slow day so far in Port Mac - Mar 10

Summary: Nap time taking out a perfectly good Sunday afternoon, Aboriginal culture (long paragraph), lazy sick day in PM but with Starbucks

Views like this one below make you wish the naps were not in the middle of a perfect afternoon. Sadly his nap started late and ran real late. Nothing else to report but dinner and pool time.

Several commenters have asked about Australian Aborigines and I have not said all that much (aside from writing about Rudd's "Sorry Day"). It is a difficult subject to bring up, but it needs to be covered. I'll do my best, but bear with me. In many ways it is a difficult topic to discuss because it is complex and has its fair share of mine fields. On the one hand, they are the first Australians, the oldest culture on earth, and a civilization (or, more accurately, many civilizations) adapted to living in the harsh conditions of this continent. Their DreamTime stories and legends are common throughout Australia and their tribes' words can be found in many, many town names. If a town name does not sound like a London suburb or like someone was telling a joke ("Hat Head" is just north of me), it is almost certainly Aboriginal in origin (that's my guess on Wee Waa, from the comment yesterday). You can also find didgeridoo music (live and on CD) throughout Australia. On the other hand, by most measures they have not adapted especially well to the circumstances of modern Australia. Reading the newspapers or just looking around (especially in the northern half of the country), it is reasonable to say that they have higher rates of alcoholism, violence, and unemployment. There is an iconic image (to me, at least) of Aboriginals in many Australian movies all hanging around cars with every door, window, truck (boot), and hood (bonnet) open. Every time I saw it in a movie, I thought it was odd and wondered what it referred to. Driving across Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia (north of Monkey Mia), I saw this at least once, typically a few times every day. I figure they do it because it keeps the car cooler than leaving anything closed (engine and truck included). There are not many Aborigines in total in Australia - estimates put it around 300k and that sounds about right to me. They seem more common in the North, but that has something to do with how uncommon people are in general. Driving through a town in mid-afternoon (Normanton, Camooweal, Halls Creek, etc.), it was very common to see Aboriginal kids riding their bikes while other kids presumably stayed inside (it was 40 degrees C or 105 Fahrenheit), but I never saw them working at the fuel stations (and I stopped at every one, it seemed). There were groups of Aboriginal men hanging around on the Esplanade in Darwin on Saturday afternoon, but Aboriginal families were more prominent in smaller towns than the bigger towns. Anyhow, they have challenges that may sound familiar to Americans who live near American Indian (a.k.a. native American) reservations - higher crime, unemployment, and alcoholism rates than the general population. In fact a remote pub ("near" Normanton, as in within 300km) that was inspiration for a song may have to close because there are new limitations on how much alcohol you can sell at one time - their primary consumers (according to the Melbourne Age article) are vacationing fishermen and members of an Aboriginal tribe 150km away. Since it is inconvenient to go there and back, both groups tend to load up when they buy. The law wants to stop this, so the pub may close. This may sound flippant, but it is not intended to be -there are no casinos to raise the incomes and employment levels in these communities. It is a topic of some discussion but very little debate (at least I believe so) because people do not want to say something that is misunderstood and casts the speaker in a negative light, although the letters to the editor in several newspapers from Perth to Sydney said things that nobody was saying on the TV or radio. People here are of good will and are upset and/or embarrassed at things that happened in the past (such as taking the children away), but not necessarily clear on how to better integrate Aboriginals into modern Australian society. I need to mention that they have a flag that I expect we will see more of outside Australia in the years to come - it looks like a German flag if a German had the self-awareness to say "Hey, pretty much every European flag is three vertical lines or three horizontal lines. Maybe we could put a circle in ours." (see below)

The net of all this is that one can be exposed to Aboriginal culture every day with placards of legends and town names, but you do have to go out of your way to be in direct contact with Aborigines.

Moving on... Port Macquarie has a Starbucks. No idea why - maybe it makes sense to put all the distribution between Adelaide and Brisbane, but they do. I pulled up and Alex saw it and said "coffee!" - I had not mentioned that I needed coffee but he has known Starbucks for a while. We also went to the Info Center in town to figure out what we're going to do here. Anyhow, here are a few photos around there and the town center. We drove by a couple beaches buy today has been a very slow day. I have had a headache since my wrestling match with Alex at naptime yesterday (now I have a fever, so I guess it is bad form to blame him for that). These last two photos below are of Flynn's Beach - a 3 minute walk from our room.

So Port Macquarie is a pretty chilled out place, but there will be enough for us to stay occupied for another 4 days: Koala park, wild west stuff, Lake Cathie, camels, river cruises, maybe a trip inland to the mountains.

Next: one of those things I just listed