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House Prices
Okay... I think we all agree, it's gotten a bit silly. When a house in Noble Park, almost 20km from Melbourne, is worth a quarter-million, where 9 years ago it was worth fifty-seven thousand, something is seriously wrong with the system.
Now this price rise may be good for Shaz and I, the house is worth approximately five times what we paid for it, but we both care less about that than we do about other people wanting to buy homes. We know how we would have struggled if Sharon hadn't bought her place when she did, and we can't help but feel for other people. Plus, if nothing else, we'd like it if in future, our kids could afford to buy their own homes.
The government wants couples to have kids, John Howard wants everyone to have a quarter-acre block. How are people supposed to manage this, exactly? If both parents need to work full-time to even have a hope of paying off their mortgage, how are they going to afford kids? Child care and the like costs a bloody fortune! And not everyone has parents that are capable or desirable as an option to looking after the grandkids.
Oh, people will find a way, but something needs to happen to reduce housing costs if you really want all this to happen in a way that allows for a decent quality of life.
Personally I think one of the big problems is that people and businesses are too tied to the capital cities. People have to head into town to work, rather than having other hubs. There are lots of people in Dandenong who work in the city, because that's where the work is. It was cheaper to buy a house at Dandenong than closer in, so the public transport has had to deal with more commuters, the public have to deal with longer travel times, more time away from home, their partners, their kids... Though of course now people are buying out at Pakenham and beyond, because that's all they can hope to afford, and spending even longer on PT or on the road.
I remember growing up, one of the reasons we moved fairly often was because dad would sell up and buy a new house closer to his job, which would change from time to time. The rule of thumb was that a half hour trip was the maximum. More than that just took too much of your day. In Melbourne, there are many people who have 90 minute journeys because they can't afford to be closer. If both parents have to work, have to spend more than a hour a day traveling, one of them is effectively working to cover day care costs, they are both getting home tired and having to deal with the needs of their children and their own needs in the few short hours left.
This is not a way for the majority of our working population to live.
I remember growing up around the lower class families that were a part of our socio-economic group, and we all had a dream. The dream when I was growing up was to have what the middle class families had - a holiday home. To all but the lowest levels of society (and remember, my family had times we paid gas bills over light bills because it meant we could cook and have warmth, and we still didn't consider ourselves too badly off) the idea of owning your own home was do-able. The real dream was the holiday home. This was usually all done on a single wage.
Now your middle classes can only hope to be able to pay off their $400,000+ bank loans before retirement. That's the extent of their goals in this regard. And in all likelihood, in their retired years, they will have to look after the grandkids, because it's only by both working that their own children can afford a home.
What's scariest, compared to a lot of places, we're still 'The Lucky Country'. And in a land that continues to slavishly and foolishly ape the United States, a country that has already shown itself to be on the downward slide socially, morally, and politically, the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen.
Mitch
I've know Mitch for quite a while now. He's a massive bloke, 6'3", arms as think as my legs... I always forget how big he is until I see him in a photo next to me. He has the same problem.
I got to know Mitch while working at Alternate Worlds, he was one of my regular customers. As time went on he started coming out the back to talk to me in my office for hours at a time about girl problems. I used to give him the most helpful advice imaginable, "Get over it," but he kept coming back. The day I knew that Mitch was a kindred spirit was the day during a conversation when Sons of Steel got mentioned. We were both blown away, not only that the other person knew the film, but that we both loved it so much.
Mitch is a hard person to write about here, because though I love the guy, it's harder to find specifics to point to about why. He's just an all-round great bloke.
Oh we don't always get on. We've butted heads on occasion, as most friends do. Having traveled with him, I'd be shy to do something like the Nullarbor trip with him, given how the last time we were in a car together for several days it got to the point where he started baiting me in full knowledge that I was genuinely ready to kick him out of the car and leave him at the side of the road. It's one of the reasons why I'm very careful who I travel with - if Mitch and I were ready to kill each other, there are many other people where I'd end up coming back and saying, "No, they decided to take the bus here, instead... They were fine when I last saw them, honest. Golly, what do you mean they never arrived?"
One of the things to admire about Mitch is that when he wants something, he just goes for it. Having seen booklaunches at cons, he decided he'd like one - they looked like fun. That meant he needed a book. Well, he wasn't going to write one, so he got all his friends to write stories, do art, and edit the bloody thing, but still had his name and face on the cover.
It was a good book, and it was a good launch, too!
