#over in western australia

[demigod-of-the-agni]

oh, OF COURSE when the rest of the world can see the northern/southern lights, my home city has to be smothered by storm clouds. and rain for a whole week. of course that needs to happen, yeah, wait another 20 years until a geomagnetic storm as big as this one arrives again. don't worry you'll only be 40 years old by the time it rolls around again

[aceoffangirls]

I keep thinking about how uncreative the Aussie states and territories are named. Like

There is already a place called Wales so we can't name it that. Well it’s a new land and it’s south let’s call it: New South Wales

We should name something after the Queen so let’s call this part : Victoria

I think we need more named after the Queen so let’s call this part: Queensland

This part is north and it’s a territory so let’s call this part the: Northern Territory

This part is south so let’s call it: South Australia

This part is in the west so let’s call it: Western Australia

Tasmania was just named after its European discoverer (you're not on the mainland so)

And finally let’s name the Capital of Australia: Australian Capital Territory

[bluestonebliss]

HELLO my tumblr twin, it’s your turn to share something spooky from where you’re from!

Tales From the Perth Regions

Okay I dragged my Dad into helping me answer this ask because that man knows everything there is to know about The Happenings of this area.

These are my favourites.

The Satanists of Kings Park

To those unaware, Kings Park is one of the largest gardens within a city in the world. That place is fucking massive, and contains a lot of thick bush. One of the landmark buildings in the park is the DNA tower, named after its shape.

Also, unrelated but the vantage point from the top of the tower is pretty neat.

Popular local legend goes that from the mid to late 70s a group of Satanists and Devil-worshippers would gather on full moons at midnight to have meetings and dances on the tower, terrorising any outsiders that dared to get close. Over the years a few homeless people who slept in the park have gone missing or found dead leading many to believe they were sacrificed in a ritual.

My Dad never personally got chased out my a mob of Satanists, but many of his mates claim to have seen their dances.

Personally, I find this one rather rude. Im a bit miffed I didnt get an invite to these meetings. Mayhaps the kings park satanists are a tradition in need of revival.

The Wreck of the SS Alkimos

Boy oh boy this is a long one. Buckle up.

No idea about how much of this is factual, but as requested this is as much of the story as I can recount as it is told through the broken game of telephone.

Upon its construction, the Alkimos experienced its first tragedy. The story goes that during construction, eleven workers were trapped between layers of metal. They all suffocated to death. Some say their bodies werent found for days, while others say their corpses were never removed.

The ship saw active service in WW2 when its second tragedy occured. Some radio operator was killed in a muder-suicide on board which was covered up as an enemy attack. Apparently the radio opperator was the first Toronto woman to die in active duty during WW2. Her name was... Maud? I think? Her ghost is said to haunt the Alkimos. Now, this is a detail thats neither here nor there, but Dad says many radio broadcasts were made back in the 50s on the Alkimos wreck trying to document it for the public, but almost all of them failed or experienced a malfunction during transmission. Bit of an odd coincidence, no?

Now on to the weird shit.

On a trip to W.A., the Alkimos wrecked on Beagle Island. It was salvaged and towwed to the Freo ports for repair. It was then towwed out by an ocean-going tug boat to Kong Kong when the tow cable broke, and sent Alkimos right back to wreck on the coast of Freo. They flooded the hull to keep her stationary, and posted an onboard watchman. Dad says this watchman was driven off the job, claiming the ship was haunted. The Alkimos was repaired one again, and was leaving for the Philippines but the tug assisting got recalled due to a storm and Alkimos took anchor. The anchor broke, and sent the Alkimos back to run aground at Yanchep, only an hour-ish from Freo port. They gave up trying to restore her after that, and there she still remains to this day.

And now the bat-shit stuff.

Multiple scrapping companies attempted to scrap parts of the Alkimos over the years after everyone gave up trying to fix her. One company reported that every time they tried, a fire would break out on board. Every time they came back the fire would somehow restart and drive them away. A few of these companies went bankrupt soon after. Thus, the legend that removing any part of the Alkimos was an omen of terrible luck.

