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reetings from Australia.
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If, when you are first handed the latest work of one whom you suspect to be your literary superior, you feel that it would be effrontery for you to criticize it, do not decline to do so. Remember that no qualifications are necessary for a Literary Critic, and that this is the Day of the Little Man, when the more insignificant you are, and the more valueless your opinions, the greater will be your chance of obtaining a hearing.
Georgette Heyer, English author, born on August 16, 1902
My plots are abysmal, and I think of them with blood and tears.
Georgette Heyer
A crank? Yes, I'm a crank: a little device that causes revolutions!
EF Schumacher, progressive German economist, born on August 16, 1911
Many people love in themselves what they hate in others.
EF Schumacher
The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.
EF Schumacher
Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.
EF Schumacher
It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.
EF Schumacher
Eagles come in all shapes and sizes, but you will recognize them chiefly by their attitudes.
EF Schumacher
Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.
EF Schumacher
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.
EF Schumacher
You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.
EF Schumacher
(See the Campden
Wonder, 1660 below)
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
Elvis Presley, American singer who died on August 16, 1977
Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.
Elvis Presley
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley
I don't want to read about some of these actresses who are around today. They sound like my niece in Scarsdale. I love my niece in Scarsdale, but I won't buy tickets to see her act.
Elvis Presley
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't
goin' away.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley, the Hillbilly Cat, Swivel Hips, the King of Rock and Roll, the King of Bebop, the King of Country Music, simply, the King.
Michael Bane, American journalist
Feast day of St Roch (Roche; Rock; Rocco;
Rollox; Rolex; Roque; Rochus)
Patron of those with the
plague, whose feast day falls at the peak time of the old plague season,
St Roch of the 14th Century
(c. 1295
– August 16, 1327)
worked miracles among 'people living with
plague', though he suffered from the disease himself.
He was a French
gentleman, with estates near Montpellierin the south of France. Roch healed all the
sick in Palcentia. Being imprisoned in France,
on the false charge of spying, and about to
die, he prayed that he might live three days longer in contemplation of
the Passion of
Jesus Christ. This was granted; on the third day an angel came and said it
was time to go, but he could have one more wish. St Roch asked that anyone
with plague might pray to him after his death and be healed. An angel
brought down from heaven a tablet with the confirmation of his request
divinely written in gold.
On August 16, 1378 (some sources give other
dates), a prison guard found San Rocco at the point of death, and the
dungeon illuminated with a blue light radiating from his body. Hearing of
this, the governor demanded to know who this Roch was. Saint Roch faintly
replied, "I am your nephew Roch". Doubting, the governor had the
saint's clothes removed from him and the red cross-like mark was visible
on the left side of his chest.
Roch was buried with
the angel's tablet beneath his head. His body is enclosed in a glass tomb in the church of San Rocco, Venice,
Italy.
In art he wears a
pilgrim's habit, lifting it to reveal a plague-spot on his thigh, which
sometimes an angel is touching to cure, for he was healed by an angel.
Sometimes he is seen with a dog bringing bread in
his mouth, or licking the plague spot: a hound brought
him bread daily with food stolen from his
master's table while he was
starving in a forest during a plague. 'St Roch and his dog' is
an obsolescent expression meaning inseparables. He is also represented as a pilgrim with staff, often displaying a
plague sore on his leg, this being on of the very few images of saints to
expose any afflictions or handicaps. In the 19th Century religious
card shown above, the fact that he is a pilgrim is signified by scallop
shells on his cloak, a symbol of a pilgrim to the shrine of St James the Great
at Compostela,
still one of the world's great pilgrimages.
His festival was held like a harvest-home, or wake, with
dances in the churchyard in the evening. His day was styled 'the
great August festival'. In Bolivia
his day used to be celebrated as the 'birthday of all dogs', in which the
dogs around town can be seen with colourful ribbons tied to them. In Bingen,
Germany there is a St. Rochus pilgrimage church on a hilltop. Every year
in August a one-week pilgrimage – the 'St Rochusfest' – is held to
honour a 17th-Century
vow of the city council.
Roch's name might have given the English an old saying,
'sound as a roach'.
The Black Death
(also The Bubonic Plague,
and more recently The Black Plague) was a devastating
epidemic
in Europe
in the 14th century
which is estimated to have killed about a third of the population.
