Australia, Good and Bad

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Apart from the "school of the air" - via radio in the outback, I have never heard of homeschooling here. In may be illegal in Victoria (Victoria doesn't have any real outback). There are small inexpensive private schools like Steiner Schools that may interest you.


It means migrants here are encouraged to retain the culture from the old country, as part of a "social mosaic" so long as it fits. "We are one, but we are many". For example, we are told Australian chefs are very highly regarded as they are happy to borrow what is good from a wide variety of styles and cuisines and blend them together.


Yeah. Most snake bites happen when people try to kill them, rather than leave them alone.


To be a real Australian, you have to disrespect authority and all criticise governments - lol. There is a vid on youtube of "the chaser" (a satire/comedy team) who pretended to be a diplomatic motorcade and got thru all security, right up to the hotel where George Bush was staying. Very funny - and embarrassing for our government. Its probably still on youtube.

Government does not interfere with churches. Our government is strictly secular. Other than criticising things like refugee policies and tax policies that do not give relief to the poor, churches don't interfere with government either.


Qld'ers would IMHO be more conservative than other Australians. There is not any dramatic geographic change anywhere. Most borders are arbitrary lines, rather than any geographic features. Nth NSW would be very similar to SE Qld. If you look at a map, the Darling River flows into the Murray (Darling-Murray system is one of the longest in the world) the landscape along the whole system doesn't change a great deal. A very low % of Australians go to church, but most identify as Christian. Qld would (I think) have the highest % of church goers than other States, especially around the Sunshine Coast (North of Brisbane).


Never. But people generally are proud of them and support them.


Warning - my bias/racism may show.

Less than 200 years ago, Aboriginies were in the stone age and did not know the wheel and had no written language. They have colourful and interesting "dreamtime" stories (the dreamtime is when the world was new/prehistoric) about how mountains, rivers, animals etc were made. However I believe there is a movement to recreate or invent an aboriginal culture to make them look better than they are/were. In traditional society, a persons' mother's brother is an important and significant. I believe that was because they had no idea who the father was. I am not aware of traditional aboriginies ever having anything resembling a marriage ceremony. I can't think of any other people who don't. In aboriginal communities today there is a problem with incest and rape. Pre-puberty kids have sexually transmitted diseases. Its a disgrace that all Australians should be ashamed of that Aboriginal communities today have 3rd world health and education standards, but it seems to me anytime anyone tries to do anything effective about it, they are branded as patronising racists.

Our government throws a huge amount of money at the problem, but it is all wasted and they still live in shameful conditions (in the outback communities). IMHO what has happened is that Aboriginies have been given a welfare mentality, and always seem to have their hand out rather than do anything themselves. For example, some years ago the government wanted to build a bridge to connect Hindmasrsh Island to the mainland. Aboriginies said it was a sacred site, so tried to stop development. When asked why it was sacred, they said it was "secret women's business" and so couldn't tell any men about it. It turned out it was all lies and they were just trying to extort some advantage out of it.

Aboriginies are a very small % of the population. I don't know any personally (have only ever met 2). In Melbourne, you are more likely to see a black Muslim Somali refugee than an aboriginee.

Last edited by BazzaMcKenzie on 17 Jan 2008, 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I'm part Aboriginal. Where I live, there's heaps of Aboriginies. No one is racist towards them though. They live like we do.

probably there is less racism because there are more and people know them. Ignorance promotes racism. Moree (NSW) and Gundawindi (Qld) have had problems.

Sorry if I offended you (never meant to) but the sorry fact is in Melbourne, Aboriginees are very rare and I know a lot of people in country Victoria who would not overtly discriminate or be offensive to you, but are still subtly quite racist (e.g. tell abo jokes and are generally derogatory towards the aboriginal community - but not individuals). Its been worse since the Yorta Yorta tried to stake a land rights claim over the Goulburn River valley.

To be clear, when I talk of racism, its an attitude towards the race not to individuals. I have never seen any overt racism where anyone has been deliberately offensive to any individual.

I'm glad there are no problems in Murray Bridge. That's how it should be.

I wonder who the principal of the air would be... But seriously, that sounds more like a long distance course than homeschooling (where the parents are the teachers and the children work from textbooks, cassettes, CDs, DVDs, CDROMs, etc.)



So rather than pronounce the French correctly (like you have to in France) you can speak your own dialect? Just an analogy. I mean, instead of trying to change your heritage you can be who you are?



When I walk into town I sometimes see a black white and yellow snake that lives out by the Public Works facility. I don't see too much of it though; it slithers away from me pretty fast.



How did the SS respond to them at the hotel?



Not even on the content of sermons does the government disrupt? Referring to the ways of Canada here. Churches don't criticize moral issues?



What types of Christians are there? Also, previous question: Is Queensland conservative in a morality sense or an economic sense?



Does Australia make their own warplanes or buy them from someone else?



What you wrote doesn't appear racist.



Well, the traditions obviously don't have Levitical-type laws concerning incest... Could you tell me more about Dreamtime? Are there any compilations in English that I could buy?



Here some certain people make a living off of welfare and social security. Some people with disabilities and widows and such should get help, but there are others who are just plain lazy.



Percentage doesn't equate importance. Here in Scott County there are a lot of Somalis too. Between them, the Iranians, Arabs, Mexicans, Afghanis, and Russians, you sometimes are surprised to hear English...

The national past time is criticising government. Our libel laws don't protect you if what you say is the truth, but courts have held that politicians have little protection from libel because they choose to have a high public profile anyway, so they are pretty much open to what ever anyone wants to say about them, so long as its not done with malice.

