8 thoughts on “This is the Grandma Phil needs…

  1. My old gram could cook the finest savoury meat pies from scratch, light fluffy puff pastry, all in a tin hut with no power or running water, on the floodplain delta of the Barron River, north Queensland. This was back in the Sixties. In the Forties, times were better, and gram had a grocery store in Chillagoe, a mining and cattle town west of Cairns. One Sunday, a nigger (using the language of the time) was pissed on sly grog (drunk on illegally-sold alcohol, at the time it also being illegal for an aboriginal to consume even beer. They were not full citizens, and were under the paternal authority of the Protector Of Aborigines, until a referandum in ’67), out in front of gram’s shop, and she told him to clear off. Well, what he did do wasn’t too smart, as he gave her some lip back. Now this just was not done back then, so gram shot him. The cops came, questioned gram, and kept hold of her rifle for a week before returning it. She eventually went before a travelling magistrate, fined £5 for discharging a rifle in town on a Sunday. The boong had kicked up a stink, until it was explained that he could face charges of public drunkiness, consuming alcohol et cetera. It was a storm in a teacup, nobody cared much, ‘cos he had it coming, it was a different era, it was a .22 and she got him in the ankle – a minor wound (only because she was a crook shot, nobody gave lip to gram!). Gram didn’t complain about the blackfella being drunk, as I’m pretty sure she was the sly-grogger. Her grocers could trade on a Sunday, but not a pub back then. That five Pounds Australian (a large white £5 banknote) was a decent whack of money back then.

  2. All I admitted to was being the product of a culture, one that no longer exists. My poor gram worked herself to death, she had $10 to her name when she died. I’m not too sure I’ll do better, but I too have been worked to a death that won’t be too long coming. Who among us can know when such a thing will be? I do know however, that It will be with a middle finger raised to petty tyrants everywhere.

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