It is said that many ghosts haunt the wreck. The most famous being Henry, the ghost of an elder man in gumboots and an oil skin. Apparently he's nice enough. My Dad's mate, Jack Sue, wrote a book about the ship ( The Ghost of the Alkimos) and during his stay on board the ship for research he bunked there over night. He said that he woke one night to pained moans from the nearby bunk, and upon turning on his torch, the sheets of the bed went sailing across the room. He said that you could hear voices aboard and the smell of cooking despite it being abandoned. He took a spice rack off the ship, and immediately was hospitalised with some sort of lung infection. However, his lungs were already fucked by the war, so its not like it was very out of the blue. He died fully convinced the ship was haunted, and he was not the sort to shake easy.

Around the late 1960s, champion swimmer Herbert 'Shark Bait' Voigt attempted an unassisted swim from Cottesloe Beach to Rotto, an island off the coast of W.A. (from which the main access point is via the Freo port) Anyway, he was never seen again. A few weeks later, about an hour north of his departure point, his skull was found floating above the wreck of the Alkimos my an escaped prisoner. Some versions of the story say is was found over the wreck, some say about 200m off the wreck, and others say it was found in the flooded engine room. Nobody knows for sure. Regardless, the cause of death was never determined.

The Alkimos has been blamed for so many misfortunes, deaths, mishaps and the like in the area that its impossible to tell you all of them. My Dad even blames a missing half a tank of petrol on the Alkimos from when he rode there.

If you want to learn more, i bet that book would be a great place to start.

Either way, seems like a great scuba place to me! I will for sure be diving what remains of the ship the second I get the chance. And I will be taking what ever I can get my mits on from the wreck.

Sadly, almost all the ship is underwater these days, but nothing a snorkle cant fix! If I go missing after announcing a trip there, you will know why.

[6ebe]

Got downvoted to hell for trying to make a point about homonationalism on reddit. I don’t think Reddit has unlocked the critical thinking to be ready for homonationalism ….

[omnic]

my mum was repeating a story i mentioned in passing to her to my grandma, about the drag show i went to. one of the queens was saying "ok who's gay!! who's lesbian!! who's bi!! who's transgender or non-binary!! and finally ..... who's straight 🤨" to get cheers from the audience and idk why my mum was repeating it to my grandma but. when she came to the "who's straight" bit of reiterating it to my grandma, my mum said "who's normal"

and i couldn't stop myself from interjecting and saying that's NOT what she said and that's also NOT right on any level to say and my mum brushed me off and laughed and i was like. fuming. like no matter how many times i try to tell her that phrasing stuff like that is awful to say, she always brushes me off and says "you know what i mean" like???????????? yeah you don't want to think your experience has a label and you don't want to have to learn shit and think that only "abnormal people" have labels but. it's bigoted, great job 👍

[coochiequeens]

Trigger Warning: Discussion of acts against children and plots to abuse impoverished children.

A serial pedophile estimated to have committed over 1,000 sex crimes against children has had his community sentence relaxed following his transition to “female.” On November 16, a Supreme Court of Western Australia judge said that the medications taken by Robert Gordon Cummins, 56, provide “a protective factor” and that he could “successfully self-manage the risk of offending.”

Cummins has an extensive history of horrific sexual offenses, the overwhelming majority of which were against children. His first conviction took place in September of 1997, when he was found guilty of indecent assault. For this, he was fined $3,000 and did not receive a prison sentence.

In December of 1999, Cummins was convicted on three counts of indecent dealing with a child under the age of 13 years. He was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment.

Once released, Cummins immediately began to sexually abuse a girl he was related to who was between the ages of 6 and 8 at the 

time of his abuses. In June 2002, he was found guilty on four counts related to crimes against that child. Cummins was sentenced to a total effective sentence of 8 years imprisonment.

Earlier that year, at the age of 36, Cummins had married a 17-year old girl. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gosia Wojnarowska, a mental health consultant to the Department of Justice, described this relationship as a substitution for “a female child that he never stopped fantasizing about” in a 2008 assessment of Cummins.

