Discombobulated. Befuddled and bewildered. Confounded and confused. Disoriented and disconcerted. Muddled and rattled. Flummoxed and flustered. Unglued and off balance. At sixes and sevens. Nonplussed and not with it. Spaced out and taken aback ...
How to conjure up in mere words the deep sense of things gone wrong in the universe? Forget North Korea, forget the Donald, imagine being deprived of the reptiles, while all around the partner stormed about the house, shouting threatening obscenities at unseen deities ...as if it was the pond's duty to work out whether the thigh bone was connected to the cheek bone ...and the dongle to the dingle ...
The pond had to arrange a proper, decent reptile fix, and forthwith, the sooner the better ...
Naturally the lizards of Oz obliged ...
Yes, forget everything else swirling around in the world, the Caterists were still on the case, and in particular, still going down on Stan Grant ... because that's what fixated reptiles do, and like masturbation, once you've started, it's very hard to stop, it's such a pleasurable experience ...
Move on? Not when you're a Caterist in search of a column ...
Richly argued as usual, in the capable Caterist way.
Stan Grant suggests that Cook didn't discover Australia. The Caterist points out that a survey suggested that few thought statues should be changed. Game set and match to the Caterists.
Of course Cook didn't discover Australia, terra nullius was a nonsense, and it seems, if the Caterist is to be trusted, that Australians prefer to live in ignorance with wilful contortions of historical truth and the meaning of words ...
What a triumph for Caterism.
Even more bizarrely, Cook is then held up as embodying the spirit of egalitarianism. Have the Caterists gone socialist, full blown pinko commie perverts?
Has living on the public teat finally resulted in a full-throated embrace of urban and agrarian socialism?
And what a deal, and without even an oral contract. Land for the technological wonders of the 18th century...
I say, good native chappie, would you mind handing over that very large rock, in exchange for a little-known copper-clad multi-nodal marvel coming soon to your shores?
And hasn't the deal worked out tremendously well. A welfare card for you, and cash in the paw from the Department of Finance for the Caterists ...
The absence of slavery?
That's what the pond loves about the reptiles ... the ability to overlook anything, or on certain occasions, everything ...
However you cut it, blackbirding went on, and there were a considerable number of sugar slaves imported into Australia ...
And there were good reasons for that first walk off at Wave Hill ...and yet insufferable Pommy bastards are still with us, and shouting down in a condescending way from their eerie at the lizard Oz ...
Never mind, there's something astonishing and marvellous about the the site* of self-satisfied complacency coming from a Caterist in full-throated cry ... (*typo joke coming).
Recently the pond has installed as toilet reading Bill Bryson's tour down under but rather than type out a quote, here's what he wrote about a visit up Myall Creek way, as quoted by Peter Gardner in a pdf here ...
Now Gardner goes on to suggest memorial plaques and cairns are a good idea, and the pond is aware that certain Bingara citizenry are still agitated that Bryson went into print at the same time as a memorial was being erected in that Gem on the Gwydir, but what puzzles the pond is why the remembrance of actual historical events should always confound and irritate the Caterists ...
As for Grant scribbling that prejudice is alive and well in the land, what better way could the Caterists illustrate it than by bunging on an epic sulk and indulging in a fit of pique, as a way to end his piece, as a final talking point ...
Yes, keep on mentioning what actually might have happened, and there won't be any reconciliation or referendum or anything else for you, you difficult, pesky, uppity blacks ...
We all know that you're talking "truth", while the Caterists talk 'truth', and we all know that you 'imagined' historical sins - you never could separate history from dreaming, could you? - and so naah naah, no referendum for you, nothing at all, sucks boo to you ...
And that's the way that dispassionate, generous white folk play the game, always giving, always caring, because colonisation was good for you pesky difficult blacks ... and all you can do is whine and moan about that eighteenth century copper-clad multi-nodal new technology you were given for a fair dibs land exchange ...
Sheesh, is there no gratitude? Not even to the Department of Finance?
And now the pond would like to pay a special tribute to the series the reptiles of Oz have been running, seen in the splash above the Caterist splash on the front page this day, which attempts a kind of balance and acknowledges that Aboriginal people were here before Cook and might even have known a few things about the land ...
It goes on and on, so the pond will settle for a gobbet ...
Actually the pond wondered what they might have made of the curious site of the British Royal Navy research vessel HMS Endeavour bobbing in the reef waters off their beloved home ...
Yes, the pond cited this only for the pleasure of the sighting ...
Here's another naval site ...
And yet another naval site ...
And now, it having been demonstrated that the pond has gone stark discombobulated mad, and it being tweet like Werner Herzog day, the pond will get into the meme ...
Sheesh, more black arm band history... when will it ever end?
"The absence of slavery? That's what the pond loves about the reptiles ... the ability to overlook anything, or on certain occasions, everything ... However you cut it, blackbirding went on, and there were a considerable number of sugar slaves imported into Australia ..."
ReplyDeleteGee, it's good to know that the 164,000 or so convicts who survived the journey to Australia between 1788 and 1868 were all on an expenses paid vacation and didn't have to do any unpaid work at all. But then they're all just whingeing poms and they wouldn't have come here otherwise.
What was that bit about "ideal immigrants" ? You know, the ones who basically don't speak English, don't know their legal rights and will work like slaves for almost no wages. Yep, there's never ever been any "slavery" in Oz.
"We all know that you're talking "truth", while the Caterists talk 'truth'..."
No, no it's all about "truthful accuracy" ! You remember "truthful accuracy" don't you, DP ?
Cater must have graduated from Monty Python's Argument Clinic if he thinks that merely contradicting Grant is somehow a refutation of the claim. While its a bit of a stretch to link it to a single Papal Bull (there were several over the space of 50 years that were relevant), Grant's point is pretty sound - why did the British want to chart and claim Eastern New Holland? To forestall the French. And what were the French doing? Trying to gazump the Dutch, who were horning in on territory the Portuguese and Spanish had claimed, because... the pope. Cater's response is no more than "no it didn't". The think tank really got its money's worth this week...
ReplyDeleteCook was, I suppose, a decent enough fellow for his times - his major crime was to try to kidnap a Hawaiian chieftain - but the British designs on what became Australia long predate Cook. His predecessor, William Dampier, is a better guide to British intent. Slave overseer, pirate, terrorist, martinet, slave owner and author of the troubled tale of Alexander Selkirk, the prototype for Robinson Crusoe. Dampier would have been the "discover" of the Australian East Coast had he not tried to round Cape Horn too late in the year, being forced to go east-about instead, ultimately bringing him to Western Australia, to chart what had already been pretty thoroughly done by the Dutch.
But aside from being a notable scumbag, Dampier left little mark on the history of the Jolly Old Flag-Waving and Civilisation-bringing British Empah. Perhaps his most notable achievement was introducing career-criminal Simon Hatley to the piracy business. Hatley would eventually be immortalised for trying to beat around Cape Horn on a later voyage. More particularly, for his attempt to avert bad omens in a storm, by shooting an albatross which was following his ship, thus becoming the inspiration for the Pond's most memorable poem.
Not so much a 'refutation' of Grant as a 'refudiation' I think. Can't seriously credit Cater with any intentional approximation to logic or truth, can we ?
DeleteThanks for the info on the inspiration for The Rime, but I think the story of Selkirk as prototype for Crusoe has been disputed somewhat. Lots of other candidate maroonees, apparently [ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/robinson-crusoe-alexander-selkirk-history/ ]