Diversity or absurdity?

Diversity is a good policy but when it is stretched to absurdity it becomes disrespectful to minority groups as well as to the art of storytelling.

In fact, an excessive display of diversity is an affront to storytelling. Some of my once-favourite shows have been ruined for me because of this sort of excessive application of diversity. When we watch a film/TV show that parades a representative of one minority group after another across the screen in a patronising declaration of the producer’s political correctness, a drama becomes a farce. It also comes across as contrived and, as such, takes the viewer out of the story. Instead of being absorbed in the story the reader/viewer is likely to become an onlooker taking stock of the incidences of the number of minority groups represented. The same thing happens when an author crudely applies ‘political correctness’.

I wonder if story-makers who drench stories with diversity are expressing their frustration at politically correct advocates with sarcasm. ‘Right. You wanted minority groups. You got minority groups!’
The first responsibility of storytellers and story makers is to the story. Given that story is a vital part of being human and essential to the human psyche that’s a sacred responsibility.
Rather than include diversity as a matter of course, story makers need to maintain their right to evaluate whether diversity is appropriate to a particular story rather than simply rubber-stamping it. If diversity is appropriate, what elements are pertinent – for the storyline, for the time period, for the setting? There may be times when including a representative of minority groups is not appropriate. Storytellers and film makers need to respect the story enough to make that call.

Apart from lack of consideration for the story, story makers who rush to include diversity for diversity’s sake also demonstrate lack of respect for the people of diverse groups. Parading minority representatives ‘circus style’ across the screen (or the page) is akin to the bad old days when people who were different were ‘on show’ in tents. It is disrespectful as well as patronising. Furthermore, inclusion of diversity without appropriate consideration becomes tokenism.

Surely we can embrace diversity and do it appropriately and respectfully.

JB Rowley November 2023

The New Asbestos

Sufferers of asbestosis and asbestos-related cancers are innocent victims of the toxic air they breathe. The tiny fibres are easily breathed in where they can become trapped in the lungs. Exposure increases the risk of lung cancer and other cancers. People’s safety can only be ensured only by the elimination of exposure altogether.

Asbestos pollutes the environment by contaminating the air and water. Asbestos was once thought to be harmless. The public was unaware of the health risks associated with it. Businesses did their best to hide the hazards of asbestos in order to protect their profits. And now, lurking in plain sight is a new asbestos. Fragrance!

Exposure to the chemicals in fragrances can cause MCS – Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Sufferers of MCS are innocent victims of the toxic air they breathe. The chemical fumes from fragrances are easily breathed in where they act upon the body to cause any number of health issues including asthma, severe headaches, depression and many more, as well as social isolation.

The public is largely unaware of the health risks associated with fragrances. Businesses do their best to hide the hazards of fragrances in order to protect their profits. By taking advantage of a loophole in the labelling laws, businesses hide the presence of toxic chemicals behind the word ‘perfume’ of ‘parfum’ on product labels.

Just like the canaries in the coal mines, sufferers of MCS are innocent victims of the toxic air they breathe. The only cure is the elimination of exposure.

Furthermore, chemicals present in fragrances pollute the environment by contaminating the air and water. ‘When volatile chemicals are released into the air, they react with thousands of other airborne environmental particles such as pollutants and industrial chemicals and eventually form a new variant of a component that is literally more lethal than the previous ones. These particles sink into the lakes, rivers, and oceans where they harm millions of other animals.’

While fragrance chemicals are not as lethal as asbestos, the similarities between the two are striking.
If you care about your own health, the well being of those around you or the environment, consider choosing chemical-free products. If Michelle Pfeiffer can do it, you can do it. Here are a couple of useful links to get your started.

27 Natural non-toxic perfumes

Amacyn Natural Perfumes Sydney

You can make a difference.

In Melbourne Today with JB Rowley

Check out our latest Youtube Podcast: In Melbourne Today with JB Rowley

A 5 minute chat with Melbourne writer JB Rowley talking about Queen Elizabeth’s first visit to Melbourne, the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, the Elephant and the Wheelbarrow, JB’s hayshed and drinking pomegrappa! JB Rowley is the author of #1 Amazon best sellers ‘Whisper My Secret’ and ‘Mother of Ten’ who also writes murder mysteries under the pen name Brigid George.

