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Alamora, Sayers and what lies beneath …

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Tarneit’s Sayers Road, home to Villawood Properties’ Alamora, was Nissen huts, quail-shooting, roadside eucalypts, wire fences and little else a few years back. Different now.

Mount Cottrell was to the north, beyond Cowie’s Hill and its brace of MMBW water tanks. The Spring Plains swimming hole was to the west across the Werribee River carving its way across the plains from Korweinguboora up near Daylesford down to Port Phillip.

The river was choked with fallen trunks, victims of what locals knew to be Victoria’s fastest river when in flood. The same wisdom contended that Bungee’s Hole, downstream in Werribee proper, was bottomless.

Sayers Road was designer-made for my rock bandmates as we happily plied our Santana and Doobie Brothers decibels across the wide-open spaces, rousing approbation from nothing more than the local mudlarks offended by thundering old valve amps. Raucous parties upset no-one.

Tarneit and its neighbouring Truganina were tough, rocky, grazing runs. Well out of town and aligned with Melton as much as Werribee, what little community infrastructure there once was was long gone even then – the old Trug township, post offices, old timber houses and bluestone homesteads, the odd hall and even school.

Remiremont                                                            Chaffey brothers George and William 

Some ruins remained, and still do, my ancestral home ‘Remiremont’ for one – a bluestone double-storey pared back to one for safety reasons but burned out in the 1969 fires. My grandmother grew up there, my mum stayed there with her uncle/aunty in the 1930s and ’40s and travelled to church not in Werribee or Melton but Yarraville.

For kids back in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, Werribee stopped at Shaws Road. Tarneit was somewhere out on the dusty Never-Never. But we rode out to explore the farmyards behind the CSIRO and the cemetery along Railway Avenue. Long before Glen Orden/Birdsville or Werribee Plaza existed, let alone Orchard Place, the first of Villawood Properties’ many Wyndham communities.

Cobbledicks Ford                                                Tarneit Primary School

We pedalled all the way out through Tarneit to Cobbledicks Ford, a hard trundle up Derrimut to Dohertys Road then down Dukelows and a precipitous grassy hill to the river. You could make out the Eynesbury stand of endangered grey box eucalypts across the river from the top of Dukelows. The Eynesbury old station’s since been transformed into an urban outpost south of Melton, south of Melton South and finally south of Exford. Urban sprawl will catch it soon enough.

But while Tarneit and Trug seemed no-man’s land, there are old and familiar names tied to it – Chirnside, Shanahan, Hogan, Leake, Campbell, Davis, Lee, Lawler – and there’s a history.

For one, there’s the 1888 Chaffey’s Channel culvert, pump, sluice gate – west of Sewells Road and thought to be to be the first irrigation scheme built in the area and the first crack at the game by the pioneering Chaffey Brothers. Didn’t fly, however, due to pumping and servicing problems and was moved to the Glen Devon Stud and what is now the Riverbend Historical Park.

The North Base Stone at 1245 Sayers Road is of State significance. It was laid in the 1860s by the Geodetic Survey of Victoria to facilitate the survey process used to subdivide land during the early days Victoria. Not much to look at but swags of map would be shot without it.

Wattle Park on nearby Sewell’s Road, was owned by the Chirnsides and leased to tenant farmers.  The Chaffeys efforts ran through it.

John Batman                                        Andrew Chirnside

The Werribee River’s been important forever, of course, as border, water and food source for Aboriginal clans of three language groups – the Marpeang bulluk, Kurung jang balluk and Yalukit willam. As a young Werribee reporter I recall covering Indigenous remains unearthed along the river by a mining operator.

In the late 1830s and 1840s, the Werribee River was the scene of conflict between Aborigines and the European colonisers. The squatter Charles Franks and a shepherd were speared to death near Mount Cottrell in July 1836. This resulted in the Mount Cottrell massacre – a punitive party led by John Batman which came upon a large party of Aborigines and indiscriminately shot and killed at least 10. There are accounts of arsenic laced flour being given to local aborigines.

Today, the river waters the Werribee South market gardens, is popular with anglers and bushwalkers and provides a rich flora and fauna habitat.

Alamora’s part in the reshaping of Sayers Road draws people to an area where its background is little known and little appreciated but where it remains a vital player in the lives of its residents in terms of location, geography, environment and natural resources.

  • Noel Murphy is Villawood Properties’ PR & communications manager

Travel Bites: Amazon chill, Lima vultures

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Tambopata River, Puerto Maldonado, Peru

IT’S cool down in the jungle. Yes, cold. In the Amazon. But apart from the bizarre temperature for an equatorial jungle, it’s most of the other things you’d expect.