Most scientists believe that the Black Death was an outbreak of bubonic plague,
a dreaded disease that has
spread in pandemic form several
times through history. The plague is
caused by the bacteriumYersinia pestis
which is spread by fleas with the help of
animals like the black rat (Rattus
rattus) — what we would call today the sewer rat. Sometimes,
the term "Black Death" is used for all outbreaks of plague
and epidemics. Source:
Wikipedia
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
Musicians' court at Tutbury,
England, in the Middle Ages
Yesterday we looked at
the Tutbury hunters'
procession in old England, on the Feast of the
Assumption, when the wood-master and rangers of Needwood forest
started the festivities that were associated with a dinner given to
them at Tutbury Castle.
Clorinda said, "Tell
me your name, gentle sir."
And he said, "'Tis bold Robin Hood;
Squire Gamwel's my uncle, but all my
delight
Is to dwell in the merry Sherwood.
"For 'tis a
fine life, and 'tis void of all strife."
"So 'tis sir," Clorindareply'd.
"But oh," said bold Robin, "how sweet would it be,
If Clorinda would be my bride!"
She blusht at the notion, yet after a
pause
Said, "Yes, sir, and with all my heart."
"Then let's send for a priest," said Robin Hood
"And be married before we do part."
But she said, "It may not be so, gentle sir,
For I must be at Titbury feast;
And if Robin Hood will go thither with me,
I'll make him the most welcome guest."
Over the
years, the celebration became a big one, and because the town of
Tutbury became a popular place, with many minstrels and jugglers
attending, John of Gaunt, 1st
Duke of Lancaster,
fourth son of Edward
III, ordered that
every year on August 16, there should be elected a king of the
minstrels, to try those charged with misdemeanours, and grant
licences for coming year.
On
this day, the minstrels would assemble at the bailiff's
house, where they were met by all the local dignitaries. They then
went in a musical procession with much pomp to the church where each
minstrel was paid a penny, then on to the castle where they
conducted their court, made merry, played music, and elected the new
king ...
Stephen was a persecutor of people with
viewpoints that differed from his own, particularly pagans, who
resisted:
" … his methods with recalcitrant pagans were
marked by the roughness of the age and place. He established
Christianity as the state religion and severely punished
superstitious customs derived from paganism. Blasphemy and
adultery were equally treated as crimes such as theft and
murder. He both commanded all except the clergy to marry and
forbade marriages between Christians and pagans. Tithes were
commanded to support the poor and the churches. Every tenth town
was required to build a church and support a priest, and the
king himself supplied the furnishings for each. At times there
was a lively resistance, supported by his political rivals."Source
As further
attempts at stamping out the old ways, he also prohibited the use of the old Hun-Magyar runic alphabet and
making Latin
the official language of the royal court. He died at Székesfehérvár, a town he had
founded.
Corso del Palio (Palio
di Siena – Race for
the Palio), Siena,
Italy
The Palio di Siena (known locally simply as
the Palio), the most famous
palio in Italy, is a
horse race held twice each year on
July 2
and August 16 in Siena, in which the horse and rider represent one
of the seventeen
Contrade, or city wards. The race is
preceded by a spectacular
pageant,
which includes (among many others) Alfieri, flag-wavers, in
medieval costumes. Just before the pageant, a squad of
carabinieri on horseback, wielding
swords, demonstrate a mounted
charge around the track.
Eastern
Orthodox: commemoration of the translation
of the Acheiropoietos
icon which means "Not made by hands", (also known as
the Mandelion; now lost) from Edessa to Constantinople on
August 16, 944
1865Mary
Gilmore (born Mary Jean Cameron; later, Dame Mary Gilmore; d.
December 3, 1962), Australian
poet, utopian socialist, later a Communist Party member, close friend of leading
Australian socialist William Lane
and fellow poet Henry Lawson.
Gilmore was the first woman member of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and member of its executive.
She is the woman on the Australian $10 note.
Lawson
once asked her to marry him but she gave him a "no", noting in her diary "a curious immaturity"
in him – like a "sappy twig".
When
Lane led several hundred (figures vary according to source) Australians
on the Royal Tar
to Paraguay to form a utopian community,
first New
Australia and then Cosme when they abandoned the
former, Gilmore stayed behind in Sydney, operating a New Australia
recruiting office at 111 Elizabeth St, with
Walter Head,
as single women were not permiited there until the colony was
established (the single exception being
Clara Jones, who was required as a nurse). Mary believed that
when she arrived at Paraguay she would marry
Dave Stevenson, a handsome shearer, but when she arrived she was
snubbed by him. From Paraguay she wrote back to Henry Lawson
inviting him to join her, with the postscript, "PS I didn't get
married".
