Ambrose Ambles

 Twelve Caesars.

Book four..: Discourses on the 12 “Stations” of Christopher Corridini.

Part five.

Eleventh Station; Jesus dies on the cross.

On the ways and means of rising and falling in olden times farming the Murray Mallee.

Rosie’s Hut.

If you turn off the main road and travel around five furlongs .. in the old money .. down a dirt track called Kruger Road, you will come to Rosie’s Hut.

I first heard of Rosie’s Hut around .. oh .. fifteen year or so ago now … when we first brought this place from my Aunty … old Vera … you see, she had gotten old and was a bit crook, so her doctor advised her … quite strongly .. that she needed to move into the main town in the Barossa for the sake of her health … so she put this property on the market and we just happened to be looking for a dusty little spread out here in the mallee and bango! … Bob’s your uncle … so to speak.

Well, one side of the property backs onto Kruger Road, just a stone’s throw from Rosie’s Hut … so it wasn’t long before my curiosity got the better of me and I wandered over to have a squizz at the place.

“Hut” is probably the wrong description of the place … because it is too large and too well-built to be considered that .. but at the same time, it is just a one roomed building standing by itself without any other sheds or out buildings backing it up. But there, that’s what it is called .. sure an’ I did originally think the name was in relation to a woman’s name and I could let my imagination .. of which I have an over abundance .. conjure up an image of a past age, with a woman living out here in the hut … a woman with rich red hair .. of the Christina Rosetti type … an image of her as depicted by the Pre-Raphaelite painters … throw in a touch of Shirley MacLaine in “Irma la Douce” and you are getting somewhere near me.

Or perhaps as the Inn-keepers daughter in the poem “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes.

“The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding–
Riding–riding–
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.”

And so on it goes .. a lovely piece worth the read.

But in truth, there was no long-tressed woman to stand at the hut’s door, no blue-eyed daughter in the moonlight, no simpering eyes in the moonlight, to tempt a young man to share in the moonlight … the local knowledge of why Rosie’s Hut was there or why that name, took a little searching on my part over a span of these near fifteen years … for all those who lived through those early pioneering years have now passed away and have taken with them that knowledge of who, what and why these people and places existed … Except! . . .

Except … there were clues that gave it away .. the first was old Mr. Rosenswieg … he was the “Ted” in my story of “Ted and Edie dance the Rumba”… he was born around 1933 .. and he filled in the rest of the name from “Rosie” to Rosenswieg … hence .. : Rosenswieg’s Hut. Evidently another branch of his clan owned land around there but had disposed of it before he was born … But he did give me the next clue to the reason for the hut’s existence .. He told me that back in the early days of cropping here on the flats, in the late nineteenth century, some landholders did not actually live on the blocks, but rather would come down from their hills homesteads, bringing their workers, family and horses and assorted equipment for either sowing or harvesting … depending upon the season and would camp down on the flats paddocks while they did an intensive round of ploughing and seeding or harvesting and bagging the seed or sheathing the hay …

All the family including women and children were brought down to help with the labour-intensive work … the women to cook, the children to clear stones from the paddocks or feed the horses and that is why there was that one solid-built “hut” … to give the women and children shelter at night after doing the cooking and serving for the workmen and family … who slept in the thatched-roofed post and beam outbuildings.

It was a different life back in those days .. this area being known by its branded name : “Breakheart Country” … all hard work and muscle for both the men and the women, while the children also were expected to pitch in to help … I know about the children being there in the fields because I have record of one child from my German relatives family dying from burns because of being caught in the burning of the stubble that was practiced in those days before ploughing for the seeding season.

That explained the whys and wherefores, but not the confirming date of the construct and by association, the times of when those families stayed in the hut.

What threw me about the dimensions of the one-roomed hut, was, as a builder myself, the proportions and construct told me that this was no family home … not even in the pioneer sense .. I have experience of those pioneer settler’s houses … they are mostly of stone/post and beam with pug & pine walled infills. Rosie’s Hut was well built, the corner quoins not of local limestone nor a local granite, but layered large pieces of slate … this secured the corners of the building and held it fast for a long time, unlike other early buildings that fell down without the solid corner bonding .. The lime mortar placed the building in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but the machined roof timbers of Oregon and the stamped / branded roofing iron from England gave the date to around the turn of the twentieth century .. The clean walls of solid, lime plaster showed that there was never any room divisions and there was no evidence of wall plugging for cupboards … so the one big room, with a small fireplace with a large German vault-oven behind it showed this hut served as eating place after a hard, long days work and then the private sleeping quarters for the women and children, while the men slept in those thatched shed outbuildings …

It would seem that everything required for the month’s duration needed to seed or harvest the crop was brought down from the hill farm, including the slate building stones as there is no slate of any reasonable quality to be found on the flats .. I wrote of those days and the trials and tribulations here ..

Soil..:

Earth, dirt, soil and all that it contains for a healthy environment to live and plant, feed and prosper. There was a time when ALL peoples had a healthy respect for that piece of land that they lived upon. A sacred respect, a worshiped thing of unknown quantity with a reliable certainty that the Earth would provide.

Cut to the twentieth century, pre second world war..a time when self-sufficiency on the land was still considered a religious endowment from God. This was especially relevant among the Germanic settlers who came from the deep soils of Silesia / Posen with the start of the settlement of South Australia. Their Lutheran teachings humbly drew their faith toward the debt to their God that the soil in this new land was holy grist for their mills and families and communities. Seasonal festivals for sowing and harvest were celebrated with gifts placed near or upon their church altars, their stern benevolence conditional on the continuity of hand to plough to faith to harvest and reward for work done.

And the arbiter of all this source and supply was the Earth itself..the soils of the settled lands…in reality if not in recognition ; a Pagan celebration of Gaia .. Mother Earth.

“ She lives, she sees..her breath I breathe,

This Beauty ,

This island ; Earth.”