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What Happened on 26 January 1788?

“For years we have walked on a one way street to learn the white man’s way. Now is the time for you to come closer to understand us.” I agree with Dr Ungunmerr-Baumann who spoke these words on 26 January 2021 when accepting her Australia Day Award.

How wonderful it would be if all Australians learned the languages, stories and songs of our first peoples. How mind boggling it would be if all Australian school children had the opportunity to learn to speak the Aboriginal language local to their area.

However, human nature being what it is, the process of coming closer on a national scale will take time, patience and compromise.

One of the major issues that increases the distance between whitefellas and blackfellas is the campaign to change the date of Australia Day celebrations on the basis of January 26, 1788 being Invasion Day. Using this term is inflammatory because it evokes images of an invasion i.e. armed troops marching en masse in the manner of the Roman invasion of Britain under Julius Caesar. I know there are nuances in the meaning of the word ‘invasion’ but given the era and the context, this is the obvious image it portrays. Many whitefellas see the use of the word as a deliberate ploy to twist the facts. As a result, new resentment against Aboriginal people is born in some whitefellas and existing resentment is deepened in others.

From the Aboriginal perspective, resentment toward whitefellas is deepened because of the resistance to the change of date.

Thus a bed of resentment grows where harmony cannot flourish.

So what happened in New South Wales on 26 January 1788?

On 25 January that year HMS Supply, the smallest and fastest ship in the First Fleet, brought a landing party, which included ‘a number of marines and reliable convicts’, into Sydney Cove.

‘The first night at Sydney Cove was spent on board the ships, but the next day, 26 January, there were scenes of unprecedented activity in the little inlet. In one place, said Tench, was a party cutting down the woods, while elsewhere another group set up a blacksmith’s forge. Soldiers pitched officers’ marquees, while a detachment of troops paraded in bright sunlight and cooks lit fires.’

Several paragraphs later in Thomas Keneally’s A Commonwealth of Thieves we learn that, ‘The disembarkation of the bulk of the troops and some male convicts occurred the next day…’

Some whitefellas wonder why January 26, 1788 has been targeted as the turning point for the change in circumstances for Australian Aboriginal peoples when the seed for British colonisation of the continent was first planted on 29 April 1770. This was the day Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook arrived in Botany Bay on the Endeavour.

After a failed attempt to communicate with the people on the shore, he twice fired a ‘Musquet load with small shott’ before eventually going ashore in search of fresh water.

Cook’s landing ‘…is symbolic because it portended the end of our cultural dominion over our lands.’ (Dr Shayne T. Williams, Ph.D, Aboriginal language and culture consultant at the New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group, Inc., and granddaughter of two ‘proud Dharawal women’)

Several months after this, on 22 August 1770, Cook ‘in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took posession (sic) of the whole Eastern Coast’.

While I can see that the 26th January was chosen for Australia Day from the perspective of whitefella history without due consideration for the first peoples, I can also understand why claiming that date was Invasion Day raises the hackles of many whitefellas – even those who would otherwise be reasonable and potentially sympathetic to the Aboriginal perspective. As a convict descendant I find the term offensive because it creates an image that denies what happened to the convicts.

This issue will continue to divide whitefellas and blackfellas and therefore prevent the development of kinship unless it is handled differently.

Perhaps what is needed is a funded national campaign to calmly explain, without anger, hysteria or demands, the reasons why Aboriginal peoples object to celebrating Australia Day on January 26th. I suppose that’s too much to hope for.

JB (For a free murder mystery from award winning author Brigid George CLICK HERE!)

References:

Thomas Keneally. A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia (Kindle Location 1289). Anchor. Kindle Edition.

Captain James’ Cook Landing

An indigenous Australian perspective on Cook’s arrival

Endeavour Journal 29 April, 1770

Endeavour Journal 22 August 1770

What the world needs now is…

ESCAPISM!