He co-ran Continuum 4 with Mondy and did a fine job. His design work for the cons (and for the Mitch? t-shirts that compliment his books) has also been marvelous. His attitude, and he's right, is that most con t-shirts look crappy. People want something stylish, with a cool logo. He only designs things he'd be happy to be seen wearing down the street. I remember artist Nick Stathopoulos commenting that when he's wearing one of the t-shirts Mitch put together, he feels like he's in designer-wear - he feels cool.
And that's the thing about Mitch. He's one of the biggest, most lovable dags I know, but he's also very cool.
I often say having Mitch in my life keeps me young. We're free to talk crap and when we're around each other, the crap comes easy. Together we've launched more short-lived, badly thought-out ideas than most people have had in a lifetime - it doesn't matter that they went nowhere, we had fun. In the times when we've done wrestling stuff together, I've always been worried about hurting him, he's never worried about hurting me, which in a strange way I appreciate. I still recall the SwanCon video where we did multiple takes of Mitch hitting me in the head with a frying pan... he never held back and every take features him giggling as I hit the floor.
How can I not love a man like that?
Okay... I think we all agree, it's gotten a bit silly. When a house in Noble Park, almost 20km from Melbourne, is worth a quarter-million, where 9 years ago it was worth fifty-seven thousand, something is seriously wrong with the system.
Now this price rise may be good for Shaz and I, the house is worth approximately five times what we paid for it, but we both care less about that than we do about other people wanting to buy homes. We know how we would have struggled if Sharon hadn't bought her place when she did, and we can't help but feel for other people. Plus, if nothing else, we'd like it if in future, our kids could afford to buy their own homes.
The government wants couples to have kids, John Howard wants everyone to have a quarter-acre block. How are people supposed to manage this, exactly? If both parents need to work full-time to even have a hope of paying off their mortgage, how are they going to afford kids? Child care and the like costs a bloody fortune! And not everyone has parents that are capable or desirable as an option to looking after the grandkids.
Oh, people will find a way, but something needs to happen to reduce housing costs if you really want all this to happen in a way that allows for a decent quality of life.
Personally I think one of the big problems is that people and businesses are too tied to the capital cities. People have to head into town to work, rather than having other hubs. There are lots of people in Dandenong who work in the city, because that's where the work is. It was cheaper to buy a house at Dandenong than closer in, so the public transport has had to deal with more commuters, the public have to deal with longer travel times, more time away from home, their partners, their kids... Though of course now people are buying out at Pakenham and beyond, because that's all they can hope to afford, and spending even longer on PT or on the road.
I remember growing up, one of the reasons we moved fairly often was because dad would sell up and buy a new house closer to his job, which would change from time to time. The rule of thumb was that a half hour trip was the maximum. More than that just took too much of your day. In Melbourne, there are many people who have 90 minute journeys because they can't afford to be closer. If both parents have to work, have to spend more than a hour a day traveling, one of them is effectively working to cover day care costs, they are both getting home tired and having to deal with the needs of their children and their own needs in the few short hours left.
This is not a way for the majority of our working population to live.
I remember growing up around the lower class families that were a part of our socio-economic group, and we all had a dream. The dream when I was growing up was to have what the middle class families had - a holiday home. To all but the lowest levels of society (and remember, my family had times we paid gas bills over light bills because it meant we could cook and have warmth, and we still didn't consider ourselves too badly off) the idea of owning your own home was do-able. The real dream was the holiday home. This was usually all done on a single wage.
Now your middle classes can only hope to be able to pay off their $400,000+ bank loans before retirement. That's the extent of their goals in this regard. And in all likelihood, in their retired years, they will have to look after the grandkids, because it's only by both working that their own children can afford a home.
What's scariest, compared to a lot of places, we're still 'The Lucky Country'. And in a land that continues to slavishly and foolishly ape the United States, a country that has already shown itself to be on the downward slide socially, morally, and politically, the gap between the haves and have-nots continues to widen.
Mitch
I've know Mitch for quite a while now. He's a massive bloke, 6'3", arms as think as my legs... I always forget how big he is until I see him in a photo next to me. He has the same problem.
I got to know Mitch while working at Alternate Worlds, he was one of my regular customers. As time went on he started coming out the back to talk to me in my office for hours at a time about girl problems. I used to give him the most helpful advice imaginable, "Get over it," but he kept coming back. The day I knew that Mitch was a kindred spirit was the day during a conversation when Sons of Steel got mentioned. We were both blown away, not only that the other person knew the film, but that we both loved it so much.
