Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Snoop Dog Banned from Australia

Published on April 27, 2007 in Tabloid Crap. 0 Comments

Just another reason why I like John Howard:

But Mr Howard said Snoop, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr, had been barred from entering Australia for "sound reasons" – some of which were not on the public record.

"Well, I have to be careful what I say in these matters but he has been … well there are certain judgments that are made on certain advice that I can’t go into, but the reasons for banning him are sound," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

Mr Howard compared the case to the previous banning of Holocaust denier David Irving.

"Why should somebody like this, who’s got a particular background, be allowed into the country?" he said.

I only wish we could ban Snoop from the US as well.

ANZAC Day in Australia

Published on April 25, 2007 in Facts About Australia. 0 Comments

Across Australia today Aussies are remembering the ANZAC soldiers of World War II along with other Australian soldiers of the past and today.  ANZAC stands for the Australian New Zealand Army Corps that was formed in response to the British Empire’s request for troops to fight in World War II.  The ANZAC’s most memorable battle was on the shores of Gallipoli in modern day Turkey where the Australians took massive losses in the blundered attack.  However, the shared suffering and bravery of the attack resignates with the Australian character of mateship and is thus remembered on ANZAC Day. 

Today I went to a local memorial service that began at 5:45 in the morning and then in true Aussie style we went to go eat breakfast and then drink beer in remembrance of the ANZACs.  I had a beer at 7:30 today and I can’t remember the last time I have ever drank a beer that early in the morning, but allegedly the ANZACs drank alcohol before landing on the beaches of ANZAC Cove that morning on April 25, 1915 to fight the Turks.  

While drinking some beers with my Aussie friends this morning plenty of talk was about the wounding of two Australian soldiers in Iraq.  Additionally Australian soldiers came under rocket attack today as well.  It is pretty clear that Iran was trying to kill some Australian soldiers the day before ANZAC Day so that over the holiday that would be what all the Australian will be talking about.  So far Australia has been very lucky and has had no soldiers killed by enemy actions in Iraq or Afghanistan.  So any soldier killed by enemy fire would be a big news story.  Australia has had wounded soldiers before so the Iranians did not achieve their desired media effect.  The Iranians have been working on getting the British out of Iraq and humiliated them last month with the capture of the British sailors and Marines.  I think it is very likely the Iranians ordered an attack on the Australians through a surrogate militia in Iraq in order to create political pressure in Canberra to withdraw Australian troops. 

As this incident shows the Aussie soldiers serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the world are continuing the spirit of the ANZACs today for Australia.

Shocking Teenage Deaths

Published on April 24, 2007 in Australia in the News and Victoria. 0 Comments

There are a couple of news stories involving the deaths of teenagers that has been making headlines in Australia. 

The first one involves the suicides of two teenagers from Melbourne:

Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier, both 16-year-old students at Melbourne’s Upwey High School, were missing for a week before their bodies were found on Sunday, hanging from a tree in the Dandenong Ranges National Park.

From last December to February, on one of her websites, Jodie posted three odes to suicide.

These two girls got involved in some kind of glorification of suicide group on the internet and decided to kill themselves and announced their attentions on the internet.  Of course some people are demanding the government raise their kids for them:

Monitoring children’s internet use is the responsibility of their parents, Prime Minister John Howard said following the deaths of two girls who discussed suicide on their websites.

Mr Howard was asked if the government could improve monitoring of the internet or educate parents in a bid to stop a similar tragedy.

"I think the greatest thing that has to be said about this is that parental responsibility in the end is the key to behaviour by children," Mr Howard told ABC Radio.

The other shocking teenage story come from West Australia:

However, the court heard today that psychologists and psychiatrists had failed to fathom why the then 16-year-olds woke up together one Sunday morning, decided to kill Eliza, planned the deed and carried it out in such a cold-blooded fashion.

Defence lawyer Gillian Braddock, SC, said her vulnerable client, who had lost both parents by the time she was 10, appeared to have been led by her co-accused, who has been described as a disturbed and angry young woman with a fascination with death. (…)

But both girls played active roles in the murder – one strangling Eliza with speaker wire, while the other pressed a chemical-soaked cloth to Eliza’s mouth as the girl struggled and begged for her life.

