I have opened a new blogger account specifically for this area where I live so as to promote stories and history placed in this locale.. https://underthemalleebough.blogspot.com/ for it is imperative to preserve what I call the “Historical watermark” that has been “impressed” upon a locale…it is such a thing that fixes and holds a place in time and allows the people living there to feel..and that is the correct emotion..”to feel” a part of that history and so identify with confidence to a place where they are living their lives…to destroy the in-situ history of a place is to debase one’s own life..It is why I feel a strange comfort whenever I descent off the higher land down into the Barossa Valley. it is because the old Germanic families and their Lutheran faith still hold control of the administration of the district and they are mostly containing any post-modern, ugliness that raises its developement head be it architectural or social, and the towns sited within that valley all have a deeply settled, rooted life of their own..You go into these towns and you can still read the Germanic names on the shops and businesses there….more power to those Germans!
The Murray Flats have a similar historical footprint, except here there is a solid mix of the original Anglo ancestry and development along the Murray River, with the Riverboat traffic and system in situ and the more Anglo-centric governance of the towns here, though the farming areas have the unmistakable influence of those hardy Germanic families still in remnant pockets….also, I have to make point of my own Italian connection to these Flats in that my Father, along with many other Italians coming earlier to the region than the post-war migration waves, were interned during the war years to cut / burn charcoal in the Blanchetown region to contribute to the war effort..and it was here that my father met my mother; of Anglo/Irish descent, a servant girl in both Punyelroo and Portee stations before/during the war…so I too have a solid connection and emotional tie to the history of the district..
As a consequence, I feel more at home here in the Murray Mallee than I did where I was born and grew up, THOSE locales now suffering from a dismantling of any recognisable cultural tie to both myself and those neighbours and friends I grew up with..the history has been lost..whereas here, there remains that emotional recognition of “where it all began” on both sides of the family..; the Italian and the Anglo heritage, plus the Aunties that married into the Germanic connections in the district…THAT is the “Historical watermark”..THAT is “the tie that binds”.
Having been a contributor of articles and aesthetics to social media for many years, culminating in being “cancelled” from several sites, and now, “deactivated” from a Twitter account because of the ghastly banality and insanity of conversations there, I can give a pretty sound analysis of the contributing faults that have given social media such a bad name these days.
The simple equation that makes a social media site “successful” is contained in the same equation that makes a particular political party successful and the tragic reality of that equation was developed and drawn upon in the last decade to elevate certain social media platforms to the giddy heights of financial mega-extreme, along with elevating certain unworthy political personages to similar heights with the use of “Cambridge Analytica” manipulation of opinion to let the likes of certain disreputable characters gain office .
It has been long known that a certain percentage of the population will always “seek the oracle and worship the idol”….in the world of social media, this is known as clustering or cabal-ing..I use the more pejorative term of :”Hem-hugging”..ie those who hide behind a metaphorical mother’s skirt to snipe out at those they disapprove of, whilst enjoying the security of being “covered” by a “mother’s wamth”..in the social media sense that being a person or persons of “authority” within the public perception or having a majority of approving “followers” that give one a touch of “cred’ by association”.
It is a cowardly, crawling method of making opinion upon those that cannot defend themselves from the onslaught of “piling-on” obsequiousness from the legion of followers crowding to also gain validation via numbers..it is the classic example of a “bullying” philosophy.
It usually starts with the culprits cautiously making an observation on a particular subject under discussion, keeping within limits of visual approbation of other’s points of order, till they suss out the particular person on the platform or blog that has a certain higher level of authority and they will then gravitate in a very short period of time to echo that authority, all the while gaining confidence through a certain level of cluster anonymity (hem-hugging) to become more assertive and accusatory of the one person under attack.
I wrote of this marvel back in 2021 after the disastrous failure of Labor to gain office in the 2019 Federal election..here (this was originally posted on one of those social media sites I was “cancelled” from); https://freefall852.wordpress.com/2021/02/14/clustering-the-new-tool-for-electoral-success/ …The use of “Identity politics” by both the Conservatives AND the Greens recruited enough swinging voters along with the gormless “woke” left to allow the incumbent, incompetent, corrupt govt’ of the day retake office and inflict another 3 years of disaster upon the most vulnerable..
This inherent weakness in the human condition has been drawn upon throughout history, but with the electronic age and the rise of social media as not only a tool for communication, but now a weaponised instrument for mass/mob judge, jury, executioner, to use in its favour..never has such a cowardly thing been made more mainstream..We have witnessed many times the brutal use of this cudgel to beat-down, bludgeon and crush opposition of whatever shade of opinion debated, until it is now become an “influencer” in its own right of perhaps even the judiciary itself…certainly the political arm of government and perhaps now the financial arm also…for what bureaucracy or business can stand in its way?..the irony being that the mob will not balk at crushing an individual standing in its way, but seems to go-to-water if called upon to instigate mass revolution to change an entire social way of life for the better…