Right and Wrong
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Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: NT
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Right and Wrong
I called this letter right and wrong as I couldn’t think of a better name.
My mate Johnno rang on the mobile the other day.
He was spitting chips.
It occurred after the demise of Ansett.
I had been out checking fences and bores for a while, rather enjoying a few nights in the camp, and got his call when I got back.
Johnno comes from the Isa, and he asked me to join him on a business trip to Winton, where he wanted to give me an earful over a few coldies at the North Gregory.
Johnno and I are both sexagenarians, and he claims a distant relationship to Fergus McMaster. You know, the gentleman who funded Fysh and McGuiness when they fired up Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
Johnno has been a bit of an investor all his life. In fact, that is how he makes a quid.
But he has reached the end of his tether with the stupidity of both government and business in Australia.
So, he arranged to fly out to Camooweal, pick me up, and fly down to Winton. He thought, given the historic times, it would be nice to get things off his chest in an historic town. You know, where Fergus gave Fysh and McGuiness the cheque.
As we flew over Dagworth, I could almost see the tears welling up in his eyes, as he thought aloud about how Banjo would be turning I his grave, at the way the country has gone.
Well, we got to the North Gregory pub, checked in, and then adjourned to the bar for a while.
At our age, we don’t spend too much time drinking these days, but the next three hours or so were quite enlightening to hear how a bloke, who is the salt of the Australian earth, felt about the state of the nation.
I was quite unaware how much it had been eating at him. Not that we see a lot of each other these days, but we keep in contact on the phone, and probably catch up once a year.
Old Johnno let fly as soon as the barmaid drew the first beer, and we had slaked our first thirst.
As a long time private pilot, he has always had an interest in aviation. In fact he introduced me to this website, which I have followed with some interest for a while.
He also held shares in Ansett when it was a company run by a wily old bloke, who was a real Australian in his view, and who was dedicated to what was good for the company, its employees whom he had regarded as family, and who developed much of the tourism industry before anyone knew it existed.
He said he had read a book a few years back, called A Secret Country. He gave his a copy to read. I didn’t think a lot of it until I came across a chapter, which opened my eyes about likes of the late Sir Peter Abeles, and the goings on of Rupert Murdoch, and a couple of others. But it was this bloke Abeles and his conduct which took my interest. Of course, we all now who he was, and that he ran a transport company Alltrans, which merged with TNT. But his behaviour of intrigue had escaped me, and I was astonished at his behaviour. What more astonished me is the fact that all of this seems to have gone on with the full knowledge of politicians and governments of all persuasions.
But I digress.
Back in the North Gregory, Johnno was getting to his final point, which was how disillusioned has become with the political behaviour of elected members of the parliament. He has been a National party member all his life, and he has quit. He reckons his local member, Bob, is right. He has left a flagging party because it, along with the rest of the political parties, no longer represents the will of the people who elect them. The Prime Ministers of all persuasions have done nothing except feather their own beds, and he said that the most overt example of that, was when Hawke got into bed with Abeles with the airline pilots strike in 1989.
Old Johnno then filled me in on a lot of the details of that. I was amazed to find how disgracefully the government had actually conducted itself. Johnno said he had a cousin who had been involved. So he felt he had a reasonable insight into the situation.
But his final point about that was that it was basically the government funding a private industrial quarrel between the two major airlines, simply because Sir Peter Abeles called in the favours he had distributed to the PM.
At the end of his discourse on this, Johnno said he was sick to death of the pitiful standard of government Australians have had for the last thirty years, the slow death of the country people, the handouts to the big business, the bleeding hearts who all live in big cities, and who don’t want any controls over who comes to this country, or how they arrive.
My old grandfather was around during the strike in the nineties. The 1890’s that is, when the shearers were out. He knew what a scab was, and he had a family to feed too. But he didn’t scab.
I must mention that Johnno and I are at different ends of the spectrum. He is a businessman, and I am a working man. But we are the best of friends, and we both understand what is right and what is wrong.
So having read a number of letters posted in the Pprune website, mainly around the Ansett debacle, I thought you might be interested what a couple of old geezers think.
We are just ordinary blokes, and certainly nothing anyone does will much affect my life.
