Jetty Road Weekly Update 4/5/25

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Welcome to Botany Bay

Peta Credlin in reflecting on the Coalition’s election defeat says they needed to ramp up the culture wars. They have had plenty of practice.

Blakfellas on the beach:  “Welcome to Botany Bay you whitefellas. Hey it’s a bit warm for those redcoats ay?” Whitefellas: (to themselves) “Did you hear anything? Did you see anything?” “Nothing to see here mate. She’s pristine. What a place” Blakfellas: “You like our place? Over 60,000 years we have been here. Plenty of good tucker here” Whitefellas: (to themselves) “Yeah cobber. Its bloody pristine. Nobody here. We can build a village. We can build a nation. We can build a bloody big bridge.” Whitefella matelot suffering from scurvy and a thumping hangover: (to himself) “Jeez what did they put in that bloody rum. I am sure I heard and saw somethin’?”

After 200 years of denial we are being asked to accept with good grace that our indigenous people have lived on this particular part of our country for over 6 millennia. For us the welcoming is at times a little perfunctory, but for our Indigenous it is both symbolic and a vital connection with a past we were only too willing to dismiss and erase from history. 

The existential question? The one Credlin and others refuse to countenance and answer truthfully. Why can’t we, that’s all of us Australians, embrace and be proud of our indigenous history? 

Image: Advocate Perth WA

AFL – Grass Roots

Country clubs deserve much more than lip service and BS fertiliser.

Does raising the standard really justify placing already struggling  grass roots clubs in further jeopardy?

The game has never been better to watch. Magnificent athletes. Highly skilled. Played on incredible surfaces at state of the art venues. Televised directly into our loungerooms four nights and two days a week. How could we possibly have anything to complain about? AFL is flying – at the highest level.

The game has never been more difficult to administer. Volunteers filling out compliance form after compliance form. Attending online courses and meetings. Raising money to pay for players. Working in the canteen. Attending to injured players. Competing for players in an ever diminishing pool as the cream are freely traded to the NTFA Premier Division and the cost of getting them back means paying out a contract for a season they will never play in at the contracted club. All one way traffic away from - the NTFA Division One and Two Clubs. 

The NTFA restructure was implemented by the AFL and not just AFL Tas ( for they are one and the same) for one reason only. To placate North Launceston and Launceston. The call to raise the standard ignores a number of critical factors. 1.  There are a limited number of players who can perform at a higher standard. North have most of them already. 2. A restructure that favours six teams can only be paid for by reducing the capacity of other clubs to field teams and ultimately to survive. Now it is dog eat dog at the lower levels. 3. The NTFA Premier Division was not broken in the first place.

The AFL is entertainment. Country and grass roots footy clubs are our soul.

Image: Museums Victoria

Bullocky(Old Sid)

There was story on ABC radio about an old north west coast bushie who traversed the hinterland and on occasion would lie down to rest with a billy tin lid inverted in his ear to keep the rain out. Sid came from similar stock.

We had clocked on for afternoon shift but we could not go down the mine. The winder drivers were holding a stop work meeting so we were left to wait on the surface. So wait we did, having a clear understanding that we would be paid our base rate. After an hour and a half the chief mining engineer whispered in my ear we were not being paid for waiting. We quickly put this to a vote and to a man we walked off the job. But not home and not far. The next four hours were spent in the RSL club before heading home for a game of cards and to eat our crib. My young wife was not amused, banishing us to the kitchen and firmly closing the loungeroom door.  Sid had accompanied us after putting in a double shift – day shift at the mine and afternoon shift at the club. My union mate Duhig liked to call him Bullocky. Sid was in his fifties with a north west coast farmer’s constitution and remarkably for someone that age in those times, still air leg mining. He was of a particular breed; one Pete Hay captures perfectly in his poem The Duck’s Guts https://walleahpress.com.au/FR43Hay.html.  Men who had laboured for little money on farms and elsewhere, who eventually landed a good paying job for which they were eternally grateful: - to their employer. We put our hot pots on the stove, sliced up a bit of bread and then divvied up a bit each from our own crib for Sid. He tucked in, at one stage sweeping the crumbs off the bread board and shovelling them into his mouth. Then he launched in to us. “You union bastards. You wouldn’t work in an iron lung” David Fox took the bait. “Fair go Sid. You never said a bloody word because your mouth was so full – Of OUR TUCKER” And then it was on. Duhig and I exchanged knowing grins with Sid giving as good as he got until the door was swiftly opened by my wife. “Keep the noise down” she commanded. Sid was in his element. Putting his arm around her he cooed in her ear “You tell ‘em darling” Too which she replied, “and leave this nice old man alone.”At the bottom of the mine change room stairs the next day I was met by a grinning Duhig and Fox who chirped in unison: “You leave this nice old man alone.”

Song Part of the Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNMgoiNLFs