Why wasn’t I surprised when an ex-school principal took part in a military-style exercise shooting and killing three people? Guns have always been a part of the frontier.
Queensland is still a frontier state. Don’t talk to me about the driving, the unwillingness to use vehicle indicators to signal when your car is going to turn, the high-speed pursuit-like behaviour on the Bruce Highway north of Brisbane, the tendency of people living in the north of the state (a state which is the size of Alaska) to refer to people living in the southeast as “Mexicans”. Julian Assange grew up in the north, he wrote the book on distrusting the authorities, and is still languishing in prison because of his radical ideas. Queensland has a frontier problem.
Nathaniel Train might’ve worked in NSW but it was a remote part of that state, and it was just a short distance across the border in Queensland where he found his apotheosis, the solution to all his problems, and of the problem of living alongside others.
Radicals go to places where the law is thin so that they can live out their fantasies of a heaven on earth where their own laws preside. Queensland is a frontier state, a place where the centre of political power is marginalised in the tiny population enclave that is SE Qld, where large towns, each with its own ethos and bearing, are strung out along the long coastline drawing settlers looking for the high life, for a life away from care where it’s warm all year-round. Where nature is harsh, making people feel even more independent, more in-charge of their own destinies. Queensland is a frontier with a unique set of problems that nothing will cure.
Perhaps it’s best to do as a friend of mine suggested: get a large set of scissors and cut along the border, then push Queensland out into the Pacific Ocean.
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