This was how it stood in those years before hire-purchase, compound interest mortgages and bank-loans became commonplace…When small holdings of farmland could support a single family with crops, chooks, a cow or two and the veggie patch to sustain a well-balanced diet and the household could get by on barter-exchange for what they did not produce with other farming families. I remember being told of one son, who upon joining the army in the time of the 2ndWW, literally sat down and wept when he received his first pay-packet with his own name on it…never before had he ever had money of his own.

The ownership of land gave you status within the district..With the working of the soil, you were considered one of the “ins” of the farming community..as against those who laboured for their living outside of ownership of land..these were the “outs”. Seen as spurned by God and considered a lesser member of the community.

“ As I see it, they (the pioneers) accepted their arrival here as Divine Providence – they were led here- and their land was taken up at the hands of Divine Providence for themselves.” (Mr. “B” 80+ yrs.)

Mr. Colin Thiele (the Author), who lived on family property in the Valley until he went away to school said :

“Yes, there was a spiritual bond with the soil, linked with their religion. Their land was a gift from God and it was from the soil that good gifts flow. This knowledge was deeply and unquestioningly instilled in them.”

The strict discipline brought to the new land in regards to system, method and social order, sustained these hardy pioneers through the rigors of unfamiliar weather and shallow top-soils..their over-zealous regard to form and measure causing damage to those very soils they revered as God’s gift to them..their hopelessly small allotments in this dry land soon showed them reason to doubt their benevolence.

“The German farmer who ran his farm in an ordered and efficient manner thought of himself, through the teaching of his church, as a good steward of that which had been given him through Divine Providence. To own land and to farm it well gave him status in the sight of God and of his fellow men. Any person not exhibiting signs of good stewardship, that is, an inefficient farmer, in the terms of this ideology was ‘out’, and considered to be of lower status. Colin Thiele suggested that through their zeal and desire to be good stewards the German pioneers (ironically enough)l:

over tilled the soil through ignorance of Australian conditions compared with those of Silesia where they came from. “

The years of the Great Depression and the foreclosing by the banks on many of those small family farms drove some off the land, and by losing their land, there was “inside consideration” that they had fallen from faith with God and so were sometimes forced to leave the district and community. This had grave consequences for many Fathers and head of the family…breakdowns and suicides were not infrequent at this time, and the cruelty of financial dominance by the banks sent many other farmers into labouring for extra income in what was now a capital rather than a barter-based community.

Even the wording of the teachings from the Lutheran pulpits changed with the times..where once praise for hard work on land and stock was singular for the owners and tillers of the soil, after the War, an equal consideration was given to WHATEVER means was employed to gain wages to support the family.. God had yielded his preference toward a life on the soil to any means available to keep one’s head above water!

The bankers were now writing the gospel…..The conservative politicians were empowering the banks.

“ Now mute, this soil of ravaged earth,

Speaks a language I no more discern,

Where once I tilled with bare hand..

. . . and DID understand.

Mute ; the soil that gave me birth,

Speak to me!..my mother silent,

This island ; Earth. “

Suddenly the means for subsistence was mercilessly altered..The soil, the Earth, lay open for rapine and pillage..cropping moved from small acreages to broadacre and machinery from horse-drawn to satellite controlled in the space of a couple of generations. The descendants of those old Germanic pioneers, those hardened tillers of God’s earth moved from being “dirt-farmers” to “chemical-farmers”…the barter system redundant now as there was in place corporate conglomerates to shift mega tonnage and if your farm was too small for consideration, you were left behind.

There was no place in this brave new world of hedge-funded mega agri-corps for either sympathy for the old handed-down generational family farm, nor banking finance for the same to restructure the size of their holdings..the family whose heart was from the soil was finished, percentage was the new arithmetic of farming.

The prayer of capital religion was one of cold, hard cash..and woe betide they who lacked capital or credit, for theirs will not be the kingdom of this new God.

“ Mr. B. ( 80+) :

‘ It is an economic position as a result of politics that young people can’t afford to stay on the land. By and large they can’t even build a ‘blinkin’ house for themselves anymore because the prices have just escalated. ‘

Mr. B. apparently, has only, as many disillusioned elderly people will do, seen government policy working towards this disintegration, and has failed to recognise the steady encroachment of the capitalist ideology within his own community. This encroaching capitalist ideology has been recognised by most of the younger generation, as witnessed Mr. N. (35) who knows that to be competitive in the modern economy, farms must be mechanised and holdings must be increased in size to warrant capital expenditure on the necessary machinery. He is aware that the old ideology requiring a good steward of God’s gifts to supply his family needs from his own land through his own labour is beyond the financial capability of the non-capitalized, restricted acreages which were sufficient in the days of the pioneers.” (ibid)

 

“This Island Earth.

Lament, fair children, Lament fair child,

Lament for what you have to abide.

Born to us a gift supreme, sight sublime,

Beauty’s hand to hand in mine,

But now I turn mine eyes askine,

Now in shame and guilt decline

To walk hand with hand in thine.

Whilst fair Beauty and her entourage

Lay dying in irreversible damage.

And ponder I, why ‘tis always encouraged,

That we pluck the prettiest flowers,

But leave the weeds to flourish..

On this island Earth.”

 

So now, after all these years, I feel I can quietly say with a sense of confidence that Rosie’s Hut had a long and fruitful career as cookhouse/shelter until the days of the horse drawn farming era came to a close .. the end of many things … much back-breaking work, labour intensive farming and all, yet there must also be admitted that alongside those daylight hours of chore and grind, there was also the evenings of no doubt some singing of old folk songs from their homelands along with the weary relief and satisfaction of what they had achieved and the resulting harvest would give claim to the nod of a job well done and payment well deserved .. a thing fast becoming obscure and unfathomable in this age of cynical weariness …

 

41 comments

1. Corridini; July 28, 2020 at 6:45 pm

The reason farmers from the hills brought land for cropping on the flats was because in the days of horse-drawn ploughing, the flat lands were more favourable for the horses, as they were not prone to slipping on wet, muddy slopes…hence a law was passed in Sth Aust’ that the flatlands were to be restricted to cropping and the slopes to stock grazing…you know it makes sense!

