2 Texans Down Under

Finally, we have a clear notion of “the Darling downs.”

Most Brisbane folk watch the ABC television weather news on weekday evening, I expect, for hints on how to dress the next day, but for me it’s a geography lesson as much as anything else.

On an outline of Queensland, town and city names are posted with their high and low temperatures for the day, and I think, “Oh, that’s where that is” or, more rarely, “We’ve been there.”

But the names of various regions such as “the Darling downs” never get put on the screen because, obviously, everybody knows where they are. Unless, of course, you’re newcomers, as we are even after nearly three years.

Until Easter weekend this year, we didn’t know where Australia’s “New England” was. Then we drove through there and expanded our knowledge even further by visiting Texas, QLD, which is, appropriately enough, in the southwestern part of the state. Well, south, anyway, and as far west as we’d been.

On that trip, we also learned, while hiking over large chunks of it, where “the granite belt” is and we got to know a bit about Stanthorpe, where our farmers’ market apples come from, near the New South Wales border.

But “the Darling downs” was an entirely mythical place as far as I was concerned. I assumed it must have something to do with the Darling River, which is dying a slow death from drought, up-stream irrigation, and city-water demands.

Our printed maps don’t use the term as a label and my trusty Australian dictionary carries no definition of it despite listing “Darling shower.” That’s a dust storm.

As I said, though, we are finally in the know. This past weekend, Kristi and I traveled west and then north, passing near Ipswich, driving over the Wivenhoe Dam’s dam, and going through Esk, Toogoolawah, Blackbutt (named after the tree of the same name, I assume), Read the rest of this entry »

Thinking of taking a big leap? Thinking of starting a new chapter in your life and considering Australia as its setting? Then you may be in luck.

The new Rudd Government has announced for the coming fiscal year the biggest annual increase in permanent and temporary migration into Australia since the 1940s, and there doesn’t seem to be much backlash. Some worries, but no real opposition.

The plan is to open the door to nearly 300,000 workers from overseas between July 1 this year and the end of June, 2009, and the work visas will be not only for high-demand jobs, but various kinds of work, skilled and unskilled.

As I noted in my last blog, Treasurer Wayne Swan, speaking for the Labor Government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced this widening of the immigration door in his budget presentation last week and it could be good news for anyone considering moving to the Land of Oz.

(Note: My spell checker IS working. Aussies put a “u” in “labor,” writing it “labour,” but not in the name of the party now in power, Labor.)

Inflation is a hot topic here and business leaders hope opening the door to more migrants will help dampen wage demands. Labour union leaders fear that it might, but they don’t seem to be too worried, only protesting that they need a place at the immigration decision-making table.

The reasons behind this substantial change and the absence of acrimony about it, so far, were expressed in a column May 17 in The Australian by the newspaper’s primary political-affairs editor, Paul Kelly.

Kelly wrote: “Australian labour shortages are here to stay. They are Read the rest of this entry »

Angela Hoy, one of the two owners of the company that published my print-on-demand book, Moving to Australia: Two Texans Down Under, blew the whistle last week on a heavy-handed threat from a company about which I’d always had positive feelings, Amazon.com. Now their “goodwill” capital with me and lots of others is fading fast. This is not, unfortunately, an April Fools joke. It’s real, and here’s a short version of the story.

Print-on-demand (POD) publishers, and there are many of them, are being told by Amazon.com: We have our own POD company now. We’re going to sell on line only the POD books our company publishes or those of POD companies that pay us a hefty fee and meet other requirements. Take it or leave it.

Authors and would-be authors, who are among Amazon’s best customers, are getting the same message.

Kathy Hendershot-Hurd, my friend and advisor, correctly notes that this story is turning into a viral firestorm for Amazon.com. Of course, Amazon.com may be too dominant in their market to care. Might doesn’t make right, but it may, this time, let Amazon get away with a monopolistic dictate.

Or maybe not. At the end of this blog, you’ll see Kathy’s list of more than 60 bloggers who are speaking out and spreading the word, along with her invitation for the rest of us to help spread the virus. Maybe Amazon.com isn’t inoculated against this blatant power grab’s effects after all.

For the full report from Angela in Writer’sWeekly, click here. For Kathy’s views, go to her blog by clicking here. Here’s her invitation:

I’d like to do my part by listing the 60+ references to this story. Feel free Read the rest of this entry »

Western Australia may be the world hot-spot this week for discussion of the health and viability of democracy in the United States.

Two guests of the Perth Writer’s Festival who present disturbing but dissimilar views of America in an election year have been prominently featured in the media across this nation.

One is Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America and other best-selling books, and the other is Cullen Murphy, author of The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America.

Wolf has outlined ten steps that have characterized fascist dictatorships in the past and says Bush, Chaney, and crew have led the country a long way down those steps and away from democracy.

Murphy, editor-at-large of “Vanity Fair” and former managing editor of “The Atlantic Monthly,” sees much to worry about in the country today: paranoia about immigration, excessive privatization of services traditionally provided by governments, arrogant foreign policy, an over-stretched military, and other facets of Rome before its fall.

He is, however, more optimistic than Wolf about America’s future, and it appears that most Australians are, too.

Any review of legal changes during the current administration offers Read the rest of this entry »

Australia’s top leaders officially said “sorry” today to the “stolen generation” and their families. All over the continent Indigenous people and the non-Indigenous gathered in crowds to listen, applaud, and shed tears of both happiness and sorrow.

For outsiders living here, it was like being present for a family event almost too personal for the eyes and ears of guests. One felt honoured to be able to listen and watch.

Kevin Rudd, elected Prime Minister in part because he promised to say the word his campaign opponent, John Howard, refused to say, “sorry,” spoke solemnly and without great flourish, but his message was powerful.

