Easter Activism part 2

At our camp (not far from the detention centre) we had a debriefing of what happened that day and some people that had come from other parts of Australia and were inside the detention centre while we were outside, came and told us what they had experienced. We also made a mass chickpea curry with rice, and had to do all of our talking in the dark (or in the bus, which was awfully hot!) because in the lights we had outside there was a mass of beetles! There were mossies too (mosquitoes) but for some reason I've noticed that here you don't notice the mosquitos biting you until the next morning when you itch (unlike at home where you can feel them). I have some great pics of the ridiculousness of bugs! That night I ended up putting my swag and sleeping bag (borrowed from a friend) in someone else's tent that had extra room, cause it was too warm to climb into my swag and I was afraid of getting eaten my mossies if I laid on top of my swag. I am very glad I did cause there was one guy who did just that and said they were attacking all night, and when he woke up he looked like he had a disease there were so many mosquito bites!!



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We were able to get a few people into the Centre the next day (they chose who), but when they got in there, only the ones who came bearing legal advise talked to people, the rest didn't because the men inside decided they didn't want to meet with any of us one-on-one, they wanted a delegation of us to come in there and meet with them as a group and to see the conditions that they were living in. Normally this would be allowed, but not now. Usually you can meet with the men in the main areas, but while we were there they were wanting to put us off to another, secluded part, with individual meeting rooms. We decided we'd respect their wishes, and also thought this good, so those that were in there came back out and we protested that we should have a small delegation go in. They wouldn't let us, so about half of the group sat down in front of the gate, not letting vehicle in or out. After a while the police came and started hauling people away. I did not participate because, not being an Australian citizen, I wasn't sure what getting arrested would come to (deportation??) so didn't want to take the risk. I sat on the sidelines and videotaped. The police had to make to trips to haul them all away, but we found out later, when we drove back to the camp site, that the police had just dropped them back at our campsite and given them 24 hour move on notices (can't come back to the centre within 24 hours). We discussed some more and then decided to go into Derby, the closest town, about 20 minutes away, where one of our members friend's lived. We were going to stay at her place as well as at this church house that was open for us to use. We packed up camp, piled into the bus, and off we went.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsJRh6PAH20

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu29mSRLufw&feature=related







Well, when we were in Derby, something very unexpected happened... a tree branch smashed in two of our windows! The bus driver (one of the three) felt horrible about it, but upon explaining it, it was a total fluke that could have happened to anyone. The top of the branch caught on something on the roof and the branch broke off of the tree and swung down to take out the windows. I was one of the people sitting by one of those windows. I was buckled in and so couldn't go anywhere when it happened, so got glass shards into my knee and shoulder as well as glass dust all over me. There were about 3 of us that got cut up, and I think mine might have been the worst, which is good cause mine weren't all that bad. The girl in front of me was lucky cause she was leaning up against the window, but had her pillow behind her, so only got one cut on her back.
Luckily we were very close to that girl's friend's house, so the glassy people walked there and were the first to take showers.





We then cooked dinner and watched ourselves on the news (we had amazing technicians with us who were able to get internet, even at our campsite!! and so everything was sent to the media) that night! I have some footage of us watching the news.

I set up my swag in the backyard, and after chatting for a while went to sleep. The next morning we got all packed up and walked over to the church house (so we could give the lady we were staying with some space). We cooked and tried to figure out what to do about the bus. After a lot of discussing, a small group of the most experienced people (3 people) who also were trained as mental health counselors, went back to the gates (it had been over 24 hours) to try and get in to see some of the men that had recently collapsed do to hunger strike they went on to try and make the guards let us visit them. They were there for a few hours, and when we got the message that they were unsuccessful at getting in to help the men, we headed into the bus and drove up to the gates, got out, and immediately started shaking the fence and chanting. We ended up knocking down the fence (it was just a little temporary one) and chanted for a bit more until the police showed up again, and that was our cue to get back onto the bus so we weren't arrested. It was such a short time and so much energy, it was hard to go back to the house and just sit around!

(just after the fence came down)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeeMlCRV29M&feature=related

As for the bus, we ended up getting some laborers to help us put up some corrugated metal onto the side of the bus held together with some wood, and the sides we borded up with cardboard and duct tape. Pretty primative, but we had to do something and it was the week of Easter (and then Monday was ANZAC day and so Tuesday was also a holiday) and nothing was open. We couldn't go anywhere to get the windows repaired, and we had to drive back cause people had to go back to work etc. We were already up there a day longer than planned, which meant that a few people had to catch a plane back cause they couldn't afford to be gone longer.

