Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The Gutta

That's what the locals call Port Augusta... I think you gotta worry about a town that begins with a prison and ends with a detention centre perched on an army base. But the Mayor says: "I have encouraged this community to "hang in there" as God has his hand on Port Augusta - 'The City of His delight'." Hmm.
So the locals seemed like a bunch of racists, and I tried to keep a low profile. There's a large indigenous population and apparently the Gutta is where there was communities of Afghani cameleers years ago. One of the guards at Baxter had an Afghani parent and an Aboriginal parent. Wow.
The Ranges are very beautiful and on the drive out of town I saw emus on the artillery range next to Baxter. The detainees can see the blue sky and the red earth, but not the horizon that makes sense of the landscape. Heaps of flies and dust.
Took some great photos of silos, watertowers and desolation. Will post them when I can get Jack to download them for me.

3 comments:

Bonnie Conquest said...

Couldn't help but post this quote from a speech by Julian Burnside QC about immigration detention policy -

"I will make 3 principal points:
What we are doing is needlessly cruel;
What we are doing is largely pointless;
What we are doing is fabulously expensive."

Steve Chatelier said...

It is sad that we even need to get to points 2 and 3...surely needlessly cruel is enough?

On another front, I just wanted to express my anger that the Aus government provided $10mil in aid for the New Orleans disaster. That is not to say that I don't feel terrible for those affected, but that there are significant crises in developing (or stagnant) nations like Niger where the government does nothing...I am pretty sure that the US doesn't need the 10mil...

Anonymous said...

not to mention the humanitarian crises here in australia...