They didn't see the funny side, which made it even funnier. There was talk of charging them with something, but then other media ridiculed the fed police them even more, so I think it was all dropped.

Yes churches criticise moral issues (like I said, treatment of refugees etc) but for example there was a recent debate in parliament about abortion (strictly its illegal in Victoria unless there is a danger to the mother or proceeding with the pregnancy, but that's very loosely interpreted so that abortion is easy to get for anyone, and they wanted to change the law to reflect actual practise) and very few churches got involved in the debate.

Australia as a nation was formed when the 6 independent colonies chose to unite in a Federation in 1901. There is only one mention of God in the constitution and no mention of churches. Government does not meddle with churches and any politician who tries is widely and actively criticised.


Anglican (Church of England) is the largest, then Catholic, then other protestant (Presbyterian merged with Methodist and is called "Uniting"), Baptist, Lutheran (esp in Qld I think), etc. I think about 9-10% Jewish. Significant number of Buddhist and Muslim, but no idea what %.

Qld doesn't adopt daylight savings, so its said in summer they are 1 hr and 100 years behind the rest of the country - lol (sorry Q'mass). Qld is more rural than other States and I think more conservative both social and economic and more religious, but not puritan or prudish.


We make them under licence from US companies. Our main strike plane is the FA-18. The US Navy had people here supervising construction and testing prior to delivery to the Air Force. Our Army uses Black Hawk helicopters, but I don't know if they were built locally or not. All our military gear would be common with NATO countries. Not all the stuff is American.

We use our own designed/built diesel-electric submarines. I heard they are quieter and more stealthy than nuclear, but we don't have enough nuclear expertise to maintain nuclear ships anyway. We fly Orions for surveillance and anti-submarine warfare, which (I am told) we very good at.



try here http://www.didgeridoos.net.au/dreamtime ... ories.html

or here http://www.dreamtime.net.au/dreaming/storylist.htm

Australian traits v American
Ever seen the movie Jaws? When that came out, it was said that a lot of Americans kept away from beaches, worried about sharks. By comparison, Lifesavers at Australian beaches can give a shark warning and a lot of Australians would take no notice of it, thinking its probably a false alarm.

I think as a nation we are a lot more cynical, less serious and laid back than Americans. Some see that as laziness, but that's not so. We also have a stronger spirit of looking after each other (mateship) so we have a fairly good public education and health system and welfare system.

In contrast to Americans, its said that in WW2 Australian POW's held by the Japanese survived better than Americans because the weakest were looked after by their mates more than the Americans did. If someone could not eat their rations (illness or whatever) they were given to whom ever needed it most. By comparison Americans would trade rations, so they went to whom ever had something to trade. I suspect that's come about from being first settled by soldiers and convicts, a feeling of isolation from the rest of the world and coping with a relatively harsh environment.

Last edited by BazzaMcKenzie on 17 Jan 2008, 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've not left this town much, but Mildura in Victoria is nice.

Maybe you and Bazza missed this (it's in Parakeet's avatar) but he is a bird fancier, especially parrots, so his chief interest is a birdy state, he's already thinking QLD which seems like one of the parrotty parts of the country to me.

SQUAWK!

OH! Speaking of birds...I might be getting a sulpur crested cockatoo soon. It's not that I want it, but I sold my house and the one I'm buying (on 15 acres) has a cockatoo in a large cage. It sort of goes with the house they said. The sellers are elderly and moving into a unit so they can't take the bird. I asked them to put an ad in the paper for it, but somehow I think I might end up with this bird. I will know more in about 6 weeks.

like the Qld tree top walk (not been there myself, but heard about it)

and hand feeding rosellas

(you used to be able to do that at Wilson's Promontory in Victoria, but Parks and Wildlife have stopped people feeding them. Remember what I said about the "cotton wool" State?

By lake Nagambie (central Vic) there are flock of hundreds if not thousands of these corellas, which can make a deafening noise when they all screech together.

Why stop feeding the parrots? What are vegetarian birds going to do? Express their frustration with your ear existing? What is with the stupid law?

Ja, ich dinken es arbiten. NOT!

Since when are parrots not freeloaders? When have these birds attacked people? Steal their food, yes. Tried to hurt, no. Not generally at least... Oh yes, diseased parrots are the first to line up for an ambuscade. (not only that, but are the diseases transferable?) Yes, I think these laws work. NOT!

we had a corella plague when I lived in Perth.

Bad.

Did you get it? Glad you're ok now.

someone in the Department must have had nightmares from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" - lol

Apparently the Currumbin Bird Sanctuary (now the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary) -->LINK got its start when Gold Coast beekeeper and flower grower Alex Griffiths began feeding the local lorikeets to halt their destruction of his prize flowers. Word spread - not just to the local birdlife, but also to visitors from other states. The sanctuary became a popular tourist destination, and Griffiths eventually donated the business to the National Trust of Queensland.

Disease I don't know about, but injury? When a parrot chomps on your finger with that sharp pair o' pliers it calls a beak? Yep, definitely leaves a mark.

Parrots are nowhere near the worst of it, though. Nesting magpies are intensely territorial, and will dive-bomb and attempt to peck the eyeballs out of anyone silly enough to go near them. And seagulls, gah! Don't get me started. Just try to have a quiet lunch of fish 'n' chips on any beach, anywhere in Oz. A loud "braak!" (which is Seagull for "hot chip") shatters the air, and next thing you know there are dozens of the greedy buggers gathered around you in a big circle... waiting. It's enough to sh!t ya to tears.