Straya, Mate!

If you want to understand Settler Australia’s culture you need look no further than a sports-field.

Tennis

Let’s start with Indigenous Australian tennis champion, Evonne Goolagong. Her entry in the tennis hall of fame mentions the poor living conditions of her childhood, acknowledges the stolen generations and then… and then… can’t help but be cute:

During the 1970s, Evonne Goolagong was a household name and face – attractive, carefree, and admittedly prone to lapses in concentration that caused folks to say “Evonne’s gone walkabout.”

Other players might lack a killer instinct, or be given the benefit of 100 white failings, but Evonne’s bad days were put down to her “going walkabout”.

Indigenous Australians are many different peoples. These many peoples traditionally lived purposeful and spiritually rich semi-nomadic or nomadic lives. “Walkabout” was not necessarily as Hollywood would have it, about “vision quests”. On large outback cattle stations, “Walkabout” was often the explanation given to white managers when Indigenous labourers warned they were heading off for a while – often to tend to spiritual or community obligations. The priorities of Indigenous Australians were perfectly reasonable but, from the white viewpoint of those who exploited their labour, the word “Walkabout” became equated with unreliability and weak character.

But hey, if white people did not know any better in 1970, what’s the fucking excuse for the way the entry reads now?

Football –Biggest Religion After Christianity

“Look at the boy go,” says the commentator in the clip. One week before Michael’s 24th birthday. He does this all the way through my DVD of the complete 1993 Grand Final match between Essendon and Carlton. Michael Long was a brilliant player; he was everywhere the ball was this day, and won the Norm Smith Medal (Best on the Ground in a Grand Final Match.)

One day in 1993, Nicky Winmar decided he'd had a gutful of being told to go back to where he came from and sniff petrol, and all the other usual stuff:

The Winmar “incident” prompted the AFL to try and get its act together and stamp out racial vilification on the field. Of course, it didn’t change much. Racism and sexism are deeply entrenched values in football because they are deeply entrenched values in Settler Australia generally.

At the end of this brief clip is the moment in 1993 when Adam Goodes had a 13 year old girl evicted from the ground for calling him an ape in 2013. Adam pointed to the person who abused him before he realised she was so young, but says he was still right to evict her.

Goodes said that Victoria Police asked if he would like to press charges but he declined, reiterating that the girl needs to learn why her abuse was hurtful. The young girl was quick to ring Adam and apologise.

"It's not her fault, she's 13, she's still so innocent, I don't put any blame on her," he said.

"Unfortunately it's what she hears, in the environment she's grown up in that has made her think that it's OK to call people names."

"I guarantee she has no idea right now how it makes people feel to call them an ape."

Two years later, the girl’s grandmother complained that Goodes should be the one apologising – he only had himself to blame if people did not like him. (Guess there is no chance the young lady learned anything, despite having to apologise.)

Then the pot started bubbling again when Goodes called Australia Day “Invasion Day”. (I wrote my second post about Australia Day in 2017.  With a lot of campaigning from more important people than me, things have improved, and the movement to have the date or day changed is actually growing.)

Round 9, 2015 Adam Goodes does a war cry, created from the traditions of several tribes by a group of Indigenous teenagers called the Flying Boomerangs. Goodes’ on-field cry was more for the benefit of those teens than to get up white noses, but of course we settler lot always just assume everything is all about us.

 

Greg Inglis (who plays rugby rather than Aussie Rules) is feted in Sydney for his goanna run. Why does Rugby have no problem with Indigenous people, but the AFL does?

After the initial commentary this clip provides clear examples of what opinion leaders in this country really think:

You’ve gotta wonda Y, at this point, McGuire and Bolt’s opinions get so much airtime and carry so much weight. Short answer is this country has, for a long time, been the exclusive property of older, sexist, racist, white males – at least in their minds. People like them DO consume more than their fair share of oxygen. And, as I always say "if you wanna understand the bizarre behaviour of humans just follow the money" the real answer lies with the people what own the media.

When you see the sort of leadership we have/ tolerate/ still endorse, no wonder the grandmother of a 13 year old girl could still be comfortably unrepentant 2 years after she was called out for racism.

Back to 2015: Soon after Goodes’ performance, Lewis Jetta repeated the cry in response to all the flak Goodes was taking.

There are one or two sane pundits in Australia – no surprise most pundits are white, but at least someone tries to represent decency.

The Weekly is often a source of sane responses to rubbish ideas.

One of the greatest ironies is that Australian Football, while seemingly a mish mash of other western styles of football, was actually based on an Indigenous Game, Marn Grook.

