Australians, what is WRONG with you?

I haven't been stung by bluebottles since last year* mate. No one's been attacked by a shark round here since the other day**....


*december 31, 2012 that shit hurts.** December 27 , 2012 Port Macquarie

Nuh uh, I find these in my backyard ALL the time on the west coast in Perth. Like near the kid's sandpit, under the kid's scooters, under the kid's pedal cars, under the fence etc. Fortunately they move really slow so you can squash them easy. (I am not joking!)

Our current plan for New Zealand:

Mate, bluebottle's not a fly, it's a jellyfish. My thigh looks like this dude's: http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w72/smokedv8/1024day6.jpg

Itches like HELL!

Yeah, I realized it was another weird Austrian word thing.

That plant sounds terrifying. Also, one of the comments:

Are you seriously telling me that there's another stinging plant that is fucking worse there than one that can do this?!

It's Australia. You don't want to ask "is there something worse".

Unless you're talking about Foster's. In which case the answer is no.

"Fostah's. Austreyelian for cat piss."

But Redbacks aren't deadly. Er, to adults...

...Well, there's always antivenom?

The cubic poop dropping Keg on Legs. Also the natural enemy to cars and trucks.

It's just "strayan". And it's "Ozzie" not "Awsy". Next Yank that says Awsy is getting one of these for Secret Santa.

Wombats are awesome. That is all.

I can't find the meat pie. I think they got Australia and Austria mixed up.

Aboriginal. Aborigine is offensive.

I've heard the opposite, that calling someone an 'Aboriginal' (noun) is offensive. 'Aboriginal person' or 'Aborigine' were both acceptable, but some people prefer 'Indigenous Australian'. This is all based on what my Indigenous studies professor has told me, however. I don't pretend to speak for an entire people.

I like how Elyscape keeps a one-post like-free zone around the spider picture.

What state are you in? In NSW 'Aboriginal' is very much the accepted term. I currently work in social housing and many organisations I deal with have the word in their title, like the AHO (Aboriginal Housing Office) or all the different LALCs (Local Aboriginal Land Councils). Otherwise it's 'Koori', which is specific to NSW and Victoria, or 'Wiradjuri', which is specific to the Central West.

Ultimately though there is not one single group of Aboriginal people, and what is or isn't offensive will depend on who you talk you. A co-worker recently corrected someone by saying "I am Aboriginal, not an Aborigine." Most folks I know around here refer to themselves as being part of a 'mob', but I recently heard a story of an old woman in hospital who became very upset when the doctor came into the room and told her visiting family members "Alright you mob, time to go" because when she was young a mob referred to a group of Aboriginal people who were rounded up to be killed.

Great story: Mate of mine is travelling in Asia for several weeks. Spends his last week in Viet Nam. The day he's set to leave, he's packing and can't find his passport. Starts to freak out, as you do. Can't find it anywhere, none of his mates have it. At this point he's got to be on a plane in a few hours. He races to a cab and is like: "Australian Embassy?"
"Yeah Yeah, Australian Embassy." Says the cab driver without even missing a beat.
They hop in and fly across town. Get to a building and cab driver is like,
"Australian Embassy!" pointing to the building. Mate runs in to find that he can't read the sign. Goes to the desk and is like "Australian Embassy?".
"Yeah Yeah Australian Embassy. Third Floor." Says the dude at the desk. Ol' Mate is pretty relieved now. Gets on the elevator, goes to three, doors open up and "Austrian Embassy" blazed on a sign. Bricks were shit.

Turns out the right embassy was one floor up! but it was enough to nearly kill him.

I'm just quoting the probably American voiceover actor who does the Fostah's commercials in the States. :)

I'm fully expecting that the twist ending to After Earth will be similar to Planet of the Apes except that they're not in a future version of earth where the planet has evolved to kill humans, they've just gone backwards in time and crash-landed in Australia.

I just want to announce that right now, it's around 47C - or 116F in Americanese - outside. Now I know how the Christmas turkey feels.

I'm in NSW too, but the Indigenous studies lecturer I mentioned was from QLD. Perhaps the way to go about it is to respectfully ask the person you're talking to what they prefer? Anyway, I'm studying social work at the moment but I have no actual experience yet, so thanks for the insight.


Also, yes it is damn hot. I was going to post to the weather thread but I couldn't think of anything to say beyond "argh, it's too hot". Yay: http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/heat-records-fall-as-sydney-sizzles/23289

It's started raining here in the last hour making it feel less like a blast furnace and more like a sauna. I kept thinking today about the line in Biloxi Blues "Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot." We didn't get as hot as Sydney though only 42 here, still a record.

