Early yesterday morning, I was fishing at Nudgee Beach just off the edge of Moreton Bay, adjacent to the Brisbane River and Airport. It’s a grubby little area and is just 20 minutes from Brisbane City, so it is very accessible.
It’s my release. A way to get away from all the humdrum. The noise. To be one with nature. The gentle breeze. The mangroves and the white-faced herons that can stand still for what seems an eternity, unlike most of us that struggle to be still for a few seconds.
It might have been a fishing village 50 years ago and the décor would be similar. But unfortunately, there is not much left of that, nor much fish left just the same.
I looked forward to being alone. But fate had other ideas.
For whatever reason, there were just the two of us. Me and another “old bloke”. Well, an even older bloke it later turned out.
Naturally, after some small talk, we got to talking about the recent horrific events of Bondi.
We didn’t talk about who or what was to blame. Or grand solutions. We just shared in the tragedy.
The old man was heavily accented, which made me curious. So I asked him what country he was originally from.
He immediately told me he was a “nationalized Australian”. It was almost as if he had rehearsed that line, or had used it so often it had become second nature. For whatever reason, he didn’t really want to tell me. Or maybe he really wished he could.
We ended up speaking for about 3 hours on that jetty. We covered so much territory. He was 83 and his wife was in her 80s, and he hinted at her dementia without wanting to go into much depth. He was a retired fitter and turner and a very intelligent man.
Eventually, after sizing me up to see what I was like, he admitted he was Palestinian. The fact that he went through a vetting and screening process to tell me his country of origin probably explains the sensitivities he experiences in a society that does not understand much about Middle East politics and culture.
He explained as a Palestinian, he was essentially a blood brother of all the Arabs. He felt some similarities with our own Indigenous people in Australia, but for him it was the Middle East. He was a long-term devout Muslim, but converted to Christianity because his wife was a Christian and found the teachings inspiring. My feeling was he was both proud and embarrassed about his heritage because he was acutely aware of how it was perceived after living in Australia for many years.
However, he was sympathetic to the Islamic cause and explained to me some of the subtleties of the various factions, from the Lebanese, Syrians, Qatar, Egypt, Iran and, of course, the Jews.
He had no time for the terrorists or the terrorism of the region, but explained how deeply ingrained they were in their thinking. We quickly agreed that the Catholic Church was probably one of the most corrupt institutions on the Christian front (my whole family — wife, me and all our kids — are Catholic, so don’t get lost on that). He did also say he believed Jesus’ teachings were the most justified of all the religions.
One thing that came out of our discussion was not the importance and the damage religion can do, but the need for many to have faith in something when it appears there is nothing else to place your hopes on.
My personal view is that the people that come into these discussions on forums like ours have little understanding of the need for faith for some of these people, who we seem to treat as statistics, and not understand their lack of alternatives in a life that has passed them by.
In between these deeper conversations, we got to the real business. One that two men needed to do. Fishing lol.
We only caught one fish between us but shared our bait and ideas. Our aligned common sense was a constant in the whole discussion.
The one fish was caught was by me. Maybe, that made me feel better after everything I learned from him. It was about 3 inches long, a little bream. I live-baited it and left it on a sleeper rod trying to catch something bigger. It was on for 40 minutes or so and was not taken. My view, when I wound it in after inspecting it a number of times, was he had done a pretty good job, so I took the hook out. I let it go free and he swam away, seemingly unaffected by the ordeal. When I was younger, I never would have let it go and let it be free.
Now, if two old bastards from entirely different cultures can get on a jetty for a few hours and agree on most things, it goes to show there must be some hope for this world.
PS: I originally posted this on the Bondi Massacre blog but was advised I should put it to a wider audience. It’s a terrible shame that the children of the current generation are fighting these pointless battles and cannot shake their parents and grandparents out of this recycling of violence and destruction. I accept they may have been quasi-brainwashed, or committed to a cause of revenge or justice. But today’s generation has enough information readily available — at their fingertips — to put a stop to these vicious generational cycles. There are no excuses. Tell your children, but explain to them they have a responsibility to get it right, because the current generations and their predecessors for the past 3,000 years or so have really screwed it up big time, and it’s time to let it go and move towards a better future.
