Post by McGooPost by Peter Moylana handful of students whose origins I can never guess.
I actually live in Medowie which is really Port Stephens. Where are you?
I'm in Waratah, within sight of the city centre. Although the distances
aren't great, I go past Medowie about once in a blue moon. The last time
was when I took some Belgian visitors up to see the Port Stephens
dolphins, after which we took a sort of zigzag path home in the hope of
seeing some koalas (we didn't).
Post by McGooI know what you mean. There are some really dark skinned people about
in Newie. I gathered after some scandal on the news that there is
actually a refugee centre in the Broadmeadow area.
Quite a few Sudanese refugees have been resettled in Newcastle over the
last few years, and since they tend to be good walkers they can be seen
in all sorts of places. The scandal you heard about was probably when
the government contracted out the resettlement work to the lowest
bidder, rather than leaving it with the organisation with the experience
and competence to do the job. To complicate matters, the volunteers who
had been helping with the settling-in process - showing people how to
use telephones, how to do the shopping, getting medical help, teaching
them English, etc. - refused to do volunteer work for a for-profit
company, so the number of people in Newcastle doing this job dropped
from several dozen down to one single person, who didn't know what she
was doing and did it rather badly. This led to a few disasters,
including the much-publicised death of one child. I don't think the
problem was ever solved satisfactorily, although I think some of the
volunteers have been coaxed back.
The scandal before that was more a comedy than anything else. At some
stage leaflets flooded the city urging people to come to a rally to
demonstrate against the introduction of a threat against our racial
purity. (What purity?) A counter-rally was organised at very short
notice to welcome the Sudanese. On the day, reporters found seven
people (including the speaker brought up from Sydney) at the racist
rally, and about five hundred at the counter-rally. The racist
organisation continues to exist, and occasionally makes its presence
known by graffiti and so on, but as far as I know the membership
consists of one person in Newcastle and one in Sydney.
Post by McGooI have met Saffers (love that word) in Boolaroo, Maryville, Medowie,
Raymond Terrace, Stroud. I have met a lot of people who have worked
or lived next to them too.
First I meet people who think nothing of going for a 20 km walk, and now
here's someone who knows the area better than I do. All of those places
you mention are places that I pass through now and then, but rarely
visit. Although, now that I think of it, it was only yesterday that I
was telling myself that it's about time I climbed that hill above
Boolaroo that was rendered almost treeless by the Sulphide plant, to see
whether the vegetation is recovering. I must do that soon. I've been
wondering what the view from there would be like for years - in
principle it should be spectacular - but I've never seen a single person
on the hill, presumably because it's only recently that it stopped stinking.
Post by McGooThey always pick my accent.
It's likely that I could pick a SAfr accent, because to me it's
distinctive, but on the other hand it must be 20 years since I last
heard one, if I don't count the TV and radio. I could easily pick
Afrikaans, for the simple reason that Nederlanders in Australia almost
never speak Dutch, even among themselves, so anything that sounds like
Dutch must be Afrikaans.
Post by McGooAre you related to SA in anyway?
Not at all. I'm in this conversation only because I hang around
alt.usage.english a lot. And because this is one of the very rare
occasions where a crossposting between newsgroups hasn't brought a bunch
of idiots into our midst.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
reliably receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses.
The optusnet address still has about 3 months of life left.