http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2010/12/06/199001_ntnews.html

FARMERS are going to take the spotlight with 2012 to be the Year of the Farmer which is good, as while they are not a endangered species they are a dying breed. But what about helping to save a definite threatened species? The year of the whatever it is in Australia is a bit of a free-for-all, whoever yells the loudest gets to grab it for their own promotion. Do you think 2011 should be the Year of the Ranga? Australian Farmer of the Year Chairman Philip Bruem said they would strive to reposition the role of the farmer. In 1990 there were more than 150,000 farmers in Australia, last year there were 120,000 and recently we hit our lowest sheep numbers since 1905, with just 67 million. We need to declare 2011 as the Year of the Ranga, or Year of the Red Head. Your Say “Celebrating something that has evolved from a MUTANT GENE seems undignified to me.How ’bout we call for an open season on rangas instead !!!” BigTone With 2010 having been the Year of the Seafarer you can see how blindingly successful such a promotion can be. Who hasn’t gone out and patted a seafarer on the back and said: “Good work Tiger.” A 2007 National Geographic feature claimed that rangas could be wiped from the planet in 100 years. This is based on the theory that less than two per cent of the world’s population have natural red hair and globalisation – which makes more partners available in different spots – means gingers will not meet other gingers in pubs as often. This reduces the chance of alcohol-fuelled ginger production. While one red-haired parent can produce a red-haired child, two redheads produce more bundles of red joy. It should be easy to make next year the Year of the Ranga as the only group that seems to be making claims are the University of Western Australia’s Year of Mathematics. This would seem to be more about tearing society apart than anything good. They describe it as a series of educational, thought-provoking and entertaining events where people of all ages can explore the exciting world of mathematics and the array of opportunities that exist. Which is just a blatant lie. How many former mathematicians are now homeless, broken down and derelict after they realised high end mathematics served no purpose at all? Save the ranga, celebrate – and perhaps breed with them – in 2011.

www.crikey.com.au/2010/11/18/media-briefs-leckies-going-nowhere-aussie-media-dine-out-on-royal-wedding/

And my so loyal NT News readers: http//tools.ntnews.com.au/yoursay/comment_all.php?article_id=194931&full_name=&email=&location_name=&remember_me=&email_me=Latest Comments:

Printed in NT News, Darwin

November 18, 2010

www.ntnews.com.au/article/2010/11/18/194931_ntnews.html

HUMPTY Doo bloke Les Schultz would say, “G’day darlin”‘ and then treat the future Mrs Windsor, Princess Kate, well, like a princess.

Les has ideas for the wedding between Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales and the chick named Kate.

He has a five-year-old tame buffalo cow name Beverley who he has promised to let his mate from Casino, NSW, Jimmy Roache marry. It’s a long story.

“He’s been talking about it for a while … his wife is sick of him down there so he may as well be up here married to Beverley.”

Les reckons the young couple should head out to his place and they can have a double wedding, next to the verandah by the pool. Just in case Beverley gets thirsty during the ceremony.

Have you got any good ideas for the royal wedding?

Breaking news: Kim has cancer.
“I hope the old journalism adage of grabbing the reader’s attention from the first line has been successful in this
situation. “So, now that I (hopefully) have your attention, it’s true. “I have cancer.” This is how I recently found
out she has cancer.
Facebook.

I liked it.

Not the cancer but the style.

It was the words of a journalist.

Yes, get their attention straight away cause if you don’t you will never get them to the end of the yarn, even if you are telling your mates you have cancer.
I guess it is Kim. A hard arse in petite blonde. She will like that description.

But Kim, 50kg is not fat, especially accounting for a tumor the size of a football.

More hard arse than I ever could be.

