Booming chimes

In Barcaldine giant wooden chimes sound over the Tree of Knowledge -

We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

Golden lies

This text is from the Waltzing Matilda museum.

A true text would read -

A consortium of wealthy Victorian pastoralists stole aboriginal lands around Winton and prospered ....

Thuringowa City

Thuringowa City is no more. 

Years ago Thuringowa City was amalgamated with Townsville City and the name Thuringowa is just the name of a suburb and a street. It is a pity that the name Townsville was not the one to go.

Townsville does not make sense. It means town-village. Townsville is also the fictional joke name of the town where the cartoon characters The Powder-Puff Girls reside.

Townsville was named after one of the original investors who founded the town. He was also a ship owner involved in abducting Pacific Islanders f(called blackbirding)or forced labour in Queensland and he paid them in trinkets rather than cash. Payment in coin was the law.

He also gained title to land near Townsville by planting roasted coffee beans rather than coffee beans that could germinate.

When it was proposed in the 1990s to erect a statue of the Townsville's namesake in the City there was an outcry. It was realised that if completed the project would be subject to constant vandalism, so it did not proceed.

A mural of founding identities including the blackbirder was painted. But when I last checked the mural has been over painted.

I don't want to be reminded of the man, Thuringowa is a better name.

Rita in Charters Towers

Rita sat on the back steps of her house in Charters Towers. It was late afternoon. She watched the aboriginal men being herded along the gully out of the town. This happened every afternoon when Rita was a young girl in the early 20th Century.

Rita told me when she was in her nineties. I must have been a powerful memory because she did not tell me of any other memories from her childhood.

Rita was my grandmother and she lived to celebrate her 100th birthday. I remember what she told me.

Ancestral Land

I was driving along a country road recently when I came across a road named with my surname. It is an area that was inhabited by my ancestors - now farming country with little native vegetation and most traces of the aboriginal inhabitants are erased.

Can I do more than say "Sorry"?