Mitch is a hard person to write about here, because though I love the guy, it's harder to find specifics to point to about why. He's just an all-round great bloke.
Oh we don't always get on. We've butted heads on occasion, as most friends do. Having traveled with him, I'd be shy to do something like the Nullarbor trip with him, given how the last time we were in a car together for several days it got to the point where he started baiting me in full knowledge that I was genuinely ready to kick him out of the car and leave him at the side of the road. It's one of the reasons why I'm very careful who I travel with - if Mitch and I were ready to kill each other, there are many other people where I'd end up coming back and saying, "No, they decided to take the bus here, instead... They were fine when I last saw them, honest. Golly, what do you mean they never arrived?"
One of the things to admire about Mitch is that when he wants something, he just goes for it. Having seen booklaunches at cons, he decided he'd like one - they looked like fun. That meant he needed a book. Well, he wasn't going to write one, so he got all his friends to write stories, do art, and edit the bloody thing, but still had his name and face on the cover.
It was a good book, and it was a good launch, too!
He co-ran Continuum 4 with Mondy and did a fine job. His design work for the cons (and for the Mitch? t-shirts that compliment his books) has also been marvelous. His attitude, and he's right, is that most con t-shirts look crappy. People want something stylish, with a cool logo. He only designs things he'd be happy to be seen wearing down the street. I remember artist Nick Stathopoulos commenting that when he's wearing one of the t-shirts Mitch put together, he feels like he's in designer-wear - he feels cool.
And that's the thing about Mitch. He's one of the biggest, most lovable dags I know, but he's also very cool.
I often say having Mitch in my life keeps me young. We're free to talk crap and when we're around each other, the crap comes easy. Together we've launched more short-lived, badly thought-out ideas than most people have had in a lifetime - it doesn't matter that they went nowhere, we had fun. In the times when we've done wrestling stuff together, I've always been worried about hurting him, he's never worried about hurting me, which in a strange way I appreciate. I still recall the SwanCon video where we did multiple takes of Mitch hitting me in the head with a frying pan... he never held back and every take features him giggling as I hit the floor.
How can I not love a man like that?
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Only thing is, our pay rates were 20% less, largely on the back of the cost of living supposedly being 20% less. With housing prices suddenly shooting up the major cost differential over here is gone. I bet pay rates haven't caught up yet.
I see one of the problems with housing here in Perth is because of the "Everybody wants a quater acre block" mindset, there is little to no medium to high density housing, and what there is, tends to be "slum" housing. (there are rare exceptions). People expect to get a quarter acre block, so they don't look at the alternatives.
Perth covers the same physical area as Sydney. Perth has 1.4M people. Sydney has 4.1M people. See a problem yet?
Public transport gets described as a "joke" here, yet has to cover stupidly large distances for stupidly small numbers of people. They'd be better running mini busses on many of the routes.
No Cable TV here. It's not economic to lay it. (And yes, the tried. There are a handful of suburbs wired up, but the rollout just stopped)
Fibre optic rollout is just not going to happen for home users for the above reasons.
...and yet you Eastern Staters still make jokes about us Perthites being dense...
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I just realised why this statement was bothering me so much. I know a lot of Perth folk. I know a lot of Eastern States folk. Probably equal numbers of each, maybe even more WA people. I hear a lot of people in WA talking about all the nasty things the ES say and think about them.
And I don't honestly recall ever having heard these sorts of comments from anybody in the East. Maybe I don't watch the right programs, maybe I don't have the right friends, but I have never heard all the stuff that seems to be attributed to the ES when it comes to bagging WA.
So, where is it coming from? Is it the perception that this is probably what the ES think, spouted as fact? Is it a couple of loudmouths in fandom or on TV being thought to be representative of 10 Million people?
Not having a go at you personally on this,
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It's partly (maybe mainly) paranoia, but remember that whenever a TV soap filmed in the Eastern States during the 1980s wanted to write a character out, they had them move to Perth. Maybe that's where it comes from.
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It was interesting comparing living in Gateshead (in the North of England) to living in Perth. Admittedly Gateshead's only three hours by train from London on a good day, but it's still readily apparent that most Britons consider the North to start at
It was interesting comparing living in Gateshead (in the North of England) to living in Perth. Admittedly Gateshead's only three hours by train from London on a good day, but it's still readily apparent that most Britons consider the North to start at <a href=""http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watford_Gap</a>Watford Gap</a>, some 50 miles out of London.