Also, in the early days of cropping out here, there was a strong demand for Durum wheat, Durum is the hardest of all wheats. Its density, combined with its high protein content and gluten strength, placed it in demand for semolina and pasta making…They grew it here on the flats.

2. Winnie; July 28, 2020 at 6:58 pm

Look for me by moonlight , watch for me by moonlight , I’ll come to you by moonlight though hell should bar the way.

3. Corridini; July 28, 2020 at 7:11 pm

“How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway, And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.”

Eeeh, ba gumly!…they knew how to write romantic poetry in those days!!

4. Phil; July 28, 2020 at 10:47 pm

I went down the lane to visit the famous legendary old Rosie’s Hut
It wasn’t the rocks I was interested in but the shape of Rosie’s Butt.
Now Rosy had a butt that was voluptuous, firm and nicely round
It was in fact the only butt that in the district that could be found.

Rosie famous in these parts for her baked scones and jam delights
It wasn’t the cakes or the apple crumble pies that started all the fights
It was Rosie’s breast and her voluptuous thighs and nice rounded Butt
That brought all the men down to learn the facts of life at Rosie’s Hut.

Don’t lie to me Joseph, all men have a visited a ‘ Rosie’s hut at some time in their life 🙂

My ditty’s get worse with the amount of booze I drink.

5. Corridini; July 28, 2020 at 10:54 pm

Phil….” My ditty’s get worse with the amount of booze I drink.”…..may I suggest at this point…..you stop drinking!!

And Phil…it must be accepted…while women dream of many things, of worried children, missing pets, lost opportunities and or other things…men will dream of women.

6. Phil; July 28, 2020 at 11:13 pm

‘ And Phil…it must be accepted…while women dream of many things, of worried children, missing pets, lost opportunities and or other things…men will dream of women.’

Indeed they do. I dreamt I had a Rolls Royce and when I woke up is all I had was a horn.

You know when I was playing in bands from the vantage point of being elevated, you could see the men and women playing the mating game. You would see the males especially, they would walk around like puffed up roosters. All good mates until a women gets in between them and then all shit can break loose. And the women who in some cases could probably knock you out with one punch, sat there all demure sipping on one drink for four hours. There has probably been a study of it. I wouldn’t be dead for quids.

7. Jon: July 29, 2020 at 12:21 am

You see these slate and stone huts all over Wales and Scotland too, for very much the same reason, I have no doubt. Survival as a farm worker was a tough business.

Aside, the poem, ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes has a little of the popular charm and tragedy of Ned Kelly. Once again the institutional power of the State inflicting its abuse on the common people, the ravages of colonisation, hence the romanticisation and creation of the rebel or folk hero.

Couple of links for those who’d like to hear the poem recited, put to drama and music:

The Highwayman – Directed by Oliver Chater, 2016
based on the poem ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes, 1906

The Highwayman by Loreena Mckennit
from the album ‘The Book of Secrets’, 1997
short film by Erica Elizabeth Ravenwood, 2014

8. Corridini; July 29, 2020 at 8:45 am

Thanks for those links, Jon…and I have to inform people that the header pic is not the real “Rosie’s Hut” , while I do have pics of it, I am reticent to post them on social media as past incidents have led to vandalism of some identifiable sites…and I can assure you that the current farmer who owns the property would be livid if they found their locale had been displayed all over social media!…the pic is similar in that it is a one roomed hut of stone construct, but Rosie’s Hut has a iron roof.

Phil…I wrote on just such a subject here in the past…it gleaned little comment as you would expect from a body of people more interested in the machinations of a foreign lunatic that what was happening right under their own nose..

Jon..I looked at those links and I feel they have somewhat overworked the subject matter..but that is just my opinion.

Corridini; July 29, 2020 at 11:22 am

” And the women who in some cases could probably knock you out with one punch, sat there all demure sipping on one drink for four hours. There has probably been a study of it. I wouldn’t be dead for quids.”

Ode to Women’s beauty.
Speechless and numb, I gazed on her beauty there,
Her limbs, her hands, her soft flowing hair.
Her voice the whisper of an angel’s prayer..
SHE..roamed her eyes over the banquet fair,
The roasts, the salads, the fruits so rare,
And of my adoration, just so….au contraire.
“There is so much beauty before us here ,
It is so hard to decide….you tell me, my dear,”..
She said..”What to you is the most desirous fare?”

9. K-LeeJuly 29, 2020 at 11:39 am

“it must be accepted…while women dream of many things, of worried children, missing pets, lost opportunities and or other things…men will dream of women.”

Speak for yourself Joe. Thank Christ the next generation has evolved past such dismissive crap.

I dream of the day when women will be valued for their merits rather than their tits.

10. Corridini; July 29, 2020 at 1:00 pm

” I dream of the day when women will be valued for their merits rather than their tits.”…….

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

― T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

You have no idea, Kaye Lee…you have no idea at all……

11. Roswell; July 29, 2020 at 1:42 pm

I would think that K-Lee has more of an idea what women want than you do, Corridini.

(Notice how I wisely chose not to conclude my comment with a smart arse statement like “You have no idea, Coridini…you have no idea at all…”

I probably didn’t because I find it childish and unnecessary).

12. Corridini; July 29, 2020 at 2:19 pm

But then, does she require your input as her messenger, Roswell ( notice how wisely I choose not to conclude my comment with : ” . . . such dismissive crap.” I probably didn’t because I find it childish and unnecessary).

