Over 30 years ago my Mum, my sister Catherine and friend Jim jumped into the old 1977 Toyota Corolla and headed from the Table lands north to Bundeberg and then to Bargara beach. It was hot and the beach was long and beautiful. The water was just like a hot bath and it was great sitting in a small tidal pool in the evening without the fear of sharks or other nasty beasties creeping up on us, well the mosquitoes were a problem. The hotel was nice but the food was that nouveaux cuisine rubbish, it looked great and it tasted ok but it was damn expensive and not much of it.
The drive the first day had been about 14 hours and so we stayed here for a couple of days before we carried on north till we reached Rockhampton and then flung a left towards Emerald and Sapphire. We stayed in Emerald overnight and continued our quest west until we could go no further at Tennant Creek where we flung a left once more to head south to Ayres Rock.
The daytime temperatures were brutal, 46c if I remember correctly and we could not use the air-conditioning in the car because when we did the poor old thing coughed and spluttered and so for many hundreds of kilometres we had to have the window open just a little to get airflow through the car but it was brutal. Driving at 100 kph and with the added bonus of wind-burn, not wind-chill, but wind-burn made for a very difficult journey indeed.
Ayres Rock is almost in the centre of Australia and you can fly or drive and we chose to drive to experience the Outback in all its glory and to be honest it was a great experience and having my Mum there made it all the better. For the first time in many years she was young again and carefree away from the miserable old bugger that tried to contain her. There is a picture of her standing in the middle of the desert highway in the middle of nowhere with a big smile on her face, I can see it in my mind’s eye now……
So like many other folk that come this way, we come to see a big rock and pay exorbitant prices for the pleasure. When we went, we shared a kind of backpacker cabin arrangement where we had 4 beds to a room. You sat outside to eat and you could watch the big friendly Iguana stroll around looking for scraps and in the distance the rock itself. Ayres rock is big, it’s a huge feature on the landscape and most people come here so that they can experience the desert, the surrounding MacDonnell Ranges and of course to climb the rock. The local Aborigine tribe has decided that they will no longer allow anyone to climb the rock from October because it goes against their beliefs. The rock is on their land and they believe the rock is very sacred to them and so no one will be allowed to climb it anymore.
When I first went to Australia I didn’t know much about them and so over time you begin to learn a thing or two. After living in Australia for 30 years I don’t really have much time for them. The population of Australia is made up from many different races and the Aborigines just happen to be one of them, but they were there first of course and because of this they own the whole of Australia apparently. Over the years they have been given land rights, which is fair enough. They have complained about the brutality they faced at the hands of the British, fair enough. They were hunted for sport, many terrible things happened to them but after listening to them for 30 years about how they were treated by the white man, you begin to get sick of the broken record, especially when many choose not to help themselves. I don’t care if you are black, white or blue……………..there comes a time where you need to just get off your arse and change your situation instead of blaming every wrong decision you made on the invading white man that came to the country. I come from Scotland and the English treated us like shit over the years and it was around the same time as the shit was going down in Australia, but we as a nation we have become quite successful and many of our people have moved on and we don’t get any special treatment, we did not get compensation from the crown………..that’s not to say of course that some folk still do hate the English and I’m sure there are a few in England that don’t like us, but we move on we have to.. I’m a Scottish Aborigine after all. But the Australian Aborigine’s spend their life’s in the past and refuse to move into the present.
If you go to the job centre you will see one lot of jobs for the Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders. No one else can apply for these jobs, no other Australian or immigrant can. Years ago I saw a job in the job centre for an IT trainee that had been advertised for over 6 months and so I went and asked about it. “Are you an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?” “Eh no, I’m Scottish” “Then you can not apply for this job, only they can” “But the job has been there for 6 months and no one seems to be too interested, they seem more at home hanging around the street corners chatting to one another and walking with a limp” “Sorry sir these jobs are only for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.”
And there you go; this is what it is still like in 2019. They have many services that are specific to them and yet they shout about discrimination. Everyone in Australia should be equal regardless of the colour of their skin and yet this is not the case and so how do they think that respect will come to them if they don’t join the rest of society. Every time something goes wrong it’s not their fault. The educated Aborigines are making a fortune of the backs of their poor uneducated.
Millions of dollars have been……….. what’s the word? ………Misappropriated…….. This happens too many times ……
I was having a game of snooker one night in the local RSL club, it was a competition and I got paired up with this Aboriginal guy that worked at the university and after listening to him for a few hours while we played snooker, and by the way we won some chickens that evening, I learned that many of the educated Aborigines are also quite disgusted with their own people and more so of the ones that take advantage of them.