We were journos together is a sweat shop newspaper in Shepparton in Australia, a place where you start breeding and exist or you inebriate at the pub to forget you live in an agricultural industrial wasteland splatter surrounded by fruit trees and dairy cows.
We were dark and cynical always. Even though we worked on a country rag. Cynical and dark in a way that
was polar to the folksy community rag image the owners put across.
But death on the front page sold like nothing else and we all knew it.
And in “Stabberton” death and destruction was around. Covering agricultural shows or school productions for the
third year running was punctuated by late night call outs to see a truck driver pile driven into the earth after he ran
off the road. And all you see is his boots to his knees sticking out of the ground. You find ways to deal with that.
It may involved 12 scotches but it also helped to forge dismissive darkness to deal with death. Perversely death
and destruction were involuntary adrenaline, a pulse when life had been drained by the banality of the rest.
All tragedy could be joked about; heads severed by Samurai swords: arms legs and heads cut off with power
saws; a local legend stunt pilot crashing and burning almost in our car park; or a dead baby in a bag. When the
police scanner said a two car “code 12” we presumed someone was dead and journos jumped out of their seats.
We called it a fatal, as did the police. When I started on the well removed “farmer’s paper” I refused to call it a fatal,
I called it death. But when I became part of the death round in the big paper they unconsciously became fatals.
Fatal was clinical which removed the death We chose our circles for our jokes carefully. The advertising
department would never get it. Same for everyone outside the newsroom. The cops did.
But even death became banal after a while. It can be when you shut it out. I don’t know what that makes us but
I felt quite normal. I was a person before I was a journo. Our cynicism extended to “cancer journeys” My uncle
died of a brain tumor. But in newspapers you can be overwhelmed with too inspiring stories about cancer. It all
felt like too much spin. The awful was often removed and it seemed courage and a positive outlook was all you
needed. There never seemed room to be bloody scared and a bloody mess. It was artificial and the word
courageous had no meaning for me. Never heard the honesty of the horrific fear of death from the thing that was
eating you from the inside.
What choice do you have, your instinct wants you to keep on living.
You shut down you die. I did not know if that was courage. But I have never had cancer. I have never been close
to courageous. One night after a few too many drinks at a Christmas party with the emergency services a police
sergeant said to me casually, “Sorry I didn’t tell you, but we only just found the body.” “What body?” “Out on
Ford Rd, in an irrigation channel.” A dodgy excused exit and the call was made. Death was on the front page
again. Kim turned up ready for beer but we were on the death beat. She is shorter than me and I am not a hill let
along a mountain. She was accused that night of “chesting” a old cop as we drove around in the dark looking for
the headless body scene. She, didn’t (well I was a little drunk so don’t remember so clearly) but she is tough.
Now Kim is facing death. She may have the “lucky” cancer, lymphoma, where the chances of recovery with
chemo are good. But it may not be.
She may die. And being tough may not be enough. And it scares me, partly selfishly as I see myself as mortal
in a way that I did not when death was work. I knew it was different reading her message when I felt death when
as a journo I had not. I wrote lots of articles based on a “death knock”. That is when you knock on the door in
a cold call of a family who has just had a family member die. Even if their head and life had been stolen by a
Samurai sword. And you ask them to talk about the dead one.
Surprising many wanted to speak to a stranger with a note pad. We called it a “tribute” story, celebrating the life
of the person we did not know.
Although I did it seriously and respectfully, I was unsure of it and still am but people spoke, a last chance at life,
if only in print. What did we say when we knocked on the door? We joked of a longer termer’s stock line: “I am
very sorry for your loss.” It seemed so forced and so fake.
I did not offer condolences. How could you? My worst was as chief of staff a pleading woman rang to say her
son was missing. I asked her if she had told police. She hadn’t. She rang back a few days later same request,
same question same answer. A few weeks later in meeting to decide what went in the paper another journo came
in and asked if the name of a dead man found rang a bell as she heard it on the radio news. He had been
murdered.
That night I drove to a small town nearby for a death knock on the woman who had called me. I still remember
his name. They did not let us in or speak to us but I rang “around” and I wrote the story. But to Kim’s message
I did not know what to write. I joked about “ I am very sorry for your loss”. And wrote, “I hope you don’t die?”
I was hoping the journo bond would make it work. I panicked and wrote again to apologise. But she got it. I still
don’t know what to say. I bet she is scared. Not that I know as she is upbeat. Maybe that is courage. But we
joked and began to write her obituary. “Kim was very cynical about cancer journeys, ironically…” That was
written before I got this.
“Hi kids, “…So here I am in ward 9C at the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg, where I’m expected to stay for about
three months, give or take a few days off for good behaviour. “…Last Thursday about 2pm, I got a call from the
oncologist at Ballarat Base who told me the results of my biopsy were in and I had to come back immediately.
In I went, where I was told an ambulance was on its way from the Austin, where I would need to go for immediate
treatment. I have the most aggressive of all the lymphomas, a very rare type known as Burkitt’s Lymphoma
(according to the stats on the Leukaemia Foundation’s website, there are only 12 new cases diagnosed in
Australia each year). It attacks and multiplies with such haste it can be fatal within five weeks.
“Due to that fact, treatment is equally aggressive. Rather than the usual once per fortnight chemotherapy regime
most lymphoma patients undertake, I on Saturday started the first of a daily regime, which will continue, with
breaks to allow my blood levels to recover, for the next two to three months. “The life of a cancer patient I have
discovered however, is high after low. By Sunday night the mass in my stomach had grown so large it was
crushing my diaphragm, making breathing a chore and sleeping flat impossible. However, five intensive days of
chemo later however and all has virtually returned to normal. I can breathe deeply and barely feel the mass. The
doctors seem pleased with its retreat. But that also comes with the danger it will break down too fast, causing my
kidneys to fail as they race to expel the cancerous cells from my body, a condition know as tumor lysis.
“Additionally, the doctors told me yesterday the tumor has also encroached upon my bowel far more than first
thought and I have now been banned from eating.
“From today I am being fed via a drip, most likely for the entirety of the
chemotherapy treatment…In a week, my hair is expected to start falling out. But
all will be worth it if at the end of this time I can walk out of here alive. They are
still telling me there’s about an 80 per cent chance of that happening but there’s a
lot of hurdles to jump yet. “The reason I’m writing is that I’d love to hear from you
all if you can spare a minute to write. Obviously I have my good days and my
bad, so if I don’t respond for a couple of days, you will know why…” I could tell
you more about Kim and like most journos, though most deny, she loves being
central. It is about her. Intelligent, pretty, (though she has quite large thumbs) and
fair and upfront but you don’t know her and words can’t tell about her. But good
writers show, they don’t tell. I hope I have. I could scold her about using clichés.
I hope she has time to learn