Escapism allows us to disconnect from our immediate reality. It comes in many forms but the kind I like best is literature. I am familiar with this form of escapism as I have used it most of my life – starting as a kid growing up with many boisterous, untamed brothers. That was a reality I needed to escape from!

Reading a book is a quiet place to be in your head. When your mind settles into a story you enter a different reality. Your immediate reality no longer matters. The heavy burdens of real life are momentarily lifted. Right now human beings all over the world need this sort of escape.

Often, when we come out of the story, our perception has changed. Resting in the fictional world has allowed us to regain our equilibrium, to muster strength and to feel a sense of hope. It is that sense of hope which is most important in the world at this time. The person who has hope has the will and determination that goals will be achieved…

During my teenage years, those tumultuous years of high emotion and rapid change, the escapism literature I turned to was the classic whodunit of authors such as Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Although I didn’t identify what attracted me to that particular genre at the time, it makes sense to me now. My personal world had been turned upside down due to significant biological changes. The world as I knew it was transforming because I was leaving childhood to enter the scary adult realm. Like many teenagers I needed to know that despite all this upheaval, everything would be all right in the end. That’s the underlying message of a good whodunit.

Although my reading choices have broadened as an adult, I continue to read (and need) the whodunit genre. I also indulge in other forms of escapism such as watching TV dramas, walking in nature or playing online quizzes. However, my number one choice is literature.

During the current gargantuan world upheaval, escapism is vital to our well being. Stories can provide that easily and conveniently. We can still access books even if we are quarantined or in isolation by downloading ebooks or audio books to an electronic device either from our local library or from an online store such as Amazon.

 Let all your cares fall away: read a Dusty Kent today!

All the very best to everyone.  JB 🙂

Lost to History

Nine-year-old John Hudson narrowly escaped death by hanging, for stealing a few household items, to become the youngest convict at the time of sentencing and one of thirty-four children to arrive in Sydney on the First Fleet. In 1788 when John, now thirteen, arrived in Australia along with more than 700 other felons, approximately 250 Aboriginal languages each with different dialects reverberated across our vast continent.

Along with the convicts and their jailers, the First Fleet brought a new language to the land; a language that evolved into Australian English. It is a rich language enhanced by colloquialisms, such as ‘a kangaroo loose in the top paddock’. Australian English developed under the influence of the convicts giving us words like ‘fair dinkum’, ‘chook’ and ‘brumby’, as well as Aboriginal languages which gave us words such as ‘budgerigar’, ‘yabber’ and ‘billabong’ .

For me, it is a tragedy that the original languages of the land are no longer spoken and sung across the continent. Modern Australia would be far more auroral if it were ablaze with the languages of the many Aboriginal tribes of Ancient Australia.

When my two young nieces, who are mixed-race Aboriginal girls, recently stayed with me for a weekend, the seven-year-old and I explored the Italian language together. (I am learning Italian as an adult and she is learning it at school.) As we enjoyed making this connection through a foreign language, I experienced a sense of sadness that we weren’t also able to enjoy exploring the language of her Aboriginal ancestors. From the whitefella side of her family (and from the wider community) she has inherited and learned the language of English. But the language of the blackfella side of her family has disappeared.

Just as Aboriginal languages were lost to history, so too was young John Hudson. The last known record of him is that on 15 February 1791, he received 50 lashes ‘for been out of his hutt after nine oClock.’

It occurred to me that perhaps my nieces and nephews, through the loss of the language of their Aboriginal ancestors, have also lost a connection to ancestral memories. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s a heartbreaking possibility.

As my mother used to say, ‘it’s no use crying over spilt milk’ but I can’t help imagining an Australia where all Australians grow up speaking the local Aboriginal language as their second (or even first) language. Instead of struggling with the mandatory and irrelevant French I studied at school, I could have learned from the Kurnai language of my local area that the pelican is called ‘boorun’ and the Southern Cross is known as ‘Ngooran’. Speaking their language would have been a powerful way to demonstrate respect for the Kurnai people, as well as creating deeper bonds between the whitefella tribe and the blackfella tribe. Colonialism robbed not only Aboriginal Australians but all Australians, of the opportunity to know the first languages of our homeland.

