Australia's White Australia Policy was a set of laws designed to restrict immigration by people who were not of European origin, especially targeting Asians - mainly Chinese - and Pacific Islanders. Those laws aimed to maintain Australia as a predominantly white, British-style society.

The roots of the policy trace back to the gold rush era of the 1850s, when thousands of Chinese immigrants came to Australia seeking prosperity. Their success in the goldfields primarily resulted from them taking all available ground, leading to tension with European miners and culminating in violent protests such as the Buckland and Lambing Flat Riots.

In response, the Colonies (now States) imposed taxes and other restrictions targeting Chinese arrivals. By the late 19th century, labor unions opposed low-wage competition from Chinese workers in industries including furnituremaking and market gardening, further fueling support for restrictive immigration laws.

They say Australia rode in on the sheep’s back.

But if you’d been standing in the cane fields of north Queensland, sweat in your eyes and the hum of harvesters in your ears, you might’ve thought otherwise. While the outback echoed with the bleat of woolly sheep and the click of shears, another Australia was rising... sweet, smoky, and sharp-edged.

This one rode not on the back of a sheep, but on the swing of a machete.

The machete: tool of the land - now the weapon of headlines and a handy distraction from what’s really going on.

Our country, which owes so much to the machete, is now very worried about them. And rightfully so.

So it got me thinking about sugar... its history and its contribution, good and bad, to our great nation of Australia.

It all began on a quiet afternoon in our neighbourhood park.

Cricket season had ended, leaving a vast, grassy oval entirely to ourselves.

My big brother picked up a sheet of writing paper, folded it with care, and launched it into the breeze.

That simple paper glider soared for a few glorious seconds before landing softly -  and just like that, I was hooked.

The paper glider quickly evolved.

I have a relative heading off from sunny central Queensland to further a career in the southern depths of Australian Tassie winter wonderland. I am assured that she has a great puffer coat and ugg boots and a good attitude. 

Good luck with that. It set me thinking about a time when I did the unthinkable and headed across the ditch to teach ....  

Back in the 1990’s I was asked to “ help out “ at an educational facility in the " balmy " southern city of Invercargill in New Zealand. Just a few months, over winter, to be a relief teacher for someone who was “ sick. “ I obliged.

When I fronted up, I discovered that my predecessor was on sick leave because of a nervous breakdown from teaching the classes I was taking over. Strange how that wee fact was left out. As the cool April weather closed in, the days shortened and the southerlies blew in from Antarctica, I began one of the most memorable attacks of frostbite I have ever had.

OK, chillblains, but you get my drift.

Dusty Gulch Gazette

Special Dusty Gulch Day Edition

“Blackout Special: Lights Out in the Gulch!”

By Roderick ( Whiskers)  McNibble, Chief Mud-Slinger & Power Failure Correspondent

While the nation was still reeling from the latest Prentis Penjani “liar liar pants on fire” special (charred to a crisp, as usual), and the Honklander brides saga had gone full media blackout, something much louder went BOOM in the valley.

Those two mighty Gulch Valley chimneys -  170 metres of old-school coal muscle -  came crashing down in a controlled demolition that shook the dust right off our swags.

And in true Dusty Gulch fashion, the locals have turned catastrophe into a sing-along.

In a quiet Australian town, long ago, stood a modest weatherboard house. It had three ordinary steps at the front, but the four wooden backsteps leading down from the kitchen verandah opened onto a boy’s entire universe.

Fifteen paces ahead -  thirty with seven-year-old legs -  stood the dunny, its tippy tin tucked beneath a leafy vine. Once a week came the Night Soil Man, brave, dependable, and somehow larger than life. He would swap the full tin for a clean one without fuss, as if performing a sacred duty for civilisation itself.

Beyond the gate sat a green Morris Minor sleeping in a garage crowded with ladders, tools, bits of timber, old paint tins, and mysteries only fathers understood. In the far corner of the yard, chooks scratched and clucked around the veggie patch, occasionally escaping into forbidden territory whenever the gate was left swinging open.

Those backsteps were this boy’s favourite place in the world.