She became the colony's
schoolteacher and 'newspaper' editor (the paper was read out daily
to the colonists). After her return to Australia some six years
later (she and her
husband were among the first to leave Cosme, disillusioned), she
continued to write poetry and became active in campaigns for the aged and under-privileged.
Her
works include Marri'd and Other Verses (1910), The Hound of the Road (1922),
The Tilted Cart (1925), The Wild Swan (1930),
Under the Wilgas (1932),
Old Days, Old Ways (1934)
More Recollections (1935),
Battlefields (1939), and Fourteen Men (1954).
In her old age she told the National
Times, May 6 - 11, 1974 of an unsuccessful attempt
of Larry Petrie's to blow up Circular Quay, the main
dock area of Sydney. No date is given, but it's probably 1892.
Petrie had left a bomb in a drain at the Quay, and
some of his associates decided to remove it. While Mary Cameron (as she was
before marrying William Gilmore) watched out for police, with great trepidation
the diminutive Member of NSW Parliament Arthur
Rae (1860 - 1943)
crawled up the drain and removed the bomb, having volunteered to do so because
at 5 feet tall he was the smallest person in the clandestine operation. Rae was
Vice President of the AWU and one of the founders of the Australian Labor
Party. In 1891 he was one of the first 36 Labor members elected to Parliament;
he was later a Senator in the Australian Parliament ( 1910
- 1914, 1918
- 1935). Alongside Artie Rae
and Mary at this extraordinary occurrence was Chris
Watson (1867 - 1941),
third Prime
Minister of Australia and the first Labor PM (1904).
See also July 27,
1893 for another of Larry Petrie's bombings (on the SS Aramac), this
time successful.
Wikipedia says:
Gilmore's first volume of poetry was published in 1910, and for the next
fifty years she was one of Australia's most popular and widely read
poets, although advanced literary opinion held much of her verse to
be doggerel and propaganda. In 1908 she became women's
editor of The Worker, the newspaper of Australia's largest
and most powerful trade union, the Australian
Workers Union (AWU). This gave her a platform for her powerful
journalism, in which she campaigned for better working conditions
for working women, for children's welfare and for a better deal for
the Aboriginal
people.
Before her death at 97 she had a succession
of housekeepers, many of them leaving in exasperation. On Thursday, December 6, 1962, Sydney witnessed the first State funeral
granted an Australian writer since that of Lawson forty years earlier.
Like
her former would-be beau, Henry Lawson, her image appeared on the Australian
$10 note, or, rather images, for the banknote features an early
photograph as well as the controversial portrait painted in her
later years by Sir William Dobell
(zoom
image).
"When she met Lane in 1892, Mary was a
schoolteacher in Sydney, a tall, young eccentric-looking woman
with herauburn hair chopped extremely short.She was deeply
impressed by Lane whowas recruiting for his dream of asocialist
commune in Paraguay, wherethere would be no bosses — except
himself, as it turned out. Mary loved people with a good brain
and William Lane was a remarkable writer and a charismatic
figure. He was happily married; there is no suggestion therewas
any sexual involvement between them. She joined Lane's New
Australia Movement and after school would head into their city
office and help edit their journal. It was here she met a tall,
handsome, swashbuckling Queensland shearer called David Russell
Stevenson. Like a lot of bushmen at that time, Stevenson was
self-educated and used to carry Shakespeare in his saddlebag.
Mary became absolutely infatuated withhim. At the same time
Henry Lawson was absolutely infatuated with her and begged her
to marry him and come with him to Western Australia. But once
she'd met Stevenson, poor Henry, who was two years younger than
Mary and a puny specimen compared to Stevenson, was forgotten,
except as a wonderful friend who she could talk to about
writing.When the colonists sailed off in 1893, Mary couldn't go
because single women weren't wanted until the colony was
established. The one single woman taken, a Queensland nurse
called Clara Jones, was needed because the NSW government said
they couldn't go without a nursing sister on board. Clara and
Stevenson fell in love on the voyage. Lane, who put a stop to
their flirtation, told her Stevenson was engaged to Mary.
