Train staff are going to serve a pre-breakfast at 6:00 because we’re stopping for our first “whistlestop” tour – this one in Broken Hill – at 7:00. There are a couple of Aussie old bulls in the lounge and the talk soon turns to politics. After finding that I’m from USA, they give me a primer:
There is soon to be an election for prime minister and the incumbent, John Howard, of the Liberal party (which is Australia’s conservative party – go figure) is trailing badly in the polls to his Labor Party opponent. A lot of what I hear is “grrrrrr, bloke, grrr bloody, grr, hmmph, youknowwhatImean,” but some of the points I pick up are: Labour can’t manage the economy. Last time they were in their Treasurer was a bloke who had managed three coffee shops into bankruptcy – and he was put in charge of the country’s money!! The public’s memory is short, they say. Howard has been in about 11 years, and people have forgotten how bad the economy was before then and what the Liberals have done since then to fix it. There’s a whole new generation of voters, too young to remember and too uninterested to care. (Incidentally, Don told us that if you don’t register to vote, or if you don’t vote, you’re fined. Everyone is required to vote. I need to look up some statistics on that. Where’s the internet when you need it?)
Australia’s big trading partners in Asia had disastrous stock-market crashes a few years ago, but Australia was largely cushioned from the blow, thanks, I’m told, to people who understand how the economy works. Everyone in Labor’s leadership is a union member and they can’t manage anything – like coffee shops! (I pick up a paper later in the day and the Liberal Party’s number two man is cited as saying: ‘(the) Opposition Leader (is) an economic illiterate backed by a “gaggle of trade union leaders.”… “the most lightweight leader of a political party that I have seen.”’ Nothing like being forthright.)
I think Howard’s been our best ally in thinking clearly and speaking coherently about the radical Islam threat, so it will hurt to lose him from the world scene. Australia has 550 troops in Iraq The Labor leader’s plan is to bring them home at a rate of 10-15 per month. You can’t do that, my instructors say. They’re a unit. To dismantle them slowly is going to leave a body that can’t function as a unit. It puts comrades at risk.
Anyhow, I enjoyed my instruction in Aussie politics from the Liberal side.
Broken Hill, well into the outback, came into existence when silver was discovered in 1883. They’re still actively mining silver, lead, and zinc and the town’s population is 23,000. Our tour bus driver estimated that BH had another 100 years of mining left, others are more pessimistic. There’s an underground ore seam 4.5 miles long by about 800 ft. wide (he didn’t say how thick) -- they call it the line of life (which is how I translate the “loin of loife”) -- that’s being extracted.
Our first stop is the airport where a unit of the Royal Flying Doctor Service is located. On the way we pass under a sign that says Airport, our driver points out. It used to say Welcome on one side, Farewell on the other. That was for Queen Elizabeth’s benefit, who visited quite a while ago, but now it just says Airport. Makes you kind of sad.
As we drive around town, our driver helpfully points out several retirement homes. I guess he’s made a judgment about the interests of the IP passengers he sees on his bus. BH has lots of well-kept miner’s cottages and a nice downtown collection of 100-year old public buildings, so I can see why BH could be something of a tourist destination. A town brochure lists several B&Bs.
W.r.t. the Flying Doctors, there are 22 such installations covering 80% of Australia to the extent that anybody anywhere in that vast open expanse who needs a doctor can be reached within two hours. Also, the service has scattered medicine chests around the country for ready access. Also, people in the outback have body maps, so someone in pain can tell the doctor by phone or radio, “It hurts between my A and my B! Nobody pays for service – government pays 2/3 of the program’s cost; various citizen fund-raising activities -- rodeos, bake sales, … -- pay for the rest.
One other stop on the tour was a combination art gallery and jewelry store. I bought a postcard copy of a local artist’s rendition of the Red Centre. Here’s a picture of it (guess I could have just photographed it in the store and saved $1):
Somewhere out of Broken Hill Dick sees a couple of kangaroos in the real wild. I’m on the other side of the car with my nose to the laptop, so I don’t see them. Later, while we’re stopped on a siding, Dick sees an emu hen(?) with five chicks near by and I get a good look through binoculars.
Around Broken Hill the terrain is quite barren. Later, around lunch time as we angle southward toward Adelaide we get into wheat-farming country – pretty and green.
In Adelaide the weather has turned rainy. We take a bus tour with only one brief stop to get out. The original city is surrounded by parkland on four sides and the city is known for its gardens. We get some glimpses through wet windows. We also see a lot of small to elaborate period homes, well-preserved or restored. Adelaide is known as the “city of churches,” and we drive by quite a few fine old specimens.
My big thrill is that the bus went by the Newmarket Hotel where my Mom and I memorably stayed in 1991. It looks like it’s been refurbished. A lounge is prominently advertised. The surrounding neighborhood looks friendlier. (I had thought about skipping the tour and making a pilgrimage to the Newmarket on my own, but I had decided seeing the city that Mom and I didn’t was the better choice.) Later I talked to bus driver and he confirmed my impression that the Newmarket is surviving and thriving.
We leave Adelaide about dark.
Cheers,
Rob
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