The Lawyer in thongs

Thongs are a great measure of happiness, they are a sign of warmer weather and the lazy freedom of student days. When I have a pair on my feet I feel like all is well with the world. Second only to the exquisite pleasure of bare feet, they instantly lift my mood and make me feel grounded which is so very important for an earth sign like me. Yep, I've done it again. Gradually got comfortable in the office to the point where most days I wear thongs. Was a lot quicker this time, I wonder if it's because I feel sort of like I'm travel/working? As a girl who has an incredible dislike of pantihose I'm not sure what I was thinking when I signed on for this law caper. To speak of which I have now officially finished my degree and am graduating in December. I did well enough in my final paper to maybe just scrape into first class honours depending on things get calculated. Big relief (and very exciting for me because i never thought I'd make the grade) however I'm not feeling very smart today, how many times do you need to make yourself sick before you stop choosing to raise hell at the pub as a method of celebration???

So now I have the first bit of paper (and yes there's another one still to go) but am I prepared to whack on a pair of stockings? It was towards the end of my degree before I looked around and the horrible truth dawned on me like a prickling hot cold flush - most women lawyers wear pantihose and heels. Can I face a lifetime squishing all my womanly curves into a restricting mesh that tears at the slightest touch only the devil himself could have designed?

Well native title could be the answer! Where else can i work with lawyers who wear akubras and work boots to the office and would be more likely to use pantihose on a guest appearance in Bush Mechanics then as a wardrode 'must have'? I am settling here and I think I'm coming to quite like it. I leave Perth tomorrow, Geraldton will be the next test, and from there to Mt Magnet, the towns keep getting smaller and I suspect stockings on the legs of lady lawyers will be harder and harder to find. But apparently so will thongs, they aren't great snake shoes you see!

Catching up on sleep in the "hippie bus"!! Yay!!

I had a lovely weekend staying in Penny's lovely Bedford "Hippie Bus" on her property at Jarrahdale. It was a lovely escape and I got the chance to do some gardening, helping to lay out irrigation pipes and bushwalking, together with lovely meals and great company. A fabulous weekend that went a good way towards my much needed attitude adjustment.

After some really long deep and meaningful conversations I realised that some of the problems I had been having adjusting to the work environment were affected by all sorts of other factors and it's nice to know that in most cases my intuitions served me well and I had been reading the organisation's culture pretty accurately.

Despite that, still feeling quite a bit of culture shock - I don't think I'll ever get used to receiving legal agreements to review that are covered in red dust!!! They come from all those small time prospectors out there scavenging a living in the WA outback, an interesting but undoubtedly tough way to scrape a living.

The work is incredibly interesting and provides me with so much stimulus for deep thinking about Australia, how (not) far we've come and how the process of deep colonisation continues. In a climate where the WA government has just overturned a ban on uranium mining and the choas surrounding native title is still so far from resolution, it's hard to stay positive but I keep in the forefront of my mind the words of an elder who has been fighting this battle for a very long time, affected by choices and government actions way beyond his control. That this is just another step towards a treaty and in the geological time scale of aboriginal culture, the journey has only just started.

I also enjoy immensely the humour and reminder of how ridiculous the legal system must appear to those who live outside it. After pouring through a ten year claim history and reading how lawyers have tried to explain the various amendments and new decisions to their aboriginal clients. You can almost hear the sigh go around the meeting - what now? what does this mean? we sick of talking same rubbish. We already told you. It's an incredibly salient look at how incongrous the two worlds are and it's us whitey lawyers that look the clowns.

The Pain and the Pleasure of New Places

Wandered around Fremantle over the weekend and was blessed enough to run into the Fremantle Arts Festival, so at least there was some music to entertain me. Ann- you'd have loved the WA Mandolin Orchestra. Fortunate enough to have the choice of Lindsay Pollack, a long time favourite, playing at Kulcha or the Herd playing down at the Arts Centre or some funky groove stuff I never heard of over at the Fly by Night musicians club. I chose the funky happenings and wasn't sorry...but as I was incredibly hung over and totally outdone binge-drinking wise by the seasoned party crew at the Perth office it wasn't a late night.