Thinking Stevenson had lied to her Clara married the first man
to come along. Before Mary arrived, the first colony had broken
up because of Lane's dictatorial behaviour and Lane had formed a
second colony over 100 km away. Because the schoolteacher had
remained with the original mob, Lane wrote to Mary and begged
her to come out. She had just turned thirty, the age at which
she believed she would become an old maid, a future she devoutly
feared. So she packed up, putting in eight yards of white muslin
suitable for a wedding dress, and at the end of 1895 off she
went. First of all a little sailing ship to New Zealand, then a
tramp steamer and the perilous voyage around Cape Horn up the
east coast of the continent to Montevideo. From there she had to
negotiate her way without any Spanish onto a paddlesteamer and
travel 1600 km up the great rivers to the capital of Paraguay.
From there she took a steam train and got off at a siding. She
had expected Stevenson to meet her but it was Lane's brother who
met her for the thirty-mile ride to the rough little colony,
just thatch huts and a jungle clearing. They had a welcome dance
for Mary that night and Stevenson didn't dance with her once.
Humiliated and embarrassed Mary wrote to her old swain Henry
Lawson saying, 'Why don't you come over after all?' But Henry
had just married and didn't respond. Mary went to the colony not
just for love, but for its ideals on gender equality. What she
didn't realise was the colony had scrapped the clause about
gender equality. As a single woman, she was in a pretty
embarrassing situation. Before long she was reading to a man
called William Gilmore who was in the colony hospital. He was
nearly illiterate, but he was a good, kind, handsome man and
before long an engagement was announced. I speculate that Mary
may have prodded Gilmore towards a proposal because he was so
shy, and although not in love with him at that time, I think she
did fall in love within the marriage. I think their physical
relationship turned out to be a wonderful excitement for Mary.
There is a rash of quite sensual poems that she writes at that
time." From 'Bluestocking in Patagonia'
by Dr Anne Whitehead:
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1264 King Henry III of England granted a pardon to a woman
named Inetta de Balsham, who was hanged for harbouring thieves, but who lived
from nine o'clock on Monday morning, till sunrise on Tuesday following, still
hanging on the scaffold, as was testified to the king with sufficient evidence.
In his Natural
History of Staffordshire(Oxford, 1686), Dr Robert
Plott recites verbatim a royal pardon granted to the woman. In his account of
Oxfordshire, the same author tells of a similar occurrence that happened to a
woman surnamed Greene. Ms Greene, after being hanged for about half an hour, was
still alive. "What was most remarkable'" writes Plott, "and
distinguished the hand of Providence in her recovery, she was found to be
innocent of the crime for which she suffered".
Escapes
from the gallows
"In Plott's 'History of Staffordshire,' we are told that
in the reign of Henry III., one Judith de Balsham was condemned for receiving
and concealing thieves, and hanged from nine o'clock on Monday morning, till
sunrise on Tuesday following, and yet escaped with life! In evidence of this
most incredible story, Plott recites verbatim, a royal pardon granted to the
woman, in which the fact is circumstantially recorded. 'Quia Inetta de
Balsham pro receptamento Latronum ei imposito nuper, per considerationem.
Curie nostre suspendio adjudicata et ab hora nona diei Lune usque post ortum
solis diei Martis sequen suspensa, viva evasit sicutex testimonio fide
dignorum accepimus.' What can be said against such testimony as this?
Nothing perhaps but that the thing is impossible. The days of Henry III. were
days of priestly imposture; and there have been grosser juggles in the annals
of unholy craft, than hanging a woman for twenty-four hours without killing
her!
"In the account of
Oxfordshire, by the same author, we find a remarkable notice of the woman
Greene, who, after being hanged, was recovered by Sir William Petty. [See
Anecdotes of Science, p. 519.] The time of suspension, it may be necessary
to observe, was not quite so long as that of Judith de Balsham; she hung
only about half an hour. 'What was most remarkable,' says Plott, and
distinguished the hand of Providence in her recovery, she was found to be
innocent of the crime for which she suffered.'"Source
1617 The first African slaves were delivered to the British colony of
Virginia.
1660The strange case of William Harrison, the
Campden Wonder
On August 16, 1660, a 70-year-old rent
collector (manager of Viscountess Campden's estates at Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire,
England), William Harrison, disappeared from Chipping Campden, England, and only
his hat, comb and 'collar band', or scarf, were found. His servant, John
Perry, confessed to his murder and implicated his mother Joan (who was thought
to be a witch) and his brother Richard. All three were hanged, although a body
was never recovered.
Fully two years later, the
'murdered' William Harrison returned to Chipping Campden, with a fantastic
story, which he laid out in a sworn letter to Sir
Thomas Overbury, a magistrate of the county of Gloucester. Harrison wrote that
he had been kidnapped by two armed horsemen, who stabbed him through the side
and thigh with swords. They had taken him on a long journey through England to
Deal, where they had put him on a ship.