We're moving next week to a new apartment that has no air conditioning. Today made me pause on that one for a sec. New apartment is three minutes stroll to the beach....

Then you don't need a jacket.

43C isn't as bad as you'd think. I went out to eat pizza at a local park with coworkers around 1pm. It was mostly a good excuse to laugh at all our pommy friends as they failed to cope with the temperature.

I grew up in a house with no air conditioning. Even today, with air conditioning only in the main bedroom, I feel a little bit like a rich bastard.

Air conditioning? Decadent wastrels.

So I had an army friend who told me that the aboriginal people have thicker skulls than other peoples, and that army folk are instructed that if they are to get into a fight with one, not to punch them in the head. My google searches haven't turned anything up in snopes, and some JSTOR articles from 1979 -- which could just be racist BS to make them sound primitive. Is this a myth? It sounded a little out there to me.

I think that's Samoans. That's why Samoans always win headbutt battles, even against the Irish.

The thing about aboriginal people having thick skills could very well be urban legend. However, I'm also mindful of a radiographer friend out at one hospital I worked in getting frustrated at being called in late at night to X-Ray for ?skull fracture. He always said that the aboriginal people have thick skulls and in his life, he'd never seen one fractured. That all sounds well and good, though some further context may need to be considered such as:

1. Many assaults are associated with intoxication and the medical staff are typically requiring X-Ray in order to rule out blunt force head trauma, which can be difficult to diagnose by the bedside when a patient/victim is also intoxicated. So related to his experience, it could very well be biased, that ?skull fracture does not actually equate to all patients getting X-Ray having head trauma.

2. Many assaults have the victim end up with a broken forearm/wrist as a result of shielding their head from a possible nulla nulla (or other blunt object) beating. As such, again, there may not be any head trauma at all.

This isn't to say head trauma doesn't happen of course. And he may have also pointed out that the skulls on X-Ray are thicker than a Causcasian skull. But then again, a majority of work in the NT hospitals outside of Darwin is for Indigenous patients, so it is fairly tough to judge overall I believe. I'm no radiographer, so I have nothing I can actually provide there.

Nor do I don't think there will ever be any hard evidence to say for certain that Indigenous Australians have thick skulls or not. There are cultural reasons to consider, and what would it achieve exactly? Imagine the single minded connotation that could go with it, suggesting that thick skulls = dumb people, which is certainly not the case, and nor should Indigenous Australians be considered "dumb." However the bigots out there would more than likely run with it anyway, as they are wont to do with anything that casts a negative light on Indigenous Australians.

In another story told to me when I first arrived in the NT and being shown around a local town, my colleague was telling me how he was walking along the main street one day and there was a running argument going on nearby. One individual apparently picked up a fairly significant sized rock and threw it hard at another who was walking behind him, scolding him. This rock apparently struck the woman in the head, cleanly, all she did was stop in a quick daze, then carried on scolding this man across the street. Should I believe this story, or is it something to open my eyes to how bad things are out there (hint, pretty bad) rather than coddling me up in some sort of crazy belief that we all make a difference. It is easy to believe, because sure enough as this story is being told to me, one Aboriginal person did push another Aboriginal person in front of our car, a car which thankfully was only doing 40km/h and takes no time to stop. A car which also had NT Government markings on it, though it could be debated as to whether they noticed that, or if it were purely random.

One thing is for sure - Indigenous Australians, certainly in the NT, are tough. The bloodwork I've done on these guys who merely walk into the hospital emergency dept would have a regular white fella calling an ambulance and complaining of 10/10 pain seeking pain meds. And the number of co-morbidities they carry with them which exacerbates the problems they might have.

Happy Australia Day!

Edit: or Invasion Day, as you choose. Wikipedia tells me that you all have your equivalent of our "Indigenous Peoples Day" (celebrated on Oct. 12 by those who see Columbus as an invader rather than a heroic explorer).

You're late. It was Australia Day yesterday, because we live in the future. It's great living in the future.

no no, I'm early.

Australia has given Boston a meat pie shop, so I can forgive them almost everything.

Except the spiders.

No Tim Tam shop? Weak.

The meat pie shop sells the Tim Tams! They even have Tim Tam ice cream.

Nice! That is pretty awesome, then.

The way that was written, I first thought there were spiders in the meat pie shop. *shudder*