Australia
That’s So Gay…Politcal Correctness 1, Kookaburra 0
September 3, 2010 by Kathy Drasky
Australians love a good controversy – so one should not be surprised that a favorite children’s song, sung in English-speaking countries ’round the world, has come under fire for the use of the word “gay.”
The 75-year old song, “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree” was penned back when gay meant happy, but that’s no longer always the case. And now a primary school in Victoria has insisted on changing the line “Gay your life must be” to “Fun your life must be.”
According to the Sun Herald, the school principal was listening to an old tape of the song when the word “gay” suddenly sounded shocking in this day and age.
“…I just suggested to kids, ‘Nowadays that [gay] can mean different things, so let’s just sing a fun old time’,” he said. According to the principal “some children use the word ‘gay’ to bully others without knowing the meaning of the expression.”
The principal has inserted the word “fun” where the word “gay” used to be, but the controversy does not end there. Again, according to the Sun Herald, Crusader Hillis, from the gay and lesbian advocacy group the Also Foundation, said…
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Australia’s First Woman PM Hangs in There
September 2, 2010 by Kathy Drasky
When I arrived in Australia at the beginning of August the country was in the throes of a federal election for Prime Minister. The campaign had all the elements of a sensational American slugfest for the nation’s top spot, including a left-leaning single woman who lived with her hairdresser boyfriend vs. a conservative in the George W. Bush mold, a Catholic who talked about family values and sending unwanted immigrants back to where they came from.
Julia Gillard vs. Tony Abbott, Labor vs. Liberal. To debate or not to debate. Should tomato sauce be free with your meat pie? Red budgie smugglers. Rooty Hill. Mark Latham ambushing each candidate for a 60 Minutes ratings scheme. Greens and Independents and the “above the line” option.
I took it all in on the evening news and talk shows – and watched as Australians dutifully went to the polls on August 21 to cast their compulsory votes. From that I thought, Americans could learn a thing or two.
But then, as the returns came in, I got the feeling I had been here before. There was not going to be a decision in this race on election night. Neither…
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You’re Not Still Writing Resumes, Are You?
September 1, 2010 by Kathy Drasky
Need a job? Try something like this. It was sent in response to an ad for a Project/Product Manager position at Pollenizer, an Australian company that helps web-based businesses grow and flourish.
Ok. So maybe this approach won’t help you land that senior banking executive position…yet. But creative approaches using social media tools to promote your business have been with us for a couple of years now. When your business is you, shouldn’t the same rules apply? Furthermore, a recent Pew study finds that social media is not just for “kids”. Chances are very good that the 50-year-old doing the hiring knows a thing or two about YouTube.
Hat tip to Delimiter for sharing this story.
Sydney Shots
August 30, 2010 by Kathy Drasky
A late winter’s Saturday in Sydney and a walk from Kings Cross to Surry Hills. Beautiful people, beautiful day.
My Australia in Review
August 25, 2010 by Marianne McPhee
After almost five months in Australia, having sneakily avoided winter, I’m settling back into London life. When I think about my most recent travel adventure, I suppose I was able to see quite a lot of Australia, but really, I didn’t see half of it. This is one big country. I passed through five of Australia’s eight states and territories, saw cities, the ocean and the outback and I left thousands of miles uncovered. But what I did see, I’ll never forget.
I loved wandering through Darling Harbour or taking the ferry to Manly Beach in Sydney, exploring the great cafés and night spots in Melbourne, and hitting some of the fantastic museums in Canberra.
In the Northern Territory, I got a taste of what I’ve always imagined to be ‘real’ Australia (not that the cities are any less real) in the Outback. I walked around Ayers Rock and ran under its waterfalls after the rain, trekked through the Valley of the Winds in Kata Tjuta, and hiked around the rim of Kings Canyon. I drove past herds of wild camels, slowly backed away from a Western Brown Snake (one of the deadliest in the world), and evicted various lethal…
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My Last Days Shower-Free
August 23, 2010 by Marianne McPhee
So after I recovered from the shock of jumping out of the plane, I hit that annoying (for everyone else) stage where I could not stop talking about it. “I just jumped out of a plane! I can’t believe I just jumped out of a plane. Wow, that really just happened…” on and on it went. I did eventually get the hint, I promise, but not for a bit. You stop being aware of other people’s reactions to a thing like that after awhile…
I met up with the Fraser Island group (the ones that got stuck sorting out the 4×4s and doing the grocery shopping) and hopped into the back of our truck to head to the largest sand island in the world.