It’s long been a dream of mine to see Aboriginal languages taught in schools as a mainstream subject for ALL students. I thought it was an impossible dream but it’s exciting to know that more is being done now by the Education Department and other agencies to revive and teach Aboriginal languages. Some schools have already implemented Aboriginal language instruction. So there is hope for my dream to be realised.

And perhaps one day, maybe when a descendant is researching their family history, John Hudson’s story will also be dragged out of the depths of history.

Glossary:

billabong: a dry section of a river that fills when the river overflows

brumby: a wild horse

budgerigar: a small parrot

chook: a hen

kangaroo loose in the top paddock: to be mentally deficient

Kurnai: title of the tribe that inhabited Gippsland

yabber: to chat or rabbit on

References:

Robert Holden, Orphans of History: The Forgotten Children of the First Fleet, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999

First Fleet Fellowship Victoria Inc.

Thomas Keneally, A Commonwealth of Thieves, Anchor Books, New York, 2007

https://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/convicts/john-hudson/

Kurnai Language Glossary from Wurruk by Vaughan Nikitin

 

Why it makes sense to keep Australia Day on January 26.

The 26th of January 1788 was not a day to be celebrated by the convicts who arrived against their will on the First Fleet and it was a day that marked the beginning of traumatic times for the First People of the land.

In contemporary Australia, January 26th is a day that has developed its own traditions, created memories down the years for many, many people and is a significant holiday in our calendar.

Aboriginal people and groups advocating reconciliation who lobby against it are missing a wonderful opportunity.

Why not lobby for Australia Day to become a day that includes celebrating ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and heritage as a proud part of a shared identity’? Thus Australia Day could become a powerful force in race relations helping ‘all Australians understand and value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous cultures, rights and experiences, which results in stronger relationships based on trust and respect and that are free of racism.’

On the other hand, forcing the date of Australia Day to be changed is a step backward for those who claim to desire reconciliation. It creates division and widens the gap between Aboriginal Australians and non-Aboriginal Australians. Resentment from those who love the day as it is toward those who force the date to be changed can grow into stronger feelings. I feel resentment myself toward claims that January 26th is Invasion Day. Resentment is as strong as my feelings get but then I have loving connections to Aboriginal people through family which possibly tempers my reaction.

January 26th is sometimes called Survival Day by Australian Aboriginal people. It could also be seen as Survival Day for the convicts who wanted nothing more than to return home. Survival is worth celebrating, isn’t it?

It seems to be a no brainer – choose the option that has the potential to deepen our understanding of Aboriginal cultures and history or the option that creates division and resentment in Australia.

(Quotes taken from the website of Reconciliation Australia.)

JB

Persian Plantings

Recently, a chance mention of a ship called Persian by fellow writer and storyteller, Jackie Kerin, led to the discovery of an intriguing coincidence.

Jackie uses the Kamishibai format to tell the story of the historic voyage of the Persian in 1833 when it transported seeds and plants such as ferns, grasses and grape vines from England to Australia. The plants survived this long and arduous journey thanks to terrarium style glass boxes called Wardian cases.

The 1833 voyage carried an experiment by amateur horticulturist, Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, who wanted to see if the boxes he had designed could successfully transport plants and seeds across the oceans of the world when all other methods had failed.The experiment was a resounding success. After six months at sea enduring temperatures from  -7°C   to 40°C  (19.4°F to 104°F), the plants arrived ‘alive and vigorous’.

The Wardian cases were on the third voyage the Persian had made to Australia. The coincidence we discovered relates to the Persian’s second journey in 1830. This time, my paternal convict ancestor John Rowley was on board.

In 1830, John Rowley, an eighteen-year-old labourer from Leeds, and his partner in crime, twenty-two -year-old William Thackrah, were sentenced to death for breaking into a premises and stealing goods and chattels (such as  spoons,  sheets,  aprons, table-cloths & fabric).

Why the death sentence despite the fact the men had not hurt anyone? Crimes against property (and the Crown) were considered the most heinous by the British Government of the time, and no doubt the privileged class that owned property held the same view. So while thieves were hanged, a man found guilty of manslaughter was fined as little as one shilling.