But I will give you a bit of a clue, Roswell…When a presbyter of a closeted “church of materialist feminism” comes on to lament the unequal trading rights / value of “merit” against “tits”, you know they are fighting a losing battle…because like Morrison’s current trade-off of “suppression of the covid virus versus opening economy”…both K-Lee’s and Morrison’s ideals are fighting against an invisible enemy…because in one case, the covid19 virus does not yield to a “preferred outcome”, so to do the males of this world not sacrifice..in private at least..their preferred choice to gaze / desire wantonly upon the voluptuous female as against the “woman of merit”….in both cases, it is not a conspiracy, it just is.

You know it makes sense….Now go in peace.

13. Jon; July 29, 2020 at 2:21 pm

Corridini – ‘Jon..I looked at those links and I feel they have somewhat overworked the subject matter..but that is just my opinion’.

I think this is true for the video associated with Loreena McKennit’s music, noting that the video is not Loreena McKennit’s. The song and music is I think very well suited and authentically rendered by LM. Alas, it is probably the best YouTube video for her music even though it does not live up to the quality and artistry of either LM or Noyes; I’d prefer just to hear it. As for the first link, the film by Chater, I thought it was very entertaining and as a dramatic recitation of the poem itself quite well done, certainly the best illustrated rendition available.

14. Corridini; July 29, 2020 at 2:51 pm

Jon….I have to agree they were both well presented pieces…but my preference for poetry is to read it to myself…I am not a fan of public recited poetry…or prose for that matter, for I believe the reader constructs the personality or situation described in the writing to their own interpretation…and in doing so “personalises” the poem or story…But like I say..that is just my personal opinion…to each their own.

15. Phil; July 29, 2020 at 7:18 pm

Corridini.

Women have always been admired for their merits. Their tits are an added extra to admire as nature provided.

Most men and I said most or, dare I say, the more cerebral, don’t eye off the beauty of a women and then think to themselves, I wonder if this beautiful women can quote the sonnets of Shakespeare, can she explain quantum physics to me, can she do calculous, or can she change a wheel on a Holden Special? The human species can and will, go back to the jungle in the flash of an inviting glance.

Yes indeed Corridini, you are correct, it just is and will always be so.

16. Corridini;July 29, 2020 at 9:01 pm

The problem is, Phil..the hard currency of learned experience and common sense is not traded these days as much as those more facile promissory notes written rote-like from between cardboard covers…When a young man, I was several times involved in bar-room scraps with other young men over women..and while many now scorn such behaviour as brutal and uncivilised, I would counter that there is little that is more noble..except perhaps fighting for one’s country…than shedding some blood for the honour of a woman’s hand…and why not…after all, do not women bleed for the sake of us men as well?

17. K-Lee;July 29, 2020 at 9:16 pm

FFS…..we not only exist for your sexual fantasies, we menstruate for the sake of men as well? Get me outta here!

We are not your vassals and vessels. We are not here for your pleasure or servitude.

Perhaps when men start realising that we might make some progress on the domestic and sexual violence epidemic in this country.

18. Phil; July 29, 2020 at 10:32 pm

Corridini

I find it quite strange, that men like you and I by telling the truth and seeing the reality of life and not how someone would like it to be , that we are somehow responsible, for domestic violence. To tell you the truth, I find that idea, quite offensive.

I found out quite some years ago the PC crowd had turned society on its head. My daughter who was fifteen at the time came into my bedroom and said to me ‘ Dad I think there is someone near my bedroom window ‘ Cutting a long story short, there was a peeping Tom perving on my daughter through her window. Now my daughter makes Elle McPherson look like Phyllis Diller.( Does that make me a misogynist? ) She got her looks from my wife. I could see the attraction. (Not by me btw, but the perve. ) Now as luck would have it, my wife and I caught him. He had a shot at me so, I proceeded to teach him some social etiquette. I told him just before i broke his nose, it’s a nice idea if you want to take a lady out on a date, the best way was to wine and dine her first so to speak, before you get down to the real business.

We called the police and the forensics turned up to take samples of the perves body fluids for further enquiries. Well the female copper says to me to quote Did you think it was necessary to break his nose? (I nearly went into catatonic shock.) I said to the police after a few expletives, that their investigation had just terminated and I asked them to leave the property.

Being the well adjusted human being that I am I made a fatal mistake. What I should have done was invite the man into my home and make him a nice cup of tea with a slice of my wife’s apple crumble (Btw get this, my wife does the cooking in our home I know that’s weird hey ) we share the other chores to a fraction. Yes and sat him down and found out where his life went wrong and why his dad wouldn’t play football with him. I was supposed to just stand there, while he was beating me to death with a baseball bat.

Of course the same people that think people like me are dinosaurs don’t mind a little bit, if our military bombs women and children from 30000 feet killing and maiming God knows how many and don’t feel the leased ashamed. What a strange society we are turning into.

19. Mick Tailer July 29, 2020 at 10:40 pm

Phil, I don’t think anyone was suggesting that.

20. K-Lee; July 29, 2020 at 11:03 pm

I can understand your anger Phil.

It’s the same anger I feel when Corridini says “so to do the males of this world not sacrifice their prefered choice to gaze / desire wantonly upon the voluptuous female”.

Like it is ok because he/you want to. Oh but don’t do it to your daughter?

Do you even care how it makes women feel? Does the concept of mutual consent mean anything to you or is your perving somehow different?

21. K-Lee; July 29, 2020 at 11:48 pm

I also find it interesting Corridini’s choice of the “voluptuous female as against the “woman of merit”. All people have merits…even the voluptuous ones. You guys are really missing out because you “don’t eye off the beauty of a women and then think to themselves, I wonder if this beautiful women can quote the sonnets of Shakespeare, can she explain quantum physics to me, can she do calculous, or can she change a wheel on a Holden Special?” Maybe, just maybe, if you talked to the person, you might broaden your interests and knowledge beyond how to get your rocks off.