In June of 2009, the serial pedophile was convicted of one count of possessing child pornography and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment. Two years later, Cummins was detained awaiting trial for conspiring to engage in sexual intercourse outside Australia with a person under the age of 16 years.

But even being in custody did not stop the disturbed predator from planning out his abuse against children.

Between July 2005 and September 2008, while incarcerated in Perth’s maximum-security Casuarina Prison for filming the abuse of his youngest victim, Cummins, along with two other men, devised a scheme to establish a child sex trafficking ring in Thailand upon their release.

The convicts intended to set up a doll-making business called “Little Angels” as a cover. Former teacher Mark Pendleton, 53, and Kenneth Bishop, 74, conspired with Cummins to employ low-income women from rural areas in order to gain access to their children.

In 2011, Cummins testified in the Perth’s Magistrate Court that he had first befriended Pendleton in a sex offender treatment program in Perth’s maximum-security Casuarina Prison. They began plotting to abuse vulnerable children after they were both relocated to Karnet Prison Farm.

“Mark told me families in Thailand were available for a price. If they were willing to send their children into minefields to look for shrapnel, they would be willing to sell their children for sex,” Cummins told the court.

After he was released on parole in 2008, Cummins became the “pipeline” for carrying out the plan, and began researching properties for sale and information about false passports while contacting Thai mothers whose children were being considered for potential abuse. Cummins also sent financial contributions to the impoverished women to build up their trust.

“The idea behind it was to assist them and become valuable to them,” Cummins told the court. “So they would allow me to do anything I wanted… Including sexual activity with the children.”

In phone recordings played during court proceedings, Cummins could be heard saying that the women he was most interested in employing would come from villages and ideally should be “more simple people.”

The recorded conversations between the men were “laden with jokes and sexual innuendo”, and referenced former pop star and pedophile Gary Glitter, according to news reports. Cummins told Pendleton that women had sent him photographs of their “lovely families,” which he explained to the court prosecutor was a reference to their children.

Cummins admitted he and Pendleton considered supervising an orphanage in order to “effectively convert it into a child brothel.” He stated, “From our point of view, we had discussed setting up an orphanage and having access to the children there for sexual purposes.”

In exchange for pleading guilty, testifying in court, and confessing to the plan, Cummins was handed a reduced sentence of two years and seven months. Despite the fact that authorities had uncovered their plot by tapping their phone lines, Supreme Court Justice John McKechnie ordered Cummins to be freed from jail on a recognizance release order, as he had spent 18 months in custody pending trial. 

He was released the day after the trial ended in September 2012, despite the court having been told that Cummins was estimated to have committed 1,000 sex crimes against children during the course of his serial abuses.

In 2014, Cummins, then 49, was spared yet another jail sentence for a historical sexual offense he admitted to committing against a 12-year-old girl. The sentencing decision was made on the basis that his use of “anti-libidinal drugs” had deprived him of his sex drive. 

Western Australia District Court Judge Michael John Bowden sentenced Cummins to 12 months in jail, suspended for 18 months, on the provision that he comply with a supervision order.

“It really is the fact that the chemical medication seems to have deprived you of any sex drive that leads me to deal with this case in the manner in which I am going to deal with it,” he said.

Judge Bowden added, “The offense is so serious that imprisonment is the only appropriate disposition but it does seem to me that I cannot say that a suspended sentence in the circumstances would be wholly inappropriate.”

In 2018, general practitioner Dr. Wynn Owen recommended that Cummins’ chemical castration treatment be halted out of concern over its side effects. Cummins had been taking cyproterone on an intermittent basis since 2004, and on a regular basis since 2012. However, medical reports revealed that once he stopped taking the antiandrogen, he experienced a “floodgate return of sexual thoughts.” The same report detailed how he feared he “would have progressed to snatching a child.”

In 2019, Cummins was diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” and began to self-identity as a woman. Court records note that he had “formed a platonic relationship with another transgender female” around this time. Additionally, Cummins’ “interest was directed to gay pornography,” which “preceded the transitioning from male to female.”