It's a strange city, Perth, they don't have that many people so they added a few bronze extras, mostly with a colonial feel to match the buildings. Its clean and refurbished and after so many good boom years it still looks flush with money. However it is a boom and bust kind of place, and all good Perthians are preparing for the big bust, commiserating with me for coming out West at the start of the wrong kind of cycle. You know you hear about the resource boom back in NSW and know that its a mining town but just how big and how skewed and how totally pro-mining it is still came as a huge shock to me. I guess I am still reeling and this week the shock of the place nearly had me totally undone.

Maybe I should start at the beginning... First of all the reality of work at a seriously underfunded and under resourced statutory body like a Native Title Review Board in what appears to be the most discriminatory state of them all - WA. Means that the accommodation that you knew would be nothing flash turns out to be a horror show that you can't switch off. Here is a photo of my hotel, I live in that yellow strip next to the jacaranda at the top left. People of Wollongong- think about those units at the corner of Crown and Mt Keira and you'll get the idea...

Next, welcome to an organisation that has been so chronically underfunded that the mining companies (opponents) had to request more funding for them, just so that they could manage to perform the totally one-sided farce that facilitates mining operations in this state. The result of which is a state of disorganisation second to none. Which means you get dumped in front of a computer, hardly introduced and you start working, never really sure what you are doing or why or if you should be doing it differently.

The frustration and bewilderment of landing in a place like this and needing to basically fend for yourself brought me to tears yesterday (not to mention the lack of sleep brought on by the eleven (yes, count them) lane freeway running past my window) ...BUT then amongst all that are the moments of humour and bewilderment that you get by looking at the world through the eyes of another. How strange this native title system must seem to the traditional owners who having been working in such a crazy, disorganised and frankly embarassing debacle that doesn't really get them anywhere anyway; except with a whole lotta money that they can fight over and at war with their neighbouring claimant groups about where exactly, with pinpoint GPS precision, their country stops and another's starts.

It is, despite all that, interesting work and the some of the people I am meeting here are really inspiring and amazing people. Thanks to the heavens for my fellow intern Akmal who has a great attitude and keeps me laughing through the day. And on the weekends to escape the accommodation horror I have been doing all sorts of exciting stuff, at least it's a great motivator!

On Sunday I went for a paddle around the Shoalwater Marine Park near Rockingham and also snorkelled through some really amazing kelp and seagrass forests. A marine environment I had never thought I would enjoy exploring so much (due to my absolute terror of seaweed) but it's really nice when it's all attached and alive, growing in a more orderly fashion with (naturally) seaweed free avenues you can snorkel through to look at all the different and countless types of kelp.

In the evenings I am not far from King's Park, its beautiful...and some of the Wildflowers are still out. There is also a flight of more than 600 steps (my estimate) and each night I join all the other crazies walking up and down them in an effort to fall into an exhausted (and traffic oblivious) stupor. Altogether, (although not if you asked me yesterday) I am still glad I came because I am learning and after all that is what it's all about.

super-blogger

Following in the well trodden footsteps of those pre-eminent and world weary friends who have travelled the far flung corners of the world before me and lived to blog it all in hyper real detail to their friends; welcome to the astounding, hair raising and altogether normal ponderings and wonderings of janine the ordinary blogger.

I'm here. In Perth; not what I expected. Working in Native Title. there is enough fodder here to feed the cynic in me for decades to come. hats off to all the amazing folk who work their guts out in such a flawed and racist system. I'll blog some more when I have settled in have something more interesting and jolly to report... right now, frankly Im dead tired.. and my legs are cold... so adios for now xoxo and welcome to the latest in blog-tastic entertainment. :) much love janine.