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Perth does tend to feel like the "red headed green eyed child" of the states. It's mostly just a distance thing.
We are 2 - 3 hours behind. This doesn't sound so bad but so many bureaucratic things operate exclusively out of the east and then don't even bother hiring one person to man the phones to cover the west. I get really shitted off if I ring up at 3:30 on a week day to only be told "Our offices are currently closed. Please ring back, Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm."
This does tend to produce a feeling of inferiority in us Sandgropers.
The distance thing also gets hammered home in Fandom when we get asked why we don't attend so many cons. "Cos the nearest city is 3 days by car if you REALLY fang it" doesn't seem to be the obvious answer.
Mind you the upside of this is Perth now has 3 regular cons and a 4th semi regularly. (Waicon, Swancon, Ghengiscon and Borderlands/Wasteland/Fandomedia/Nights Egde)
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One problem that's hard to beat is the distance/time thing. At one point before Federation, there was a proposal to have Australia run under only one timescale, nation-wide. Great idea in some ways, nightmarish in others.
I think the distance thing in fandom isn't helped by the fact that so many ES fans know nothing of Perth fandom. The cons aren't advertised over here to any meaningful degree. SwanCon 17 did the best job of advertising over here, and got something like 30-50 Melbourne fans in one hit. Any of the places in the East where you would expect to find local con advertising, there were SwanCon 17 flyers as well.
And with regards to the inferiority, I suppose that is what is galling to me. If people want to find reasons to feel inferior, fine, but don't justify it by saying "and it's because of them," and point to half a continent. If the government or business don't take the West into consideration, take it up with them, don't blame the people who just happen to live in the 'favoured' zone.
I've heard this stuff spouted so many times at SwanCons that I'm starting to find it offensive. It feels like Perth fandom is either elitist, insular, or just making up reasons to hate ES. Now that's a generalisation, and I know it's not everyone, but those who say these things tend to be very vocal about it. And if I'm feeling unwelcome, when I know I have a lot of people who actively like me over there, then how many others are being put off?
In fact, that may be why it's hard to get ES fans to head over. What I have heard said in the East is that Perth fandom hates ES. When asked why, people just wave their hands in the air and shrug. So it's hard to get people to spend the extra money to head over to start with. No matter how good the rep of the con, if they don't think they'd be welcome, why would they even bother? And how much is this backed up by the lack of advertising?
(And yes, I know it's hard to find reliable people to put out flyers in your home state, let alone other states, just making the point that it's additional reinforcement.)
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From:
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(More here)
I'm interested in following your other comments up.
I'm a fairly recent part of the "Rolling Perth Room Party" that likes to "gatecrash" eastern states cons and REALLY enjoyed the two Continuums, I'd be curious to see who has being saying "Eastern Staters hate Sandgropers".
I know some elements of the Swancon going public would whinge about which horizon the sun comes up on. Hell, they whinge about every other bloody aspect of all the cons they attend...
I say "F*ck em!" and if you can't ignore em, let me (or Null Space or any number of other Coast crossing congoers) and we'll make sure they know that the welcome we get in the east has always been brilliant!
As for promotion, it's really hard to get posters and flyers out and about in WA, let alone across the country. What I think we SHOULD be doing is making sure ads appear in appropriate publications and on mailing lists for other cons. Cross promotion and all that.
(I am, admittedly sensitive about this cos I am theoretically running a Con in November over here)
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Typically I can't think of names, but I don't know how many times, right up until the last few years, that I had to wade in from time to time about the old chestnut that Melbourne 'deliberately ran a con at Easter when Perth had the Natcon,' when the con that ran was a Goodies convention. The conrunners themselves came from Adelaide, chose to run it in Melbourne, and were helped by local fans. It wasn't a science fiction con. And it's typically one of the bits of proof behind "ES hates us."
But yes, fans on both sides of our wide brown land are whingers, and always looking for someone else to blame for their woes. Is it too much to ask that people just run cons for their fellow fans? Rather than to empire-build, stop the other guy from getting it, or our of some misplaced regional honour?
And is it me, or is it getting harder to run cross-promotion between cons these days? No-one seems to have the knack.
RE: The succession - from the day I first heard about this, I wish it had happened. I can't see too many ways in which WA would be worse off, and I think culturally people would be happier.
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On a different note, Mitch is officially at Top Bloke, and looks stunning in a white Disco Suit.
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And great in dark colours with small black wings.
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Oh and my favourite line about Victoria - "I love visiting Victoria, it's almost like being in a part of Australia."