After navigating the bumpy (huge understatement) trails, and getting just a tiny bit lost, we found Lake Wabbe. Actually, we found a trail and a towering sand hill that promised to have a lake on the other side. I wasn’t so convinced. But we’d come all that way, so we started to trek up the sand. The steep, slippery, hot sand. When we finally made it to the top, it was totally worth the sweat. The…
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Day Three of the Back to Nature Period
August 21, 2010 by Marianne McPhee
After my days on the Hammer, it was onto the bus for a 13-hour drive down Australia’s East Coast. After watching The Green Mile on the bus television, I did my best to get my dream on, but it’s not the easiest in a cramped upright seat. Oh well. Arriving at about 6 in the morning in Hervey Bay, I got picked up by the Palace Adventures hostel van and taken to check in. Two hours later I was sitting in the lounge room listening to the most painful government safety video. Ever. I was headed to Fraser Island that morning on a three-day camping trip to the largest sand island in the world. I tried my best to listen about dingoes, camping, cooking and driving on dunes, but if I’m honest, I was dozing off… Hey, what can I say, no sleep and a poorly-shot film doesn’t help with the whole staying awake thing.
After that, me and all the other backpackers were split into groups to go into the 4×4s. Then we were told about our chores for the morning. Go to the garage. Pick up the 4×4s. Inspect them. Pack the camping gear. Go to the supermarket…
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The World Mangrove Atlas: Hope Amid Despair
August 20, 2010 by Danielle Nierenberg
By Daniel Kandy
The World Mangrove Atlas revealed some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the loss of mangroves has slowed to 0.7 percent annually. The bad news is that that rate is still three to four times higher than the loss rate of land-based forest and one fifth of all of the world’s mangroves are thought to have been lost in the past three decades. Of the world’s original mangrove forest area, estimated at 80 million acres, less than 37 million acres of mangroves now remain.
Mangrove forests are home to an abundant variety of tropical fish, birds, reptiles, crustaceans and insects, as well as thousands of species of flora, and human populations who depend on the mangroves for their livelihoods. (Photo: Flickr Commons)
Mangrove forests exist in tropical and sub-tropical regions, with Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Nigeria, and Mexico having the largest total area of mangroves. 2010 is the United Nation’s International Year of Biodiversity and there have been some positive developments in mangrove conservation. There are 1,200 protected areas in places like the…
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Five Days Shower Free: Days One and Two
August 20, 2010 by Marianne McPhee
Okay, it sounds gross. Five days, no shower, no soap. Definitely no sugar coating on this one – I was…dirty. Why, you ask, did I go five days without washing? One day, okay sure, two days starts to get a little iffy. But five?
Let me explain. In those less-than-clean days, I went sailing on a professional racing yacht, traveled hundreds of miles on an overnight bus, jumped out of a plane, and slept on an island covered in dingos. Not much time for showering.
After landing at Proserpine Airport, I grabbed my bags and boarded the bus to Magnums Backpackers. On the way, for the one and only time while I was in Australia, I passed a group of wild kangaroos! It was early and I was tired, but wild kangaroos in Australia, it would seem, are harder to come by than you’d first expect so I was pretty happy. During my one night at Magnums I took what I already knew would be my last shower for days. I did my best to appreciate every drop of soap, promise.
The next morning started Day One of what we’ll call the Back to Nature Period. It began on a…
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Australia Marks 30 Years Since Azaria Chamberlain’s Disappearance
August 17, 2010 by Kathy Drasky
This week marks the 30-year anniversary of the disappearance of a baby named Azaria Chamberlain, snatched as she slept in a tent on a family camping trip in Australia’s outback by a wild dog known as a dingo. Or, as was once popularly believed, murdered by her mother, Lindy Chamberlain.
In America, we know this story best from the 1988 Meryl Streep movie A Cry in the Dark, known better as the movie in which Streep wore a hideous black-banged wig and was criticized for a slightly off-kilter Aussie accent in which she delivered lines like, “The dingo ate my bab-ay.” (Cringe)
Pop culture phenomenon and/or dreadful miscarriage of justice? Lindy Chamberlain was tried and convicted of murder (her husband was convicted of being an accessory) even though no body was found and expert witnesses, including Aboriginal trackers who followed dingo footprints from the baby’s tent, contended that a dingo certainly could have carried out the removal (and consumption) of an 8-week-old infant.
Evidence to the contrary included what was at the time believed to be blood stains in the Chamberlain’s car and clothing found (and not found) that was inconsistent with Chamberlain’s descriptions of how the…
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