I aten't dead yet

Even if it looks a bit like I've fallen off my perch, I'm still here, but I have been working on two massive works in tandem. Both are now complete, though one of them is still under wraps, and it is more than 200,000 words long, so I am still tweaking the text.

The other is now being pitched, so I am willing to talk about it, all 102,000 words of it. The trigger was a TV program, two months back. that triggered me to say "there was worse than that..."  Her Indoors said "how would you know?" and I said "I have written about bits of it in several books, but nobody has ever done the long-form survey of slavery and forced labour in Australia." That was my mistake, having said I was done with writing books. I started scribbling notes

So three months later, I have done it, starting with this quotation, one of the many bits that I knew about.

I call the last three months bog-snorkelling in a cess-pit. The clipping below shows how the SMH reported a Wiradjuri hero in 1852, and it gave me my title Involuntary Belonging, now being pitched, is a 102,000-word study of people who were constrained to work, from agriculture workers who could not leave without being tossed in gaol, to Indian, Chinese, German and South Sea islanders who were "indentured", teenagers banged up and trained to be servants (Stolen Generations, Fairbridge and more) to Sulu and Aboriginal slaves in the pearl fisheries, and that's just the start. Some Aboriginal stockmen were beaten and/or murdered. I don't think the Duttons of this world will like my book, if they can read.

You know the joke about Peter Dutton's library burning down? It was a tragedy, because he hadn't finished colouring it in yet... yes, it was once a Spiro Agnew joke, but we've all forgotten him. Those colourless blanks are so easy to forget...

Back to the book, did you know we had slaves in Sydney in 1819, according to a court... they were sent home by probably the first former slave owner in Australia.

Anyhow, half-way through the third pitch to a publisher, there was a heavy fog this morning, and when that happens, it's time to look at the spiders, and as I have now completed the third pitch, here is why I trudged through soggy bush:

(The trick is to get there as the sun burns off the fog, but it being winter, then sun was a bit slow. Under summer conditions, I would have been aiming the camera almost into the sun, and getting something like the last shot, taken eight years back.)

Shot taken on North Head (Sydney), eight years ago.

I'll try to get back sooner, OK?

Maybe I'll tell you about my fight with Telstra, who first, defrauded me with dodgy bills, and when I complained, tried to bully me, then lied to me, and in the end, it seems, tried to harass me. Currently, the people I hold responsible for the bad behaviour, are trying to keep me firewalled from the senior management who could put them through the mincer, and I am about to blow the lid off the whole thing. I want explanations, answers, details of audits undertaken and a list of the criminal charges preferred.

Currently, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has been refusing to recognise the criminality, and is refusing to pass my complaints past the miscreants to those who must bear responsibility for the actions of these petty crooks. They have already refunded the money they stole, and paid me $500 to go away, but there are principles here, and that $500 says they have admitted guilt. 

They will learn that you don't try to defraud an old fraud investigator who was given master classes in head-kicking in the 1960s, and if you do, you don't try to bully him: that is elder abuse, and I have been gutting bullies since the 1950s, and if you do, you don't try to lie to him, and don't send him fake messages about service changes.

You certainly don't rob and then run a campaign of bullying against an elder, not one who has been an advocate for the disabled for more than 40 years. I am the Customer from Hell.

I have nominated the senior managers I want to talk to, and if they don't obey my every requirement, they are going to be in a flustercluck in a cement mixer with 500 broken bottles.

Stay posted...