For the young people of today

I drove my car to a session on Mildura’s population projections and trends yesterday and ended up going back to work on my high horse.

Presented by the Victorian Department of Planning and Community Development there was some interesting, although not earth shattering data presented. It basically said that Mildura (ie Mildura Rural City Council) will grow from 51,824 in 2006 to 55,523 in 2026. Rather modest figures.

The session included a roundtable discussion of current issues and their implications on planning and community development in the coming years. It was during this and when each table presented back to the whole that my skin began to crawl and my blood began to boil.

There was a nice ratio of young (sub 35yo) people in attendance, but still all aged Gen Xers and Baby Boomers were pinning the entire future on the young people.

Many tables had discussed the need to keep young people in the area. I disagree most vehemently. This is a very short sighted attitude and not about to actually achieve the outcomes they are after, which is a continuation of the community and an evolving region. I think we all need to allow young people to go and come as they want or need as many times as they like.

We need to  ensure that Mildura is an attractive place for young people, either for work, family or lifestyle reasons but we should not deny young people of the opportunity to spread their wings and gain life experiences in a place of their choosing. We just need to make it an attractive option when they are considering a change.

After hearing the feedback a DPCD employee paraphrased “We must protect the interests of the community by keeping young people here.” Bullshit. That’s akin to prison. In my experience, young people who go away and come back later on can have far more to offer than those who stay. They get a bigger picture understanding. They get a maturity that helps them contribute to their community. And they appreciate the community a whole lot more and it’s more important to them. If we keep people here, that doesn’t bring in that greater sense of purpose.

Young people are not the panacea to our problems or issues. No wonder the youth are disengaged. They feel the pressure of all the old people who expect young people to take up the mantle at its full weight. Instead, they should be encouraged to become involved and slowly groomed for future roles in their community.

Trick or Treat – Selfish vs Charity

On Saturday night I was trick or treated by two girls dressed as a witch and a pumpkin.

Two Australian girls, in a small Australian city, in a suburban street. Their costumes were of the ‘off the shelf’ variety that is currently invading bargain and cheapie department stores, no personalisation, just a ‘Made in China’ tag.

Since when did Halloween become a celebration in Australia? It’s not a special event, it’s not part of our culture and doesn’t mean anything to us except perhaps an excuse to dress up in spooky or kooky attire.

I don’t know what these two girls were expecting. They knocked on my door (hopefully they tried the dysfunctional doorbell first and waited a good while) and interrupted my viewing pleasure of The Cat in the Hat. When I opened the door all they said was “Trick or treat” and held a bag open. Do they think that people just have handfuls of treats by the door ready to give them. Ah hello, this is not America and I haven’t got a carved pumpkin head on my verandah, sorry, porch.

So I sent them away empty handed, although with only an apologetic shrug of my shoulders, not a tirade against Halloween and tricking and treating.

Although, had they thought ahead of the time and knocked on my door a day earlier to say “Hi I’m Maddison, I live around the corner and I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to come around trick or treating tomorrow with my friend, have a good night,” I may just have gone to the shops and picked something up especially for a polite little girl instead of wearing my own witchy expression and sending them away empty handed.  

Now let it not be said that I turn away kids doorknocking to raise funds for their school/club/special cause because this witch goes to special effort to support them by buying a chocolate or two.  And that is all about charity for a good cause and not rewarding selfish behaviour.

A guide to air conditioner cleaning

With my man away on a boys weekend, and temperatures of 37 and 38 degrees Celsius predicted, the air con cleanout was left to me.

To beat the heat and avoid roasting on the roof, I got onto the task as soon as I got up. After placing a call to my brother for some tips, I was ready to go and undertook the following steps.

