution to post more.

In the meantime here are some pictures from during the year.


6th October, 2014              Darling Harbour Entertainment Quarter.

25th October, 2014      First meeting between Fred the cat and Barney rescue dog.

30th October, 2014. 

Three months after my brother passed away, my sisters and I get together at the family home to start to pack up the house for sale. My brother lived here all his life.

22nd Decembe, 2014.

I went into Martin Place, Sydney. I walked up it from George Street until I came to Castlereagh Street but I was unable to cross the road to stand closer to the Lindt store. Too much respect for the two who were murdered.

Some of the floral tributes.

There were fears that Muslims would be targeted for violence when it was noted that the shooter was a Muslim so someone on Twitter posted I'll ride with you #illridewithyou if a Muslim was fearful of travelling on public transport.

THE SIEGE AND MURDERS AT THE LINDT SHOP HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION OR RACE.

Later, that evening I headed into Pitt Street Mall.

David Jones store

Darling Harbour

A great interview - Vincent D'Onofrio

Thanks to Carol Docherty

Some photos of my visit to Sydney.

Sydney harbour is so lovely.

What a day yesterday was, up out of bed at 5.45am to catch the train down to Sydney and I find there is trackworks. So hop on the rail bus which takes you down via the F3 (now known as the M1) freeway. If you are like me driving on that road, then you have your hands firmly gripping the wheel with an intent look on your face as the road dips and swerves around hills and mountains, across bridges seemingly suspended in mid air and hugging the road as the juggernaut trucks sway past you. Fun, not.  So to sit back in a modern coach as it leisurely sweeps down hills on it way to Sydney is a pleasure where you can enjoy the scenery. You have time to chat to your fellow riders and a couple who will be going to the same market as you. (See paragraph below.)

I came down from the NSW Central Coast to help my daughter with her stall. There was trackworks on the Sydney Trains so I caught a rail bus down opposite me was a elderly lady travelling with her grand-daughter. The lady was dressed in full modern vintage clothes, I asked her if she was going anywhere special and she replied "We've come from Newcastle and are going to the Round She Goes Sydney's Preloved Fashion Market, we have been travelling for 3 hours now, do you know the way to Marrickville?. 

I wish now I had taken her photo.

After arriving at Central, it's onto a city train (yes, some were running just not on the northern or some inner city lines) trundle out to Marrickville then a brisk walk up the hill to the town hall. I bypassed all the hopeful shoppers to the front desk. "I'm here to help my daughter with her stall" I say and am ushered into a hall in utter chaos, people rushing to and fro with armfuls of clothing and dodging racks of handbags and coats.

I finally track down my daughter who is serenely setting up her stall, everything is labelled and tagged, and whom also grabbed some chairs as its going to be a long day. 10am to 3pm.

The doors opened to the general public and it was on for young and old, we took turns to go out and grab a drink and some lunch and then back into the fray again. FUN. We were packed up by 4pm, with not so many journeys to the car as pre market so that was great.

Natalie dropped me off at Strathfield for the journey home. I arrived home at 7.45pm after having to catch two buses, one to Hornsby to change for a coach to the Central Coast. All I wanted was a banana roll and a coffee for dinner, a catchup on twitter and facebook to see what every one else had been up to during the day and then off to bed. 

Today has been Wash Day, getting ready for work this week.

Transcript of Western Australia Senator Scott Ludlam

 welcome speech to PM Tony Abbott.

For those who are looking for a transcript of the outstanding speech given  March 3rd by WA Senator Scott Ludlam 

Senator Ludlam welcomes Tony Abbott to WA

Thank you President

Tonight I rise to invite Prime Minister Tony Abbott to visit the beautiful state of Western Australia.  I do this in good faith because we are only a matter of weeks away from a historic by-election that will determine not just the final makeup of this chamber after July, but will decide much more of consequence to the people of Western Australia whether they're thinking of voting for the Greens or not.

Prime Minister you are welcome out west, but this is a respectful invitation to think carefully about what baggage you pack when you make your next flying campaign stop over.

When you arrive at Perth airport you'll alight on the traditional country of the Whadjuk Noongar who have sung this country now for more than forty thousand years.  This is two hundred times the age of the city that stands on the banks of the Derbarl Yerrigan, the Swan River. 

Understand that you're now closer to Denpassar than to Western Sydney in a state where an entire generation has been priced out of affordable housing. Recognise that you are standing in a place where the drought never ended, where climate change from land clearing and fossil fuel combustion is a lived reality that is already costing jobs, property, and lives.

