Acting the goat

I had a near miss at the Roma goat races today. I was in front of a big crowd on the racing side of the barrier in order to get a good photo. When the goats set off I trained my camera on the leaders and started clicking. They passed me halfway down the course and I turned around to watch the finish. However one stray goat came loose from the field and bore down on me. I was unaware of the threat until I turned around at the last second. I saw a rider with arms outstretched as he attempted to regain control of the goat while avoiding clattering into me with his billycart.

I just had time to lean back out of the way and the wheels went over my foot. It also went over my camera bag but somehow did not smash the lens. A little surprised ut otherwise unhurt, I turned towards the goat and rider which trundled its way back on track. The goat was feisty but hardly distressed and there was no other damage done. Yet this tale could easily be another nail in the coffin of the races, the signature event of Roma’s Easter in the Country.

Easter in the Country is a rolling four day festival with something on in town each day of the weekend. There is an Easter parade, markets, thoroughbred racing, a rodeo, drag racing, speedway, motocross, an art show, bush poets and many other events dotted through town. Easter in the Country has been going for 35 years and over time the Easter Saturday goat races have become the iconic event attracting the biggest crowd. Today the main street was closed to traffic and packed with pedestrians finding the best vantage point for the two races. There are five goats in each race and the atmosphere is good-natured and friendly.

But it may be the last of its kind in Roma. Goat racing is legal but Animal Liberation wants it stopped on grounds of cruelty. Animal Lib has been concentrating on northern NSW and has been successful in closing down three goat races. Bundarra had to end its goat race due to the adverse publicity. Lightning Ridge has also replaced its Easter goat race with a big dig for opals in the main street.

The last straw was a Today Tonight report of 21 October 2011 which was a grab of selected crashes at a NSW country meet in Woolbrook. The Channel Seven report typically appealed to “think of the children” mentality while also making itself the story. The footage showed safety and wellbeing could be improved at Woolbrook (there was no examples of pulling goats by the horns in Roma). But the report did not prove Animal Liberation’s claim it was “barbaric and cruel”.

Cruel practices to goats remain unproven in law. However the mere taint of such publicity is now affecting Roma. One of the major Easter in the Country sponsors is threatening to pull out because of the goats. This is a big deal because Easter in the Country is as a not for profit organisation. Unpaid volunteers spend 12 months getting ready for the next event and rely almost totally on sponsorship. They get little financial support from Council (mostly in kind) but bring a lot of tourist dollars to Roma and the region.

The Easter in the Country committee knows the goat races are a drawcard and believes its goats are treated safely and humanely. I saw no evidence to the contrary today (my careless moment aside). Yet they cannot deliver a festival without sponsorship and unless a generous patron can be found that does not believe goat racing is cruel, the practice is unlikely to continue in 2013.

The sponsors who don't condone goat racing are hypocrites. Animal welfare is not their primary concern. If it was they would also have objected to other Easter in the Country events such as horse racing, bull ride and rodeo. The real reason is possible negative public relations coming from the association between the company and a national media outlet story about cruelty.

Perhaps the future will prove me wrong and goat racing will go the way of bear baiting and fox hunting, despite our collective atavistic appetite for animal sports. Seeking a halfway house, Roma could perhaps take its solution from overseas. London has its annual Oxford versus Cambridge goat race, but these goats fly solo, unencumbered with carts or riders. Oxford lost last year due to its goat slowing down to do a poo. Oxford apparently gained such revenge when it won the inaugural stoat race. I hope no-one tells Animal Liberation.

Being Good Friday

(Picture: the Breakfast Creek Hotel, a Brisbane pub that wasn't open today)

Though it was a 28 degree scorcher of a public holiday in Brisbane today, there was little chance of being able to quench your thirst with a beer. Because here as in the rest of Australia, the pubs were shut for Good Friday. But why should shops and pubs shut for a Christian festival? This is a quaint practice retained from the days that Australia was a Christian country but those times have long since past. The census is showing Christianity declining as a force in Australian society with just 64 per cent of the population (down from 71 per cent in 1996) calling themselves Christians in 2007. It is surely time to remove this archaic custom.

Meanwhile, the Australian Retailers Association believes the shops should also remain open on the day. They have asked the Federal Government to take the lead in deregulating shopping hours at Easter across the country. They say ambiguous and inconsistent state laws are hurting national chains, franchises and consumers. While the laws have been liberalised in the ACT (where there are no restrictions) and Tasmania (where they still close on Good Friday), laws elsewhere remain stuck in a mid century timewarp. WA is particularly regressive with shops shut throughout Easter except Saturday.