It’s isolated, remote, dangerous, poverty-stricken, primitive, environmentally threatened and scary. It’s also beautiful, diverse, enlightened, even mystical. And it’s sultry.

Cool but sultry. That wonderfully evocative description that takes in leaves so dripping in condensation you’d swear it’s raining, dark thatch huts and hammocks, jungle bars with sour cocktails in sweating glass tumblers.

And it’s also full of nocturnal screeching by unknown species, howler monkeys bellowing in foliage high overhead, deadly bushmaster snakes, leaf-cutter ants and terrifying stinging trees to which adulterers are condemned.

That’s not to forget brilliantly-coloured macaws and toucans, giant river otters, piranha, naked children playing on riverbanks, shamans growing psycho-tropic drugs, riverside gold-mining operations from makeshift canoes, alligators, jaguars, tapirs, parrots and more parrots, waterways that rise 12 metres and more in flood.

 

Lima, Peru

VULTURES. Last thing I expected. And haze. Thick, enveloping haze. Like a bushfire approaching. Thick, close, under-your-shirt haze. Creeping in like a London pea-souper.

Except this isn’t London. It’s Lima, Peru, just a few degrees south of the equator. It should be steaming, hissing, like a busted boiler valve. Instead, the temperature’s a mild mid-20s Celsius. Balmy.

And the setting sun – slumping lazily into the vast watery desert of the Pacific – is a warm, gilded disc, all fuzzy, indistinct, at the edges. A gently vanishing glow, hardly a sunset proper.

Adjudicating over this trick of nature, from the vantage of San Domingo’s steeple, is the wizened black vulture, Coragyps atratus, with a basilisk eye. 

Breathe in. The warm jet-stream rising west of Chile; the abused children’s fate adorning the billboards of this confused, for years even train-less city; the demonic Christian conquistadors of Spain and their legacy ever-present … all are considered under the withering eye of the vulture; cousin of the native Quechuans’ chief totem, the condor.

 And the sunset’s fogged, blotted. Warm, soaking, otherworldly. As if like Peru and its history, perhaps its future, it too has been forgotten by the Fates.

 

When taking offence becomes offensive …

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Above: David Rowe’s commentary in the Australian Financial Review

Have to laugh when a bunch of comic administrators can’t see the irony in B-rating a professional cross-dresser for his comments on cross-dressers.

Especially when that cross-dresser is responsible for that bunch’s existence. Talk about biting the hand that feeds. Like the cannibal who ate the comic said: tastes funny.

Definitely something funny going on with the snarky little snub of Barry Humphries by the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

Cartoonist Johannes Leak summed it up neatly with his image of the festival thought police sitting about at a crisis meeting moaning: “We’re a laughing stock.”

Doubt they would have laughed either at David Rowe’s cartoon of Bazza’s alter-egos lined up at the Pearly Gates being told by old Peter to form an orderly queue.

Dame’s Edna’s eyes are popping as Sir Les Patterson, equipped with signature cigarette, drink and blazing erection, jumps queue on Sandy Stone and squeezes in behind her.

“ ’Scuse me for pushing in Edna,” he apologies, his face a lascivious purple not unlike the backside of a rutting baboon. Edna’s set to jump, to use Les’ diction, like a kangaroo bitten on the balls by a redback spider.

Are you with me, Parkie?

Barry Humphries’ disdain for wowsers, the woke PC, the patently unhappy cancel culture, tub-thumping moralists, is having an extended field day right now. He’d be jumping for joy in his grave, if he was in there yet.

Dan Andrews is talking of a State funeral for the comedy giant. He should be thinking of a statue, too. Might want to start thinking about an inscription, as well. Maybe something from Barry Mackenzie:

“I was down by Bondi pier

“Drinkin’ tubes of ice-cold beer,

With a bucket full of prawns upon my knee

“When I swallowed the last prawn,

“I had a technicolor yawn

“And I chundered in the Old Pacific Sea.”

 Probably a bit too Sydney-centric for a Melburnite, though. And glorifying grog, instead of gambling. Maybe something a bit more generic:

“One day I got to reading

“In an old sky-pilot’s book

“About two starkers bastards

“Who made the Lord go crook

“They reckoned it was a serpent

That made Eve the apple take

“Cripes that was no flaming serpent

“Twas Adam’s one-eyed trouser snake.”

