ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL TONIGHT - AUSTRALIA REVEALED

by juni 62 Replies latest jw friends

  • hambeak
    hambeak

    Thank Stephanus Where can I see some pictures of some of these underground homes? Do they have running water, a sewer system and electricity?

  • Sunnygal41
    Sunnygal41

    Stephanus, I appreciate the information you shared with me re: genocide. Of course, here in the USA, we've got our own "Hall of Shame"..........the horrible things that the "white man" did to the resident native americans............of course, this has happened in just about every land that has been invaded by Europeans.........I'm remembering what the Spaniards did to the Mayans and the Mexicans and the Aztecs..............please don't think I'm pointing fingers just at Australia. I just want to clarify that with you. I'm wondering also, especially considering Leoila's(sp?) comment, if racism and prejudice is "hidden" as it is here in the US? Some people like to boast and say that here in the "North" we don't have prejudice, but, I've heard enough first hand accounts to know that's a lie.

    Terri

  • Stephanus
    Stephanus
    Thank Stephanus Where can I see some pictures of some of these underground homes? Do they have running water, a sewer system and electricity?

    Like most outback towns, they have to be fairly self sufficient. I remember seeing a news item some years back about the town of Coober Pedy having a wind generator built to try and address the electricty problem. When the wind's not blowin', they still have to use generators run on expensive shipped in petrol.

    Here's a link or two:

    http://www.gluckman.com/CooberPedy.Australia.html

    http://bandb.about.com/cs/uniquegetaways/a/underground.htm

    http://www.goway.com/downunder/australia/saus/saus_coober.html

    http://www.cooberpedy.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=191

  • Stephanus
    Stephanus

    Andamooka is another desert opal mining town that features dugout homes and other strange architecture:

    http://www.opalplus.com/sa-fields.php

    http://www.oacdt.sa.gov.au/communities/map_of_communities/andamooka

  • Stephanus
    Stephanus

    Stephanus, I appreciate the information you shared with me re: genocide. Of course, here in the USA, we've got our own "Hall of Shame"..........the horrible things that the "white man" did to the resident native americans............of course, this has happened in just about every land that has been invaded by Europeans.........I'm remembering what the Spaniards did to the Mayans and the Mexicans and the Aztecs..............please don't think I'm pointing fingers just at Australia. I just want to clarify that with you. I'm wondering also, especially considering Leoila's(sp?) comment, if racism and prejudice is "hidden" as it is here in the US? Some people like to boast and say that here in the "North" we don't have prejudice, but, I've heard enough first hand accounts to know that's a lie.

    Oh, there's definitely racism here, overt, as well as subtle. Just writing about "Aborigines" here, like they're some sort of subset, or "them", is paining me. I try to only acknowledge one race, the Human one. Unfortunately, we like to categorise and make tidy neat piles of everything. Including people. In the cities it's less obvious, and generally is an individual thing, according to the person. It's more observable in rural towns where there's a sizeable Aboriginal population on the edge of town.

    I'll never forget one heart wrenching story. I was studying accounting at the local Tech College and one of my classmates was an Aborigine named Allan. He told us the story how one time he was in the north-central NSW town of Moree and went in the pub. He was told by the publican he couldn't come in; he'd need to go to the pub at the other end of town where they served Aborigines. The publican was kindly and nice about it all, but...Segregation! In NSW!! In MY lifetime!!! Allan wasn't even from the local tribe - he was from near where I live, on the coast!

    More about it here:

    http://www.active.org.au/sydney/news/front.php3?article_id=3484&group=webcast

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Stephanus....I viewed things only as an outsider, but what you are saying is exactly what I saw. Doomadgee looked like a pretty depressing reservation, with little or no opportunity at all in white culture (with no observable industry or employment) while the land is way too small to support traditional ways of life; I read that the town started in the first place when the Aborigine people in the area were forcibly relocated by the Burketown sheriff. The road west from Doomadgee is littered densely with beer cans.

