Australian Thoughts

 

Date:   1/26/2021

Dad Joke:  On my visit to an Alaskan Island, I thought I saw an eye doctor, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.  (Oh, that is bad!)

Random Thoughts on a Passing Scene:   In regard to today’s Dad Joke, I should write about my work-related trips to Alaska’s Admiralty Island (the Fortress of the Bears).  I did not get to see much as it was nearing the shortest daylight days of the year.

More to do than can ever be done:  Other than a quick business trip for me, I think EAB II of our family is the only other one to have visited Australia.  Eric and Maria have been to New Zealand, with a stopover in Australia, I think.

More to see than can ever be seen:    Totem Pole Rock, Fortescue Bay, Tasmania, Australia.   https://www.mountainproject.com/area/105962409/the-totem-pole

More to know than can ever be known:   For this Day in History, Australia Day is the official national day of Australia.   Observed annually on January 26th, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the British 1st Fleet at Port Jackson in New South Wales. 

A business trip took me to Western Australia.   I did not get to tour much of the country and was never in the deep Outback.   However, even with the little that I saw, it was impressed upon me how remote and sparsely populated that huge country is.    

A couple of other things that always come to mind about Australia:  

·         Geologically and geographically it was cut off from much of the rest of the world for eons.   Thus, the flora and fauna were isolated and developed their own uniqueness.   

·         The human inhabitants – the Aborigines – were similarly isolated until the advent of Dutch / British sailing ships on voyages of discovery and/or settlement. 

·         Another fact of Australian settlement is that almost all of the early colonial efforts were in the form of harsh penal colonies.   Many of the prisoners were forced there due to debt, poverty, criminal elements, ethnicity (lots of Irish) and were generally Great Britain’s malcontents and undesirables.  The standard history on this era is Robert Hughes’ “The Fatal Shore”.

·         I can also refer you to the outlaw folk hero “Ned Kelly” of the mid-19th Century who reflected the ongoing tension between the British Overlords and the common folk.   (Ned and his gang can be likened to our Jesse and Frank James in regard to being similarly romanticized outlaw heroes.)

·         Like our Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, exploratory white men (making the distinction here because the Aboriginal peoples of Australia traversed the entire continent) won fame and courted disaster crossing the interior.   I don’t recall the “first” to cross the continent east-west, but I do recall “Burke and Wills” who just about made the first north-south land passage.   That one did not end so well.

·         Lastly, one of the Australian Based movies we enjoyed was “The Man from Snowy River”.  This is a good movie – especially if you like Westerns and some of the best horse scenes ever!     And, lo and behold, well before the movie, there was a poem (titled the same) that is the basis of the movie premise and script.   It is fun to read the poem!  https://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/paterson-a-b-banjo/poems/the-man-from-snowy-river-0001004

There you have it.

TAB

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