Hmmm. Having a go at the Christians. That should get it a run but it’s probably still a bit too close to the humour that made Alvin Purple a hit in 1970s Australia. And Paul Hogan with his dopey drooling over a bikini-clad Delvene Delaney. Or Benny Hill with his cast of buxom, wink wink, co-stars.

Appalling stuff. To think that people used to roll up in droves to theatre restaurants such as Dirty Dicks. And to drive-in theatres with hard porn flicks on giant screens that could be seen for miles around. Hippies danced naked at rock festivals. Nudists made themselves comfortable on beaches.

Aaagh, excuse me, but the Kath and Kim character Sandy Freckle just suddenly came to mind. Shh, don’t laugh. The fun police will get you. Bit like that other farce, No Sex Please, We’re British. That was packing them into the West End way back when Barry Humphries was just hitting his straps.

Bawdy, risqué behaviour has been going on since Chaucer’s time. And the Romans. You should check out what the Greeks were up to. Maybe check a few cave paintings too if you want to get real funny about it all.

Sorry, it’s human nature to get down and dirty. Barry Humphries did all of that, with great skill and humour. He targeted the wowsers and what we’d now call the woke and PC brigades. The stuck-up, self-righteous and up-themselves do-gooders.

And there should be more of it.

As for the transfolk, well, according to Sir Les: “I yield to none in my abhorrence of sexual prejudice. As for some courageous folk who claim that they were born in the body of the wrong sex, Les Patterson has this to say: ‘I’ve been there, guys. I know. I need to get into the body of the opposite sex on a regular basis’.”

Les insists he defends “to the ultimate my right to give deep and profound offence … so long as people laugh while they’re being offended.”

When he was asked do they laugh as much nowadays?

“Oh yes, of course they do.”

Seems, it’s just not at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.

 

Bingeing on science faction

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Ascension, by Nicholas Binge, Harper Collins

Pseudoscience stuff’s good clean fun, right?  Why shouldn’t the world’s crust just ripple up and accelerate the movement of land masses like Pangea, Gondwanaland and Pannotia to a couple of million years rather than the eons we thought?

Authors like Graeme Hancock, and more than few psycho creation scientists, will try to convince you it’s all possible, even true. The world’s fossils were all buried in Noah’s cloudburst of 2348 BC. Six days fair slog and a day off on Sunday, all that.

Others writers, like Ian Plimer, are lauded for eviscerating the God-botherer science revisionists with common sense but spurned for doing the same to climate zealots. Yep, science is all good fun until someone loses an eye. But colour its reason and evidence with politics, religion, activism, fraud or other shape-shifting and that’s what you’ll get. And worse.

Nicholas Binge, however, seems more bent on fun than mischief with his Ascension fable of a giant mountain that springs up in the Pacific Ocean, drawing an autocratic monied/warmongering/science-led expedition – it’s a little unclear which for a while – to investigate its singular peculiarities. And he’s having a lot of fun.

Singularity’s probably a better term because there’s a good bit of space-time continuum shape-shifting as Binge coerces a crew of physicists, anthropologists, medicos, biologists, ethicists, mercenaries and explorers onto the mountain and points them upwards.

Strange things are happening, as protagonist Harry Tunmore smartly learns. Old friends can see the future, predict card turns perfectly, amid a catatonia punctuating by ramblings about time, about watching the seconds.  But they self-immolate before exploiting their new skills in the casino.

And they’re the smart ones. So you imagine what the wild-eyed soldiers of fortune make of things as time moves back and forwards, dead people come and go before their eyes, unearthly life forms start as microbes before infecting everything, as alien creatures from beneath the ice attack.

Yep, here there be monsters, as the old cartographers cautioned of uncharted waters. And they’re getting into everyone’s brain as the mountain, a good bit taller than Everest incidentally, lures everyone higher.

Brutal cold, hypoxia, paranoia and open hostility colour the research mission as it moves painfully higher. And the body count mounts as Harry tries to fathom what the devil’s going on, why his personal life is a disaster, how to survive his own expedition members as much as the creatures and why on earth the mountain’s luring them all higher like a physical hunger.

But Harry’s sharp physicist grey matter nuts out what’s going on and how to traverse the monolith. In a fashion, that is, his road map’s an inter-dimensional thingo which leaves a lot to be desired. But like TV’s It’s About Time, never know if you’ll wind up in the Stone Age with Gronk or in New York City, still with Gronk.