The girls reported Eliza missing after they buried her beneath her house and pretended to help her family look for the dead girl.

These are two really sick girls.

Damn, that Had to Hurt

Published on April 23, 2007 in Australia in the News. 0 Comments

You won’t believe what this x-ray came from:

THESE X-ray images show the leg of a chair embedded into the eye socket of a Melbourne teenager who miraculously survived a random attack outside a city nightclub earlier this year.

The images of teenager Shafique el-Fahkri at the Royal Melbourne Hospital were taken as a team of five surgeons prepared for the complex three-hour operation that would save his life and his eye.

After leaving intensive care, Mr Fahkri spent a month in hospital and today has 95 per cent of his sight back.

The former Xavier College student, now 20, told The Age yesterday that his eye remained very blurry, his body was weak and his neck was stiff after the incident. "I feel all right at the moment, actually, but I am too weak for work," he said in a raspy voice, a consequence of the chair leg passing through his throat.

Can you imagine a chair leg going through your eye socket and into your throat?  Unbelievable that this guy survived much less retaining his eye sight.  Amazing.  Even more amazing was that his attacker got off light considering what he did. 

The court was told Peart, an apprentice electrician, had a clean record and had quickly confessed.

Magistrate Peter Reardon today decided not to jail Peart or order him to serve a term in a youth training centre (YTC).

Mr Reardon said given Peart’s age and lack of prior convictions, jail was inappropriate and a YTC sentence was not suitable because his rehabilitation was progressing.

What if he killed him?  Would the sentence be the same?  If someone did that to me I would want them in jail. 

Water Restrictions Implemented in Queensland

Published on April 23, 2007 in Queensland. 0 Comments

To all my Brisbane readers, welcome to our world in Victoria:

South-east Queenslanders face tougher, level five water restrictions from today.   (…)

South-east Queenslanders will only be allowed to bucket water their gardens three afternoons a week and personal water use has been set a target of 140 litres per person per day.

Any household caught using more than 800 litres a day will have to explain their water use or face a hefty fine.

Anti-Americanism in Australia

Published on April 20, 2007 in US-Australia Issues. 0 Comments

I was reading the Yanks Down Under Forum yesterday and noticed a thread that was started with a someone asking if Australians look down on Americans or not? From what I have noticed living here is that I have experienced much more anti-Americanism in America than I have ever experienced here. I have always maintained that the biggest anti-Americans can be found in America itself. 

However, with that said there is a segment of Australia that is anti-American just like in other areas of the world I have been too because it is en vogue and the fashionable thing to do now a days.  The usual stuff I see around here is people bitching about the US government and passing stereotypes about Americans when they don’t think Americans are around.  However, in Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth I actually had random people come up to me who heard my American accent and asked if I was an American or not and then go into anti-Bush tirades. 

I’m not one to pretend to be a Canadian, so if someone asks I always respond that I’m an American and if that means I have to put up with a few seriously intellectually challenged people every once and awhile so be it.  I would say the guy in Adelaide was the worst because he was complaining about Bush, American greed, multi-national corporations, 9/11 conspiracies, and all the usual leftist talking points and here he was a hippie dressed in freaking skirt who smelled.  Really it was a kilt but it was just really strange.  These guys piss me off, but my wife and I just ignore them and get away from them because I don’t want to get in any fights with them and face getting deported over idiots like that guy in Adelaide. 

This comment on the Yanks Down Under forum really got me laughing:

I have one really funny story, though – My husband and I went to see Casino Royale when it first came out and the theatre was completely packed. We were seated next to a couple and I sat next to an Australian woman that just talked…and talked…and talked. I generally just smiled and didn’t say anything and then the lights went down and the previews and commercials started.

A commercial for the Nike iPod came on and a woman’s voice with a distinct American accent, started talking about how many kilometers she had run that day.

The woman leaned over and said in the most condescending, self righteous tone, "I didn’t know that stupid Americans even knew what a kilometer was!" Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle…

I looked at her straight in the eye and said, "Well, actually some of us do…."

The blood drained from here face and she looked like she had just taken a fastball in the stomach. She started apologizing profusely and back-pedaled as fast as she could. I told her not to worry about it several times, but she was clearly mortified that she didn’t know that an American was on the receiving end of her comments.