The priests where I work have taken the Immaculate Conception idea too far. They sold one of the bulls.The other bull – Bishop Belo – while keen, cannot be in two places at once despite his single mindedness.It make me think these guys need to squeeze in at least a brief birds and the bees talk into their 14 years training for the priesthood.I am one of those adviser types,  working at the Fuiloro Technical and Agricultural school dairy project near Lospalos, started by some of those enthusiastic Australian types.My dad who sent some of his cows Fuiloro way dropped by Timor recently.He shook his head in a “I’m glad our are neighbours back home are not here to see this,” way when I told him I lost a bull.I think he was about to give the when a mummy cow and a daddy cow really love each other talk.We drove Timor looking for a replacement. Bull, not son.With Fuiloro the only dairy farm in Timor, you’d think bulls would be as scarce as a taxi after dark in Dili.Turns out bulls are scattered around the country like Easter Eggs. Big black and white hooven Easter eggs in the shape of bulls hidden by a very sadistic bunny.We found some small ones at the Don Bosco Fatumaca school near Baucau but they would need step ladders, a packed lunch and a compass and the when a mummy cow and a daddy cow really love each other talk before they could get the job done.We searched for another with a torch and a padre at midnight in a rice field at Laga. But he must have been hiding behind a buffalo because we never saw him.We ended up in the Dare badlands in the Dili hills I a bush bashing bovine buka and Sparrow Forced it into the jungle.We were looking for the Puslawita training centre and I had ridiculous certainty I knew where it was; keep to the right after the café, stick to the left after the church and turn off to the right.I had sort of expected a sign or a building.Silly, silly malae.We were heartened by chicken noise, thinking for some reason it would lead us to bulls, which is about as sensible as asking a walrus to juggle. Of course, in the jungle, the chicken is the natural predator of the bull.Pure advisor logic.Then  we hit a bracken cocooned trail, made by hunting chickens presumably, the sort not used by Australians since World War II.Twice we came across blokes, probably not expecting their day to collide with bull seeking wack jobs. But what do I know, maybe they were out spotting potential bull purchasers.“Ïta hatene karau susubeen aman bot sira iha nebee?” or a similar special person interpretation of  “Do you know where the big dairy bulls are?”A fine question for a stranger in the jungle.“Over there”.Over there proved as clear as two plus two equals five.And soon our trail was blocked by a spider as big as a tractor.I thought the cows could get themselves pregnant if I had to deal with Massey Spiderson.Now dad is a bit of an old hobbly mongrel after too many years pulling teats and got a new Terminator knee last year. He has about as much leg drive as a Mikrolet up Mount Ramelau and he was puffing like no magic dragon.Face with the eight tractor spider eyes I swallowed selflessness and punted on the opposite direction leaving dear old Hobbles at Massey Spiderson base camp to have a deskansa or a fight to the death with an arachnoid with the gland problem. My money was on the one with the legs not the one with the bionic knee.I was worried that if I lead dear old Hobbles any further into the jungle looking for King Solomon’s bulls at some point I would have to pull a screen around him and put him down.I pushed on the whispers of the bulls in the bush, also thinking that if I went too much further I would have to eat Hobbles to survive the trip out and lying my way out of it“Yeah mum I have some good and some bad news. We found a bull but dad’s plane went down in the Timor Sea. No survivors. I’m sure it was quick.”I was crawling on the jungle floor, thrashing with wrath at shadows and bracken and bracken shadows with my machete when I saw her, or him, or them hims really.The secret bull breeding grounds of Dare.A beefcake bovine bonanza carved out of the jungle on the side of a mountain. And there were these two old mates feeding five bulls like it was just part of the usual daily mountain jungle grind. Cut your way in with a machete, clock in, feed the bulls, clock out, hack your way back out.Just doing what ya got to do to put rice on the table.Their workmates must have said, “We’re going out to see if they want us to keep on going here, you wait here. Whatever you do, keep feeding these bulls and don’t leave. We’ll be back soon.”And that was 1982.And old mates were feeding and waiting, feeding and waiting“.“They’ll be back”.  “I’m sure they’ll be back”.  Do you think they’ll be back?‘I crawled back and got dear old Hobbles.The manager didn’t show any surprise that a sweating malae crawled out of the jungle and asked if he could see his bulls, then crawled back into the jungle and came back out with an older, dearer, hobblier malae to have a look too.But that is dairying in Timor, not short of strange and unexpected bull.When we do buy one of those bulls, we are going to have get the UN to airlift it out because we came in the front gate.