22. Phil; July 30, 2020 at 12:29 am

” Maybe, just maybe, if you talked to the person, you might broaden your interests and knowledge beyond how to get your rocks off.

Please keep your attempt at psychoanalysing me , to yourself. Further more, do not lecture me on how I have gone through my own life and how I get my rocks off !!! WTF do you think you are? Keep your personal insults to yourself.

I have not stated anything in my dialog with Corridini that is not true. That you don’t like it or agree with it, is tough titties.

Keep your wannabe Germain Greer take on the sexes. to yourself, nuance is definitely required with Greer and that’s not your thing.

Your attempt to psychoanalyse what is an innate feature of the human species is laughable.

Clean your crystal ball it has a veil of ignorant darkness over it.

23. K-Lee; July 30, 2020 at 12:45 am

It’s not psychoanalyzing you…it’s trying to tell you how some women, including me, feel about this stuff..but you guys aren’t interested in that…unless you are protecting your own girls by punching someone. You pretend you speak for “men” but you don’t represent the men I know.

Being ogled by strangers, being judged and categorised by your appearance, being the object of unwanted sexual advances at work…and much worse….is not flattering. It’s not some sort of right of males to do this.

24. Phil; July 30, 2020 at 2:02 am

“Being ogled by strangers, being judged and categorised by your appearance, being the object of unwanted sexual advances at work…and much worse….is not flattering. It’s not some sort of right of males to do this,”

Do you have a cognitive dissonance problem?

Where in my burst did I condone any of the actions you have accused me of being ignorant of?

I have told you, I am telling it like it is, not how you would like it to be.

Where did I say I represent the men you know. I’ve been around, but forgive me, I just obviously have not had contact with your male friends because if I did, I would have to throw out the window the knowledge of interacting with the public for over fifty years. Yea sure I would.

So now I’ll repeat it for you as Corridini said, you have no idea, not a clue.

You don’t debate people, you push your ideas on them like an insufferable know all.

25. Mick Tailer; July 30, 2020 at 2:05 am

I have a confession: I love my wife so much that I don’t even look at another woman.

I’ve learnt a lot from Carole, just by listening to her. I’ve learnt what words are offensive or demeaning to women and I have dropped them from my vocabulary.

Once upon a time I was racist, sexist, and a pervert. I’m much happier now that I’m no longer any of them.

That’s my story.

PS: I used to work with a bloke about 20 years ago who emailed me a photo of a topless young girl – about 17 – to which he added a few lustful words. I thought to myself; “You sick fuck. You’ve got two beautiful daughters roughly the same age.”

26. Phil; July 30, 2020 at 6:32 am

‘ Once upon a time I was racist, sexist, and a pervert. I’m much happier now that I’m no longer any of them.’

Well lucky for me I have never been any of those things. No I’m not perfect I just had good teachers. I probably drink too much.

My point is made from observations and not participation. You didn’t have to tell me your story I’m actually capable of the realisation that not all men are the same. I am also educated enough to know humans are a complicated species.

Some men and women are built that way, there is no rhyme or reason, it just is.

I have been to peoples home where their parents of a child has been given every opportunity in life and they have turned out bad and ended up in prison. I have seen the opposite children brought up by drunken no hoping parents who have turned out to be model citizens. See I can tell people the bleeding obvious as well.

I have defended the honour of women on more than one occasion in my life and they were not related to me.

My only regret in the incident with my daughter is, I didn’t clout the bastard a little harder. Btw it could have been one of my sons the outcome would have been the same. That’s what thousands of years of evolution has done, it is innate in us to protect our off spring . If we were in a perfect world we could spend the billions we waste on the military, on something useful like hospitals.

Btw I have received porno in my personal messenger from people and like you, I keep the peace and just quietly delete it because it offends me, but I am not going to ruin a fifty year friendship with someone, because they still find a women’s mammary glands seductive at seventy years old.

Jesus Corridini you had better implode Rosie’s Hutt, it has caused trouble at mill.

27. Corridini; July 30, 2020 at 8:27 am

Sorry to inflict such upon you, Phil…but I went to bed last night as this thing kicked off and I have just come to the desk now….but I have to say I am relieved somewhat that you are “holding the fort” and taking it on the jaw “for the team”…I don’t think I could have handled the flak better then you have…there is more than a touch of honesty in your replies as you counter the onslaught of social engineering being howitzered at you!

What can one say..except that I have yet to see a cluster of young women out on the town clutching instead of that cute little sparkling clutch-purse and looking like a million dollar diamond, a slim volume of the mathematical solutions of corfete theory….

But I will tell this little incident for your own amusement..:

An old mate of mine years ago when he was in his early twenties had a very jealous girlfriend…and he had to be careful she never caught him even gazing in the general direction of “voluptuous beauty”….One bright day, whilst coming off the Tullamarine Freeway, where it bottle-necks into the greater Melb’ suburbs, he was creeping along at a snails pace on the inner lane with his girlfriend in the passenger seat, when he noticed walking down the sidewalk a distance ahead (young males have extraordinary eyesight to view a “vision splendid”) this young, well endowed woman wearing a tight sweater coming toward them…Knowing the wrath he could expect from his passenger if he gazed in that general direction (women have even better eyesight than the males btw.), he steeled himself with a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel and with all the impassioned emotion of an Arnie Swatznegger “great acting moment”, he stared dead-pan ahead at the traffic….The young woman had just got abreast (no…don’t )..when he suddenly copped an almighty whack across the back of his head!
“What was that for?” he demanded.
“That girl with the tight sweater…” his girlfriend accused.
“I didn’t look at her!…I was watching the traffic straight ahead!!” he whined.
“No”..she pointingly replied ” but you wanted to!!” …..

You see, Phil…the ladies already know…even on here, with all the “in-house” denial of a St Peter before the cock crows…the women know….why?….because dear old mother nature has designed them to know……it just is.