We had a debriefing that night, which was mainly us sitting around with a guitar making up a song about how Serco always says "no!". We also watched some more news.

On our way home the next day we were surprised at how well our window patch was holding up, and how not noisy it turned out to be! :)




We stopped and camped at 80 mile beach again. After setting up my swag I started a conversation with a lady who asked us what we were there for. That was interesting. Me and another girl were the main ones who talked to her with a few other people coming in and out of the conversation. She was a very big, literalist Christian. Without going into a huge spiel about it, basically this is what she was saying (and I'm only slightly paraphrasing, she basically said all of this): All muslims are terrorists, if they come to her country, then they have to change to her country's religion (which is funny cause Australia isn't a very religious country), but she wouldn't have to if she went to their country (and she said "they'd blow me right out of the water if I went there"). She kept getting off track and saying how Islam is wrong and Christianity is right, and how Jesus saves. She kept preaching to us, even though I told her I was Christian, but I believe that everyone is saved no matter what (too much for her to handle). It was very hard to stay on topic with her, she essentially wanted to convert all of the muslims that come to Australia, which I told here was another thing entirely, you need to deal with one issue at a time even if that is what you want to do. We also told her that these were good people who had done nothing wrong, and she said "that's the they TELL you." And when the girl I was with told her the personal story of the man she had met with and said that he was a Christian, she said "well, they'll say anything."
Anyway, after a while of this we finally found out that she was upset about her daughter, who has mental issues (and apparently support for mental illness in Australia is horrible) and she didn't have the strength to take care of her any more, and her daughter couldn't get a house etc. She figured, if her daughter couldn't get help, why should Australia help these refugees, to which one person who briefly came into the conversation mentioned that if we'd just let them into the country and not put them in camps that would save Australia millions of dollars each year, money which could be used to help people, Australians, like her daughter. At the end we kind of agreed to disagree I think, but we did make her think quite a bit, and I hope she changes her perspective at least a little. I pointed out to her that all of the information she was getting was purely based on here-say, which is very easy to get sucked into, we all do it sometimes. So many people are told that muslims are terrorists and so believe it. We also tried to get her to understand that not all of these people can go through the proper procedures to get here because often the offices they'd get paperwork from in their country don't exist, and/or because they are so desperate to get out that they just hop on the next boat out and often don't even know where they're going, they just need to leave.

That was an interesting evening. The rest of the trip was good, hard to sleep on the bus, but good. We did briefly stop in Broome, not much to see and most things were closed cause of the holidays.

Broome:



Life changing experience.

-Cassie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYnlXKXW7W0

Easter Activism

What better way to spend Easter than protesting the imprisonment of refugees! I went on a week-long trip with Refugee Rights Activist Network (RRAN), a group that I was introduced to at Orientation Day (O Day) before school started. They had mentioned this trip that they were planning up to Curtain Detention Centre near Derby, WA (near Broome) and I had thought that sounded like something I would be interested in, so I kept up with it and went along! I hadn't been able to go to any of the pre-departure meetings cause they're at the same time as choir practice, so I really had no idea what was going to happen, I just knew that we were going to go deliver dictionaries and chocolate eggs to the detainees.

When I was on public transport to the East Perth train station (the meeting point) I was pretty nervous about going on such a long trip with a bunch of strangers. When I got off at East Perth a girl named Beth came up to me and asked if I was with the group going up North, so we found the group together. I only really talked to a few people on the way up, but mostly read my book that I brought and did some studying. I took some pictures of the surroundings through the bus on the way up, so you can get an idea of the WA landscape. The big mounds are termite mounds, amazing; they build them up like this in the warm areas and it helps with cooling, in the center of Australia where it gets really cold at night, they are built into the ground to help with heating. We went far enough north to encounter crocs, but we didn't see any.







We camped at a place called 80 Mile Beach, which had a caravan park. There is an amazing beach there which I strolled around the morning before we left. We also had a run through of what we should and shouldn't do if we were arrested at the protest, and were given cards of a lawyer that was going to cover us for the week. I decided that I wasn't going to take part in anything that could possibly get me arrested, just because I didn't want to jeopardize my schooling and did not want to have to worry about the possibility of deportation. I wasn't sure if that would be the case, but best not to take any chances.
Here are some pics of 80 Mile Beach and our campsite.