The physics, existential philosophy and violence make for a good rollicking yarn. Just don’t ask why Harry’s abandoned his family yet happy to relay his deeply personal story in letters of extraordinary minutiae to his 14-year-old niece. Or why he’s constantly writing them while trying to escape death climbing up a mountain, for that matter.

It’s a mechanism, I suppose. You know the drum. Don’t let reality, let alone facts or science, get in the way of a good narrative. After all, what do those scientists know?

Take the Big Bang, for instance. That’s a once upon a time story if ever I heard one. Here’s a poser for you. What was there beforehand?

Please don’t tell me fairies ….

Head-shrinking as a political art form …

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WATCHING Parliament the other night got me to thinking of the Peruvian jungle, of headhunters and, given the cranial magnitude evident in Canberra, the Amazonians’ skills in shrinking heads.

Not the psychiatric head-shrinking, mind you there’s probably a job there, but the real thing _ the secret savage lore that’s fascinated everyone from anthropologists to horror film directors.  

Ghoulish practice that it is, head-shrinking’s a time-honoured, popular pastime which as recently as the mid-20th century was commonplace from Panama to Ecuador and Peru. Not Canberra, regrettably, but had the simple procedure for shrinking scones been better known … well, who knows?

It’s not so hard, really. When you’ve despatched your subject _ presumably an enemy of some species _ hack off his head as close to the body as possible. Slit the scalp from the crown downwards to the nape of the neck. Through the opening, flay out the skull, remove the flesh and skin of the face and scalp.

Still with me? Next, ditch the skull, unless you need a conversation-piece ashtray or somesuch. Stretch the skin over a wooden handle and immerse it a vessel of hot water to contract it a little.

If you’re a purist, like me, you’d then sew a ring made from a vine into the neck to keep it open so you can drop hot stones inside.

Add hot sand to the pebbles and keep the head in constant motion, swinging it about, to allow the heat to apply to all the parts uniformly. When things cool, tip the sand out, reheat it and repeat the process.

Gradually, the head will dry out and become smaller. Remember to knead the features with your hands, pinching and moulding the face to retain its natural appearance _ even its natural expression.

That’s it. Simple, really.

If you were ambitious, mind you, you might care to shrink the whole parliamentary carcass. Peru’s Jivaro folks abbreviated one particular Spanish officer, an old conquistador supposedly searching for El Hombre Dorado _ the Golden Man _ reducing him to just a shadow of his former self. From five feet nine inches to just 31 inches.

According to Robert Ripley, of Ripley’s Believe It or not fame, he’s located in the National Museum of the American Indian as best I can establish and possible relocated from New York to Washington in recent years. He sports a rather grand moustache for such a little bloke.

Funny but he looks a little like the late defence minister Jim Killen to me, which is odd _ he was one of the least big-headed figures to grace parliament.

The once wildly-popular Ripley has been resurrected by folks at Five Mile Press in a colourful scrapbook entitled Search for the Shrunken Heads and other Curiosities. It features everything from a bloke with a full-on horn growing out of his head to pink polar bears and ancient talking Egyptian statues.

But it’s the shrunken heads that are the stand-out curiosity. And Ripley, true to form, offers an intriguing insight into the custom.

“The taking and shrinking of human heads is an ancient rite with the Jivaros, and one which has not vanished with modern times.

“It has, rather, been stimulated by the demand of tourists for specimens of the head-hunters’ skill as souvenirs and all the laws against the practice that have been passed by the South American republics are of no avail.

“While there are traders to pay a price, and tourists to buy, the sale of human heads will probably continue.

“The method of reducing and shrinking the heads remained a secret for many years and it is comparatively recently that anyone has witnessed the actual process.

“Friends of my mine in Quito (Ecuador) told me of a German scientist who ventured into the unexplored Pongo de Seriche _ the land of the Jivaros _ in hopes of learning their secret, and six months later a shrunken and mummified head with a red beard and light hair was offered for sale.”

This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser

Trying to stop courting disaster

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Never fail to be appalled by the time-worn old adage that you get the kind of justice you can afford.

Should never be that way but time and time again we see justice dispensed like an insurance company’s write-off car crash assessment. Too much to fix, car’s not worth that much, cut your losses all round. In jurisprudence-speak, just settle.

See it all the time. The cost of defence is going to be too much, cut your costs.

Lots of people happy to do it, too. Bordering on scam. People who might sue for defamation, for instance, for the supposed loss of their reputation among friends and colleagues. They’re happy to forego that sorry loss for filthy lucre instead.