The most recent ruling was in response to an application for an extension to Cummins’ supervision order, which was filed by legal representatives for the State. Concerns were raised that he remained a “high-risk offender” and should be monitored for safeguarding purposes.

Dr. Wojnarowska told the court that pedophilia is regarded as a lifelong condition, and a 2021 assessment was presented as evidence in court. “In my opinion, if [he] were to be taken off the order, [his] risk of sexual reoffending may escalate,” Wojnarowska stated.

However, she pointed out that hormone treatments carry considerable health risks and are not recommended for long-term use due to their effect on bone density and liver function. She therefore recommended surgery.

This opinion was supported by forensic psychologist Julie Hasson. Ms. Hasson recommended an orchiectomy as a means of “living as a woman and reducing [his] libido to protect against any concerns of future sexual offending in the event that [he] did not pursue gender reassignment surgery,” according to court records.

Justice Michael Corboy ruled that a new four-year supervision order be imposed with conditions including “testosterone suppressing treatment.” He noted that the diagnosis of gender dysphoria was “obviously a very significant event,” with his “transition” being “central to the issues” in his case. The judge added that the court should keep Cummins’ gender dysphoria diagnosis and transition “in mind” while considering his risk of re-offending.

Cummins was referred to with feminine pronouns throughout court records and proceedings. Media coverage similarly utilized ‘she/her’ pronouns for Cummins, as well as did not identify him directly or give an indication of the name he is currently utilizing.

Cummins’ case recalls that of a notorious American serial pedophile who was similarly released into the communityafter the court was told his transition meant he would be “less likely” to offend.

Joseph Matthew Smith, who also goes by the name Josie Maria Dunham or Josie Smith, made international headlines in 2020 after being released from prison after beginning a gender transition. Smith had been convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old resident at Midwest Christian Services (MCS), a treatment facility for juveniles. 

Due to his lengthy history of sex crimes, a pre-sentence psychological report was carried out. Smith told a state forensic psychologist he had molested as many as 15 children under the age of 13, the youngest being a 1-year-old baby. Due to his extremely high risk of re-offending, Smith was handed an indefinite prison sentence.

But after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria and beginning a hormone regimen, Smith was released, with officials claiming he was now at a lower risk of re-offending due to an altered testosterone level, and that he “no longer had the sex drive of a man.”

Smith was paroled in January of 2020 but by October of 2021, he had already violated the terms of his strict conditions by using an unauthorized electronic device and seeking out sex. Despite the violation, Smith was not remanded to custody, and was instead allowed to continue to live in the community.

Since his release, he violated the conditions of his parole twice by attempting to access child sexual abuse materials. Smith is currently incarcerated at the Newton Correctional Facility, which is a men’s institution with a special program for sex offenders in Jasper County.

By Genevieve Gluck Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[mycological-mariner]

Hmm… Cornish Western story… hm

[nintendont2502]

I don't know how to phrase it but like. There's something about living in a place that's only represented in media when it's media *ABOUT* that place yk

[onlineblindsau]

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[batshit-auspol]

1979: After American space station Skylab crashes to earth over the town of Esperance, Western Australia the National Parks Service issues a $400 fine to NASA for littering.

[freepassbound]

🤹‍♀️ - If you could take a year off from work or school and still get paid, how would you spend your time?

🥜 - What is your biggest pet peeve?

🥛 - Is the glass half full or half empty?

🤹‍♀️ - If you could take a year off from work or school and still get paid, how would you spend your time?

Ah. Well.

The thing is, this is basically what 2020-2021 was.

...it didn't go well.

Of course, if it were to happen again, there would be an option that was not available at that time - and it is undoubtedly what I should do (or even be compelled to do): travel.

Just lots and lots of trips, domestic and international, of varying length, with some intermissions at home to rest between.

🥜 - What is your biggest pet peeve?

These days, it seems to be other drivers - or at least that's the one that gets triggered the most often. I mean, is it that hard to drive competently?!?

