When I grow up....

I wrote this post about a month ago and had never finished it. So I am deciding to post it now, Sorry that it is a bit out of order.

During on of my many periods of daydreaming yesterday I realised something that made me quite envious of the locals here. I was dreaming about where I would end up in my life, what I would end up choosing/where I would end up living etc. And this topic always distresses me. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, and I'm getting to the stage where I am grown up I still dont know what I want to be.

I then realised that the people here have no pressure on them for these sorts of things. They have no aspirations of any change, or to accomplish anything that is even considered a minor achievement in the white man's world. When it dawned on me it was quite interesting. Now dont get me wrong, there are Indigenous people here who do work, and who enjoy it alot. But in our community I reckon the percentage of workers would be about 10% of the population.
I became quite jealous. It is nothing for my girls to go home at lunchtime and not come back to work simply because they dont feel like it. And it is accepted by my bosses. Thats just how it is. It is expected that the white people work the hours they should. To give you an insight: one of my girls might bugger off to another community for a couple of months maybe even years, when she returns she will walk right back into her job no questions asked. But if I buggered off for a couple of days/weeks without notice I would loose my job. Basically no one ever get fired up here unless they get caught stealing.

I was thinking today, that this place is fairly awesome. My house is about 150m from the beach. When I walk to the end of my street I can see the beach. When I walk out the front door of my work, I can see the ocean. I can walk down to the beach at anytime and see a crocodile sunning itself on the sand. The people here have a great opportunity to an awesome life. They get free housing. And the government pays them to have children/look for work. So they all do nothing most days and get paid for it. They have opportunity to fish, hunt, swim, go bush and see animals that you never get to see anywhere else.
So there are all these opportunites sitting on our door step. Some of the best fishing in Australia is here, along with some of the best beaches. And these people have access to even more places, that I dont, that are alot better than anything I've seen up here.

So these people need to take care of and make the most of what they have got before it is gone. The indigenous blame the white man for alot things. But its not the white people who find it acceptable to litter and It is not the white people who dump their belongings on the beach front. This place is beautiful, but it is sad what is happening to it. And its sadder to think that these people arent making the most of what they've got.

One of my friends said to me oneday "if you were getting $70k a year in royalties, dont you think you would buy an awesome boat and be out fishing every day or hunting, just living the dream? Not just sitting around watering your dirt allday?" And its totally true (yes for some reason they just sit in the same spot for hours and water the same patch of dirt over and over). But alot of them do have an opportunity to a good life. I suppose they just dont want it. I dont really know.