Don't Speak About The...

This town is hitting 28 degrees AT NIGHT. Do you KNOW what that means!

...well, mainly it just means I am sleeping naked and wake up with a headache. So The Guy is happy, until he tries anything. And then he gets the age-old overused line thrown at him from my grumpy puddle of sweat:

“Fuck off. I have a headache. And a fan with sharp blades”.

Apparently these temperatures are now breaking records as far back as the 1800s.

So last night we tried to escape by heading back to the Astor Theatre Palace. I am loving this place. Especially that it shows old and strange movies.

We watched “Samson & Delilah” and “Lucky Country”.

"Samson & Delilah" is about 2 Aboriginal kids, in the current times. That’s all I really want to say, because you should watch it. And I think I have seen FB signs that it is hitting SA screens currently. Watch it, and you’ll even identify your own social setting within it.

I reckon the dialogue must have made up a whole two pages of the script. It’s slow. If you don’t like arty “Noveau” movies, then maybe give it a skip. But its hectic. And thought-provoking.

After 4 months in this town, there still is not too much that I can say from an outsider’s perspective about the Aboriginal Aussies here. Cause there is NOTHING obvious about their culture or even their existence. Nothing in the news. Nothing in general media. Nothing in socialising talk or even socialising.

You don’t see, let alone, meet up with any Aboriginal folk here.

The Guy told me that it is all very different when you land in Adelaide, in South Australia. And we are both interested to see what his many months of work in the Outback next year are going to reveal.

I have tried to get some community development jobs around “Aboriginal issues”, but have definitely picked up that I am not welcome in this area. It’s a very protected area. But not necessarily protected in a healthy way.

There really is NO dialogue about the very bizarre situation going on here.

Which is why “Samson & Delilah” is so much more intense.

And, I guess, it makes me love my country, region and culture more. Because we TALK. We all complain that there are topics that are “off bounds”, but the very fact that someone spoke up about it and then half the commentators attack them...while the other half “RAAAAH!” and support them on it, just shows how talkative we are. Politically & Anthropologically.

I don’t know if this is all unique to Melbourne & Victoria... which really is Little Britain. Or the country round. And, as newbie, I am still scared to ask.

At the end of it all, it is tough to judge (well, no, it isn’t, considering how easy & narrow-sighted judgement is...) because I come from a screwed up country & city. Where the Sandton Stare was perfected to ignore the begging kid at a street cafe or Malawian Mom & babe at the robot. And just cause I don’t ignore it in SA, I would be ignorant to claim we all did acknowledge the fkced-up disparities of wealth & social luck.

But, I guess, in SA, we talk, it’s in our face, we have the media ensuring we don’t forget it, we acknowledge that folk of any other colour & economic-standing have as many rights to be upheld, we consider this in our daily talk. And, in what seems to be a swelling movement, nearly every second person I know in SA is starting to do some small or massive effort to correct social-economic madness.

But here. Here really is a colony. The Brits rule. And the British (And American) Way of Life is the way to live.

Socialism. Aussie style. ?