The ship was captured by Turkish pirates who sold the old man
into slavery near Smyrna, Turkey ...
1738The
death of Joe Miller (b. 1684), an illiterate but popular English comedian. A book of jokes
was published under his name, and these jokes were often quoted. Following his
death came the expression, 'a Joe Miller', an old term meaning a stale joke.
Examples:
"When the Lord of Ormond was young, and came first to Court, he
happen'd to stand next my Lady Dorchester, one Evening in the Drawing-Room, who
being but little upon the Reserve on most Occasions, let a Fart, upon which he
look'd her in the Face and laugh'd. What's the Matter, my Lord, said she: Oh! I
heard it, Madam, reply'd the Duke, you'll make a fine Courtier indeed, said she,
if you mind everything you hear in this Place."
"Two Gentlemen disputing about Religion, in Button's
Coffee-House, said one [of] them, I wonder, Sir, you should talk of Religion,
when I'll hold you five Guineas you can't say the Lord's Prayer, done,
said the other, and Sir Richard Steele
shall hold Stakes. The Money being deposited, the Gentleman began with, I
believe in God and so went cleverly thro' the Creed; well, said the other, I own
I have lost: I did not think he could have done it."
(This one I don't get at all but I'm sure it's a
rip-snorter; maybe you have to have grown up Catholic or Church of England.)
In America, "the early Joe Miller joke-books were often taken
over bodily from the English issues. But in 1833 one of the comic almanacs
pictured a tombstone bearing the legend, 'Here lies Joe Miller'; and though the
name survived, these famous little books – some of which Lincoln saw – contained
thereafter an increasing bulk of humor that can be distinguished as American."Source
1819
The Massacre of 'Peterloo':
martyrs for human rights
Apeaceful demonstration for political
reform and universal suffrage in St Peter's Field, Manchester, was attacked by
citizens and military personnel, with the loss of eleven lives. The name was
founded on the Battle of Waterloo, still fresh in the public mind. (See March 10, 1817; the Blanketeers.)
"James
Wroe was at the meeting and he described the attack on the crowd in the
next edition of the Manchester
Observer. Wroe is believed to be the first person to describe the
incident as the Peterloo Massacre. Wroe also produced a series of pamphlets
entitled The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events. The
pamphlets, which appeared for fourteen consecutive weeks from 28th August,
price twopence, had a large circulation, and played an important role in the
propaganda war against the authorities. Wroe, like Carlile, was later sent
to prison for writing these accounts of the Peterloo Massacre. "Source
"In 1853 the 'Mary Ann', skippered by William Randell,
and the 'Lady Augusta', under Captain Francis Cadell, ran an
unexpected race up-river, each sure of being the first to open up the Murray
for traffic."Source
1933
India: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma
Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience,began a fast against the refusal of the
government to grant him permission to work against untouchability while in
prison. On the fifth day of the fast he was removed to Sassoon Hospital; his
health was precarious. He was released unconditionally on the eighth day when he
was on the verge of death.
1949Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With
the Wind, died two days after being hit by a car.
1956Hungarian-born American
actor Bela Lugosi, remembered
as Dracula in several movies, died of a heart attack, in poverty after being
discharged from a hospital where he was being treated for drug addiction. His
wish was to be buried in his Dracula cloak, and it was done.
1960 Joseph Kittinger parachuted from a balloon over New Mexico,
USA, at 31,330 m (102,800
ft). He set unbeaten (as of 2003) world records
for: high-altitude jump; free-fall by falling 25.7 km (16 mi) before opening his parachute;
and fastest speed by a human without an aircraft, 982 km/h(614 mi/h).
1965Watts
Riots, USA: Several days of rioting ended in the Watts
neighbourhood of Los
Angeles, California. During the riots, 34 people were officially reported
killed, 1,100 people were injured, 4,000 people were arrested, 600 buildings
were damaged or destroyed, and an estimated $35 million in damage was caused.
1966 Vietnam War: The House Un-American Activities
Committee began investigations of Americans who had aided the Viet Cong
with the intent to introduce legislation making these activities illegal.
Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested.
He did his Abbie best to exhort the crowd with
Yippie rants, but was roundly booed for interrupting the music. Guitarist Pete Townshend (who didn't know Hoffman was a celeb) bashed Hoffman's head with a guitar and
Abbie was thrown off the stage.