28. K-Lee;July 30, 2020 at 9:15 am

So telling you how I feel makes me an “insufferable know all” who should get back to dreaming about “worried children and missing pets” because you are “telling it like it is”?

I absolutely agree that “not all men are the same”. They don’t all “go back to the jungle in the flash of an inviting glance.” which is why I object to statements like “the males of this world would not sacrifice their prefered choice to gaze / desire wantonly upon the voluptuous female”.

I believe the objectification of women is a contributing factor to a lot of problems in our society. Our daughters are made to feel being pretty is the most important thing. They starve themselves and inject chemicals into their faces and spend a fortune supporting a “beauty” industry which tries to turn us all into barbie dolls. Getting old is something to dread rather than embrace.

BTW I have little regard for Germaine Greer and I would have thought that everyone would be a feminist by now.

“Feminism, the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.”

29. Mick Tailer;  July 30, 2020 at 10:27 am

Hey Phil. I wasn’t having a go at you. I hadn’t even seen your comment while I was typing mine. You and I have no beef with each other, and I’d like to leave it that way. 😀

30. Mick Tailer; July 30, 2020 at 10:32 am 

but I have to say I am relieved somewhat that you are “holding the fort” and taking it             “on the jaw” for the team.                                

 Corridini, if you think I was having a go at Phil you are sadly mistaken. I was just                     saying the sort of bloke I am.

31. Corridini; July 30, 2020 at 10:47 am

Not at all, Mick…not at all…..I know from past comments that you are like most of us “married men”..a worshipper at the altar of wifely delights!

32. K-Lee; July 30, 2020 at 11:13 am

Mick has respect for Carole’s opinions and many accomplishments, as do I. Not sure “worshipper at the altar of wifely delights” is how I would describe their relationship. I see mutual respect and admiration and support for each other – a partnership in the true sense of the word.

               Mick Tailer; July 30, 2020 at 11:34 am

That was a very repulsive thing to say to me, Corridini. That is beneath contempt.

33. Corridini; July 30, 2020 at 11:52 am

” Am I sane of a people gone mad,
Or mad in a world that is sane..” (Henry Lawson)

To “worship at the altar of wifely delights” is possibly the most complimentary thing that a husband can do…for it does not suggest for a moment salacious desire, rather than an adoration and respect to almost hagiographic heights the completeness of woman as partner, companion and wife….To suggest that such is a slur on one’s marriage partner is to sink to a depth of pathological insanity requiring restraint and medication…a solution perhaps I may suggest to those who would accuse me of such…

Get a grip people….get a grip!

 

34.  Jack; July 30, 2020 at 12:55 pm

I have a registered IQ (with Mensa) of 137. In my life I have met MANY people more intelligent than I am (I don’t think a high IQ means you are intelligent – merely good at puzzles). But of the 10 more intelligent people than I am that I have met, 8 of them have been female, one of them my wife (deceased at 45, I am sorry to say ) and two of my 3 daughters. Two of my female acquaintances are both physically attractive – I suppose, but it’s their minds that keep me interested.
An American comedian summed up the difference between brains and beauty – he said when you lust after women, just bear in mind that cosmetic surgery can increase or reduce their bust; change the shape of thei eyes, or lips. their buttocks. But you can’t change stupid. I remember talking to a very beautiful girl at a party, and being bored shitless by her. Because, after a while, you cease to ‘see’ a beautiful woman (or man, I suppose); but you never tire of intellect.
I have avoided contributing to this thread, and have only written this because acrimony was entering into it.

      35.Jack; July 30, 2020 at 12:57 pm

I apologise for my last post, on re-reading, it doesn’t actually say anything helpful.

  Corridini; July 30, 2020 at 3:09 pm

” I apologise for my last post, on re-reading, it doesn’t actually say anything helpful.”….on the contrary, but it all hinges on the name of that “American comedian” and why HIS opinion of what is beauty and what is intelligent matters..

     36. PhiL; July 30, 2020 at 3:31 pm

‘ You see, Phil…the ladies already know…even on here, with all the “in-house” denial of a St Peter before the cock crows…the women know….why?….because dear old mother nature has designed them to know……it just is.’

As my old mum used to tell me and still does from time to time when I try to put one over on her ” I didn’t come down in the last shower ” Or my favourite ” Don’t come the old soldier with me” My mum had a great way of explaining ” It just is ”

I don’t mind a good debate but I am not going to be brow beaten into a belief system that I don’t totally agree with.” Uno Numero ” ” Feminism.” For two quick examples, I don’t believe women should serve in front line trenches in war or front line policing. We can debate the pros and cons of that until the cows come home .Both those opinions btw, I didn’t get out of a Mills and Boone from a story of a jilted lover. . Or a children’s comic book called the Beano.( That’s for you Jack) But getting ones feet wet in the action so to speak.

Having said that, that doesn’t automatically make me a wife basher, someone who believes that women should be chained to sinks or any other such notions of inequality. Or that I somehow I don’t understand the feelings of others. Bollocks.

So it’s back to an afternoon of Led Zeppelin for me. Carry on.

     37. Corridini July 30, 2020 at 3:53 pm

A close reading of the above article “Rosie’s Hut” gives example of a way of life and cultural behaviour that was prevalent among the Germanic pioneers of this district and the Barossa Valley etc…sure, it was patriarchal and could be oppressive and unforgiving..but when you live in times that give no leeway for “individualism” and all its accompanying demands, it gave security of home and place in the broader community..

I shall attempt to write a piece that turns the coin on what they had as society, family and community and what we, in this “enlightened age of freedom”, can now boast…Watch this space.

     38. leefe; July 30, 2020 at 3:55 pm

“‘ Once upon a time I was racist, sexist, and a pervert. I’m much happier now that I’m no longer any of them.’

Well lucky for me I have never been any of those things.”