    The epitome of "solutions that aren't working" of me is the law that imposed VERY STIFF fines (up to $75,000 and 18 months imprisonment) for people entering Doomadgee with liquor. It allows one to bring up to 71 cans but not a single bottle of wine. Why is wine entirely forbidden but enough beer allowed to get someone stinking drunk? Moreover, it's just a two-hour drive to the store off of Aborigine land where they can literally buy as much beer as they can carry. The woman who runs it says that they buy the beer, drink it on the road between them and Doomadgee, and then come back to get more. No problem for her, the sales help pay the bills. Meanwhile the law has little relevance. We visited Doomadgee twice and never got checked by the police, even tho we went straight to the station on our first visit.

    I have a friend who is from Mauritius (and has part African and part Indian heritage) and she lived in Darwin for a year while doing some research. Because of her ethnicity, she was taken to be Aborigine and she told me that never in her life -- and she lived for many years in Germany and other countries -- had she never experienced racism as she did there. Being a white visitor, I wasn't able to see this side of things....until I picked up a newspaper and read some of the letters to the editor.

  • Stephanus
    Stephanus
    The epitome of "solutions that aren't working" of me is the law that imposed VERY STIFF fines (up to $75,000 and 18 months imprisonment) for people entering Doomadgee with liquor. It allows one to bring up to 71 cans but not a single bottle of wine.

    You've got to wonder what the hell passes for thinking among the people who legislate this stuff! 71 cans is one can short of three cases of beer. Is there some kind of study that shows that 3 cases of beer can be detrimental, but anything less than 3 cases is fine?? As for wine vs. beer, I know they used to be taxed differently; who knows if that is a factor in this crazy law??

    I have a friend who is from Mauritius (and has part African and part Indian heritage) and she lived in Darwin for a year while doing some research. Because of her ethnicity, she was taken to be Aborigine and she told me that never in her life -- and she lived for many years in Germany and other countries -- had she never experienced racism as she did there. Being a white visitor, I wasn't able to see this side of things....until I picked up a newspaper and read some of the letters to the editor.

    I've seen a lot of stuff on telly lately with Darwin bragging about how "multi-cultural" it is. Untrusting soul that I am, I usually mentally add: "Except for the Abos (the derogatory term)".

    I seem to remember there being some scandals within some of the Northern Communities earlier this year - child abuse and so forth. Was any of that being covered while you were there. I remember thinking of the Dubs and the Amish and other closed patriarchal groups, when I heard all that.

    I dunno, sticking a bunch of people out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, does nothing for them. And all it does for you is keep them away from you!

  • juni
    juni

    Thank you Stephanus for all of your hard work to educate us more about Australia. Thank you too for the links. I'm going to copy them off so I can share them w/my daughter who loves history about other countries and their culture. I have an opal ring; it's beautiful. This will be interesting for me to see where it came from, etc.

    This has been wonderful!!

    Juni

  • Stephanus
    Stephanus

    I have an opal ring; it's beautiful. This will be interesting for me to see where it came from, etc.

    What type of opal is it? Different types come from different areas. Black opal comes from Lightning Ridge, in Northern NSW.The place is like a giant trailer park - it's kind of hard to build ordinary houses out there, and they don't seem to do the underground homes like in the South Australian fields. Other opal comes Coober Pedy and Andamooka in SA. There's also another opal mining spot in NW NSW called White Cliffs - people I know who've been there reckon it looks like the moon - grey/white and cratered everywhere. And South Western Queensland is a source of Boulder Opal, so called because it seems to be found in large lumps of rock, rather than in veins or layers at depth.

    But while 90% of the world's opal come from this neck of the woods, don't forget your own Nevada! Some of the most startlingly beautiful black opal in the world comes from there. And Mexico produced opal before the Australian and US discoveries. For all we know, the stone in your ring may be more local than you thought!

  • juni
    juni

    Don't know if we ever knew Stephanus. It's white background w/all different irridescent colors throughout. I have to put it in Olive oil 3x a year to keep it from cracking. They have water in them? That's what we were told.

    I'll go on line tomorrow and see if I can get a similar picture. I've seen other opals, but this one is very irridescent w/colors.

    It's 3/8" long oval w/3 diamonds on each side.

    Juni

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