The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers. Unknown.
I posted this (see below) to my Facebook page yesterday, and a longer but very similar screed went onto my Instagram account. The Facebook post got two likes, one of which was from a fairly high profile Australian climber. You should not read too much into this as I have a grand total of 16 friends on Facebook: the audience is small and I have no interest in garnering “likes” so most of my posts are either stupid, sarcastic or both. To be clear, despite the Zuckerberg back flip on censorship, totalitarianism and toxic femininity (if masculinity can be toxic so can excessive feminism), I am no fan of Facebook and the only reason I got an account was to see the trail updates about our local mountain bike tracks. Unfortunately, Facebook still seems to have a strangle hold on this type of communication for local community groups. That often happens, the first kid on the block manages to garner the most success. Outside of that, like all social media, Facebook is not a healthy place.
Still, I pop into Facebook and put up the occasional post. Ironically, the other thing I keep up with on Facebook is the movement to keep the climbing areas in Mount Arapilies open to climbers. Climbing is, or at least it used to be, counter-culture. Climbers were outside society, lived in their cars (before the Trust Fund kids all got $100 K+ Sprinter vans), and shunned mainstream movements. These days, climbers, like the left itself, have morphed into authoritarian tattle tales who have been co-opted by the Critical Race theorists and now spend most of their time talking about how climbing (and the outdoors in general) is exclusionary to various identified victim groups.
No-one who conducts these ludicrous surveys or dreams up these unworkable strategies – which, by the way, always include the exhortation to “check yourself” because you too are, obviously (it really goes without saying), also a racist, sexist homophobic sinner - ever thinks that perhaps the reason some IV’s (identified victims) are not into climbing is because they are uninterested. I am a 62 year old white female and, for my entire outdoor career I have been – mostly but not entirely – the only female in a group of mixed race males. I never thought this was systemic sexism because it was patently obvious to anyone with two neurons capable of synapsing, that the real reason I was the only woman was because, as a general circumstance, women were not interested in climbing, skiing, mountaineering, or whatever the relevant sport was. Reality, as they say, is a bitch.
Riding around our local trails today I was thinking that anyone who saw my Facebook post and is a nanny state government supporter (most, if not all of the political left) would be quite insulted because, in a round about, sly kind of way, I was calling the folks who love signage, safety regulations and the like, weak and stupid. Oops. Not actually my intent. The post was a warning not a condemnation.
I’ll do an Andy Kirkpatrick here and say, as Andy would after a series of non-PC talking points “I do apologise.” Andy Kirkpatrick, of course, was cancelled by the woke-rati climbers for some perceived slight or use of “hurty words” and, just like that a brilliant mind from the climbing scene was erased; but such is the nature of the new world order where mediocrity is infinitely preferable to meritocracy.
Anyway, I rode my favourite trail today: RU12. It’s old school, narrow, twisty, rocky, a little technical, lots of steep uphill sections even though it is officially a downhill track with a steep, rocky climb out an eroded fire trail at the end. The good thing about the heart pumping ride out is that every other up-track feels easy afterwards. The other good thing is, for some reason, the E-bike riders don’t venture down RU12 much which automatically gets my approval. Anyway, take heed of my warning, or don’t. It’s your choice.
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