Australian Aborigines

I don't consider myself an overly racist person. That is, I'll give everyone a fair go, regardless of appearance.

Still, I'll be honest, I've lived in Australia for about 23 years now, and during that time, I'll admit to one or two things having become apparent.

It didn't take long to realise that Australian Aborigines can be a nasty bunch. No shit, the level of hostility that they can rain on you, unprovoked or otherwise, is absolutely second to none.

You can be just driving down the road, for all intent purposes, minding your own business, and there'll be a group on the street hurling abuse at motorists passing by. And what abuse. They are loud, and filthy. You don't even have to be looking at them.

Now, I'm not saying they all behave like this. No way. But if you were to add up the percentage of crimes commited by an Aborigine in this country, and marry that up against the percentage of the Australian population being of Aboriginal descent, well... I'm betting those numbers wouldn't add up.

There's a reason I'm blogging about this, and it's not because I feel the sudden urge to blog about these people. No, the reason I'm blogging about them is because yesterday...

...we had a visitor.

It was all very atypical really, we had the landlord over to do a bit of maintenance. Some of the washers needed replacing in the bathroom, and the basin needed new tap fittings. The usual stuff.

So the landlord was coming in and out a lot, and it wasn't an unpleasant day outside, so we just left the front door wide open.

Myself and my fiancee were in the main living area, immediately to the right of the front door, just talking. The house has a pair of nice elegant internal doors separating that room from the entry area, and even though I couldn't see the entrance from the front door directly, thanks to the doors being made of mostly glass, the reflection cast actually allowed me to see the area completely.

At one point, I look up... and the reflection presents an image of this face at the front door, peeking in. Just... looking. I remember thinking how strange it was, because I assumed it was our landlord, except for the fact that I could still hear him working away in the bathroom.

So I walk over, and there's this guy standing there, staring in to the house. He was Aboriginal, in his late teens/early 20s, and as is often the case with them, hadn't quite gotten around to having had his monthly shower just yet.

"Can I help you?"
"Err yeah, I need a taxi".

Clearly, that's my problem.

"You want me to call you a taxi?"
"Yeah could ya? I need to get to Burswood"

At this point, I don't know why I didn't just point him down the road to the local gas station, or the shopping centre, but I just thought... yeah, ok. So I go for my phone.

"What's the number?"
"13 13 30"
"What's your name?"
"Steveo"

So while I'm on the phone with the taxi company, he starts to walk away. He points to his left, mumbles something about "just being over here", and then disappears from view.

Of course, by the time the taxi showed up, he was long gone. I went out to explain the situation to the driver, who just sort of nodded, and took off. Steveo was nowhere to be seen.

While Australian Aborigines have complained over the years that they've been treated unfairly, and that they should be respected, something tell me that getting a taxi was the last thing that Steveo actually wanted.