Ahhh, that delightful phenomenon of the male of the species declaring himself free of certain faults that he does not recognise in others much less himself.
Take it from an impartial observer, Phil – while I have no evidence of you being either racist or a pervert, you are most definitely sexist.

Mick: it is a relief to see there is at least one honest and decent man here. I admire your forbearance.

 Mick Tailer; July 30, 2020 at 4:03 pm

Thank you, leefe. We walk many paths in life, and every step I’ve taken has led me to where I am today. I am content with that.

      39. Corridini; July 30, 2020 at 4:23 pm

leefe…while Phil is more than capable of looking after himself, it is my turn to take some flak about your comment in reference to sexism..; ” it is a relief to see there is at least one honest and decent man here.”

To me, the most recent and public aggressive sexist person in Australia is or was when they had their hands on the cojones of the nation, Ms Credlin…power without effort…She had a “c**t-struck” Abbott by the balls and she twisted that useless shit-head this way and then that and so vicariously did the nation twitch and jerk to her crushing desire…and the same system of sexism can be applied to any woman who knows of and how to wield their sexual power..and that starts from a young age..and don’t tell me that you do not know of any control freaks that have not at some time in their lives used that sexual power either in a coquettish or flirtatious manner to “toy n tease”…used that “sexism” to plan, play, demand or in the most extreme cases extort a situation to their benefit. I’ve seen it used to get a man beaten to a pulp just on a frustrated whim.

A double-edged sword cuts both ways.

      40. leefe; July 30, 2020 at 4:29 pm

Oh, of course, Corridini. Not because Credlin is actually worse than any of the sexist powerful men in this country, but because women are inevitably held to a different standard than men.

The system was created by and for men, and maintained for and mostly by them also. Yet there is always more flak aimed at a woman who uses that system to advance herself than at the men.

And don’t bother explaining that you disagree. I’m well aware of that. I’ve had this conversation with too many people for too many decades. The slowest learner in the world would have twigged by now (well, OK, maybe not – Trump seems to be immune to any form of education).

      41. Corridini; July 30, 2020 at 5:29 pm

I once saw an “on field” interview with some hard-arsed Russian general at some eastern bloc skirmish where he was asked if he considered the possibility of a US army involvement…the man smirked and voiced his opinion (with wtte) that the American army was a “Hollywood army”…all glitter and shine but no grind….and that is the same for so many idealist principles I see shouted from these pages at times….memes, themes and jargon just dripped from a script-writer’s pen…all sound and fury signifying nothing much at all…you think you got “freedom”?…ask those being tried in secret…you think you got power and rights?….ask those indigenous people in the “Black Lives Matter” movement..you think you got substance as an individual citizen in a democratic country…ask those abandoned guest workers and students on the food queues…there but for the grace of the ruling class . . .

No..we have only one source of power now, and that is social media power and the ruling class is fast learning that even there, the whole world runs on bluff.

No..we are all now like I said of leefe above…politically obese lay-abouts gorging on political comfort food…quoting and re-quoting catch-phrases and jargon falling from the pages of the latest “fantastic essay” from a veteran of the American lecture circuit…always the “expert”…always the “solution”…and yet..here we are in the middle of a pandemic of what could be the biggest social disaster since the great depression…just wait till September..because without a total cover for those who have high rent/mortgage, the wind of cruel change is going to blow right up our arses!

 

 

 

Twelfth Station; Jesus is laid in the tomb.

On a final solution to the middle-class problem ..

“Death to the Bourgeoise”  

Having all but given up on writing political commentary these last couple of years due to the real fact that no-one is listening to ACTUAL constructive criticism and most social/political blogs have gone over to a continuous rinse and repeat of puerile whinging of the “Morrison is a dirty-turd” type of structural commentary, I have decided to once again enter the fray with a rant on MY favourite complaint and one that ought to get at least a degree of rational critique..and why not?

The problem we meet right from the start with most social media blogs, is that they are run or moderated by middle-class people…those very persons that Thorsten Veblen quite astutely identified with having a vested interest in the debate and would manage the direction the conversation was going through the comments sections with their and others in the cabal of a “Consciousness of kind” affiliation…so we end up where we now are with this puerile “poo-bum” intellectual discourse where agility of skewered, witty abuse is the most revered of critique.

Petty, middle-class political/social philosophy in our sphere of influence..particularly the ones affecting the working classes, reached its zenith under the leadership of Thatcher, Reagan and Howard, whose destruction of worker’s wages, rights, tertiary education for the greater population and unionism also reached the giddy heights of wrack, racism and ruin and our humanity simultaneously dived to its nadir…which examples the best description of the Excelsior position the middle-classes have been striving toward for so many decades.

For what IS the point of a middle-class?

Truly..what do they contribute toward the betterment of humanity?

Some would splutter and say ; They run mines, factories, corporations, social programs for the poor and destitute…they make the laws and jurisprudence work…they write the curricula for education across the three tiers…They frame the behaviour of social decency and parliamentary procedures and on and on and on and you tell me ONE…ONE!!..just ONE of those above subjects that they haven’t constructed to most suit and benefit their own class most of all and tell us which one they also have not used and abused to profit their own class the most and again which one has NOT fell at some point in the last few years to be utterly and completely corrupted, used and abused by that same class to further their own interests?

We have seen the petty middle-class leadership, graduated in most part from those fagg-assisted private schools and colleges whose main objective seems to be inculcating an education of pederasty and bastardry in equal measure into the mindset of the most mean-spirited and obnoxious arseholes that their (personally constructed for their own use) God could ever breathe breath into!..till our business, education, Government authorities and judiciary is bulging at the seams with the graduates of those pusillanimous institutions sharing the spoils of biased and prejudiced wealth-management networks.

It is an utter, utter disgrace!

The Silesian Weavers (Translation-German)

This poem was inspired by a protest against the working conditions of weavers in Silesia, a province of Prussia in Northeast Germany.  Riots occured in 1844, demanding better conditions.