Makes you wonder what a reputation’s worth if you can buy it back with a court order. You can’t, of course.

You can trick up the legal system in other ways, too, if you’re short of cash for legal fees.

Vocal accusations, untested police charges, the rabid court of public opinion and the cesspool of social media are terrific ways of buying the justice you want for next to nothing.

If you’re on the attack, that is. If you’re happy to see your target vilified, harassed, ridiculed, thrown out of work without a fair hearing. If you don’t subscribe to notions of a fair trial, innocent until proven guilty, the rule of law or the annoying notion of justice not only being done but being seen to be done.

If you’re on the defence, it’s a different matter. No amount of money can stave off this kind of out-of-court barrage. You can be done right over no matter regardless of any court outcome.

Which is why the Federal Court is restricting media access to various legal documents. To avoid undesirable consequences by non-parties, viz, reporters.

It means journos can’t report on untested initial applications and claims as soon as they’re lodged with court. They have to wait until the case has its first hearing.

There was a time when sub-judice meant something to reporters. The idea was that you wouldn’t potentially influence any juror, or judge for that matter.

The Federal Court is basically trying to restate that kind of legal protection, by guarding against a level of digital public discussion way beyond what a paper/radio/TV might once have prompted.

Media outlets are filthy on it. Chiefly because, I’d suggest, they’re worried social media has a massive jump and audience on them. They’re claiming the Fed Court has a fundamental misunderstanding of journalism, free speech and democracy.

I’d suggested they’ve got a pretty good idea.

That said, there remain some serious shortcomings to the idea of keeping jurors in the dark about defendants, notably about prior offences and all sorts of evidence that might be deemed inadmissible by our courts.

Jurors are basically treated as dummies. Not smart enough to weigh evidence without stuffing it up. Maybe there’s a case, if you consider how some people react to social media campaigns.

But the one-sided, bias confirmation indoctrination that activists rely on, and web giants happily exploit, is not what justice and the courts are meant to be about.

What we increasingly have these days is pure kangaroo court stuff. Like the old cowboy movie line: Sure, we’ll give you a fair trial, then we’ll hang you.

Jurors need full information, not just some biased information – and definitely not finessed, prejudicial information – if they are to make the same fair and accurate rulings/reports that journalism is obliged to present.

Situation’s pretty simple, really. Anything else and the media’s just embarrassing itself like the targets it too often seeks to lynch with public opprobrium.

 

 

Banshees of Inisherin

Banshees, mangling and mayhem on Inisherin

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Above: Brendan Gleeson as Colm Doherty in The Banshees of Inisherin.

Met the great Irish musician Paddy Moloney, leader of the legendary Chieftains, years back backstage at Dallas Brooks Hall.

I was with another Irish legend, Melbourne’s Paddy O’Neill, who ushered me past a scowling bull of a security guard with a thumb over his shoulder in my direction and the magical words: “Don’t worry about him, he’s with me.”

By the time the bull figured he was being gulled, we were in, Paddy greeting Paddy alike like long-lost brothers, lots of shoulder-slapping and plenty of beer gushing about the place.

Not sure why I’m reminded of this episode after watching The Banshees of Inisherin. Maybe it’s something to do with Paddy’s fluid control of language, suggestion and meaning.

“Follow me, I’ll be right behind you,” he’d laughingly instruct me. Or gently admonish me with: “I’m sorry, Noel, but you’re wrong again.”

Hold on, when I was wrong before? The Skipper, as he was known, could snooker you before you even knew you were playing.

Which is kind of what happens to Colin Farrell’s Padraig Súilleabháin in Banshees, when his drinking mate, Brendan Gleeson’s Colm Doherty, decides he’s had enough of him and doesn’t want to talk with him anymore. And nothing Padraig does seems capable of changing matters.

No particular reason for all this. Other than Colm thinks Padraig’s “dull” and he wants to spend what’s left of his life focussing on more memorable things, like writing fiddle tunes he hopes will be remembered longer than being “nice” to old mates like Padraig.

With Padraig declaring the first of these new tunes “shite” and refusing to leave him be, Colm ups the ante in a ridiculous fashion I suspect only the Irish could manufacture. He threatens to shear a finger off his fiddling hand each time Padraig talks to him.

Now, I haven’t made it to Ireland yet but I understand it’s a fine country from its Moher Cliffs and Waterford crystal to its Aran Islands, O’Carolan concertos and mad Flann O’Brien ruminations.

Been skirting around its periphery for decades, mind you. Fooling about with its music, soaking up its writings, wrangling with its citizens – which is enormous fun by the way – and observing Hibernian ways with a generally bewildered scrutiny.