I shared a house with a bunch of Scottish folk in western Sydney in Arakoon Avenue and we had an Aboriginal family living next door to us. We would say hello to each other but sometimes there were fights and sometimes the girls would come over to our house for help and then we would call the police for them and then get abused for calling the police. They stole our washing, how did we know this………because we saw them wearing our clothes, they used our swimming pool and yet when we tried to complain about them we came up against the racist card. One of their kids got knocked down and myself and Tom ran outside and help pick up the corner of the car while someone pulled the young boy from under the car, we helped to save his life. They had a dog which they never looked after and the rest of the street used to feed it, it was a nice dog. One day we phoned the RSPCA to tell them that the owners of the dog were not looking after the dog and could they come and pick it up. I explained that the dog was friendly and if it was not for the kindness of the neighbours the dog may have starved. She was very interested to listen to my story until I told her that they were Aboriginal and then outcomes the racist card. Oh sorry sir there is nothing we can do about this and as long as the dog is being fed then that is ok. But the owners don’t look after it……………..because they were Aboriginal they would not do anything, because they knew that the race card would be played as it is still done to this day. You can not criticise a person of colour or a minority element within the community.
Opal fuel was developed in 2005 to combat Petrol Sniffing in over 106 communities, one of the favourite pastimes of your average Aborigine back then. The health costs were massive, but it was BP that came to the rescue by changing its formula slightly so that they could not get this high anymore.
There was a story back in the early 90’s about two Aborigines that tried to sue Fosters Beer because they had become alcoholics, If Fosters hadn’t made the beer they would have drunk it and so QED they would not be alcoholics.
Communities in the north of Australia are supposed to be dry (no alcohol) because many were spending their dole money on booze and so the smugglers step in and a new market is created. Prohibition does not work; it just makes some people rich.
To try and combat some of the problems the government have given the members of community that are claiming government support a debit card and no alcohol can be bought using them. The feedback is that they are being discriminated against and they should have the same choices as everybody else and have cash put into the bank. When this happens the children are the ones that suffer. So many adults are irresponsible and the money ends up getting pissed up against the wall. There are so many other issues but I am not going to list them here, but one underlying theme is the lack of ownership for any of the problems that they have, they really need to look inward and begin with educating the young and start to move into the present day.
So I’m not being racist here by the way, I am telling you what I have observed over the years. It’s the immigrants obviously that have built Australia, wave upon wave of them over the years have brought their skills to the country…………maybe it’s making food or making coffee or whatever, but the difference between them and the local indigenous communities is that they have forged a future for themselves and contributed to the growth of the country in a very big way.
Not allowing tourist to climb Ayres Rock I feel is just being done because they can, and not really for the reason they say, which is that it’s a culturally sensitive site. You can climb Ayres Rock and you can appreciate the natural wonder of the place and when you stand on the top of it and look around at the panorama on offer you will see that it is stunning. All over the world tourists go to religious and culturally sensitive sites and buildings and locations and they are happy to share them with the world and let them be amazed at the same time. You can go to many wonderful cathedrals and mosques in the world and you can often climb up to the roof structure and see the wonders of the ancient stone masons. In Florence I climbed up to the top of the cathedral and it was brilliant. I’m not religious in the least but I admire the engineering and the ingenuity of the builders. I also have the same respect for nature, Mother Nature created Ayres Rock, there was no architect, no owner, no builder and it belongs to the world.
The local indigenous people have made a big mistake by putting a ban on this area. People will continue to come and they will climb it anyway. You have to pay $25 for the privilege and many will pay this without a thought. A stupid decision has been made by the local land owners and they are fracturing the reconciliation process. So many people have been pissed off by this. If I ever go to that part of the world again and I have the opportunity to climb the rock I will because it belongs to the world and I will leave my $25 at the bottom of the rock or I’ll post it to the relevant authority.
Update Oct 28th 2019
I wrote this about a month ago and since that time the rock has been closed and the fine for climbing the rock has been set at $10.000, which is absolutely ridiculous……..I just hope that all those local mobs that made such a commotion about people climbing Ayres Rock start to feel the pinch from the lack of tourist dollars that will hopefully not be spent in that area. After all one of the main reasons to go to see Ayres rock is to climb it, to experience its majesty, to look at the amazing form from the summit and to experience the panoramas and vistas on offer from the top.
If I win lotto and I can happily dispose of $10,000, then you will see me on TV as I climb the rock and maybe I’ll take a bottle of wine for good measure.
There are bigger problems in their communities to tackle than to spend so much time and resources on stopping people from climbing Ayres Rock which for many has been a source of income and joy for the climbers, I for one hope they come to regret their decision.