As usual on my travels, I am starting to read biographies of people of the area. So far I've read John Passmore's "Semi Detached Australian" about the childhood and life of an Australian academic 1930s-2000; Norma Sims "Apprentice in Black Stockings" about the training years of an Australian nurse in the 1950s; and am half way through Eric Hedley Hayward's "No Free Kicks" which is the story of the family of an Aboriginal man and tells a lot about the treatment of indigeneous people from the 1920s to 2000 and his family obsession with Aussie Rules football. The best read so far is No Free Kicks, even if I'm not terribly interested in footy! The books I have chosen give a good spread of people's experience in the 20th century.
I came across Eric Hayward's book because he was one of the speakers at one of the welcome meetings. I found Eric to be a good speaker. At every introduction meeting chaired by the top university professors, there is an acknowledgement of the indigeneous people and their contribution and prior ownership of the land on which we are located. I'd be interested to find out what triggered this, when it started and what the audience make of it. I expect I will find this out when I start my class 'Private Lives and Public Issues'. We don't do anything like this in the UK, and the nearest we get to it in meetings at my workplace, was the safety announcement, explaining the fire exits.
On a more light-hearted note, this morning I was walking to the bus stop when two ladies came out of a house and jumped into their car. Nothing of great significance, except they jumped into a Thunderbird car, with the registration R GO. So the two ladies really could say "Thunderbirds are Go"!
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