Tradition, isolation, religion, history and politics underpin a harshness that’s hard to absorb from a distance. But its sentiment, humour, beauty and logic – fashioned as it is by emotion and humanity – polish those ragged edges.

Banshees brings all of these to the table with its wry plot, damaged characters, ambience and landscape. It tips a cap to Ireland’s brutal history with both everyday and ridiculous violence.

Padraig, gentle innocent that he is, notwithstanding the occasional drunken slip-up, is assailed by deep personal losses – his best friend, his sister’s departure and his tiny donkey when it chokes eating one of Colm’s fingers.

His only recourse is to burn Colm’s house, which Colm accepts as justice for the donkey’s loss. He spares Colm’s dog.

Ridiculous upon ridiculous, it almost looks as if Colm might be willing to rekindle their friendship although Padraig doesn’t seem interested, even if he can’t stop himself from being polite to him.

The Banshees of Inisherin is the name Colm gives his tune-set. It’s a dark, brooding composition which he conducts, blood dripping from his hand, as his students belt it out on their fiddles in the local pub.

Good name for an Irish tune although for mine it’s pipped by another called The Banshee’s Wail Over the Mangle Pit.

Blood-curdling’s probably a fair description. It’s not shite but I think it would sound grand if Paddy Moloney’s Chieftains tackled it. With Paddy O’Neill on the drums, too.

Of course, I could be wrong again …. but I don’t think so.

 

 

Fear and loathing in the court of the kangaroo

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Remarkable to see the angst, stupidity, arrogance, and vengeful and avaricious behaviours attached to the Higgins/Lehrmann rape case.

Not to mention the miserable failure of the judicial system to uphold either itself or the individual’s basic rights.

Feral. The whole lot of it, start to unresolved finish. Nothing in there to really flatter anyone involved in the entire brouhaha.

Any semblance of innocent until proven guilty out the window. Might as well be in China, Iran or any other totalitarian state you can think of, including America of course.

Any semblance of courts or lawyers looking to uphold the fundamental rule of law – that philosophy that portends that people are accountable to the law – has been tarnished, sullied, compromised, bent or straight-out ignored.

Neither plaintiffs nor their supporters care a jot for the idea of pulling their heads in for fear of prejudicing a fair trial. As sub judice and contempt of court laws demand. Also as their lawyers and even the judge have advised. But there’s no penalty.

There are, instead, ratings, circulation, awards, notoriety and the next contract to always consider. No such thing as bad publicity.

The media don’t really care. They’ll publish whatever they think they can get away with. Calculated risk, as their lawyers advise. Or they might not publish what they suspect their audience might not like.

Some jurors don’t care. Even when they’re told 17 times not to undertake their own research. And again, no penalty. Mind you, more seriously, there’s no structure whatsoever to check on the behaviour of jurors. Who guards the guards? Been a problem since Roman days.

It’s all grist to the mill in the great Land of the Fair Go. A land buttressed by an adversarial judicial system drowning in a maelstrom of activism and entitlement, derailed media and legal ethics, politicking and political interference.

The Higgins case has been shonky from the go-get. Nothing’s been done properly. Vital evidence-gathering never happened. On-off police dealings, no-show medical appointments, book deals, media interviews, Press Club and Logies performances, electioneering, even a bizarre prime ministerial apology – plus a long-running media commentary heavily fixated not on any regard for Lehrmann’s right of innocent until proven guilty but on the outrageous injustice visited upon Higgins.

Allegedly, of course. Not that the word ‘allegedly’ carries any weight anything legally. Anyone not living under a rock knew of the Higgins claims. Jurors included.

What mechanisms were in place to ensure jurors might effectively cast any pre-knowledge of the case from their minds? Or do a bit of their own digging about on the side?

Nix, your worship.

As it unfolded, a court cleaner accidentally knocked a folder off a desk and spotted something that shouldn’t have been there. And that’s the best security the court can offer a defendant against prejudicial jury deliberations?

Talked about the system being stacked against a defendant.

We know the system’s stacked also against rape plaintiffs, too, of course. An appalling percentage are unsuccessful and the mental anguish and humiliation attached to physical and evidential demands, court appearances and cross-examination can be withering.

But at least the plaintiff’s identity is protected. Rape claims can be pursued in court in anonymity unless they prefer otherwise. Like Higgins.

