From Outlaws to Bludgers, with a Bright Enough Future

[Brisbane, 6/10/24]

To be a tiny footnote two centuries after your death is an accomplishment in itself. In Old Bailey, London, John Hudson was a parentless chimneysweep. At nine-years-old, he broke into a house one night to snatch clothing and a pistol. Exiled to seven years in the “continent of sin” and “land of deformity” (Robert Hughes), he mutinied before departure, but was recaptured. On 1/20/1788, Hudson arrived in New South Wales after a 250-day journey that had claimed 48 lives. On Norfolk Island in March of 1790, a 16-year-old Hudson was caught outside his hut after 9PM, so had to endure 50 lashes. He made it back to Port Jackson (Sydney) by 1792, and was possibly there in 1795. That’s it for this minor tragedy.

In his magnificent The Fatal Shore, Hughes gives the impression Hudson was nine when dumped here. In a book of so many facts, some are bound to be off. As for the oldest convict, Hughes correctly cites Dorothy Handland. He goes with the highest estimate for her age in 1786, 82. Newgate Gaol recorded her as 60-years-young.

Her sentence served, Handland bobbled back to Cork, Ireland in February of 1794. Not, however, according to Hughes, “In 1789, in a fit of befuddled despair, she was to hang herself from a gum tree at Sydney Cove, thus becoming Australia’s first recorded suicide.” Even without bad intents, history is slippery.

There’s a beer here, James Squire One Fifty Lashes. On the can is a cat o’ nine tails. Despite its brutal name, it’s a pale ale with “fruity aromas of passion fruit, grapefruit and citrus,” so these are lashes delivered by some leather thonged queer inside a pink lit dungeon, not the kind poor John Hudson got.

Soft epicures in nut cracking jeans can still bask in Oz’s convict past. By the Brisbane River, they sprawl on beanbags sipping Felons beer. “Our brewery finds its name from the true tale of four felons, who, in 1823, on their way to Illawarra from Sydney were blown off course and found themselves lost at sea, ended up shipwrecked up north on Moreton Island. Their thirst for adventure and freedom lives on today in our beer—proudly brewed for the people of Brisbane […] life doesn’t get much better than this. Cheers!”

Among convicts, those from the educated and moneyed class were known as “Specials.” Sneering at others, they were despised. Hughes, “Probably the rank-and-file convicts’ resentment of Specials helped consolidate the prejudice, long to be felt in Australia, against brainworkers as ‘bludgers’ or social parasites.” With few factories left, Aussies are mostly employed in offices, so they’re bludgers by self-definition. In rural areas, hicks still sweat in the sun. Immigrants fill service jobs.

You’re fucked if you’re a man who can’t stand staring at a screen all day in air conditioning or chirp, over and over, “Can I help you?” This bias against being cooped up was inculcated into schoolkids. They read these Banjo Patterson lines from 1889:

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

Eighty seven percent of Aussies now live in cities. It’s more urbanized than Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan. I wonder if these Dorothea Mackellar lines from 1908 are still read?

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

In “My Country,” a 48 line poem of 239 words, there are no humans! Aussies are enraptured by their near empty continent. It’s a blank canvas where everything is possible.

In Hughes’ loving portrait of Oz, the most passionate passages are about the landscape and its fauna. Suphur-crested cockatoos are said to “flirt their crests erect into nimbi of golden spokes like Aztec headdresses. These raucous dandies assembled in flocks of hundreds which, settling on a dead gum tree, would cover its silvery limbs in what seemed to be a thick blooming of white flowers; until, at the moment of alarm, the blossoms would re-form into birds and return screeching into the sky.”

Cities mean rules. In orderly and clean Brisbane, most citizens wait at crosswalks even when there’s no traffic. With six times Philadelphia’s population, Australia has just over half its murders. Used to the ghetto swagger and gait, I find Brisbaners mellow and relaxed. Here comes a schoolgirl in uniform on her scooter. Lying on sun splashed grass, a young couple laugh and caress. With skyscrapers as backdrop, the casually dressed buy ice cream from a truck called Kreamed. At a curve edged pool, Tongan children splashed. Hunting for garbage, long beaked ibises eye and probe. Showboating hairy legs, a purse strapped man in a billowy miniskirt crosses the street. A large sign advertises Hey Fella! “Your online gay doctor.”

My friend Mark recounts a telling episode from his days as a taxi driver. At a Redfern intersection in Sydney, a shirtless aborigine opened his passenger door to promptly snatch his rider’s purse.

“What a dickhead!” Mark exclaimed.

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that!” she retorted. “He’s just a poor man in a rich man’s world.”

In her mid-20’s, she got off at the University of Sydney. Lugging her books, she left the cab still huffing over Mark’s insensitivity.

Believing China could be reached by land, many convicts wandered off into the interior, only to have their bones picked clean by crows and dingos. Dreaming of green tea though not necessarily pork lo mien, they lay on their back with their throat burning to stare at an infernal sun. In the 21st century, Asia has been brought here, so no need to risk death for excellent pad Thai, Peking duck, sushi or pho. Yesterday, Mark and I had some beef soup at Bake N Grill. Within a ten minute walk were six other Vietnamese joints.

I keep telling Mark, “It’s so calming here.” We agree Australia has the least alarming future among Anglo states. Mark, “Maybe we’re just five years behind.”

Oz has mineral wealth and still good trade relationship with China. Unlike Canada, it’s not next to a crime racked and increasingly volatile USA. I woudn’t advise buying a house in Windsor, Ontario! Homicidal rappers aren’t worshipped. There’s no child star turned into a naked freak swinging on a wrecking ball. Granted, American culture is a presence, but there are other influences.

While in Namibia, I saw horrible footage of Aussie cops beating anti-vaxx protestors, but those incidents were limited to Melbourne. Greenlighting such barbarity hasn’t prevented Daniel Andrews from receiving this country’s top award, Companion of the Order of Australia. Most Aussies are appalled by this recognition.

Sitting on a bench, I eat a steak and mushy peas pie. Its crust and gravy are unpretentious and true. The beef, though, is wagyu, so an improvement. I’ve also had wasabi flavored cheese here. Like everywhere else, Australia evolves.

[Brisbane, 6/9/24]

[Brisbane, 6/8/24]

[Brisbane, 6/8/24]

[Brisbane, 6/8/24]