The Outback

Such a great trip and so much to say. In brief, 4WDs, adventure tours, waterfalls after waterfalls, camping out in the open, both wet and dry, mosquitoes aplenty, saw snake eating a frog, found out that licking a frog can give you the same high as magic mushrooms. More 4WDs, bumping dirt roads for hours, barbecues, aboriginal cave paintings.

Yes, aboriginals. We don't know much about them, and didn't quite care, nor could have that much information since it is not in our face. So I found from my Aussie friends, that since the whites arrived and figured that even though there were hundreds of thousands of these people, they did not have a recognizable system of government, and them being nomads, have no permanent settlements, land ownerships, and so decided to claim the land and drove these people out. Balance between nature and human which is their very basis of survivor got disturbed. When these Aboriginals try to fight back and hurt a tiny number of whites, they enforced 'laws' on them. State took away children of mixed parentage, and even into the 1960s, it was common for them to 'own' one, working in the day and being tied up and fed scraps at night.

So in the territory, legislations set up, then dumped - policies replaced policies, but pretty much nothing much has changed.

Who are they to dictate what these others (who were there first) can or cannot do, should they have proper jobs, or not. If they are happy living in the bushland and keeping their hunting and gathering ways, why are we stopping them?

Yet the equilibrium has already been destroyed thanks to the alcohol and drugs. Women now are receiving ends of domestic violence and child molestation is considered normal so long that 60 year old finds the 13 year old a potential wife, it's alright to shag.

So these whites can't sit around and do nothing, can they? How can they allow people to do whatever they want? But how can they make these people, socially awkward if not given proper chance of assimilation, do what is right in their own opinion, without consulting their own?

It's indeed real tough, and they jolly well do something real quick. If the rest of the states can do it, NT can too.