Images copyright Stormboy 2014.
x sarah toa
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Robert Neil's Snakes, 1840
Torn-ock, Tukyte, N. Name. Venemous. Length of specimen 4 foot 9 inches
Williamlungar N. Name not venemous
Norn, N. Name. Psuedohaje nigra. Male (?) Venemous - deadly
Specimen 3 3/4 feet long
Kirry-gura, Williamlungar, N. Name.But doubtful if poisonous.
Bardick, N. Name.
coronatus, latin. Venemous but not dreaded by the Aborigines.
Diamond Backed Snake.Aren't they beautiful? I've only labelled them with what I could decipher. N. Name means Nyungar Name. In my next post I'll tell the tale of Robert Neil, Bob and the Fish Pics.
Pictures courtesy of the British Museum of Natural History.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Pumpkin Scones, Joh Dear?
“A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in."
H L Mencken
In a campaign spearheaded by politicians and lovingly supported by such journalistic luminaries as The West Australian and The Sunday Times, the West Australian police have announced a 'Dob in a Bikie' Day.
That's correct. We're not talking about Nazi Germany or The Axis of Evil, it's just bikies and everyone hates them anyway, according to the West. So it's okay. Let's all pick up the phone and dob the bastards in.
“We don’t want to know who you are, we just want to know what you know about bikies, their activities, their friends and associates,” Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Gregson said.
“Even something as innocuous as car or motorcycle registration numbers, bikies’ colours (patches) and their places of employment could all make a difference.”
So we can now dob in anyone wearing a dishrag on their jacket for driving a car, riding a motorcycle or having a job.
Does anyone else find this frightening?
Does anyone else find even scarier the fact that police already have the names, addresses and bike rego numbers of most bikies in the state - but now they want us to join in?
A print and radio advertising campaign, encouraging the public to "phone in a bikie'', will be used, rather than the words "dob-in''. So if we pick up the phone as part of our West Australian civic duty, we won't actually be 'dobbing', because market research has discovered that this is seen as being 'Un-Australian' and we are not un-Australian, just West Australian.
I like the word 'dob'. Lets call it what it is.
WA's Police Minister Rob ("Does my face look thin in this?") Johnson says bikies have been fooling the public into believing they are members of a social club, when in fact they belong to highly organised and sophisticated criminal organisations. (ABC local)
Much attention has been paid to the outlaw clubs' appetite for organised crime but an Australian outlaw motorcycle club has never actually been successfully prosecuted under organised crime laws. Most bikies will state that individuals may commit crimes but not under the banner of the club they belong to.
If this is not the case and the police argue otherwise, then Detective Sergeant David Caphorn, Don Hancock, Roger Rogerson, those two West Australian policemen charged with a sex attack during the Victorian bushfires and Detective Sergeant Shervill are all participants in a criminal organisation, having used their position within an organised structure to (allegedly) commit rape, murder, withholding evidence or just plainclothes covering it up.
Stylistically, the police and outlaw motorcycle clubs have a few things in common. They are groups with a rigid structure of rank and a militant ethos, albeit an opposing ideology and a mutual dislike. "They have become natural enemies, to the point clubs regard the police as a gang, driven by the same motives as any other gang - power and domination," writes Arthur Veno in The Brotherhood.
This is a digression really, an interesting one but I'm not going there today.
Check out the Criminal Investigation (Exceptional Powers) and Fortification Removal Act, 2002. There was little outcry from West Australians when that doozie went through, thanks to a rabid scary-bikies campaign by the only newspaper in town.
Some of these laws revoke the right to silence, the right to privilige against self-incrimination and provides police with powers to enter a premises without a warrant and to photograph, search and detain for questioning anyone found there.
There's still a Sedition legislation festering in the law archives, thanks to scary-terrorists. As far as I know, that one hasn't been repealed with the changing of the guard.
It took a media and public groundswell to help politicians pass these acts, acts that affect every single one of us. They are not passed in secret.
It makes me terribly sad to think that we are so bovine as to let an insidious little monstrocity such as 'Dob in a Bikie Day' slide by, without throwing ourselves on the floor and screaming until we turn blue. Are we so well trained by the media's cattle prod to accept these undignified transgressions of our own society?
H L Mencken
In a campaign spearheaded by politicians and lovingly supported by such journalistic luminaries as The West Australian and The Sunday Times, the West Australian police have announced a 'Dob in a Bikie' Day.
That's correct. We're not talking about Nazi Germany or The Axis of Evil, it's just bikies and everyone hates them anyway, according to the West. So it's okay. Let's all pick up the phone and dob the bastards in.
“We don’t want to know who you are, we just want to know what you know about bikies, their activities, their friends and associates,” Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Gregson said.
“Even something as innocuous as car or motorcycle registration numbers, bikies’ colours (patches) and their places of employment could all make a difference.”
So we can now dob in anyone wearing a dishrag on their jacket for driving a car, riding a motorcycle or having a job.