When we got to the detention centre we were expecting to be able to have a few one-on-one meetings with some of the detainees. Our plan was to put about 4 people in, but we heard later that we should be able to send about 8 people in at a time. When we got there they wouldn't let anyone in. The ending time for visits was 5:00 and we got there around 3:00. They kept making excuses for why we couldn't go in, first it was that they didn't have the paperwork of visitor applications that were sent in 2 weeks in advance and that people had gotten confirmation emails from Serco (the company that runs these detention centres, as well as prisons etc). Then they were saying that the names were spelled phonetically and not correct, which was also bullshit cause people who had filled out applications had been emailing their detainee and had made sure the correct spelling of their name beforehand. Then they said that some people didn't put down the detainee's boat number (in the centres they are not known by their name, but by the boat they came on and then the number they were coming off of the boat). Some of the people in our group also had contact with the person on the inside that they were going to visit. We didn't have good cell phone service at the gate, so one person went a bit away to find good reception and she was told from the inside that the guards told the detainees that we had turned the bus around and left, which wasn't the case.

There were a few people that had come from Sydney that were in the centre visiting for legal advising while we were waiting outside and the guards were also saying that we couldn't go in and visit cause there wasn't enough room cause they were already in there, which is also bullshit cause we knew the amount of visiting room they have (there were people in the group who had visited before, and one of our videographers was detained in Curtain for 2 years) and there would have been plenty of room for all of us. Later on, when we met with the others that had been inside, they told us what went on inside, and also mentioned that one of them got a look at the visitor list and there were 8 names down that they recognized from our group down to have visited that day. So it was complete bullshit that they "didn't know we were coming". The saddest part is that this is the type of shit that the detainees deal with day in and day out for everything in there! They deal with this for when they have to receive medical attention, and sometimes for when they have to go to the toilet! I heard a story of a man that had serious back problems and the doctor said he needed surgery as soon as possible. They took x-rays, but Serco wouldn't let him keep his own x-rays cause "he would lose them" and when the time came for the surgery Serco had lost his x-rays and so 6 months later he still hasn't had his surgery. There was another man I heard of from Afghanistan that was denied because they said it was safe to go back to his home country, so they were going to send him back to SRI LANKA.

Anyway, they jerked us around like this until visiting hours were up, then we headed to the area nearby where we were camping. Here are some pictures from that day. (there were dragonflies everywhere, so that's what the black spots in the sky are).







to be continued...

Gloriousness

I started off the day early (getting up at 6 before the sunrise at 6:30) in order to catch bus to get to work by 8:00. On my way home I was in the Perth train station and there was a group of people all wearing headphones and looking down, then a blindfolded lady in a white dress popped up and they all started watching her as she went around dancing. They must have been listening to music or a story or something. This went on for a few minutes and then she took off running up the escalators to the street and they slowly followed her. A girl next to me said, "do you have any idea what that was about?" and I said "I have no clue." It must have been some sort of art thing.



Later, I caught the bus out to Freo to meet with Stina. I got her out of her studying frump laying in bed and we went to the beach. The sun was starting to go down when we got there, so we took a dip and chilled. Got some a mazing pictures of the sunset, and we experienced something amazing! Some dolphins went swimming by just a few meters out from us, we climbed up onto the rocks to get a better look and you could see them through the water, they were so close! It was a mamma and her baby. So magnificent. What a glorious day.






We then went to get some yummy red curry thai food and had ice cream (a pre celebration for her birthday on Monday). We went back to her place and studied for a bit.

What a wondrous day, i really enjoyed myself. I have been in a very good mood today. :)

Exams exams exams

I feel like all I've been doing lately is studying for exams (I guess that's the point right??). Well I feel like our last exams were just a bit ago, but that was a few weeks ago... time is flying! I both love that cause it means it's that much "faster" David will get here, but I also don't like it cause I want life to slow down so I can enjoy it, and that's what I've been working on... just enjoying life.

I have a kitten in my lap and one walkING ON MY CO
m
puter... as you can see.

Ok, back to what I was saying (now both kittens are on my lap/near my bum on my chair... PLAYING WITH MY FOOT, OW!)
I know that I'm in vet school now, but it's still kind of hitting me that even though I'm working really hard I'm just passing many of my tests, which is strange (I'm used to getting really good grades for this type of effort). BUT, luckily, all I need to do is pass, and that's what everyone else is experiencing as well... I knew this would happen, I had fair warning by Emily (5th year).