As a result of this poem, and the riots resulting in revolution, the king of Prussia was forced to allow his people a constitution. This theme was also treated in a naturalistic play called Die Weber by Gerhart Hauptman inspired by the accounts of Wilhelm Wolff. When first preformed in 1983 in Berlin, the German authority banned it.

The Silesian Weavers by H. Heine
Translated by Sasha Foreman

Their gloom-enveloped eyes are tearless,
They sit at the spinning wheel, snarling cheerless:
"Germany, we weave your funeral shroud,
A threefold curse be within it endowed-
We're weaving, we're weaving!

A curse on God to whom we knelt
When hunger and winter's cold we felt,
To whom we flocked in vain and cried,
Who mocked us and poxed us and cast us aside,
We're weaving, we're weaving!

A curse on the king, the wealthy men's chief
Who was not moved even by our grief
Who wrenched the last coin from our hand of need,
And shot us, screaming like dogs in the street!
We're weaving, we're weaving!

A curse on this lying father-nation
Where thrive only shame and degradation,
Where every flower's plucked ere it's bloom
And worms thrive in the dank rot and gloom-
We're weaving, we're weaving!

O shuttle fly! Loom crank away!
We weave unfailing, night and day-
Old Germany, we weave your funeral shroud,
A threefold curse be within it endowed-
We're weaving, we're weaving!

 

Poor Russia…Poor China…Poor Cuba..They worked so hard to rid themselves of the parasitic aristocracy with worker’s uprising and revolution..(oh yes..I know you’re going to say “organised by the middle-classes”..well fuck the middle-classes!!…they would just be shouting/pissing into the wind without the mob holding the guns…so fuck off with your middle-class..they were just the semicolon preceding the sentence!) only to be confronted on all sides with Western middle-class anxiety that this form of communist governance just may be a good thing…just may be working!…so the West drew lines under the worker’s frontiers and slammed into their own prisons any who sought to promote the slightest demand for equality, rights and fair wages…anathema to the philosophy of the middle-class whose raison d’être is for a “healthy bottom line” for their own and screw the rest!

And that fuckin’ Howard..the epitome of the most mean-spirited, penny-pinching little store-keeper class that bred the likes of those American corporate billionaire wankers like Hughes and  Hilton..both of whom ran scurrilous dens of iniquity..the types that Howard licked the boots of…at least Menzies pined for a bit of royal arse!…but this latest little mongrel turns the working tradies of the nation into wanking, aspirant investors by forcing them to register as a “small business”..and our military..once the pride of ANZAC tradition, into little more than hired mercenaries for the upper middle-class corporate war-mongers and profiteers, while he also ran a side industry with them killing off those refugees who fled those very wars and managed to survive the terrors of a perilous sea crossing in leaky boats..the most notorious killing of over 300 women and children in the abandoned, sinking “Sieve X”..

Seriously..it’s gone far enough..TOO FAR EVEN..and it has got to stop..There are enough well-educated working-class people now in the field to take control and reorganise the entire system of governance and jurisprudence so as to be better placed to serve the vast majority of citizens of the nation…No more of this bullshit policing that polices only the lower echelons of society..the basic crim’s…that’s easy to do…it’s the vast acres of political and corporate corruption that needs serious investigation, but that’s never going to happen under a set of principles put in place by the middle-class…as if they are going to investigate themselves..they’ll never “see the forest of corruption for the trees of private profit” until they cut the bloody lot down!

No..it’s time consideration was given to the complete removal of those who aspire to a greater wealth than can be called fair amount. Time to call a halt on the number of properties owned and rented above one. Time to cull the middle-class from both our Parliament and judiciary, their twisted methodology and corrupt mindsets need to be sent away for “re-education”..yes..perhaps it IS time we “do a China” and re-write the constitution and re-set the ambition of this country to more suit the majority…FOR A CHANGE!..FOR A FAIR DEAL !

1 Comment.

Mariah Anglish; January 9, 2019 at 6:54 pm

K, ah, I see. That’s a pity.

Corridini is so angry and combative… he tries so hard to alienate people, and wears it as a perverse badge of pride. (Mocking educated middle class people, for example.) He tries to justify it by attributing all the bad things to middle class people, but that really doesn’t make sense. He hates and desires higher education both at the same time.

I used to be very close to someone who is desperately unhappy and angry almost all the time. Her alcoholism has, for some time now, been eating away at her ability to have healthy relationships with people. Many of the things Corridini says, and the way he says them, remind me of her. If you have a problem with alcohol, Corridini, there is no shame in that, but if it is the case, then for your own sake and those around you, seek help. It has been utterly harrowing watching slowly it destroy my friend. Only she can help herself, but she refuses to… and the anger and resentment just grows and grows, consuming her and alienating her from friends and family and everyone around her… and the only way is down… because she refuses anything else.

Corridini; January 9 at 7:05 pm

Mariah….
you’re incorrect about Trump not learning anything…He learned EXACTLY what was expected of him to learn in one of those institutions…: How to be an avaricious bastard!…
The selection process that filters out those who are “one of the team” from those who are “difficult” is the singular reason such institutions exist!….NOT to give a good education, THAT is a by-product of the selection process..When you consider most of these old sandstone schools were started by a financial mogul, you have to concede THAT is the preferred modus operandi of that school!…
In Sth Aust’ , the most “prestigious” schools (St Peters..Pultney Grammar) were started with moneys from (and who also sat on the board of governors) the entrepreneurial / speculative middle-class.

 

Ronin.

Adrift in a sea of language,

The Ronin without a master..

Am I too that same lost soul,

A writer without his muse..

A Teller without a tale,

A wanderer in the lingua franca?

Sing a song for the dreamers,

Whisper a secret for the Lord,

Twist of the knife for a schemer,

The brutal thrust of the sword.

Please remember me my darling,

And don’t forget my name,

For whence those words escape me,

I am not to blame.