Does anyone else find this frightening?
Does anyone else find even scarier the fact that police already have the names, addresses and bike rego numbers of most bikies in the state - but now they want us to join in?
A print and radio advertising campaign, encouraging the public to "phone in a bikie'', will be used, rather than the words "dob-in''. So if we pick up the phone as part of our West Australian civic duty, we won't actually be 'dobbing', because market research has discovered that this is seen as being 'Un-Australian' and we are not un-Australian, just West Australian.
I like the word 'dob'. Lets call it what it is.
WA's Police Minister Rob ("Does my face look thin in this?") Johnson says bikies have been fooling the public into believing they are members of a social club, when in fact they belong to highly organised and sophisticated criminal organisations. (ABC local)
Much attention has been paid to the outlaw clubs' appetite for organised crime but an Australian outlaw motorcycle club has never actually been successfully prosecuted under organised crime laws. Most bikies will state that individuals may commit crimes but not under the banner of the club they belong to.
If this is not the case and the police argue otherwise, then Detective Sergeant David Caphorn, Don Hancock, Roger Rogerson, those two West Australian policemen charged with a sex attack during the Victorian bushfires and Detective Sergeant Shervill are all participants in a criminal organisation, having used their position within an organised structure to (allegedly) commit rape, murder, withholding evidence or just plainclothes covering it up.
Stylistically, the police and outlaw motorcycle clubs have a few things in common. They are groups with a rigid structure of rank and a militant ethos, albeit an opposing ideology and a mutual dislike. "They have become natural enemies, to the point clubs regard the police as a gang, driven by the same motives as any other gang - power and domination," writes Arthur Veno in The Brotherhood.
This is a digression really, an interesting one but I'm not going there today.
Check out the Criminal Investigation (Exceptional Powers) and Fortification Removal Act, 2002. There was little outcry from West Australians when that doozie went through, thanks to a rabid scary-bikies campaign by the only newspaper in town.
Some of these laws revoke the right to silence, the right to privilige against self-incrimination and provides police with powers to enter a premises without a warrant and to photograph, search and detain for questioning anyone found there.
There's still a Sedition legislation festering in the law archives, thanks to scary-terrorists. As far as I know, that one hasn't been repealed with the changing of the guard.
It took a media and public groundswell to help politicians pass these acts, acts that affect every single one of us. They are not passed in secret.
It makes me terribly sad to think that we are so bovine as to let an insidious little monstrocity such as 'Dob in a Bikie Day' slide by, without throwing ourselves on the floor and screaming until we turn blue. Are we so well trained by the media's cattle prod to accept these undignified transgressions of our own society?
Monday, June 8, 2009
Enter The GERMINATORS
It was a dark, dark moon when the Germinators, a most handsome, attractive, intelligent, sexy and charismatic selection of our local community, performed their first clandestine operation two weeks ago.
This anonymous group of Bombardiers bombed the Esplanade Hotel site, a derelict, cyclone fenced monstrosity, with balls of nefarious substances - namely clay, fertiliser and SEEDS. Lots of SEEDS - sunflowers, poppies, pumpkins, alyssum, chicory, parsley, rocket - so many different kinds of seeds that the lists goes on way too long for this post. (And I don't want yawns.)
It was highly secretive operation and so the combatants, many of them local celebrities, had to mask up.
The after-party was even better (I am told). Lots of ideas about what name such a group subversive, attractive activists were tossed around.
"Guerrillas in the Mids!"
"The Inseminaters!"
"Tossers!"
It was also decided, over some light substance abuse and post-mortem excitement, that these activists would buy some cheap Russian or Burmese discarded tanks, with the aim of better distributing beautiful flowers to the fertile earth of ugly places.
Model aeroplanes and remote control four wheel drives, for reconnaissance and distribution purposes would also be employed.
Mrs Yin is currently in talks with the Burmese military. Every other (beautiful and highly intelligent) Germinator is now gainfully employed making mud pies in preparation for their next attack.
This anonymous group of Bombardiers bombed the Esplanade Hotel site, a derelict, cyclone fenced monstrosity, with balls of nefarious substances - namely clay, fertiliser and SEEDS. Lots of SEEDS - sunflowers, poppies, pumpkins, alyssum, chicory, parsley, rocket - so many different kinds of seeds that the lists goes on way too long for this post. (And I don't want yawns.)
It was highly secretive operation and so the combatants, many of them local celebrities, had to mask up.
The after-party was even better (I am told). Lots of ideas about what name such a group subversive, attractive activists were tossed around.
"Guerrillas in the Mids!"
"The Inseminaters!"
"Tossers!"
It was also decided, over some light substance abuse and post-mortem excitement, that these activists would buy some cheap Russian or Burmese discarded tanks, with the aim of better distributing beautiful flowers to the fertile earth of ugly places.
Model aeroplanes and remote control four wheel drives, for reconnaissance and distribution purposes would also be employed.
