Every year, for more than a decade, Australia’s annual Closing the Gap reports have reiterated what many of us know: Successive Australian governments have bombed on hitting targets to close the gap of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage in areas including health, education and employment. Now, Australian voters are set to decide on broadening the agency of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to directly inform Government decision-making that affects their wellbeing outcomes, via constitutional reforms.
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The George Floyd riots haven’t happened here yet. No rubber bullets. No tear gas clouds. No sirens. No punched-in shop windows. Once El Vaquero does take some big hits however, volunteers will arrive, and step over the broken glass to empty garbage bins of debris into bigger bins. Looters will become so flush with custom boots, shirts, and hats that El Vaquero’s shelves will become almost empty. COVID will subsequently threaten El Vaquero’s survival too.
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“The other thing is that it’s prickly out there. I do a lot of hiking around Texas and the landscape is often filled with cactuses. Even if you’re hiking on a trail, you brush by a prickly pear on a cactus and you’ll have the spines all in your clothing. You try to wipe them off and it’s getting in your hands, and it’s a total mess.”
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The shelves of booze behind her are glinting like rhinestones. A tangle of fairy lights webbing high on the bar’s back wall marries with a busy nest of framed photos that features everybody from Elvis to Kinky Friedman. Every time you line up for a beer at the Continental, it’s a museum experience.
Read More“I think the alarmists are on the side of reality really. I mean, the President has 12 minutes to launch his strategic nuclear weapons if the United States is under attack, so that time to respond is getting smaller and smaller and everybody else’s nuclear weapons are on 15 minute alerts.”
Read MoreWhen he eventually does appear before the anticipatory meat-locker of an audience and hastily sets to strapping on his guitar (with the assistance of guardian-like collaborator Marciana Jones, of side-lark The Sandwich Police), the groggy pools of pink, blue and yellow stage lights expose his squirrelly demeanour.
Read More“Some episodes are pretty simple in the sense that I just interview one person and it’s a rather straight-forward story and a very personal story and so it goes a lot faster. Other episodes take a lot more time because we’re interviewing multiple people but we’re also doing a lot of fact-checking. Because we’re a show that deals with crime, we need to get things right.”
Read More“Yeah, the beauty about podcasting is that anybody can do it. We’re doing something that a lot of radio stations can’t do. We don’t have censorship and we can talk about anything we want to talk about, which is great, but at the same time, you can put a bit of care into what you’re doing.”
Read More“Good fear is all in the meaning making, meaning it’s up to the individual to cognitively interpret the experiences as enjoyable or traumatic. The same experience can be interpreted entirely differently by two people. For some having a tour guide tell a descriptive story of a tragic death which left the space haunted by the spirits can be a really thrilling to hear and they’ll interpret their own scared response as enjoyable.”
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