1. Applied sunscreen and put my straw cowboy hat on.
2. Skirted around the house looking for where the air conditioner was located – it’s strange that I had never looked for it in our two year history here – and discovered it on the skinny side of the block.
3. Unfolded the ladder, a present from my parents one Christmas.
4. Decided against putting it up in the skinny side of the house because the ladder was too steep. Tried another spot that was equally as dangerous for the climb and started giving me vertigo, however I discovered moss growing in the gutter prompting a relapse into a favourite childhood pastime of poking moss with my finger to feel how spongey it was. Finally I settled on where two parts of the roof meet together at 90 degrees. This gave me a nice little roof ladder.
5. Attached the trigger nozzle to the hose and unwound it, hoping it would reach the air conditioner.
6. Climbed the ladder with the hose, swung my leg over the gutter and scaled up the corrugated iron to the gable.
7. Having not been on our roof before, I had a good stickybeak into the neighbours’ yards and admired the view which was punctuated by other air conditioning units on roofs. I also discovered that our TV aerial is the neighbourhood birds’ pooping point.
8. I did a reconnaissance of the air conditioner and it did not look like the one I used to help Mum and Dad clean out, so I was back on the phone to my brother for further clarification.
9.  This time I climbed the ladder armed with an array of tools wedged into the waistband of my shorts. A shifter, a screwdriver and a snap-lock sandwich bag to put the screws in so I wouldn’t lose them.
10. Unscrewed the first panel and took it off, laying it on the roof above the unit.
11. Started spraying the honeycomb like pads and watched all the dirt come out. It was kind of like when you put the hose in the seals around your car’s windscreen and all variety of dirt and debris shoots out from the pressure.
12. When the water ran clear, I moved the pad a bit so I could get the next one off. With all the water absorbed in the pads, it became a little heavier. This plus the gradient of the roof and the sled like shape of the panel led to a beautiful comedy. The panel started to move, which I didn’t think would be a problem until it eluded my grasp, continued it’s downward trend and instead of stopping in the gutter where I could retrieve it, it launched off the roof and bounced into the neighbour’s tree before landing on the ground. Unsure as to whether it was in our yard or the neighbours, I had to climb down the ladder and go looking for it. Luckily it was in our yard and it wasn’t damaged.
13. As I came down the ladder in search of the panel, my phone rang. I explained what I was doing and my friend offered her handy new husband to come and finish off the job for me!

So a big thank you goes out to Paul who took over from me on the roof, sprayed the rest of the panels, cleaned the water out of the air conditioner, put some Pine-O-Clean in the clean water and rescrewed the panels back in place.

I am now enjoying the cool breeze of the air conditioner which I’m sure will get a lot of use over the rest of the summer. Air con, an essential item for living in Mildura, in the car and in the house.

Quentin’s spelling bee gives me hives

The rabid proof-reader in me is appalled (not appauled as I saw written somewhere today) at the deliberate mis-spelling of Quentin Tarantino’s latest film.

Everytime I see Inglourious Basterds I want to punch a ‘u’ and rearrange the face of an ‘e’. Violent though that may be, it’s hardly worthy of a cameo in Tarantino’s next film. Somehow word geek gone mad doesn’t conjure up epic “I must see” status, although if it was directed by Tarantino, that would surely be  enough to get a few gore-seeking fans through the double-doors.

Creating a deliberately mis-spelled name for a movie may not be the smartest thing in the world, although there may just be some merit in the idea.

Regardless, the movie was great, so go and see it without the red pen.

River people

Saturday afternoon was spent returning to my roots as a river person.

River people as I commonly define them are those interested in paddleboating on the Murray and who generally have their own boat and enjoy joining a small flotilla of boats on planned cruises.

As part of the Merbein Centenary celebrations, in addition to Tania Zaetta, a cruise from Mildura to the Chaffey Landing at Merbein was organised. I joined my grandparents and a couple of aunts and uncles for a lunchtime cruise to Merbein. It took around 1 and half hours and it was a great day to be out on the river.

We paddled past the spectacular cliffs that earned Merbein it’s original name of White Cliffs and then turned back to find a mooring spot as there were around fifteen boats already tied up. Then it was moving into river people mode. Boat hopping and saying g’day to people, boiling the kettle, inviting random people up for a cuppa and checking out the PS Ruby that had made the trip up from Wentworth.

It was on a boat trip in September 2003 when there was a trip organised as a re-enactment of the first paddleboat’s race to navigate the river. I spent a week on the boat with Mum and Dad going from Swan Hill to Echuca and that was when I realised that I didn’t want to be waiting on a platform for a train into the city to go to work every day.

Paddle boating is very relaxing (when you’re not trying to moor it!) and you meet some truly interesting people along the way.