Mrs Yin is currently in talks with the Burmese military. Every other (beautiful and highly intelligent) Germinator is now gainfully employed making mud pies in preparation for their next attack.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Crab Bait Hurts Me
I am
part human
part trumpeter.
There are so many
trumpeter spines in my
calloused hands and those pricks
grow part of me.
Part trumpeter
part human
am I.
part human
part trumpeter.
There are so many
trumpeter spines in my
calloused hands and those pricks
grow part of me.
Part trumpeter
part human
am I.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Venus of Breaksea Island
Evening. The smell of rain on limestone, a clear, clean smell. Above their camp the trees turned to bone and their white roots forked through the carved away spaces where earth used to be. The ground below was like a bone midden with their broken pieces.
It was quieter up there, on the spine of the mountain. Hook waited for the muttonbirds to return to their sandy nests. He picked the oily, fishy meat from the bones of one of their chicks. Several sails pegged into the ground behind him rose over his head, propped up with gnarled peppermint logs. They camped facing north.
After eating, he wove sleeping mats from the strap leaves of rushes; a womanish pursuit but no one else would do it. The Van Diemonian women too handy with a fowling piece and club to worry about weaving mats, the Menang woman too broken to do anything but stare at her bloodied knees. The girl, Weed, helped him.
She sang funny little songs and looked over to Hook’s hands occasionally, to see how she was going.
The muttonbird mothers began to wheel in, black and angular against the pinkening sky. Suddenly, within maybe twenty laces of the rush, thousands of birds thickened the air and the noise grew; chip wheep, chip wheep, chip weep, looking for their babies, until the sky above the limestone ridge wass hectic with their dark, arcing forms.
Later, the penguins began. Then, the song of a singular whistling man in four or five notes. Venus rose.
“Simmons told me that the Captain of that ship,” the black jack Robert Williams nodded his head towards the Astrolabe, still visible moored in the bay to the west, “was famous in their home land for finding Venus in a field in Greece.” When he did speak, Williams was frugal with words, measuring them out like precious shot. They listened.
“She was six feet tall, marble, and as beautiful as the inside of a shell. Her ears were pierced and she held an apple in her hand. He pulled her from the earth, from a tomb.”
“And here, the Captain finds no monuments to antiquity, but mullet, muttonbirds and blackfellas smeared in fish oil and red clay with feathers in their hair,” said Jimmy the Needle.
“Venus,” said Randall. “The oldest whore in the world.”
“First whore out at night and the last to leave!” Samuel Bailey finished for him, with a laugh.
“Meremere!” Said Hook.
“Manilyan!” said Moennan out of the half-light. They all stared at her as she sat dark and huddled.
She was so cold. She yearned for their fire. She missed the warm bodies of her sisters.
The Van Diemonian women eyed her, doubtfully. They remembered that first night, before they were granted the precarious safety of ownership.
It was quieter up there, on the spine of the mountain. Hook waited for the muttonbirds to return to their sandy nests. He picked the oily, fishy meat from the bones of one of their chicks. Several sails pegged into the ground behind him rose over his head, propped up with gnarled peppermint logs. They camped facing north.
After eating, he wove sleeping mats from the strap leaves of rushes; a womanish pursuit but no one else would do it. The Van Diemonian women too handy with a fowling piece and club to worry about weaving mats, the Menang woman too broken to do anything but stare at her bloodied knees. The girl, Weed, helped him.
She sang funny little songs and looked over to Hook’s hands occasionally, to see how she was going.
The muttonbird mothers began to wheel in, black and angular against the pinkening sky. Suddenly, within maybe twenty laces of the rush, thousands of birds thickened the air and the noise grew; chip wheep, chip wheep, chip weep, looking for their babies, until the sky above the limestone ridge wass hectic with their dark, arcing forms.
Later, the penguins began. Then, the song of a singular whistling man in four or five notes. Venus rose.
“Simmons told me that the Captain of that ship,” the black jack Robert Williams nodded his head towards the Astrolabe, still visible moored in the bay to the west, “was famous in their home land for finding Venus in a field in Greece.” When he did speak, Williams was frugal with words, measuring them out like precious shot. They listened.
“She was six feet tall, marble, and as beautiful as the inside of a shell. Her ears were pierced and she held an apple in her hand. He pulled her from the earth, from a tomb.”
“And here, the Captain finds no monuments to antiquity, but mullet, muttonbirds and blackfellas smeared in fish oil and red clay with feathers in their hair,” said Jimmy the Needle.
“Venus,” said Randall. “The oldest whore in the world.”
“First whore out at night and the last to leave!” Samuel Bailey finished for him, with a laugh.
“Meremere!” Said Hook.
“Manilyan!” said Moennan out of the half-light. They all stared at her as she sat dark and huddled.
She was so cold. She yearned for their fire. She missed the warm bodies of her sisters.
The Van Diemonian women eyed her, doubtfully. They remembered that first night, before they were granted the precarious safety of ownership.
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