At a later time, and perhaps in a different mind, Hoffman wrote one of his his
bestselling books, Woodstock
Nation.
"The Who had released
their first rock opera, 'Tommy', in June. Now, just after midnight, the
English hard-rockers were performing the three-record set's theme song, 'See
Me, Feel Me.' 'Listening to you, I get the music,' sang the
fringe-shirted Roger Daltrey, 'gazing at you, I get the heat ...' Head
Yippie Abbie Hoffman sat on the stage with Lang during The Who's set.
Hoffman had been working the medical tent since the festival's opening act,
gobbling down tabs of acid to stay awake. Lang and Hoffman had been looking
for an imaginary guy with a knife under the stage. Lang decided it was time to
calm Hoffman down. He had become increasingly obsessed with publicizing the
case of John Sinclair, a Michigan teen-ager busted for possession of two
marijuana cigarettes.
"So he jumped up and grabbed the mike, spitting out a few
words about Sinclair, who had gotten a 10-year jail sentence. Who lead
guitarist Pete Townsend didn't recognize Hoffman and figured he was just
another whacked-out festival-goer rushing the stage. Townsend bonked Hoffman
on the head with his guitar. Hoffman wandered away. 'Abbie was being Abbie,'
Kornfeld said. 'He was very out of his head at Woodstock. He didn't have
contact with reality.'"Source
Australian Prime
Minister
Gough Whitlam
poured red Central Australian sand from his hand into the hand of Aboriginal activist
Vincent Lingiari
(1908
-
1988) to symbolize the return
of a portion of tribal lands to Lingiari's
Gurindji tribe.
Lingiari had led the
Wave Hill Walk-Off (Wave Hill Strike), which eventually resulted in the
return of the land to the Gurindji by the
Commonwealth of Australia. The Wave Hill Strike helped reshape the agenda of
relationships between Indigenous Australians and the wider community. Although
initially an employee-rights action against the British transnational
corporation, Vesteys,
which paid the Aboriginal employees rather like slaves, it soon became a major federal issue when
the Gurindji people demanded the return of their traditional lands. The strike
lasted seven years.
We were treated just like dogs. We were lucky to get paid the
50 quid a month we were due, and we lived in tin humpies you had
to crawl in and out on your knees. There was no running water.
The food was bad – just flour, tea, sugar and bits of beef like
the head or feet of a bullock. The Vesteys mob were hard men.
They didn't care about blackfellas. Billy Bunter Jampijinpa
Many Australians have become familiar with the story of Vincent
Lingiari and the Gurindji through the
Paul Kelly
and Kev Carmody
song, 'From Little Things Big Things Grow' (the line "Till one day a
tall stranger appeared in the land" refers to Gough Whitlam):
Gather round people let me tell
you're a story
An eight year long story of power and pride
British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiari
Were opposite men on opposite sides
Vestey was fat with money and muscle
Beef was his business, broad was his door
Vincent was lean and spoke very little
He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
Gurindji were working for nothing but rations
Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land
Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter
Gurindju decided they must make a stand
They picked up their swags and started off walking
At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down
Now it don't sound like much but it sure got tongues talking
Back at the homestead and then in the town
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
Vestey man said I'll double your wages
Seven quid a week you'll have in your hand
Vincent said uhuh we're not talking about wages
We're sitting right here till we get our land
Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered
You don't stand the chance of a cinder in snow
Vince said if we fall others are rising
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow ...
Black fellas and white fellas – we still need that story By Janice McEwen
"When we heard about the stockmen walking off Wave Hill we were
in a drovers' camp in Queensland. We came in for our tucker and
Mum had been listening to the ABC news and she told us 'The
black fellas have walked off Lord Vestey's station'. We thought
they'd end up in jail. But they didn't. We were glued to the ABC
for the next nine years".
1984Carmaker John
De Lorean was acquitted of all eight counts of possessing and distributing cocaine.
1987
The Harmonic
Convergence. New Age believers gathered atvarious
'sacred sites' and 'power points' all around the world,in
an effort to prevent a predicted quarter century ofcatastrophe
by holding hands, humming, and, in the words of oneparticipant,
"meditating our buns off".
reetings from Australia.
How it works
Feast day of St Roch (Roche; Rock; Rocco;
Rollox; 
Roch's name might have given the English an old saying,
'sound as a roach'.
Musicians' court at Tutbury,
England, in the Middle Ages
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