Nos voisins du dessous : Chroniques australiennes

ce pays ne connaît pas de coups d’État, n 'épuise pas ses réserves de poissons , n'arme pas d'horrible despotes, ne pratique pas la culture de la drogue de façon indécente . Bref, c'est un pays qui ne joue pas les gros bras et ne fait pas sentir sa puissance d'une manière provocante et déplacée. Un pays stable , pacifique et correct. Un pays qui n'a ps besoin d'être surveillé du coin de l'oeil , ce qui fait qu'on ne le regarde même plus

Pas une seule route ne longe sur trois mille kilomètres ce magnifique littoral entre Darwin et Cairns, ce qui doit être une sorte de record mondial.

Ma promenade m'a conduit devant des magasins au luxe tapageur - Prada,Hermès, Ralph Lauren. Impeccable. Mais pas très intéressant. Je n'avais pas parcouru treize mille kilomètres pour contempler des serviettes de bain signées Ralph Lauren.

Suivre deux journalistes sportifs commentant une rencontre de cricket à la radio , c'est comme écouter deux pêcheurs assis dans une barque un jour où le poisson ne mord pas.

En fait, je pense qu'il est tout simplement impossible de répertorier en une seule vie l'intégralité des dangers qui vous guettent dans le moindre buisson d'acacia ou la moindre flaque d'eau de cette contrée si étonnamment riche en espèces aux crocs venimeux ou acérés

Australia is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. It was the first continent conquered from the sea, and the last. It is the only nation that began as a prison.
It is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the most famous and striking monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures- the funnel-web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stonefish- are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous coneshell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy,but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible current, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.

A la fin du XVIII siècle , les textes de loi britanniques offraient une longue liste de crimes passibles de la peine capitale. On pouvait être pendu pour deux cents délits comprenant , notamment , le crime impardonnable de "se faire passer pour un Egyptien".

Personne n'a pu m' expliquer, incidemment , pourquoi ces bestioles sont d'une toxicité aussi phénoménale . Car posséder assez de venin pour tuer un cheval , alors qu'il ne s'agit que de capturer des mouches , me paraît un cas flagrant de gaspillage de ressources naturelles . Mais au moins les araignées sont-elles sûres que les gens s'écarteront sur leur passage.

En fait, je pense qu'il est tout simplement impossible de répertorier en une seule vie l'intégralité des dangers qui vous guettent dans le moindre buisson d'acacia ou la moindre flaque d'eau de cette contrée si étonnamment riche en espèces aux crocs venimeux ou acérés

Largely for these reasons no one knows how many Aborigines were in Australia when Britons first settled it. The best estimates suggest that at the beginning of occupation the Aboriginal population was about 300,000, though possibly as high as a million. What is certain is that in the first century of settlement those numbers fell catastrophically. By the end of the nineteenth century the number of Aborigines was probably no more than 50,000 or 60,000. Most of this decline, it must be said, was inadvertant. Aborigines had almost no resistance to European diseases : smallpox, pleurisy, syphilis, even chickenpox and the milder forms of influenza often cut swathes through the native populations. But where Aborigines remained, they were sometimes treated in the most heartless and wanton manner.
In Taming the Great South Land, William J. Lines details examples of the most appalling cruelty by settlers towards the natives- of Aborigines butchered for dog food; of an Aboriginal woman forced to watch her husband killed, and then made to wear his decapitated head around her neck; of another chased up a tree and tormented from below with rifle shots.[...] What is perhaps most shocking is how casually much of this was done, and at levels of the society. In an 1839 history of Tasmania, written by a visitor named Melville, the author relates how he went out one day with a ' respectacle young gentleman ' to hunt kangaroos. As they rounded a bend, the young gentleman spied a form of crouched in hidind behind a fallen tree. Stepping over to investigate and ' finding it only to be a native ' , the appalled Melville wrote, the gentleman lifted the muzzle to the native's breast and ' shot him dead on the spot. '
Such behaviour was never virtually treated as a crime- indeed was sometimes officially countenanced. In 1805, the acting judge-advocate for New South Wales, the most senior judicial figure in the land, declared that Aborigines had not the discipline or mental capacity for courtroom proceedings; rather than plague the courts with their grievances, settlers were instructed to track down the offending natives and ' inflict such punishment as they may merit '- as open an invitation to genocide as can be found in English Law. Fifteen years later our old friend Lachlan Macquarie authorized soldiers to shoot any group of Aborigines greater than six in number, even if unarmed and entirely innocent of purpose, even if the number included women and children.