Comments about Australia

So today we went and visited the shrine of remembrance. This is dedicated to all the veterans of WW1 in Victoria. What a militaristic culture they seem to have here. In part I think its related to all the sports. I was thinking today that there is also a connection between the military and the American influence in Australia.

In contrast to New Zealand (which kind of pissed the U.S off by not allowing nuclear subs into its territory in the 1980s..) Australia seems quite American.
American stores everywhere including Target and Kmart etc... But also all their TV shows are American spin offs... even the "abc" logo looks exactly like the American one.

I guess i shouldn't be surprised that almost every newscast also involves America in some way (though for NZ it seemed it was the Blair government alone that constituted foreign news content).

Australia is a strong ally of the U.S because of their common interests and institutions in their defence of South East Asia. I took a picture today of the plaque which was in place at the monument today (in the sort of Post WW2 area)which was for the IRAQ conflict. I also noticed that they fought in VIetnam as did New Zealand.

I was also thinking today about the contribution that wars can make to nationhood. For those so called 'dominions' it was WW1. For most of the third world their independence came as a result of their contributions during WW2 (as well as many other factors...)

I also thought today about Canada's wars and the contributions they made to our nationhood. I thought about how I want to go see the monument in Vimy.

After i thought about all those things, i then realized that in a lot of ways the commemorations celebrate the victorious. The 'righteous' side that won the war, always for the 'right' reasons. I wonder what the Germans or Japanese think about WW2 for example.

One last note, it's been interesting to see the way Aboriginal culture is presented in Australia. The myths and legends i was told on the bus were dismissed with a laugh by our bus driver. Not in a negative way but, i wonder if they tell the stories because they respect them or because tourists love hearing them. The

one really interesting part was in the museum of Melbourne where they had a really good exhibit which included a lot of input by the native groups themselves. I wonder whether they consider them different races here. In Canada we only use the term Aboriginal (well it's only correctly used) to talk about the three separate groups we have, inuit, first nations peoples and Metis. Here it seems to emcompass any Aboriginal.

They are the oldest living civilization on earth and made an incredible voyage at sea to get to Australia, and yet they don't seem to celebrate that here. They put on shows for the tourists but it doesn't seem like much else is done. It's interesting thinking about the differences between how New Zealand, Canada and Australia have treated their native peoples. The Maori in New Zealand were lucky, they were discovered last and were largely left alone for quite some time and were remarkably well able to adapt to western technology, as proven in their strong fighting skills in the musket wars in the 1860s... In the other two countries the story was different and largely negative.

I didn't mean this to focus too much on what i'll call indigenous issues. It's kind of funny though that they don't interest me much at home, but here i find them fascinating...