It is time, he said, to “deal with this unfinished business of the nation,” to “remove a great stain from the nation’s soul and in the true spirit of reconciliation to open a new chapter in the history of this great land Australia.”

He said: People of European descent took Aboriginal and Torres Strait children forcibly from their parents and put them into institutions or foster homes and they did so for much of a century, finally ending the practice only in the 1970s. (Yes, the nineteen seventies.)

He said: Laws passed by previous Parliaments permitted this to happen and we, the Parliament of today, must say we are sorry. The resolution he offered used that word three times.

With 100 invited Indigenous leaders present and all major Read the rest of this entry »

Cities should be a habitats for people, first and foremost, Enrique Penalosa believes. Not for animals. Not for cars. For people.

And this former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, would create his ideal city for people with the following beliefs in mind, each of which I have taken from my notes on his remarks at Griffith University last Thursday night.

1. People want to be with people. When parks are constructed with benches facing lakes or rivers or other scenes of natural beauty and with benches facing places where people walk or congregate, it is the people-oriented benches that get the most use.

2. People need to walk as surely as birds need to fly. And riding a bike, Penalosa said, “is just a more efficient means of walking.”

3. People want to be outside. If a neighbourhood is dangerous or uninviting, people huddle around their television sets indoors, but that does not make them healthy or happy. They want to be outside, and walking around in a mall is not being outside. “A shopping mall,” he said, Read the rest of this entry »

Enrique Penalosa spoke here in Brisbane last week and opened my eyes to new ways of seeing cities.

Mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, for three years until 2001, Penalosa made major improvements in the city’s transportation system, put in 300 kilometres (more than 180 miles) of bicycle and walking trails, and left behind a network of 1,200 parks and public spaces.

What are cities for, he asked a packed auditorium at Griffith University, cars or children?

A highway through a city is like a fence in a pasture, he said, separating people from each other. Highways also give special privileges to some people (car owners) and not others.

And, “A city is a collective work of art.”

His fundamental beliefs include at least these two: human beings should come first (“humans are sacred”) and democracy depends on providing both equality before the law and the chance for the poor to move as freely outdoors as the wealthy usually can.

Sidewalks, bike paths, parks, other open public spaces, and mass transportation can further democracy and make cities great. When precedence is given to cars and highways, democracy suffers and cities fall short of their potential.

“Every great city has at least one great public space where even rich people Read the rest of this entry »

December 31 — My daughter, Lyn, dropped us off at DFW just after 6 p.m. yesterday, more than 12 hours ago, so we could catch an American Airlines flight to LA and then a Qantas flight to Brisbane, but I just called her and it was a local call.

We’re in a La Quinta motel in Arlington, near Six Flags over Texas, with our trip extended 24 hours courtesy of American. Brake repairs to the plane and a pilot calling in sick combined to produce a delay so long that we knew we’d miss our connection in LA.

Such stories are so common that they don’t merit blogging about, but the experience has produced a couple of conversations worth mentioning.

One was overheard. A crew chief confided in an AA clerk behind the counter while we were getting switched to tonight’s flight that a pilot was on hand to fill in for the sick captain. The brake problem had been fixed. We could have flown then and made our connection.

“Too late,” said the clerk, “we’ve already told people we’re leaving at 10 and they’re all over the airport now.” So, we could be almost home as I’m writing this, but we’re not.

The other conversation is one I had outside the terminal with a very tall man named Robert C. I’ll withhold his last name to protect the angry innocent. As we waited for the La Quinta shuttle to take us here to the motel, he was waiting for another bus and he was quietly raging.

Here’s his story. He and his wife had arrived from Mexico for a flight home to Philadelphia. At customs, he was detained so long that he missed his connection. At his insistence, his wife went on home without him.

At first, he said, the customs authorities wouldn’t even tell him why they’d taken him Read the rest of this entry »

A government was overthrown here Saturday.

You probably read or saw reports about it: Kevin Rudd and the liberal Labor Party snatched control of the country from John Howard and the conservative Liberal Party. It was a transfer of power by ballot and it was a joy to watch.

Having already become avidly partisan even though we cannot vote because we are not citizens here, Kristi and I were thrilled to see Rudd end Howard’s reign of more than 11 years. A leader of dubious veracity and limited vision has been replaced by a younger man who is middle-of-the-road on many issues but seems to grasp the gravity of global warming, the importance of openness in government, and need to preserve the Aussie tradition of “a fair go” for all citizens.

There was a lot at stake, and although Howard had on his stoic, strong face during his concession speech, Read the rest of this entry »

Friends in the United States ask whether or not we celebrate Thanksgiving here and I explain to them that, no, Australians miss out on “turkey day” and a lot of important holidays like July 4th, Evacuation Day, and Sam Houston’s birthday. And hardly anybody here remembers the Alamo.

That’s a tongue-in-cheek reply, of course, and Kristi and I will be joining an American friend and her Australian husband tomorrow for a Thanksgiving feast with others, as we did last year. It will be Friday here as we start the festivities, but still Thursday in the US.

Aussies are aware of this uniquely American holiday, though. In today’s “The Australian,” the paper’s New York correspondent comments on several “things we should thank America for,” including baseball.

Although I doubt our Aussie host tomorrow will agree, David Nason calls it “a game of wonderful nuance and sublime skill that is a worthy rival of cricket,” even if it is “an acquired taste” best enjoyed with a beer in hand.

The post-World War II Marshall Plan, so different from “the Bush-Chaney cock-up in Iraq,” is another worthy gift to the world from the US, Nason says, as is Muhammad Ali, cultural and religious tolerance, freedom of speech, and freedom of inquiry.

Nason notes that freedom of inquiry “remains the most important element of the checks and balances a decent democracy needs Read the rest of this entry »