🥛 - Is the glass half full or half empty?

Well, that depends what the glass is related to.

Me personally? Half empty.

Friends? My home region? Humanity, long-term? Half full.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[ABC is Australian State Media]

While Australia debates the merits of going nuclear and frustration grows over the slower-than-needed rollout of solar and wind power, China is going all in on renewables.

New figures show the pace of its clean energy transition is roughly the equivalent of installing five large-scale nuclear power plants worth of renewables every week.

A report by Sydney-based think tank Climate Energy Finance (CEF) said China was installing renewables so rapidly it would meet its end-of-2030 target by the end of this month — or 6.5 years early.

It's installing at least 10 gigawatts of wind and solar generation capacity every fortnight.

By comparison, experts have said the Coalition's plan to build seven nuclear power plants would add fewer than 10GW of generation capacity to the grid sometime after 2035.[...]

Smart Energy Council CEO John Grimes, who recently returned from a Shanghai energy conference, said China has decarbonised its grid almost as quickly as Australia, despite having a much harder task due to the scale of its energy demand.

"They have clear targets and every part of their government is harnessed to deliver the plan," he said.

China accounts for about a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. A recent drop in emissions (the first since relaxing COVID-19 restrictions), combined with the decarbonisation of the power grid, may mean the country's emissions have peaked.

"With the power sector going green, emissions are set to plateau and then progressively fall towards 2030 and beyond," CEF China energy policy analyst Xuyang Dong said.[...]

The world's largest solar and wind farms are being built on the western edge of the country and connected to the east via the world's longest high-voltage transmission lines.[...]

Renewables have a "capacity factor" (the ratio of actual output to maximum potential generation) of about 25 per cent, whereas nuclear's is as high as 90 per cent.

So although China is installing solar and wind generation equivalent to five large nuclear power plants per week, their output is closer to one nuclear plant per week.[...]

To "firm" or stabilise the supply of power from its renewable energy zones, China is using a mix of pumped hydro and battery storage, similar to Australia.

"They're installing 1GW per month of pumped hydro storage," Mr Buckley said.

"We're struggling to build the 2GW Snowy 2.0 in 10 years."[...]

The China Energy Council estimated renewables generation would overtake coal by the end of this year.

The CEF's Xuyang Dong said despite the country's reliance on coal, "having China go green at this speed and scale provides the world with a textbook to do the same".[...]

"In China they decide they're going to do something and then they go and do it."

15 Jul 24

[determinate-negation]

maybe I am wrong but I think there's an interesting paradox in zionism's denial of the diaspora and it's appropriation of the diaspora because it can't form a culture without taking from the diaspora itself

its a paradox of zionism in general, from its start its been a movement that took cultural and political influence from its surroundings– being 19th century europe– its a colonial and nationalist project modeled after other colonial and nationalist european projects, yet tries to portray itself as indigenous. part of this is from shifts in political atmosphere and self-perception of zionism over the past 100 years. but there is an 'israeli culture' you can point to that is not taken from the diaspora but rather an inversion of what it conceives the diaspora to be, for the diaspora to be seen as weak, sickly, overly intellectual, cosmopolitan and disconnected from the land, thus israeli culture is more militaristic, chauvinistic, with an emphasis on the masculine, fetishizing labor and agricultural work. the paradox is this cultural conception is basically lacking everything that made jewish diaspora culture interesting and leave a long lasting mark on western history, jewish culture as a minority culture in particular. i think the cultural output of colonial or imperial nations mostly interested in projecting strength and militarism is generally poor, chauvinistic, and easily forgotten because it lacks the qualities that make particular things significant historically artistically etc. like look at the cultural atmosphere of the weimar republic, or even imperial germany (after relative) jewish emancipation and the influence of minority cultures vs cultural production in the nazi period and afterwards, or american settler culture in the colonial period vs cultural forms created by oppressed people in america. if you are interested more specifically in israels conception of itself as like a negation of the diaspora the artist eli valley made a cartoon about this, israel man and diaspora boy. israeli society historically tried to erase diaspora culture within israel, like discouraging people from speaking yiddish and banning yiddish cultural production. but also needed to construct a positive cultural identity (i dont mean positive to mean good, just like as in creating something rather than negating or destroying) and appropriated palestinian culture, through taking indigenous names, food, etc. if you want to read about this process in israel as well as other settler colonies like australia and canada and the us the article settler colonialism and the elimination of the native by patrick wolfe is a pretty significant article. i would say as far as i can tell israeli culture today seems to be mostly predicated on this, not appropriation of diaspora jewish culture, which they seem to look down on generally. but theres not much interest in israeli literature or art worldwide, besides in germany (lol), and perhaps their failure to create anything worthwhile is part of why israeli archival and academic institutions seek to claim ownership of diaspora jewish culture. part of it is just to legitimize themselves and give themselves prestige as well i think