This is the type of stereotypical comments you hear over here when people don’t think there is any Americans around.  It isn’t just American either.  There has been a number of times where I felt uncomfortable with comments made about the Aborigines from Australians along with other ethnic groups.  Australians do not have the political correctness bug like we have in America where the biggest race baiters in the country Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are allowed to go on TV for a week and demagogue the Imus story.  Imus’s comments would barely raise an eyebrow down here while race baiters like Jackson and Sharpton simply do not exist. 

Additionally the media here is horribly anti-American in my opinion and I have just simply stopped watching it because it was so bad.  The TV news is very tabloid like.  The papers are for the most okay at least here in the Melbourne area at least, with the Age newspaper being the anti-American liberal paper and the Australian being the more conservative pro-US paper. 

However with all that said, I have done a lot of traveling down here and I have met a lot of people from across Australia.  For some reason it seems like I meet the coolest people in caravan parks.  Anyway I have found the vast majority of Australians have treated me very well and I have been invited to more barbeques than I can remember.  So if you come down here and you are American, for the most part if you remember the golden rule and treat people the way you expect to be treated, Australians will treat you in kind. 

On Walkabout At: The 2007 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 4

Published on April 13, 2007 in Victoria. 1 Comment Tags: , .

The Grand Finale

The last segment of the parade was put on by the Bendigo Chinese Association:

This was in my opinion the best part of the parade. The association had more dragons and music than the rest of the parade combined:

The people running with these dragons had to be very tired by the end of the parade:

As you can see many of the Bendigo Chinese Association’s members do not look Chinese. Since the Chinese came to Bendigo during the gold rush in the 1860’s they have been fully integrated into Australian society including through marriage. I had a guy at work tell me that the Bendigo Chinese are actually more Australian than most Australians since they have lived in the country for so long:

They also had a number of these people wearing Chinese masks marching in the parade as well:

They also had people like these guys pictured in white below that set off firecrackers as the dragons marched by:

Then finally the world’s longest imperial Chinese dragon, Sun Loong, made it’s appearance as the last event in the parade:

I can’t really convey in pictures how long this dragon is, but roughly 150 people are needed to move this dragon:

Here is Sun Loong coming right for me:

And there it goes by me:

Then finally, and it did take a while, the tail of the dragon passes by thus ending the parade:

All in all an outstanding parade and a great day spent in Bendigo. The Easter Parade is actually part of the larger Bendigo Easter Festival that went on for the past four days. It is all very well done and good fun, plus Bendigo is just a good place to visit at anytime of the year because like I said before it is one of my favorite cities in all of Australia due to the cultural and historical aspects of the town. If you are in Victoria during this time next year I highly recommend attending the festival, I know the wife and I will be back.

Prior Posting: The Parade Continues

On Walkabout At: The 2007 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 3

Published on April 11, 2007 in Victoria. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The Parade Continues

Without a doubt the most eye turning float in the parade was the Bendigo gay and lesbian organization:

You could actually hear and feel the excitement in the crowd die down as this float drove by. The weirdest person in drag on this float was the guy dressed up in a cocacabana outfit on the end of the float who had a baby doll nursing off his nipple. WTF?

Not to long after the gay float was the Falun Gong precession:

I was actually surprised by how large the Falun Gong group was. They actually put on a pretty good demonstration including the meditation exercises above and people dressed in traditional Chinese outfits below:

The Falun Gong precession was followed by Tibetan monks another religious group facing persecution from the Chinese government:

These monks actually maintain a temple just outside of Bendigo and had quite a few members marching in the parade.

The local tourist gold mine also had a float in the parade:

There are still 17 gold mines operating in and around Bendigo and the Central Deborah gold mine is located right in the middle of Bendigo. On one of their shafts located 90 meters below the city, they have opened up for tourists to visit. My wife and I have taken this tour and it was really quite an interesting experience.

They were soon followed by the Scouts:

In Australia the boy and girl scouts are integrated into one organization called the Scouts which is different from the US.