Eventually, the death sentences imposed on Rowley and Thackrah were commuted to fourteen years transportation to Australia. Both men were on the Persian in 1830 when the ship transported 198 convicts (all male) to Van Diemen’s Land.

Three years earlier in 1827, the Persian had made her first voyage to Australia as a female convict ship carrying sixty convicted women including, to give an example, sixteen-year-old Charlotte Williams who had received a life sentence for a first offence of ‘stealing a watch from the person’.

All three voyages brought foreign transplants to the Australian continent.

Not all of the convict ‘plants’ had a beneficial impact but most of the 160 000 plus men, women and children who were transported across the oceans and transplanted on the Australian continent made positive contributions to the building of Modern Australia. When my ancestor, John Rowley, had served his time, he left Tasmania to take up land allotments in Gippsland, Victoria and played a significant role in the development of the township of Rosedale. Without convicts like him we would not have the Australia we know today.

Like the convict transplants, not all the exotic plants (or the microorganisms that travelled with them in the soil) transported in Wardian cases made a positive contribution to the Australian continent. However, without Dr Ward’s amazing case we would not be enjoying the health benefits of the Cavendish banana or locally grown delicious mangoes. In the 1840s the Wardian cases brought grafted mango trees to Australia from India, generating the establishment of mango production in Queensland.

The Wardian cases were so successful worldwide they revolutionised the transportation of plants and were even used in botanical espionage. In the19^th century, China’s tea monopoly came to a halt when Wardian cases were used to successfully move nearly 20,000 tea plants from China to India. Likewise, Brazil’s monopoly on rubber ended when the Wardian cases facilitated the successful transportation of 70,000 germinated rubber tree seeds to Ceylon.

After bringing the first Wardian cases to Australia, the Persian returned to England in 1834, once again successfully carrying plants, such as the coral fern and the black wattle, across the oceans.

My ancestor was not free to return to his homeland but in his new land he planted many, many more plants starting with his own eight children who went on to ‘propagate’ numerous more Rowley ‘plants’.

Learn more about  Jackie Kerin’s story of The Amazing Case of Dr Ward .

Until next time….JB 🙂

References:

The Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases by N.B. Ward

A Commonwealth of Thieves by Thomas Keneally, Anchor Books 2007

Invasion? Please don’t insult me.

As a convict descendant I find the claims that January 26^th represents an invasion of Australia downright insulting. Such a claim implies that the convicts of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip who were forcibly transported from England invaded this continent.

To claim invasion denies the suffering of those convicts who were confined to a space of 18 inches by 6 feet on crowded ships for almost nine months on a journey over 24 000 kilometres of ocean (not to mention what happened to them before getting on the ships). We’re talking about people who had no desire to inhabit ‘New Holland’ and who were forced to survive for the most part ‘on flapjacks and desiccated salted beef’ and had to cope with sea sickness, diarrhoea, abuse and more.

Claiming ‘Invasion’ not only denies the suffering of the convicts but also the gruelling work they put in after they were forced to live here; the hard labour it took to build new lives, to build the infrastructure for Modern Australia which began on 26 January 1788. Unfortunately, people like Greens leader Richard Di Natale don’t care about that. Without a thought for the convicts or one iota of respect for their descendants, he’s interested only in manipulating emotions and scoring political points by screaming: INVASION!

Not only is it an insult to the convicts and their descendants, but falsely claiming January 26^th marked an invasion of the continent is also an insult to Governor Phillip who faithfully followed the Crown’s instructions to ‘open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections’. Even after receiving a serious injury when speared by an Aboriginal warrior, Phillip refused to retaliate and continued to try to maintain friendly relations. Hardly the actions of an invader!

January 26^th marks the beginning of Modern Australia which has evolved into the fantastic country we have today. That is worth celebrating. Those who clamour for a change of date seem to be not only ignorant of historical facts and disrespectful to Australians who are convict descendants but also indifferent of the ramifications for Aboriginal people who will surely be subject to resentment (or worse) if they are seen as the reason for changing a date that has become so popular with the general public.