The accused doesn’t share the same privilege. The defendant, however, does have the right not be cross-examined. Which might be seen as taking the fifth, not incriminating themselves – the guilty’s so-called defence.

But this also protects the defendant against prosecution fishing expeditions. And, just to be clear, it’s not the defendant not making the allegations. If the prosecution doesn’t have a case, it shouldn’t be there in the first place.

And of course allegations need to be tested in court. As much as the plaintiff might not like it.

The system might have its drawbacks, and considerable drawbacks at that, but it’s better by a country mile than any lynch mob nut jobs pretending to render justice honestly and fairly.

And it’s better than justice dispensed by patently conflicted interests going out of their way to create their own narrative about what constitutes justice.

That’s pure kangaroo court stuff.

 

 

Rhyme and verse, and a little worse …

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Was a time when poetry was the last thing held any interest for this word-mangler.

Too esoteric, too flowery, concepts too emotional and hard to plumb. More times than not, too cathartic and revealing. Hadn’t poets something better to do than sit around all introspective, navel-gazing and self-pitying? Who needs need to know their innermost ruminations?

But then, that’s not all poetry. And it’s okay, really. Plenty of people probably do need to know, if not stroppy journos. Besides poetry’s actually lots of other things too, even the outrageous limericks I once made a mission of committing to memory. Blokes named Bates and Bings, blokes from Kilbride and Kent … grand silly stuff.

Slowly, the old grey matter warmed to the possibilities of poetry – via song lyrics. Slow because I was more interested in the music side of things. Introspective stuff was rife but occasionally you’d find some inspired material, evocative stuff. Social documentary, political commentary, voices left behind but heaving with everything from love and persecution to anger, cynicism and humour.

The best stuff, so I thought, blended these peregrinations with words that jumped off the page. Words that shocked, words that looked odd, words that mightn’t garner much airplay otherwise, words with an artistic aspect to them. Typography is a thing, of course.

It’s a quair thing writing in unfamiliar areas. Like songwriting, for instance. You can write thousands of journo yarns but opening yourself to a song’s lyrics is a very different creature. Eventually, though, I thought I’d have to have a crack at some sort of poetry, even if it was just brain salad slosh. Not knowing what you’re doing in might be handy, who knows? It’s not a blood sport,  I’d venture, but I could be very wrong.

Recently, I pulled together the following brain-spit to a theme raised by a poet mate down the Surf Coast: Can you buy the ocean? Can you buy the land? If nothing else, it was fun playing with those weird little characters and their finials, bowls and shoulders, their apertures and strokes, and their spines and serifs and ligature.

So here goes, best of luck figuring out what I’m on about. There was some sort of rationale to it, if I remember rightly …

CUSTOS …

Fisherman, monger, trawler and troll,

Say the kraken will take a grown man whole,

Neb full of salt, breeches of piss,

Spirit him down a perpurean abyss.

 

Sad, sullen fate for a jack of the brine,

But not minus merit, for the best of mine,

A crab needs to scuttle, a squid to squeeze,

Amoeba shape-shift, hyperborean freeze.

 

The djinns of the seas offer baleful trust,

Abstruse, symbiotic, misfortune, unjust,

White horses, maelstrom, storm and squall,

Dreams rent beyond hope from their chalice of gall.

 

But yo ho, on Jack goes, all belligerent plunder,

Sirens of vainglory and greed hauling him under,

Fates and muses, they can plot and inspire,

But Jack Tar still fuels his own funeral pyre,

 

So whaler, the poets sing, quell your daughter’s hunger,

Ambergris, candlewax, won’t hasten your slumber,

Poseidon’s all bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,

Hug the land instead, to your fortune redouble.

 

But hold, terra’s a blight, conniving and craven,

Its beauty a snare, its lustre no haven,

A mercantile magnet of thirst and lust,  

Mammon underwritten In God We Trust.

 

So tread ware as you grift, you huckster and spiel,

Grounds shift and they tremble, oscillate like your krill,

Lords, lairds, liens of the land, caveat emptor,

Dangers deep as the sea, no call to plumb more. 

 

ⓒ copyright Noel Murphy 2022

 

 

Flop side of the coin

/in /by

 Poring over some old holey dollars recently. Not the real thing, unfortunately. Rather, some slick website images of the real thing. At up to $500K apiece, you want something that looks pretty schmick.

Dripping with history, strange tangible aspect to them, intriguing artwork, high-end corporate nature to them. Hard not to love these things. Well beyond my modest stipend, sadly.