Adelaide businesses are pushing hard to liberalise their laws ahead of the Rugby World Sevens tournament to be held there next Easter. Rugby bosses also want the Good Friday laws relaxed. But vested interests are speaking up determined to keep the status quo. The Catholic Church has warned that opening on Good Friday for shop and hotel trading would destroy a tradition they describe as “deeply embedded in the South Australian psyche”. The Church's Monsignor David Cappo says the day is a holiday, a rest day and a highly religious day for an enormous number of South Australians which needs to be treated with respect. "I would urge very strong caution about such a fundamental change to Easter,” he said. “Good Friday is such a powerful day, it is about the death of Christ."

Britain has begun the process of open trading on Good Friday. High street betting shops are the latest to open today for the first time on Good Friday. Bookmakers reckon thousands of shops will be operating, even though there will be no racing taking place today. Church groups are angry, saying the opening showed a lack of respect for the day of Christ's crucifixion. The Church of England said it was part of a gradual trend to remove the shared holidays that "help create a rhythm for the nation's life".

This point was also picked up by the Daily Telegraph opinion writer who said that a liberalised trading has led to rampant commercialism. While the writer acknowledged that previously Good Friday was stupefyingly dull, he or she (the writer’s name is not identified in the article) is not convinced the replacement is any better. “Instead of it being a day for churchgoing, Good Friday now marks the start of the Easter sales frenzy,” said the Telegraph. “It's as bad as any Bank Holiday, and we wistfully long for quieter times.”

While such materialism is an unwelcome side-effect of liberalisation, it is not enough justification to stop it. While Australia remains steadfastly shut down on Friday, its commonwealth cousin Canada has removed most restrictions in the last couple of decades. This year Nova Scotia has changed its 80 year old laws that allowed pubs to only serve alcohol with meals on Good Friday. Nova Scotia was one of the last holdouts. Only Manitoba and Prince Edward Island still require pubs and clubs to be closed on the day while in Saskatchewan, bars cannot open until noon. "Good Friday has held out…because of its religious connotations," said Craig Heron, associate professor of history at York University. "Which is odd in a society where there are many, many other religions that don't celebrate Good Friday."

Easter: Paschal Blaze

In the Christian calendar Lent is almost upon us and then Easter beckons.

The link between festival and religion is different at the latter feast than it is at its Yuletide counterpart. In many ways the celebration is less obvious though it is also stronger.

For Christians, the Crucifixion (cruci-fiction?) and subsequent Resurrection are the two single most important events in their calendar.

For secularists, Christmas is the bigger festival. The tradition of present buying and visiting family and friends are stronger at the Natal feast.

Perhaps at the subconscious level, it is because the celebration of birth is a happier time than the commemoration of death (and a violent one at that.)

Both festivals pre-date Christian times. Christianity stole the dates for its major anniversaries. They remain important times not only of ecclesiastical significance but also affording the Churches crucial airplay in materialistic times.

The relevance of the dates, demand they be heard. Urbi et Orbi.

Easter starts in earnest on Palm Sunday. The feast of the Passover is nearing and Jesus is high-tailing it for Jerusalem. Its not known just how bad Easter traffic is in those days.

He had just called in on his old mucker Lazarus, now back nicely among the living. The great man comes into town riding a donkey and is feted by the masses who garland his route with palms.

But the powers that were, weren’t happy. This man, this hero, this cynosure, could become the symbol of a new revolution. He was supposed to have royal blood; the son of David they called him.

We don’t need that kind of loose cannon in the capital. It’s hard enough to keep hegemony without interfering Nazarene preachers with regal links messing things up.

But he is popular, we need an insider in his organisation, a rat in the ranks we can buy off and find out what his intentions are. They must find out by what authority does he do these things.

That search for relevance continues to the twenty-first century.

Plainchant
“speech operates in the middle ground between thought and action and often substitutes for both”
I do
I know
I know I know
But how many times must I know
So that I know I do?
Sleep like the yeast
Ferment fomenting
In soapy moments
But when I pick up speed of a tornado
I spread ransack sadness
Violent rollercoaster of Lord High Speed
Must I seek forgiveness?
For this sick rate is me
The man who knew the child
The boy who saw the curl
The way, way back in me
Far away place
Years and more
I am the voice of you
Who?