What on earth have we allowed to happen to our country? The Australian Labor Party has become a bunch of leftie loonies and the once great party of Sir Robert Menzies is no better... a group of leftist opinion poll followers who are in actual fact no better than the Drovers Dog doing the shepherds bidding
When I read and illustrated Happy Expat's article from yesterday, I felt an immense sadness and overwhelming regret. The trade union movement was born in the bush out of frustration at voices not heard and from men who worked their guts out to not only work to feed themselves and their families, but also to fund the Australian government and therefore people at large throughout Australia.
Our Nation began as a penal colony and created a might and a gutsy character that celebrated a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. We are a nation created from blood sweat and tears. And we have come a long way from Cobb and Co to the National Broadband Network.....
In those days, everything was done out of love of country. Done out of love for heritage, of ancestry and the love of what has been and is and yet to come. It started in penal banishment and gave birth to a nation that thrived on hope, optimism and promise of a bigger, better brighter future.
No drought or locust plague could defeat us. No flood could drown our optimism. No mouse plague or war could daunt us. Australia was a land of ragged bloody heroes.
We were like the Black Knight in Monty Python - even if our arms and legs were metaphorically chopped off, we would still stand fighting for our country, and anyone who thought that we should give up would be told to " get stuffed. "
Our sense of self was so great that we would defend it and declare that none shall pass and take our soul and our freedom and our liberty. We saw Ned Kelly branded and killed for defending the honour of his womenfolk and we saw our soldiers die to protect our way of life.
We had Australian Spirit. And it was OURS and ours alone.
We were, as people throughout the world are saying these days, borne of a penal colony. Yet, because of such things as the Eureka Stockade uprising, we came out of the darkness into the sun and proudly became a Federation of States in 1901 and declared that we are Australia and Australian.
The Australian Spirit. The Australian song of Nationhood and joy at being what we call " bloody Australian." Because " bloody " and " bugger " and other words are part of our vernacular: we swear, we cuss, we are, quite frankly . Australian. And damned proud to be so. We also have our own language.
a little lesson for our American readers.
So what the hell has happened to us?
The anger and outrage at colonial rule led to the founding of the Australian Labor Party which now seems to have grown to become a grotesque caricature of the child it was. It was born in the bush under a tree in Outback Queensland and has become a milky soy boy sitting in the shade of an umbrella in an inner city café - certainly not in the sweat of a shearing shed or under the shade of a coolabah tree or a tree of knowledge in Outback Queensland...
Banjo Patterson wrote about hardship and the sheer ( as opposed to shear ) reality of life in the Australian REAL WORLD. He wrote about the life and times of ordinary Australians living ordinary lives and the battles they encountered every day just trying to survive.
How soft we have become.
And, more importantly, how soft we have ALLOWED our governments to become and how hard they have become in the same breath. They have become, not our shepherds but our jailers.
Whilst they slog away in their cafes, bars and 5 star hotels, we mere sheep are locked up in the shed we call our homes and are not even allowed to get out of the pen: we are herded into the next holding cage to await our fate. Sheared of our income, sheared of our dignity and dragged, kicking and screaming to the shearer who now, not only takes our fleece, but cuts our balls off.
We are becoming neutered and silenced by these thugs that are now our shearers who fleece us, and, even after they have taken everything from us, still keep us in the holding pen, in the shed, and disallowed from ever roaming free in the paddock again.
Help us cover our monthly costs
They are not like Jackie Howe who worked hard and they are not like the shearers who went on strike for a fair day's work for a fair day's pay: no. They are like the drover's dog who does his master's bidding in order to get a feed at the end of the day and never gives a shite about the number of sheep's backs he jumps on as long as he makes it home to get a feed.
Our police, our politicians and our so called " public servants - haha! what a joke that is … servants ?! ) run roughshod over us and seek to have us cower in a shed and we are not allowed out because the drover's dog tells us so.
Meanwhile, Australia no longer looks to the sheep's back; nor does it look to bush to solve its problems. It no longer seeks to roam free, grow wealth and prosper. It chooses to huddle in the sheep shed, get shorn and fleeced - all the while the drover's dog bites us, nips us and sends us back into obedience.
Who is our shepherd? And why do we keep doing his bidding?
Who is the bastard that whistles the sheep dog and sets the pack on us? That is the question.
If it is our Premier, our Prime Minister, or our so called Chief Medical Officer, all I can say is that this bloody dog and his shepherd have rabies.
If we are herded into a pen by a rabid dog and a rabid shepherd, how, honestly, do we break out? How do we tell them to " Bugger off " and tell them to get off our backs and let us live again as free Australians?
I wonder?
Did we trade our heroes for gold? Cold comfort for change? Did we exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