Today I went and studied physio with Stina on the beach in Freo, and yes, we did actually get some studying done... as well as a bit of swimming now and again. :)

As for work, I love my job, but I am currently seeing if I can't get something else casually on the side cause I don't get enough hours, which is really the fault of school. If I didn't have labs that made it so I couldn't get to work by 4:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, then I could work all of those. And since the hospital is only open until 7:00 it's not like I can work late. I will be getting a few more hours on the break before finals, but I need something more permanent that helps me earn my weekly wages. Right now I'm making enough to pay rent, but really not any more. I was hoping to save up some money for David's and my trip, but unless I find something else that's not going to happen (the extra money bit, we're still going on the trip). :)

Other than that life has been pretty good, just school, work and the occasional hanging out with friends. :) I'll try and write a bit more since I'll have a bit more time in a few weeks. We have a physio test next week then it's Easter break, which for half of I am going up to Broome (driving) with a group who are going to Curtin Detention Centre to visit the detainees and give them Easter eggs and dictionaries. It's a detention centre for foreigners fleeing their countries and it's very controversial.
Should be a very interesting/informative experience. I'll definitely write about that later.
TTFN
-Cassie

Catching Up

This week was study break, we get 3 of them throughout the semester, which is awesome! We have an anatomy test on Monday, so it's been mainly trying to study for that, successfully or not I'm not sure. :P I guess I'll find out on Monday. Otherwise, uni has been going really good, I enjoy my classes and especially enjoy hanging out with the wonderful group of girls that I have met here. We've become a pretty close nit group and do most everything together (either as a big group or in smaller sub-goups). :) My little group is composed of:
Lauren-Toronto,Canada
Maren- Calgary, Canada
Caitlin- Vancouver, Canada
Ashley- Illinois, USA
Stina- Kristiansand, Norway
Alisa- Brisbane, Australia
Aimee- Perth, Australia
and of course me ;P


Pic of all of us at Caitlin and Iain's house. (left to right: Aimee, Maren, Caitlin, Alisa, Lauren, Ashley, Stina)

Ashley is leaving us soon because it's too expensive for her to keep going here and she got into some other vet schools (in Illinois and London)... she just came here cause I guess they wouldn't let her defer and she didn't know at the time if she'd gotten into the others.
And Stina, even though she's Norwegian, she went to uni in Wales, so she sounds British (I love it) and I sometimes forget about her Norwegian-ness. :P
I love all of these girls, it's an amazing group and I am sooooo lucky to have them as friends. :)
On Wednesday of this week we all got together (with a few exceptions) at my house for a movie, pizza, and ice cream sundays! We have also been over at Caitlin and Iain's (her fiancee) place a few times. I have hung out quite a few times at Stina's place in Freo, which is so cute and I love it!

Anyway, in other news, a little while ago we had a bush fire that was really close to my house, we were actually concerned we'd have to evacuate! Last I heard it was about 7 kilometers from our place, I caught this picture when I was riding my bike home from the dog wash at Murdoch and at the time didn't know anything about it.


As for the dog wash, it was fun, the funds went to charities such as the greyhound adoption group. It's kind of a controversy here that Murdoch uses the "old" racing greyhounds for dissections, but sadly the animals will be put down anyway (and often by the owners in inhumane ways) so Murdoch offers to euthanize them to use for labs. It is sad because greyhounds usually stop their racing careers around the age of 3 or 4 and then these perfectly healthy dogs get put down. They are such sweet animals, I can't own one, but I think if I end up moving into a place that allows animals I definitely want to foster some. They are actually very chilled and not very outgoing, which is funny because of what they do. Also, by law they have to wear a muzzle when they're out in public, which is really silly cause they are the most gentile animals I know! Anyway, here are some of the pictures from the dog wash. :)




Me and a pet dingo


Alisa washing greyhound :)

Another function was the overall pub crawl, where all vet students that bought a ticket got on their green overalls and went on a pub crawl organized by MVSA (Murdoch Veterinary Student Association). It was awesome, such a good night! We started out at the tavern on campus (known as the Tav) and then got on buses that had party music and strobe light playing inside, and went to three different clubs around Freo and Perth. Here are some pics (videos can soon be seen on Facebook). :)






Me, Aimee and Lauren

Before the pub crawl, that morning I met Maren, Caitlin and Iain in Perth and we all joined in a gay rights parade! It was very fun and very interesting. :) After that we walked around and did some shopping before I caught the train back home to go on the pub crawl (Caitlin and Maren didn't go).


Caitlin, Iain, Maren and I




Maren, Me, and Caitlin

And on St. Patty's Day I went to a St. Patty's Day party at the Tav. :)

Me, Ashley, & Lauren

Now I will leave you with some pictures of the animals I live with, some nice pictures, and one showing you how there's sand everywhere, even along the side of the sidewalks. :) Amazingly though plants still find a way to grow out of it. :P