The Scouts were followed by the Australian Defence Force:

The vehicle you see above is called a Bushmaster and is manufactured locally in Bendigo. The Bushmaster had some ADF infantry soldiers following it:

They were using patrolling tactics as they walked down the road and this young girl by us asked her dad what the soldiers were doing and the dad told the young girl that this is what these guys have to do since they couldn’t find a real job. He got a few laughs from his buddies, but what a jerk to look down on these guys serving their countries especially coming from a guy that was overweight, with a ponytail, and wearing a wife beater at the parade. Additionally these soldiers are not even active duty, they are from the local Bendigo reserve infantry unit. So not only do they have another job, but they do this one on top of it.

The local bushfire department also had a vehicle in the parade as well:

Does these vehicle seem familiar to you? It should because it is made by the same Bendigo company that makes the ADF’s Bushmaster.

The parade was getting towards its finale put on by the local Chinese Association:

Next Posting: The Grand Finale

Prior Posting: The Parade Begins

On Walkabout At: The 2007 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 2

Published on April 9, 2007 in Victoria. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The parade in this historic city began fittingly enough with historic automobiles:

Australia is a great place for classic car enthusiasts because this country is filled with classic car clubs and Bendigo is no different. It didn’t take to long for the parade’s Chinese theme to become apparent:

This parade included many Chinese dragons as well as musical groups. This group below played Chinese themed music better than anyone else in the parade in my opinion:

They played really catchy tunes with the simple equipment they had. Not all the music was Chinese though. The parade included many Scottish bagpipe playing bands as well:

If you look closely at the above picture you can actually see an American flag in the background. Following these bagpipe players the stars and stripes made an appearance:

An American representative of the Lyons Club was the only time the US flag made an appearance in the parade.

There was also middle school and high school marching bands participating in the parade as well. The most suprising band was this one from San Jose, California:

I was pretty amazed a high school marching band from Mission High School in California was able to travel this far for a parade. They must have done a lot of fundraising to pay to participate in this event in Australia:

Bystanders were definitely surprised to see an American band in the parade and they were much better than any other marching band in the parade. That was actually the most Americans I have seen in one place since I have lived down here.

Next Posting: The Parade Continues

Prior Posting: The 2007 Bendigo Easter Parade

On Walkabout At: The 2007 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 1

Published on April 9, 2007 in Victoria. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Today the wife and I may a trip up to Bendigo to see the yearly Easter Parade held there. Bendigo is one of my favorite cities in all of Australia so I sure wasn’t going to miss this parade. The Bendigo Easter Parade began in 1871 to raise money for a local hospital and has been ran annually ever since making the parade the oldest parade in Australia. The large Chinese community that moved to Bendigo during the gold rush years began participating in the parade in 1893 and ever since then has been the most prominent contributors to the parade which includes the world’s longest imperial dragon, Sun Loong which is without a doubt the star of the parade. We figured since this parade has happened annually since 1871 they should be pretty good at putting a parade on by now and we weren’t disappointed.

The first thing we had to worry about is finding a place to park. The whole downtown area of Bendigo was shut down and any parking places near downtown were filled up. Here is a tip for anyone going to the parade next year, park at the train station. There was plenty of spaces there and there is no parking meter. The walk downtown from the train station is a short one.

As you can see it was quite busy once we did get to downtown:

This picture is from when we were standing in front of the old city post office building that you can see pictured below from when we crossed the street:

As you can see it was just an absolute perfectly, beautiful day out today for the parade. You couldn’t ask for better weather. After taking the above picture we decided that this spot was perfect place to view the parade from. While we waited for the parade to begin I took a few more shots of some nearby buildings. Here is the old Shamrock Hotel building:

The Shamrock Hotel is a beautiful building and during Bendigo’s gold rush days beginning in the 1860’s it was the place to stay at the time for all the wealthy and powerful people who visited Bendigo. The wealthy and powerful may not be flocking to the Shamrock anymore since it is now run by Comfort Inn, but it is still a beautiful building to visit.

The gold rush wealth brought Bendigo much prosperity which can still be seen today in the historical architecture that still makes up the city. Right behind us for example was the ornate Beehive Building:

This building once housed the Bendigo gold buyers stores and the stock exchange. Today it houses a variety of stores in downtown Bendigo. Just across the street from us was the Bendigo War Memorial that houses the names of all of Bendigo’s war dead:

A sobering place to visit when you see how many names just from Bendigo are housed in the memorial. Anyway now was not the time for sobering thoughts, but for having a good time as the parade was about to start.

Next Posting: 2007 Easter Parade – Part 2