Replies
I rarely get into religions, but I absolutely agree that we must get it right. The problem as i see it, If I peel back the thousands of years of layers of people, and conclude that it has never changed in that time, what has been the constant. That constant is that religions right from the start have never been honest. Honest in the fact that the sky fairies are not and have not been real. Love the old gods and the new yada yada yada. Pick a god any god yada yada yada. There are so many holes in the teachings of gods, bibles, Korans Egyptian Mythology, Roman, Greek, Nordic, Aboriginal, African, whatever, the list is endless with 100's if not thousands of gods. Strange that the all mighty being m sky fairy couldn't just get that one teaching correct.
If people were just honest about sky fairies right from the start then perhaps we could all have an equal and truthful base to start again from then perhaps we could put real faith in real humans.
I understand what you are saying Bluey, Hoey is probably more where I am at in recognising a need for faith and the circumstances that make that need.
The events of the 2 Old men on the jetty was not about solving the problem as much as understanding them and the already reconciliation of those two (speaking as a third party) was never an issue. Nothing needed to be reconciled, we were in agreement.
With respect the idealogy of religion and the Sky Fairies was never the question in itself and ultimately can never be resolved from this source of even superstition which most will come back to.
That is why I have identified the children of the current generation, they have access now to information they have previously never been afforded. Those Smart Phones give more information than any encyclopaedias (spell?).
In the future IGNORANCE can never be the solution, answer or cause.....we need to have faith in them and forget the Sky Fairies, they had their chance and fcuked up as much as any of the human beings involved.
Faith is a great thing Pops. But i'm more like, I have faith in my family, my friends, people that do good, faith in needing reasonable law and order type things. for me faith is earned.
'i'm glad your little livey got a chance to swim away, nice touch. haha
Bluey, Like you, I'm not religious at all, even if I went to very religious GPS anglican school: St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney CDB that regularly had religious classes and prayers in the beautiful cathedral there. The cathedral there in the middle of the CBD was only thing I liked about all the religious ceremonies I went to for many years. I used to be anti-religion because I couldn't make heads or tails out it. One question I had as a 14 year old, was 'why would a father sacrifice his son to prove something'? Something they kept saying again and again. Proof that God loved the world so much. It seemed a pretty ridiculous thing to do, for me. For what purpose? Optics? Of course, I kept it to myself. They used to use the cane back then...
As I grew older, it became clear to me people's faith is very important to them, even many in my own family. But most weren't out there killing or doing horrid things. There are billions of religious people. It's only a small percentage that do sociopathic things. I've actually never met a religious person in my own circle that has done anything harmful. I think it's a case of most are good eggs, but you will get the bad eggs too. So, I learned to respect what is important to others. So, I now support people's right to practice their faith, whatever that may be, and would never want to take it away from them.
We can weaponize anything. If not religion, a gun, a knife, a pencil, or any ideology. I mean the Russian and Chinese communists also wanted to kill religion off. Religion is not the problem. It's people that are the problem, specifically people with fanatic and extremist ideologies that do sociopathic things.
Hoey was that the "curates egg" LOL
Pops, There were probably more curated eggs there than we can poke a stick at LOL.
The Curator. Surely, there's a movie somewhere in this story.
a lot of truth there Hoe
Religion in Australia has only become a problem since one particular religion arrived here , we don't have to fear Christians , Jews , Buddhists or Hindu's blowing us up in in name of their religions.
Australia was built on Christian values and morals yet we have allowed people who don't share those values and morals and we are seeing the results of it , you only need to look at England and France to see what is going to end up happening here .
The men and women who fought and died for this country and the men and women who first layed the foundations of this country would be turning in their graves at what has happened to Australia .
Frankie are you afraid Ahmed El Ahmed, a devout Syrian-born Muslim, and his family are going to blow you up?
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