But there is right and wrong in life, and being a scab is just bloody wrong.
My mate Johnno rang on the mobile the other day.
He was spitting chips.
It occurred after the demise of Ansett.
I had been out checking fences and bores for a while, rather enjoying a few nights in the camp, and got his call when I got back.
Johnno comes from the Isa, and he asked me to join him on a business trip to Winton, where he wanted to give me an earful over a few coldies at the North Gregory.
Johnno and I are both sexagenarians, and he claims a distant relationship to Fergus McMaster. You know, the gentleman who funded Fysh and McGuiness when they fired up Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
Johnno has been a bit of an investor all his life. In fact, that is how he makes a quid.
But he has reached the end of his tether with the stupidity of both government and business in Australia.
So, he arranged to fly out to Camooweal, pick me up, and fly down to Winton. He thought, given the historic times, it would be nice to get things off his chest in an historic town. You know, where Fergus gave Fysh and McGuiness the cheque.
As we flew over Dagworth, I could almost see the tears welling up in his eyes, as he thought aloud about how Banjo would be turning I his grave, at the way the country has gone.
Well, we got to the North Gregory pub, checked in, and then adjourned to the bar for a while.
At our age, we don’t spend too much time drinking these days, but the next three hours or so were quite enlightening to hear how a bloke, who is the salt of the Australian earth, felt about the state of the nation.
I was quite unaware how much it had been eating at him. Not that we see a lot of each other these days, but we keep in contact on the phone, and probably catch up once a year.
Old Johnno let fly as soon as the barmaid drew the first beer, and we had slaked our first thirst.
As a long time private pilot, he has always had an interest in aviation. In fact he introduced me to this website, which I have followed with some interest for a while.
He also held shares in Ansett when it was a company run by a wily old bloke, who was a real Australian in his view, and who was dedicated to what was good for the company, its employees whom he had regarded as family, and who developed much of the tourism industry before anyone knew it existed.
He said he had read a book a few years back, called A Secret Country. He gave his a copy to read. I didn’t think a lot of it until I came across a chapter, which opened my eyes about likes of the late Sir Peter Abeles, and the goings on of Rupert Murdoch, and a couple of others. But it was this bloke Abeles and his conduct which took my interest. Of course, we all now who he was, and that he ran a transport company Alltrans, which merged with TNT. But his behaviour of intrigue had escaped me, and I was astonished at his behaviour. What more astonished me is the fact that all of this seems to have gone on with the full knowledge of politicians and governments of all persuasions.
But I digress.
Back in the North Gregory, Johnno was getting to his final point, which was how disillusioned has become with the political behaviour of elected members of the parliament. He has been a National party member all his life, and he has quit. He reckons his local member, Bob, is right. He has left a flagging party because it, along with the rest of the political parties, no longer represents the will of the people who elect them. The Prime Ministers of all persuasions have done nothing except feather their own beds, and he said that the most overt example of that, was when Hawke got into bed with Abeles with the airline pilots strike in 1989.
Old Johnno then filled me in on a lot of the details of that. I was amazed to find how disgracefully the government had actually conducted itself. Johnno said he had a cousin who had been involved. So he felt he had a reasonable insight into the situation.
But his final point about that was that it was basically the government funding a private industrial quarrel between the two major airlines, simply because Sir Peter Abeles called in the favours he had distributed to the PM.
At the end of his discourse on this, Johnno said he was sick to death of the pitiful standard of government Australians have had for the last thirty years, the slow death of the country people, the handouts to the big business, the bleeding hearts who all live in big cities, and who don’t want any controls over who comes to this country, or how they arrive.
My old grandfather was around during the strike in the nineties. The 1890’s that is, when the shearers were out. He knew what a scab was, and he had a family to feed too. But he didn’t scab.
I must mention that Johnno and I are at different ends of the spectrum. He is a businessman, and I am a working man. But we are the best of friends, and we both understand what is right and what is wrong.
So having read a number of letters posted in the Pprune website, mainly around the Ansett debacle, I thought you might be interested what a couple of old geezers think.
We are just ordinary blokes, and certainly nothing anyone does will much affect my life.
But there is right and wrong in life, and being a scab is just bloody wrong.