[soon-palestine]

We write this call from our student movement in the Gaza Strip, from the heart of occupied Palestine, from under the brutal Zionist bombing, explosions, and the clutches of the monstrous nightmare of death that lurks around us in every corner, house, and street.

We raise it from prison cells, from beneath the destruction, and from inside the rubble, to send it to our fellow students, our comrades, brothers and sisters, in all the universities, schools and institutes of the world everywhere, & we address the global student movement… that was launched in order to stop the genocidal war that is being engineered and financed by the governments of the United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and others… this courageous student movement that was born in the universities as an integral part of our struggle, that expresses the conscience of students and peoples who yearn for justice and freedom.

We in the Gaza Strip look at you with pride and honour, as you are a revolutionary fighting vanguard, and a natural and integral part of our Palestinian liberation movement. You have come in a resounding, honest and clear response against the Israeli massacres and those who finance them, confronting the companies of the Zionist war of genocide and ethnic cleansing that have claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinian students of all ages… including hundreds of struggling Palestinian student cadres, wounded and imprisoned, in addition to our great loss in the martyrdom of our professors and teachers, and the destruction of our universities, institutes and schools.

Today, we call on you, from the midst of massacres and siege, to a new revolutionary phase of comprehensive escalation. We call on you to raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honorable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people.. In Rafah, Jabalia, Khan Younis, and the entire Gaza Strip, and against the settler gangs, armies of Zionist killers, that commit their crimes in camps, cities and villages in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. We call on you to besiege the White House in Washington, and to surround Western colonial governments and Zionist embassies, and the corporations that finance the Zionist entity and arm its criminal army with all kinds of bombs and means of death and destruction. These criminal colonial symbols represent the forces that support “Israel” to kill us – with your tax money and the money spent at complicit corporations, to destroy our homes, our society, and our future.

Therefore, we call on you to blockade them until the American Zionist aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip stops. At the same time, we renew our call to the teaching, academic, and union bodies in universities, as well as cultural, academic, and scientific figures, to advocate for and support student movements until they achieve their goals. Today we turn to high school students all over the world to participate widely in the struggles and activities of the university student movement, organizing demonstrations, and organizing educational days about the Palestinian struggle for liberation and return.

Secondary schools constitute a strong fortress and a great support for university students everywhere. Once again, we send special greetings to our brothers and sisters, the students of Palestine in the diaspora.

We greet our comrades and colleagues in Students for Justice in Palestine, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Palestine Action, and the academic boycott and divestment campaigns, and we salute everyone who participated and participates in student encampments. The duty and responsibility of Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip and all of occupied Palestine is steadfastness, commitment, resistance, unity, and alignment with the resistance and the people… …until the U.S. – Zionist aggression stops and the occupation is defeated and removed from our land — all our land, from the river to the sea.

Long live the struggle of Palestine’s students for return and liberation.

Long live international solidarity. And together we will be victorious!

Secretariat of Palestinian Student Frameworks – Gaza Strip

(available in AR original, EN, ES, FR, NL, DE)

https://samidoun.net/2024/05/a-call-from-the-palestinian-student-movement-in-gaza-time-for-revolutionary-escalation-of-the-global-intifada/

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Is there an archaeology thing you wish someone would ask you about because you wanna talk about it and if so would you be willing to talk about it? Here is a picture of my cat in trade but you can look at the picture even if you don’t talk about something

You know what, there IS, and it's all courtesy of @micewithknives!

