Letter to The West, 14th December, 2010

In his letter headed “A pen or a shovel?” (14/12), David De Garis artfully paints himself as a noble, university educated man who toils away in the city for a wage that is dwarfed by that of poorly educated, fly-in fly-out workers in the resources industry. He asks which of the two paths a young man might follow these days.

David, like many other people not involved in the resources industry, you have drawn it very crudely, invoking visions of homogenous clusters of “workers” getting on planes to “the mines” and returning with fistfuls of cash. You draw attention to the sacrifices you made by going to university, unconscious of the fact that many people boarding such planes are either university educated themselves or are qualified tradesmen – and only a brave man would tell a tradesman that he has not also made sacrifices during his four-year apprenticeship.

So the very basis of your letter - the idea that a university education and the resources industry are mutually exclusive – is completely inaccurate. For thousands of people, including myself, “pens and shovels” are interchangeable. I have a degree and often work in the city, but I also love being hundreds of kilometres from anywhere, covered in flies, and hitting rocks with a hammer.

Regardless of their level of education or training, people in the resources industry take a risk by working in what history shows is a boom-bust game. And as a white-collar professional, I am sure you appreciate that with risk can come reward – in this case, financial. The flipside to the reward is  illustrated by events like BHP’s spectacular failure at Ravensthorpe and the subsequent mass sackings.

Finally David, all wage levels are fundamentally driven by supply and demand. If suburban white-collar wages are as pitifully low as you make out then how can anybody sensibly advocate for more people to enter these professions? I think your hypothetical young man should do exactly what he wants to do, not bow to family or social pressures to become one breed or other of white-collar worker. And if he hasn’t the faintest idea what to do, he should do what I did: become a geologist.

Letter to The West, 8th November, 2010

I often ride my bike to work in West Perth, travelling along the beautiful South Perth foreshore. While the mornings are not without charm, the return journey is the real highlight. I love to slow down a fraction, go “no hands”, and take in the magnificent skyline, the river, and the people enjoying it all.

Do you know what type of people I see most often, enjoying a riverside barbecue on a weekday evening? I’ll give you a tip: it’s not white Australians. It’s Asians and Arabs – in everything from couples, to gatherings of young people, to groups of several families. Similarly, in my local park, it is the African and Asian people who regularly gather to play gloriously big and free games of soccer or cricket.

Are these examples of the slow invasion or destruction of Australian culture about which many of this paper’s correspondents are so concerned? If so, can I say to these concerned people: embrace these sights and add them to your understanding of Australian culture, don’t fear or hate them.

Fearful correspondents should also ask themselves if they are really living the iconic lifestyle that they are so vigorously trying to protect. Because if they are, they don’t seem to be doing it within my eyeshot. In fact, I suspect that most of the more hateful anti-immigrant letters to this paper are written with pale suburban hands – not the bronzed, leathery ones of our folklore.

Finally, let us all remember that however fine it may be, our mainstream Australian culture is no great leap from its very recent European roots. Every reference to Australian culture without a deep nod to our Aboriginal people (implicitly or explicitly) is an insult to them.

Lizard stick

A poem I wrote about a favourite lizard-shaped stick - one of many! - at Peak Hill, in June 2010

Knotted mulga Lizard Stick,
‘twas only me you ever tricked,
but once you did you always played upon my memory.

I saw you every out and back,
your silhouette against the track,
on the quartz between the ruts that tortured you and me.

I liked the way your head was high,
turned back to the northern sky,
as if you’d strayed too far from home and thought you should return.

If only you had gone that way!
Cos when I passed by yesterday,
There was wood scraped up beside the track, and I tightened with concern.

That dreadful march of progress!
That tempered blade that never rests!
Some diesel demon broke you down into a heap of splinters.

To others you were just a stick;
to me your presence was the trick
that cooled down stinking summer days and warmed up solemn winters.

I didn’t mind your rigid pose:
through changing light your beauty showed.
You were the constant, grounded pivot about which things revolved.

Lizard Stick, my Uluru,
until your end I never knew,
how much a man can love a thing so simple and so old