Mr Prime Minster, at your next press conference, we invite you to leave your excruciatingly boring three word slogans at home.

If your image of Western Australia is of some caricatured red-neck backwater that is enjoying the murderous horror unfolding on Manus Island, you're reading us wrong. Every time you refer to us as the mining state as though the western third of our ancient continent is just Gina Rinehart's inheritance to be chopped, benched and blasted, you're reading us wrong. 

Western Australians are a generous and welcoming lot, but if you arrive and start talking proudly about your attempts to bankrupt the renewable energy sector, or cripple the independence of the ABC and privatise SBS, if you show up waving your homophobia in people's faces and start boasting about your ever more insidious attacks on the trade union movement and all working people, you can expect a very different kind of welcome.  People are under enough pressure as it is without three years of this government going out of its way to make it worse.

It looks awkward when you take policy advice on penalty rates and the minimum wage from mining billionaires and media oligarchs on the other side of the world.  

Awkward and kind of revolting.

It is good to remember that these things are temporary, for anyone listening in from outside this almost empty senate chamber. The truth is, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and this benighted attempt at a government are a temporary phenomenon, this too will pass and we need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture.

Just as the reign of the dinosaurs was cut short to their great surprise, it may be that the Abbott government will appear as nothing more than a thin greasy layer in the core sample of future political scientists drilling back into the early years of the 21st century.

2014 marks thirty years since the election of the first representative of what was to become the Greens, my dear friend and mentor, Senator Jo Vallentine. She came into this place as a lone Western Australian representative speaking out against the nuclear weapons that formed the foundations of the geopolitical suicide pact that we dimly remember as the Cold War.

Since the first day of Senator Vallentine's first term, the Greens have been articulating a vision of  Australia as it could be. An economy running on infinite flows of renewable energy. A society that never forgets it lives on country occupied by the planet's oldest continuing civilisation, and a country that values education, innovation and equality.

These values are still at the heart of our work, nowhere stronger than on the Walkatjurra Walkabout which will set off again later this month to challenge the poisonous imposition of the state's first uranium mine on the shoreline of Lake Way. As the damage done by the nuclear industry is global, so remains our resistance.

Mr Abbott your thoughtless cancellation of half a billion dollars of Commonwealth funding for the Perth Light Rail project has been noted.  Your blank cheque for Colin Barnett's bloody and unnecessary shark cull has been noted.  Your attack on Medicare, on schools funding, on tertiary education, noted.

The fact that your only proposal for environmental reforms thus far is to leave Minster Greg Hunt playing solitaire for the next three years while you outsource his responsibilities to the same Premiere who presides over the shark cull? that's been noted too...

You may not believe this Prime Minister, but your advocacy on behalf of foreign buyer technology corporations and Hollywood's copyright industrial complex to chain Australia into the transpacific partnership, even that has been noted. People have been keeping a record, every time you've been given the opportunity to choose between predator capitalism and the public interest, and it's bitterly obvious whose side you're on.

So to be very blunt, the reason that I extend this invitation to you, Mr Prime Minister, to spend as much time as you can spare in Western Australia, is that every time you open your mouth, the Green vote goes up.

You and your financial backers in the gas fracking and uranium industries have inspired hundreds of people to spend their precious time door knocking thousands of homes for the Greens in the last few weeks. Your decision to back Monsanto's shareholders instead of Western Australian farmers has inspired people across the length and breadth of this country to make thousands of calls and donate to our campaign.

As for the premeditated destruction of the National Broadband Network and Attorney General George Brandis's degrading capitulation to the surveillance state when confronted with the unlawful actions of the US NSA, even the Internet is turning green, for the win... 

Geeks and Coders, Network Engineers and Gamers who would never have voted Green in a million years without the blundering and technically illiterate assistance of your leadership team? For this I can only thank you...

And perhaps most profoundly, your determined campaign to provoke fear in our community, fear of innocent families fleeing war and violence in our region, in the hope that it would bring out the worst in Australians, is instead, bringing out the best in us.

Prime Minister, you are welcome to take your heartless, racist exploitation of people's fears, and ram it as far from Western Australia as your tax payer funded traveling entitlements can take you.

What is at stake here in the most immediate sense, is whether or not  Prime Minister Tony Abbott has total control of this parliament in coming years. But I've come to realise that it's about much more than that. We want our country back. Through chance, misadventure and somewhere, a couple of boxes of misplaced ballot papers, we've been given the opportunity to take it back, just one seat, next April 5 and a whole lot more in 2016. 

Game on Prime Minister, see you out west.


Transcribed by Dee Teal

CHEERS :)

Onward ...