I'm in charge of teaching my very own class this semester, which means I have full control over the course and I can do pretty much whatever I want. I was given a hand-me-down syllabus and overall I'm not changing much because this is my first time doing something like this and I don't want to get too into the weeds.

But the course is Ancient Civilizations, and we're getting at AUSTRALIA WEEK, babeyyy!!!

I've taken a version of this class and seen examples for a couple more, and I don't think I've ever encountered Australia in a context like this. Ancient Civ classes tend to focus on urban centers and monumental architecture, which is (partially) the result of Western bias for what counts as a "civilization" and means that a lot of cultures get left out.

With Mice's help, I've been learning about early Australian archaeology, and there is SO MUCH TO LEARN! Way too much to fit into a single week, but classes like this are really only capable of giving a very general overview. Anyway, here are some of the readings I'm having my students do:

Mice, I'll turn the stage over to you if you have anything you want to add.

-Reid

[coochiequeens]

Ladies don't travel to another country with a man if your legal status is uncertain. If you do hold onto your passport and make sure your ticket isn't a one way.

Exit trafficking: Western Sydney man abandons his wife overseas after she fell out with his mum

Western Sydney man convicted over 'exit trafficking'

He took his wife abroad, but only he had a return ticket 

READ MORE: Human trafficking gang that operated a string of brothels jailed

By PADRAIG COLLINS FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

PUBLISHED: 06:40 EDT, 27 June 2024 

A western Sydney man who abandoned his wife overseas after she fell out with his mother has been convicted over what is known as 'exit trafficking'. 

It is a type of modern slavery where women are tricked or coerced into leaving a country, in this case Australia, and prevented from returning.

The 44-year-old man, who lives in Merrylands in Sydney's south-west, took his wife on 'a charity mission' to their home country of Afghanistan in January 2018, police said.

But the man, known as AR to protect his family, only had a return ticket for himself. His wife did not realise that her ticket was one-way to Afghanistan. 

The day after he returned to Australia, AR wrote to the Department of Home Affairs, cancelling the sponsorship of his wife's visa, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

He did so because his mum didn't like his wife, and it resulted in the woman he had been married to for four years being stranded overseas.

The woman's relatives helped get her back to Australia, where she reported her husband to the police.  

AR's conviction last Friday was the third such exit trafficking conviction in Australia.

He was sentenced to two years jail with 12 months of it to be served in the community on a good behaviour bond.

Human rights activist Helena Hassani said there has been an increase in such oppression of women, often in migrant communities, in Australia.

While there are many cases involving men from Afghan and other migrant communities taking their wives abroad and leaving them there, she said there are also many cases where 'Aussie men marry women from Asia, bring them here, but marry them into servitude, or treat them like sex workers'.

Many women, such as AR's wife, are only in Australia on partner visas, leaving them reliant on their husband's sponsorship to stay in the country.

Some women in these communities are discouraged from using money, getting an education or working outside the home because the men want a 'servant'.

'It's a cultural practice where the less educated women are, the happier men are, because then no one is challenging them, no one is confronting them, and they just live the way they want to live,' Ms Hassani told the publication.

Acting Detective Sergeant Sarah Manning of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said exit trafficking often goes unreported.

No one has the right to 'cancel' another person's visa, including the visa sponsor,' she said. 

'This type of behaviour is a Commonwealth offence and carries a potential 12-year jail term.'

The first exit-trafficking conviction was in 2021, when a man from Lidcombe in western Sydney threatened to murder a woman unless she boarded a flight to India with her infant child.

The horrific interaction was captured on Sydney Airport's CCTV after the anti-human trafficking group Anti Slavery Australia told the AFP what happened.

Anyone with information about potential modern slavery or trafficking is urged to report it to Australian Federal Police on 131 237.