Palm Island

We just spent some time on a Cultural exchange trip to Palm island.

Very interesting.

The invitation came around Christmas at our church. A culture awareness trip. When this trip was initial floated, My initial reaction was ho hum.

Then Australia Day and my Facebook feed was inundated with a flood of posts bitching about Aboriginal injustice, references to "invasion day" and so on. These posts seemed worded to elicit aggressive responses and when those inevitably arrived, the authors would complain about being attacked.

As I reflected on this I figured that this kind of engagement is not going to lead to any kind of future peace or reconciliation. I also realised that I do not know a single Aboriginal. My exposure is basically to aggressive white do-gooders on Facebook and that does not endure me to anything associated with this.

The essence of this trip seemed to be to provide an opportunity to listen. I refrained from asking the Australia day question and figured I'd wait and see if it was answered on it's own.

We had an interesting and relaxing time on palm island. Then took a car ferry over to the mainland. One of the days on the mainland we went to Mungulla station.  http://www.mungallaaboriginaltours.com.au/ This is a cattle station owned and run by aboriginal people. It's also a sort of day trip tourist tour place.

They had inherited a display, put together some time back, by the Queensland museum. This was very interesting to me. The main take away for me was the realisation that in the 1800's there was an organised and concerted effort to kill as many aboriginals especially males.

So the question was answered by the provision of information.

It was noticeable the grace by which all the Aboriginal people spoke. 
Richard Cassady (Tour Organiser) and Buddy (24yo at Mungulla station) in particular but also everyone from the people who served me in the snack bar on Palm through to the people in the museum we visited before going to Mungulla.  No one took a aggressive stance and yet it is clear that a lot of wrong was done to them.

So my gut feeling is that we need to change Australia day off 26-Jan. 
We need a date that can be representative of all Australians including the indigenous people.
I think that can only happen by white middle class people calmly taking the idea on board and I think that will happen through education.  probably in short bursts.

I don't think that is going to be achieved in response to aggressive action by either black or white Australians.  I suspect that aggressive action will simply polarise people. 

I was intrigued that some of my rowing friends, who I would as a sweeping generalization, describe as rich, white and conservative asked me about the trip and were willing to listen to my description of the injustices done.  I'm sure had I taken an aggressive bad white people invasion day stance, they would have switched off immediately.

On the trip, I asked Richard about the people who were aggressive about the invasion day thing and hes response was along the lines of he is looking to the future and it's up to them as to whether they can catch up.

OTHER THOUGHTS
It seems to me that Palm is stuffed as far as western economy is concerned.  There is nothing to do.  Unless you have a government job then there seems no other employment.

I think some tourist work could be created along the lines of what we saw in Noumea. 
Individuals could :
   provide 4WD transport / tours / taxi / uber
   Crabbing / trip in a tinne.
   Horse riding.
   Guided walking tours maybe with an overnight camp?

All of these could be done as a small scale thing.  I suspect one big impediment would be the over regulation of everything in Australia.  Insurance would be another issue.  We knew in Noumea that the fellow and his van would have no insurance.  I doub't anyone would let someone just run a micro tourist thing like described above in Aus without a gazillion layers of insurance.  We just need one person injured and thats the end of nothing anyway.