If Greg Inglis can celebrate his culture openly, it’s really because he hasn’t broken the number one rule yet. “If you don’t like living in a racist sexist culture, don't complain, just fuck off somewhere else.“

Women’s Football

Did you see what happened there? I’ve followed the lead of the dominant settler culture – “football” means men. Women’s football is a deviation from the real deal.

As a youngster I quite enjoyed football, but back in those medieval days I had no idea how sexist the world was, nor how racist. The last time I had a season pass to Essendon, it cost 10/- (ten shillings) and the club still played at Windy Hill. The clubs were community based, players were loyal to their teams, and the game was not all about money. Now, it does my head in if I try to work out why any female in her right mind would pay one cent to see a match. Why would I want to join a club that doesn’t really want me as a member?

In 2017, no doubt because there was a dollar in it, the AFL began a women’s league.

In 2019, some truly sexist and foul comments were left online after a TV station posted a photo of Tayla Harris kicking the ball. The station, rather than challenge the sexism, took the photo down. This doesn’t surprise me, because this station and others propagate racism and sexism as if it was some kind of righteous obligation. Tayla quite reasonably said the comments were sexual abuse, because they were repulsive and made her feel uncomfortable.

The public was annoyed with the station’s decision to take the photo down, and there was an outcry and a social media feeding frenzy.

Tayla went on twitter and launched a challenge for people to send in photos of their best kick. You can check out the public response at #TAYLAKICKCHALLENGE

NEW ZEALAND TERRORIST ATTACK

On the ides of March, 2019, an AUSTRALIAN white supremacist organised an assault on 2 Christchurch mosques, murdering 50 people and injuring dozens more. Make no mistake, the racist shit that drove this coalhole festered in Australia, and was promoted by Australian Settler Culture.

 

 

In 1998, 4 Australian Prime Ministers – Liberal and Labor - put their names to a public letter saying there is no room for racism in Australia. Since then, the decay in leadership has been drastic on many fronts. Australia’s “leadership”, cross bench, has had no shame.

 

The 1998 letter is in marked contrast to what has been happening since. We now detain asylum seekers indefinitely in appalling and subhuman conditions. The rate at which Indigenous Australians are locked up, the reasons they are locked up and the way they die in custody are just obscene. And the mentality behind the so called war on terror is fanned constantly.

 

Senator McGrath posted this photo of Young LNP members online:

 

 

We are supposed to believe the white power gesture is just a joke designed to get left wing morons like me in a frenzy. Sadly, even the most innocent jokes often end in tears.

Here is a professional Australian Nazi having a laugh with a  mate:

 

And here is the arsehole that murdered 50 innocent people in Christchurch:

Australia's so called leaders have responded atrociously to the murders. By now, you are probably familiar with the story of Senator Anning being egged, for effectively saying the Muslims in Christchurch deserved it. Anning is a mate of Cottrell, the Nazi above doing the white power thing for a joke. Chuffed that egg boy did what he did, but certain if a person of colour had done the same they would not have lived, let alone be released without charges.

The absolute best we got from our (latest unelected) PM was that his party accommodates a range of different viewpoints, and a denial he suggested years ago that his party exploit anti-Muslim sentiment. Not gonna post more about him cause - stuff him.


The bizarre thing is that amongst the general population, Australia’s response to the NZ attack has been almost commendable. There are lots of decent, sane people in this country. We are and have always been especially happy to cheer whenever we see a Haka performed. No rugby match between Australia and New Zealand ever starts without one. Is that what makes it okay? That the celebration of Indigenous Culture has the approval of a sporting code?

One of many significant differences between Australia and New Zealand is that Britain made a treaty with the Maori people in 1840. Naturally the terms and spirit of the treaty have been broken repeatedly, and there are “problems” in New Zealand, but of all the many white Kiwis I’ve met, I’ve never met one that did not have some familiarity with that country’s true history, and Maori culture.

White people have adopted aspects of Maori culture as their own, and nothing shows this more than the Haka. I think this has only happened because the treaty, despite it’s failures, approved in theory the notion that Maori are people and as deserving of respect as any other.

Australia, on the other hand, was built on theft, and the lie of terra nullius. Like blackface, which helped subjugate black Americans after 1865, Settler Australia has justified its existence with a culture that dehumanises Indigenous Australians, lies about resistance to occupation, pre-1788 achievements and so on. To permit AFL players to show any kind of war cry would create too much cognitive dissonance in too many feeble white minds.