Nonetheless, I’ve secreted a modest 1800-year-old Roman coin on my person, which I like lugging around in my wallet. Weird, I know, but I’m still feeling that strange tangible aspect.

This coin has the sun god Sol on one side and the beak-nosed Emperor Gordian III on the obverse. Cost me $10 maybe 15 years back and it’s now worth around $150. Better return than my super, that’s for sure.

Maybe I should bung it on a nag, see if I can make some real lucci. Or better still, invest in some chump change. No, not that unregulated digital cash built on nothing, bitcoin, or any other dodgy cryptocurrencies. I’m talking about three-dollar notes.

Actually, I am talking coins – $3 coins. Nothing suspicious there, eh? You’d hope not, especially with Australia Post flogging them. Something has to finance all those Cartier watches they like throwing around, after all. Hold on, they’ve stopped doing that for the time being. I think.

Australia Post had been licking the competition with its parcel trade, so much so that Toll Global Express grabbed Christine Holgate with both hands when she ignominiously exited Auspost, with a nasty ScoMo boot up the clacker, for doing her job too well. Now it’s licking its wounds.

So it seems ironic that a three-buck brass razoo has assumed pride of place in its marketing catalogue, alongside the latest Great Aussie Coin Hunt. Mint stuff.

Actually, the $3 note holds a little-known place in Australian currency history. The $7 note, too, if you can believe that.

Back in 1966, when decimal currency was introduced, counterfeiters were quick to churn out high-grade forgeries. Lots of them. The Reserve Bank swiftly had the CSIRO research a new type of note to tackle the problem.

Author Nathan Lynch, in his new release, The Lucky Laundry, details the diffraction gratings, or holograms, moire interference patterns, photochromic compounds and polymer plastics they used to run out 1.25 million ‘optically variable device’ banknotes – as $3 and $7 notes, so they weren’t counterfeiting themselves. The tech was good but it wasn’t put to use until 1988.

Used to be a time when Australia Post’s stock in trade was stamps. Those sticky perforated squares people attached to things called letters. Spawned a creature called the philatelist. Kids collected them. I know I did. Still love them, too, great custodians of Aussie culture – everything from hairy-nosed wombats and sheepdogs to war heroes, natural wonders, lighthouses, explorers, scientists, Olympic medallists, you name it.

But I reckon Auspost kind of lost the plot when it started issuing entire footy and rugby teams at a time. All 34 teams. And then kids’ movies. Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Goofy, Harry Potter. Place has been turning into Maccas. Bubble-gum card stuff. Chips Rafferty would be turning in his grave. On Holgate’s watch, to coin a phrase, from what I can see, too.

You can even make your own stamps. Auspost has MyStamps offering personalised stamps for businesses. On special at the moment, as a matter of fact. At $25, you’ll save yourself $10 on a $35 set of 20 x $1.10 stamps. Showcase your logo, ad campaign, brand name, your own ugly head …

But it’s getting a bit out of hand now. All sorts of Aussie icons, idioms and idiosyncracies – cockatoos, bushrangers, magpies, jumbucks, the vanilla slice, Tassie devil, kelpies – are depicted on these coins Auspost is flogging. And it’s suss.

The term hooroo gets a guernsey ahead of hoon, howzat and headless chook. I’ll cop that. But gday, galah and grog all dip out because G’s been grabbed by Great Ocean Road. Hmm, what’s going there? Why not the Great Barrier Reef?

Darrell Lea’s snagged D ahead of drongo, derro, dropkick and dunny. R.M. Williams has usurped redback, ratbags and underwear impresario Reg Grundys. Product placement’s delivering Oz a good kick in the vernaculars.

Commercialism is cashing in on patriotism, that ideal considered politically as the last refuge of the scoundrel. Makes you wonder how long before you can mint your own vanity coins? Mullet boofhead on one side, pimped-up hoon car on the other. Could be legal tender for bogans.

Done it with the stamps, coins can only be a matter of time. I can see them already. Car dealers, estate agents and influencers with their own silver dollar two-up specials.

Mind you, if we could get one with Franco Cozzo, Australian imperator, 20th century, Norta Melbun anda Footisgray on either side, I’m in. And I’d keep it in my Auspost coin collector’s folder which, incidentally, retails for, you guessed it … $7.

Oh, one more thing, farewell to two of Auspost’s finest, Myrna and Terry, who took retirement leave of the Bareena PO last week after many years of diligent, professional and convivial care and attention to their constituents. Very much Newtown’s and Auspost’s loss. Many thanks and all the best, guys.

This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 31 May 2022

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