Geezzzz...aint it good to know we got this sort of tripe spilling from the brains of the cultural and social elite of our country???
Can you believe it??????
Low blow from Sydney By JOHN ANDERSEN 27mar06 THE shell-shocked survivors of category five Cyclone Larry could be excused for thinking that they are in the thoughts of people living in Sydney and Melbourne.
After all, Aussies are mates. We stick together. Blood oath.
It's a myth. Just ask Sydney columnist Miranda Devine, who reckons that the cyclone survivors are a bunch of whingers.
It's their fault for living in places like Innisfail that their lives have been irretrievably altered, Miranda writes in the Sydney Sun-Herald and on the Sydney Morning Herald website.
So overcome with sorrow was she that she wrote: "I'm sorry, but if you live in a place prone to cyclones every 80 years and a cyclone comes along after 80 years, what's the surprise? But, much as we will miss their avocados and bananas on our supermarket shelves, we can live without their whingeing." She may as well have said, "Like, get a life."
Miranda knows all about hardship. She lives in Cremorne on Sydney's North Shore where houses cost more than $1 million.
Hardship here is when the local bottlo runs out of Moet or when the maid calls in sick and madam has to do the washing herself.
It's a part of this country that has disengaged itself from regional heartlands such as Innisfail where people of Australian, Greek, Italian and Hmong descent live and work together.
About 500 Hmong, a Lao mountain tribe systematically executed and brutalised by its own government for having worked with the American CIA during the Vietnam war, have been repatriated to Innisfail.
They work here, they now own businesses here including banana farms.
They have been made welcome and become a part of this community that Miranda paints as self-centred and uncaring.
In Cremorne the Hmong would be trimming the hedges and washing the socks of the rich. In Innisfail, the community that embraced them, they have been empowered and their lives enriched.
It's a tough life in Cremorne and little wonder that Miranda, reputedly one of Australia's highest paid columnists, is cranky that people who had their jobs and homes blown away in Cyclone Larry are bitching about their predicament.
The nerve of them. Bloody upstart hillbilly North Queenslanders. As if Miranda and the Cremorne/Mosman set don't have their own crosses to bear.
Why, just recently there was a category five, heart-wrenching article in the Sydney Morning Herald about wealthy people in Mosman not being able to find servants and cleaners.
It appears that with the price of housing in the North Shore suburbs there are no longer any poor people living locally who can be employed to iron master's newspaper and dust the mistress's antique French furniture.
Gosh, get the Emergency Services Minister on the line. This is an intolerable situation.
Miranda heaps scorn on people who queued for food and money, painting them as grasping opportunists, too lazy to help themselves, but quick to suck at the public teat. If only she knew.
The fact is that without power, people lost what food they had in the freezers and refrigerators.
All businesses were closed, many were destroyed. It wasn't as if you could rock down to the corner store and order a cheese burger and fries.
The only money people had was what they had in their pockets when Larry blew in. No banks opened and with no electricity the ATMs were in lockdown.
Innisfail looked like a war zone. For the first three or four days people were in shock.
They moved like zombies. It was an eerie place to be.
The food queues at the barbecues in Edith Street where volunteers toiled, cooking sausages and onions, wasn't just for locals who had been beaten up by Larry.
Visiting journalists stood in line as well. It was either that or chew on air.
Miranda is really peeved that people complained about their predicament.
She says that 'five minutes after the cyclone hit, locals were whingeing that 'they' hadn't arrived' to fix their broken homes.
I think this a sad generalisation. I've seen people complain on the telly, which is where Miranda is getting most of her info, but I didn't come across any A-grade whingers during the five days I spent covering the cyclone and its aftermath.
But, if they wanted to complain, so what? They'd just been through hell. Minutes after Larry blew itself out I was out in a Land Rover with freelance photographer Brian Cassey interviewing people who had their houses blown away and who had spent four to five hours terrified that they might die.
We targeted the worst hit houses we could find and we didn't come across a single whinger. The people we spoke to were upset.
They were despairing. They were in varying degrees of shock, but not one of them played the blame game. They were just glad to be alive.
Maybe if Miranda had gone to Innisfail and spoken to some of the people who had been 'Larried' she might have taken a different view.
But, gee, why would you leave Cremorne where you can sip on Moet and watch it on the telly?