Why not consider a more inclusive solution? There is no reason why Australia Day can’t be a day of celebration AND reflection. A day when we can reflect on what happened to Aboriginal nations after the arrival of the First Fleet and celebrate what has been achieved by Aboriginal people in recent times. A day to reflect on what happened to those who were transported here and celebrate what they achieved. And a day to celebrate what we have all achieved together to make Australia what she is today. I reckon that’d be deadly! 🙂

One more thing. Since so many Australians seem to be uninformed about those who laid the foundations for Modern Australia, perhaps a brief look at what brought them here is appropriate.

Many of the convicts on the First Fleet and the convicts that came after them were decent hardworking people who had been forced to break the law because England’s new Enclosures Acts had driven them off the common land their families had worked for centuries and into the cities in the hope of finding work.

Furthermore, the New Transportation Act 1780 meant that Britain had the power to transport people for such minor offences as ‘stealing cloth from the rack’ (the sin of one of my convict ancestors), not paying excise tax, ‘killing or wounding any deer without the consent of the owner’, or for attending a meeting of Quakers. Nine-year-old orphan John Hudson was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for breaking into a residence and stealing several items of clothing and a pistol. Nine years old! Mary Wade was only eleven when, before her sentence was commuted to transportation, she was sentenced ‘to be hanged by the neck till she be dead’ for stealing a few items of clothing from another girl.

All this was happening in a society that had no police force, where the possibility that confessions were beaten out of people was very real and where witnesses were not always truthful. The real ‘crime’ of a servant girl accused of stealing might have been that she rebuffed her employer’s inappropriate advances. They were harsh times and the exiles to Australia had no idea that many of them would end up creating good lives for themselves in the distant, frightening land on the other side of the world.

Ref:

The Commonwealth of Thieves by Tom Keneally

Mary Wade to Us :A Family History 1788 – 1986

Wilhelmina Woylie: the little stick carrier

Wilhelmina Woylie is a children’s ebook designed to be read on tablets, smart phones and computers with beautiful illustrations by Katie Stewart. It tells the story of a little woylie who goes out one night to fetch sticks for her nest, unaware of the danger that lurks at every corner.

Please note: You might like to read the book before reading this blog in full as it contains plot spoilers. Download here.

Although the story is primarily for children’s entertainment, it can also be used for learning. Just as the stories used by the Australian Aboriginal people have been used for thousands of years as teaching tools, so can the story of Wilhelmina Woylie.

On one level, children learn about woylies (aka brush-tailed bettongs) in their natural habitat, the danger feral cats pose to woylies and other native species, and they learn about other Australian animals as well as endangered species.

On another level, the story of Wilhelmina Woylie can open up a discussion about the threat of bullies. In the story, Wilhelmina handles the feral cat in the only way she can. She uses sticks to frighten the cat because there is nothing else she can do. If the cat catches her, she will die and so will her baby in the nest because there will be no-one to feed it. She doesn’t run because she knows the cat will be much faster.

Parents and carers can, if they wish, discuss the best way to deal with bullies in the playground. Should we use sticks? What is a better way for children to react if they are threatened by a bully?

Other possible issues for discussion include the importance of caring for the habitat of animals, the natural environment,  understanding nocturnal animals (the emu is not nocturnal – he just happened to get hungry that night) and the importance of small animals.

The book is designed to be read aloud and shared between an adult and a child. There are different ways of approaching the reading of the story depending on the age and needs of the child. In general, read the story using the main text, the pop-up texts and the pictures.  However, for very young children (e.g. under the age of two) you can just use the pictures without reading any text at all. Alternatively, you could just use the text pop-ups and pictures without reading the main text. For other children, you might like to encourage them to read repeated words and phrases – but only if that is something the child enjoys doing. The most important thing is that the reading of the story is a fun shared activity.

My purpose in writing Wilhelmina Woylie  is to raise funds for FNPW (Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife), an organisation set up to protect Australia’s native species and ecosystems. When you read the story, I hope it brings a smile to your face knowing that your purchase of the book has helped endangered wildlife like the little woylie.

Download a copy here.

Until next time…

JB 🙂