Lock Up Yer Grog

Because of the floods, the water supply at the Wiluna pub became contaminated and they had to close the pub. When Meeka locals heard the news, the pubs went into restrictions lockdown and everyone started barricading their sheds, because everyone in Wiluna is on their way into Meeka.

Wiluna is another mainly aboriginal community about 130 km northwest of Meeka; the stories I hear about it are appalling. One of the local cops, who served in Afghanistan, took his nephew there and said, "If you want to know what Afghanistan was like, this is it." It's a tiny place, and when it's court day in Meekatharra, there are busloads of Wilunans who come in for their court appearances; this influx is usually accompanied by heaps of break-ins, car thefts and violence. People roll into Meeka across the desert in cars with no doors, no bonnets, wheels about to fall off, windscreens shattered or missing - and with passengers & kids jammed into every available space.

So, because of the Wiluna factor, our pubs have gone into automatic restriction mode, which limits how much takeaway alcohol you can buy - it's the aboriginal community's way of trying to keep the drinking under control. I suppose the fact that there aren't a hundred or so screaming fighting drunk people staggering around the streets all night setting fire to things means it's working...

Since I started work at the hostel and doing the meals on wheels run, I've noticed that the rotten little bastard kids from up at the housing flats haven't been hanging around our place annoying the dogs and throwing things at the fence - I mentioned it to a couple of the women at work and they seem to have been able to put the hard word on the families up at the flats. The flats are awful - if someone blindfolded you, then dropped you off there and said "Here you are in the worst slum of Bombay", you'd believe it. It's a sea of Emu beer cans; when there are so many cans that people are falling over them, they pile them up against the fence. There's a stack there higher than my waist. The little kids wander about the rubbish like those Brazilian tip-picker orphans, eating what the dogs have left. If you feel your millions of tax dollars spent on aboriginal welfare aren't enough, you can sponsor one through World Vision. Once they've eaten your care package of nutritious supplements and torn the educational books to shreds, they'll pop round to smash your car windows in with a rock (after they've siphoned the petrol).