Temptations of the Evil Internet!

Ah filtering. Won't it be lovely. NOT


Bear with me please as I explain my own expereince with people who have been under a form of 'censorship' and what becomes of them.


I grew up as a protestant Anglican in a Town wholly owned by Seventh Day Adventist(SDA) Church. We were 'tolerated' as we were the "Ambulance Family" and early on the SDA's wouldn't even allow for emergency work on the Sabbath(Saturday) from sunset Friday night to sunset Saturday. Almost all, with the few Non-SDA exceptions, other children of the town were never exposed or had limited and severely censored exposure to the evils of drink, drugs, gambling, television-radio, dancing, cinema, short shorts or skirts, advertising and all manner of day to day things we all take in and decide to do or not to do, accept or not accept. We four kids were however exposed to our nearest city, Newcastle NSW, for many of those things and being an ambulance station we were accustomed to drugs having their place along with injuries and births on our front porch or using the house and station as a semi hospital or refuge in times of need. Dad never hid that he drank on social occaissions on his few days off, and even smoked socially. We overheard adults telling adult jokes thinking we were asleep or out of earshot. We mixed with children of other towns, heard people swear and a ton of other things.


The local newsagents moved in and were tolerated too, even though Roman Catholic, as it saved SDA's working on the Holy Sabbath again. And a neighbouring town up valley had a Catholic population too. So we "NON- Seventh Day Adventists" could at least mix with others within a reasonable distance even though in our own town we were often treated as a chronic infection with which others limited all unneccessary contact lest they become tainted.


There were SDA schools, primary and secondary, and a full College for teachers, missionaries and nurses with rules of behaviour last seen elsewhere perhaps prior to World War I. And all was happy in the little happy valley of the Seventh Day Adventists.


An incident on the night of the 17th August 1980 was to change our idyllic little town and our existence forever. A Pastoral student and his young family from our town were camping at Ayres Rock, politicially correctly now referred to as "Uluru". They had two older boys and a lovely baby called 'Azaria'. The family weren't odd or outstanding in any way and the Mother could be seen shopping at the local Co-op Store and around the town. The Father was good at delivering lessons and sermons, tall, blonde but not unusual looking. They occupied a residence on the College Campus grounds up from the river(Dora Creek) which curled and surrounded much of the college/school/factory/dairy area. IN those days we all came and went through those grounds on foot, horse or bicycle, car etc. There was an old peoples' home as well and a very large red brick church at the entrance to the grounds. No security and no need for it. These were times when one never even thought to lock a car or a front or back door of their home. Neighbours knocked and walked in all the time and nobody thought anything of it; and one of the worst affronts was to either NOT offer a cup of tea or to refuse one.


The news broke quickly that Azaria Chamberlain, the youngest of this very average family, had been "taken by a dingo". Within days our sleepy, sheltered little town on the inland side of Lake MacQuarrie was under siege by media, gawkers and all manner of undesirables. Barbed wire fences went up around the SDA grounds through which I'd once walked so freely and without a thought to who owned it. Media hacks with cameras were caught in diving gear crossing the creek in order to attempt to photograph Mrs Lindy Chamberlain in her own back yard. Strangers' cars slowed and cameras popped out and photographed people walking along the main road or windows were wound down and curses and insults thrown at whoever the unfortunate pedestrain happened to be - often me. And of course we were all branded as beign a part of this 'mysterious cult' known as "Seventh Day Adventists".


Cult my arse!

Most people we knew were generally and genuinely pious people who'd moved there in order to practice a very normal religion by christian standards with the slight exception of using Saturday instead of Sunday as their Holy Day. Most preferred not to eat meat although 'kosher' meats were acceptable to their teachings. Some would sneak the odd steak sandwich once in a while and some would be prescribed meat by their own doctors. As a media branded 'Cult' they were rather dull and uninteresting in reality: no child abuse or free love, no multiple wives or strange moonlit ceremonies, no golden books or strange reincarnations of Christ. As I said, they were pretty dull. Being a town almsot wholly controlled by the SDA's of course there was the inherent little bit of hypochrisy, the "going to church to see who 'didn't' go to church" bit. They did charitable works and performed much needed medical procedures and vaccinations in New Guinea from their own airstrip in the town.


This isn't a diatribe on the Chamberlain Case, although I could post one and it'd NOT be flattering to the Australian Media or the Australian Public of the time. This is rather to reveal how the lack of exposure to information, experience, and other items affected a large number of people.


Literally over night, Cooranbong went from a snug little valley town well past it's colonial heyday to being in the Media Worldwide - I hesitate to think what would have happened had their been an internet back then. We were besieged with all manner of people and of course, some had an eye for making a profit from real estate. This all happened to coincide with an unprecedented drought and under council ordinances once a flood plain hadn't flooded for blah years it could be subdivided for housing. Afterall, by the time a flood does horrible damage to lives and property it'll be some other politician's problem.

Strange people with outsiders ways; protestants, more cathholics, even ATHIESTS, began to buy land and build homes. A new freeway went through making it possible for people to commute to and from Sydney by car and then the whole railway line was electrified and upgraded so one could catch a train to Sydney or Newcastle daily for work. What had been prime agricultural dairy and cattle land was being sold up by the remains of the first families of the town and snapped up by developers and all due to the damned drought and news that our town existed. Affluent farms and stations went under and sold up for a matter of cents an acre to be replaced by squat and ugly suburban spread.


And now to the point.

The children and and even adults of the SDA Church had little if any exposure to the temptations of life outside the Valley - in some cases generations had been closetted away in their own little world. These people, were forced into the latter 20th century, like it or not, and there was no keeping it away any longer. Some developed greed over selling and developing land undercutting or outbidding their neighbours. Others went in for growing marijuana(not that some weren't already doing that eh Pastor? but that's another story). Smoking, hard drugs, so-called 'soft' drugs, advertising, fashion, makeup, and SEX all invaded this little town and not one of these people had ever been exposed to the sorts of temptations now thrust upon them.

The sheltered young grabbed everything they could of it, revelling in things they simply had no defence against as they'd never been exposed to these tempations. Drug addiction, teenagers with smokers coughs, pregnancies, binge drinking, teen suicides, the 'need' for material things leading to theft and distrust and so it goes on and on. And all this dumped on a town with no defences, not even a policeman.


I've probably not painted a very good picture here but the fact is my generation of the young people in the town area became statistics of runaways and all manner of modern day ills disproportionate to the size of the group population.


They'd led lives only hearing what the church and their parents told them of the world, but never seen it or experienced it. When they were forced to confront it they had no defences to the myriad temptations set before them so left the Church teachings in droves for the fun and adventure[dangers and pitfalls] of the outside world. The church and it's people had built a wall around themselves and kept all worldly things out. It was a happy if deluded little place. They swallowed whole everything the Church told them without doubt or even being offered alternative thoughts or theories. So then when the media prophets told them this or that, many swallowed that whole as well. Censorship of ideas and information simply doesn't work as it leaves people uninformed, unprepared for and vulnerable to the real world. Everything above is true. It all happened.


Cooranbong today is a suburb of the "City of Lake MacQuarrie", which borders Newcastle. There's almost nothing left of the town I knew and grew up in. All victims of progress and the mighty dollar.


Today Mr Rudd, in his religious fervour, has decided that All of Australia is to become a closetted little Cooranbong - to only be told what "they" want us to be told - to only read what "they" want us to read. It's only a small step to the point where we will only be able to think that which "they" wish us to think too. And then one day, the real world will come crashing in - and we're done for.

There'll be no Australia then.