This is so awesome - yesterday I got to pilot a 3-trailer massive road train through town! And operate a forklift! Then I had to lie down, blearily watching 73 hours of The Ten Commandments in a delirium, because I've got a bad cold (no one in Meeka seems to be able to get rid of it, we're all sick. Again.)
Anyway, what happened was that we gave up on all our stupid generators and got a serious hardcore mine camp water-cooled 9kva half-tonne genny, which had to come up from Perth, and of course the freight company decided to do it on the big festival/race weekend, which meant that the freight depots are closed and most of the town is drunk, so Gary borrowed a crane and a truck from the stockyards, I met the road train (it was HUGE) at the roadhouse and led him through town, which is definitely the coolest thing I have ever done, deftly showing off my outback radio skills on the two-way ("Southbound, southbound, we got a 3-trailer turning east if ya can let im through ta"). Bruce the truck driver was wonderful & he & Gaz used the crane to get the genny off the trailer and onto our borrowed truck.
Back at bush camp, Gaz went over to the racetrack and borrowed the monster forklift and we got the genny set up yayyyy then Gaz decided we might as well finish putting the yard light in (it's on a really tall old London streetlamp post we found at the tip), so he put a wood pallet on the forks of the forklift and I raised him twenty feet up in the air to put the fitting in. Gosh we know how to have fun.
There's been a big turnout for the races & rodeo this year, so there are horse camps everywhere and unfortunately also a couple of aboriginal camps. One group set up just on the other side of our camp, and proceeded to light a big bonfire right among the dry scrub (everyone else was set up on the flats, which are clear of flammable materials...go figure). Within minutes all we could hear was screaming and yelling from the family of aboriginals camped there: "YAAAAH FUCKIN CUNT FUCK YA BLACK CUNT!" This is with tiny children in the group, and kids camped nearby.
So out of about three hundred people camped out here among the stables, the only noise and rubbish was coming from the few aboriginal camps. It was unbelievable. Everyone else was cooking and talking, working with their horses and dogs, just having a good time and being friendly, and the abos are screaming and swearing and throwing cans everywhere before the sun even began to set. Then of course they started driving and wandering drunk to see what they could steal from our camp, so I released the dogs and we stood on our flood wall and yelled at them to piss off. The bonfire was out of control, so I called the police and Gary and I debated going to get the fire truck. "Let's just roll in and hose the wretched assholes!" I said. But we figured that would lead to them coming round later and setting fire to the camp.
Then, as the band kicked off over at the racecourse, they started walking off that way - and I'm not kidding here - stopping every fifty yards or so for no reason, standing around drinking, and would set some scrub on fire, then wander along and do it again. This was a bunch of women with kids!!! All accompanied by the screaming and swearing. Fortunately this was in isolated scrub so none of it spread, but honest to god, what is wrong with these people? Later on, about midnight, they wandered back to their camp, but left one of the women behind, who then spent two hours wandering around the whole racecourse area blind drunk, screaming "MUM! MUM YA BLACK CUNT! WHERE ARE YA! YAAAHH FUCKIN CUNTS!" Finally I think someone from the horse camps just knocked her out with a bit of firewood or (more likely) she just passed out drunk in the scrub. All was quiet until six thirty in the morning, and the screaming and swearing started up again. We drove past and yep, the camp area is already a rubbish tip. I think if they get up to it again tonight we will go round with the fire truck and scare the crap out of them.
The pathetic thing is that this is NORMAL aboriginal behaviour. Outsiders come along and say, "Oh, it's the result of poverty etc etc" but it's not - they aren't poor! They get HEAPS of government money, and drive around in new cars all the time, which they wreck within weeks. There are plenty of nice aboriginal people in town and also here for the rodeo, but when they get together in groups the behaviour is just awful. I get fed up with people who say they value family culture and all that shit - they don't, they have no concern for each other or other people, even their own kids.
We had to laugh, because there was a late night showing of 2001 A Space Odyssey on the telly (we stayed up for most of the night, letting out the dogs & waving our torches around every time we heard anyone sneaking about) - and the sounds of the apes at the start of the movie mirrored what was going on in the camp next to us!!
They'll bugger off back to Wiluna or wherever they've come from soon and we can return to civilised life. Right now we're about to take the bus over to the rodeo and set up our stall for my bumper stickers and stuff, which will probably just turn into drinking beer at the beer tent then going home to sleep it off. After dinner maybe we'll wander around in the bush screaming and swearing and throwing cans everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment