I Still Call Australia Home

I had a really unpleasant experience on the Transperth bus yesterday afternoon. I was boarding the usual bus home at about 5:10 pm from Perth CBD when an Indigenous lady also went on the bus I am on without paying her fare. If her stop was in CBD, the ride would’ve been free, but her stop is in Victoria Park. The driver let her on the bus and she sat in the disability section on the left side of the bus. I was sitting on the right side, just a row behind her.

Then, I started noticing a smell in the bus. Mind you, the bus is air-conditioned, so the smell travelled faster. It was a smell of glue, and yes, she was glue sniffing. She stuffed the glue inside a transparent plastic bag. A few people (including me) covered their noses with their scarves, tissues and what not. The bus driver didn’t do anything. No one did anything or said anything to this lady.

I had headaches and felt like vomiting on the whole trip (FYI - I still have the headache until now). I was this close of losing my nerves and was in the process of working up a courage to ask this lady (politely, of course) to stop what she’s doing as it had brought a significant amount of disturbance and annoyance to everyone on the bus, when she finally went off the bus. But, as she was standing before she went off, she took a look at everyone who had their noses covered up… and LAUGHED. Real hard.

I’m pretty sure she was doing what she’s doing to push her boundaries. Probably wanting to see whether anyone would do or say anything to stop her. And when she finally figured out no one had the nerve to stop her, she laughed victoriously. She thought she has power to do anything she wants because everyone feared her.

Look, I don’t have anything against the Indigenous race in general. It’s not their skin tone, or physical appearance that annoys me, it’s the attitude. The only time I have seen a well-mannered, well-dressed and educated Aboriginal was in Curtin University. I saw this Aboriginal man who was going to classes and I thought to myself that such person is real (and of course Cathy Freeman and Ernie, but they are public figures. I literally saw this person with my own eyes so it made a bigger impact). I really wonder why there aren’t more of these kind of Indigenous people?

I remembered once I read in the newspaper about this Aboriginal man who complained about his living situation. He literally lives in the kitchen, and it was filthy. Probably the filthies kitchen I’ve ever seen. There are dog feces on the floor. He was looking for sympathy, obviously. I read one of the reader’s comments and it goes kind of like ‘roll up your sleeves and clean it then!’. I have noticed that some of these people lived off Government support and Centrelink. They don’t even work. Why should they expect us to hear their complaints and sympathize if they don’t even do anything about it? And if they had been given help, why didn’t they be grateful instead of thinking ‘I deserve this help’?

I was talking about my experience with a colleague this morning, and she mentioned to me that she was once verbally abused by an Indigenous lady (who was drunk of course). My colleague was just in a news agency wanted to buy some magazines, when suddenly this lady came up to her and called her names like white -c*nt and sl*t. She was so angry but was too scared to do anything. When the Indigenous lady left, the news agency owner came up to her and asked whether she’s okay. She was very shakened up by that experience.

She told me that one of her neighbours one day was also verbally abused by Aboriginals in his own yard. The Aboriginals were playing in his yard and yelled to him to get off of their land. He called the police on them.

They think this is they are the only Australians. Let me just say, I pay my taxes (that goes to subsidising them, I believe) and even if I wasn’t born or raised in Australia, that doesn’t make me less Australian than them. That goes the same to everyone.

Here in Australia, we have a ‘National Sorry Day’ on May 26th. Basically, it was the ‘healing’ day of those Indigenous people who have been removed from their parents/children with force (you can wiki it for more info – I’m not that knowledgeable). So, we say ‘sorry’ to them. Okay fine, that is legit – we made mistake, we said sorry and we try to make it better. But shouldn’t that go both ways? They should also be sorry for harrassing others – verbally, physically, actionally (is there such a word?) – you get what I mean. If they are more educated and civilized, Australia will be a much better place to live, yes?

If you feel uneasy and offended by my post about this issue, then I am sorry. It wasn’t my intention to disrespect anyone, I was just simply expressing my thoughts. FYI – I filed a complaint to Transperth in regards to the incident happened yesterday. I mentioned as well it was part the driver’s fault of letting this woman on the bus without paying her fare. See, I was being fair.

I Still Call Australia Home