Andre Booth

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Australia’s failure to consult Indonesia about an asylum processing centre in East Timor is likely to exacerbate tensions between our two northern neighbours.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith arrived in Indonesiayesterday, with talks on the issue anticipated. Officials here won’t say it, but it was wrong of Australia not to consult Indonesia on its policy.

Indonesian Institute of Sciences researcher Dr Tri Nuke Pudjiastut said South-East Asian countries should not assist asylum seekers in isolation. “We should be dealing with this as ASEAN. Indonesia should bring this problem to ASEAN.”

Yarn continues at http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/indonesia-fears-influx-from-timor-solution-20100714-10ahb.html

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The vote by East Timor’s parliament yesterday to oppose the establishment of an Australian off-shore asylum seeker processing centre should not have come as a surprise. Parliamentarians from the government and opposition have been saying they were against the idea since it was announced last week.

The Australian government has certainly acted unperturbed by the vote, with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith saying the vote from the parliament did not necessarily reflect the position of the government. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has similarly said that the process is “going forward”.

Continues at http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/07/13/julia-might-be-going-forward-but-east-timor-is-standing-firm/

Stuart Rintoul

July 10, 2010

AS Australia tried to shift its refugee problem to Timor, Shirley Shackleton went to what might be her husband’s grave for the first time.

After visiting the grave, in which the charred remains of the Balibo Five, including her late husband, Greg Shackleton, are supposed to be in a small box, she told The Weekend Australian: “I can’t be honestly upset because there may be nothing in there.

“It’s dreadful to have that uncertainty. It’s cruel not to know.

“I don’t know what’s in there and neither does anyone else, except the people who colluded to hide them away in Jakarta.”

Yarn continues at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/open-east-timor-graves-says-balibo-widow/story-e6frg6nf-1225890008719

Australia says East Timor proposal still on track but at what cost?

East Timor’s parliament may have rejected it, but the Australian Government insists its proposal to set up a refugee processing centre in East Timor is on track. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says the East Timorese government is still open to the idea because the East Timorese parliament’s draft resolution was not unanimous. So what now for the proposal to use East Timor as a processing centre for asylum-seekers?

Presenter: Sen Lam

Speakers: James Dunn, former advisor to the U-N mission in East Timor

LAM: Do you agree with Foreign Minister Smith that parliament’s vote is not binding?

DUNN: It isn’t binding but it’s a very strong message and we would do well not to ignore it.

LAM: Well only 34 MPs voted as you know, but to your mind does that reflect the public’s view in East Timor? That an offshore asylum seeker processing centre is not welcome there?

DUNN: Well it would reflect, I don’t know how widespread the opinions would be, but I think it would reflect them to a large measure. Because as you know, as has been pointed out East Timor below the political surface is still rather unsettled, and there’s a general public feeling that things aren’t going well, there’s a greater distance between the community and the government because the government and of course those involved, the elite as it were, are doing much better, they’ve been given salary rises and so on, while (for) the ordinary people, conditions haven’t changed for them. So I think the test now would be to see what the government comes up with, and if that is rejected by the National Assembly then in fact, I don’t think we should go ahead with this.

Continues at http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/201007/s2952135.htm