Rodney Croome . gay advocate

g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Three days on Maria Island

Maria Island is an argument for the virtue and goodness of nature

(published in the Gay Australia Guide, March 2003)

At least since the first French explorers stepped ashore on Maria Island in 1802, and probably for thousands of years before, the place has bewitched everyone who encounters it.

Take Diego Bernacchi, a late nineteenth century entrepreneur. Inspired by the island’s beauty and Mediterranean climate, he twice tried and failed to transform it into the Capri it superficially resembles.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Against the tide

When visiting Strahan look below the surface

(published in the Gay Australia Guide, January 2003)

The fishing boat cruised in from the southern ocean ahead of a brisk westerly. Only the mouth of Maquarie Harbour, dubbed Hell's Gates by fearful convicts exiled here in the nineteenth century, lay between it and a safe berth in Strahan.

Suddenly the boat reversed, sailing faster backward than it ever had forward. Tides in Macquarie Harbour don't match the cycles of the moon. They run with the much less predictable weather. And at Hells Gates – that narrowest of doors between an enormous harbour draining endless rainforest and an ocean last calmed by South America - the tide runs hard.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Tasmania and its Thylacines

Why are there more Tasmanian Tigers than every before?

(published in the Gay Australia Guide, September 2002)

The fewer Tasmanian Tigers there are the further they seem to roam.

Once these beautiful, tawny carnivores, also known by their scientific name "thylacine", were content living on the grassy plains of eastern Tasmania. This was before Europeans arrived at the beginning of the nineteenth century with fences, guns and herds of sheep. Tigers were trapped and shot by the thousands, chased out of their domain and into our dreams. As the thylacine population declined they began to be sighted in places utterly unlike their native habitat; the towering blackwood forests of the North West, the cloud-wrapped peaks of the central highlands. In 1936, after the last tiger died in captivity, thylacines appeared more frequently than ever, on coats-of-arms and company badges, and in the elaborate, baroque stories told around the hearth of every Tasmanian home. As the decades pass, and it seems ever less likely that a living tiger will walk out of the forest, thylacines prowl across government documents, rustle through the pages of novels, leap around TV promos, and peer wistfully out of beer ads. Today’s tigers stalk the internet and a thousand gourmet coolers.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

The failure of federation

There are plenty of good reasons not to celebrate the centenary of federation

(published in the Canberra Times, November 2001)

It's happy hour at a trendy mostly gay Hobart night club: amiable chatter fills the air. Someone dares mention the centenary of federation and suddenly the smiles of those around me are erased. "F... off, who gives a damn about that". It's a reaction which puzzles me so I begin wishing everyone "Happy Centenary". Responses range from apathy through scorn to outright hostility.

Few traces of this discontent have seeped into the official view of our national centenary. But it nonetheless demands to be taken seriously if only because it speaks of the broken promises of our nationhood.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

The impoverishment of the Tasmanian Liberal Party

Why Tasmania needs a better Liberal Party

(written for the Burnie Advocate, November 2000)

You might find this hard to believe but I was once determined to join the Liberal Party.

I was 10 and the Liberals were all I knew. For farming families like mine the Libs were seen as defenders of rural interests. Burr, Braid and Hope were names that popped up in every-day conversation as well as on ballot sheets.

A lot has changed since then, but I still have a strong interest in the state Liberal Party. Every Tasmanian with a stake in social reform should.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

"Untouched and Eternal": preserving old growth forests in Tasmania

Will we learn the lessons of Europe before it's too late?

(published in the Burnie Advocate, Remembrance Day 2000)

Have you ever wondered why so many young Europeans travel to Tasmania to trudge for days on muddy tracks through forests we too seldomly visit?

I found the answer on a recent once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Czech Republic.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Identity impairment

Why do Australians have a black and white view of themselves?

(written for the Melbourne Age, October 2000)

Reading European newspapers during the Olympics could easily have lead me, had I not known better, to the odd conclusion that in the South Seas just beyond Indonesia there are two very different countries which confusingly share the same name, "Australia".

For the sake of clarity let's call these two countries Good Australia and Bad Australia.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Australian activism

Is Australian activism dead?

(written for The Australian, July 2000)

Who cares when a shop front changes hands? I did when a small wholefood store in Hobart recently became a music outlet.

The dealers in organic food had been members of the Democratic Socialist Party and while many Australians believe this Party's ideology is outdated its upstairs office was nonetheless a hive of young people committed to social change.

The young people are gone now. They are sitting in their bedrooms under portraits of Che Guevara while their old office is plastered with Bardot posters.

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Too gay

What does it take to be a good man?

(published in The Australian, July 7th 2000)

A gay friend of mine was floored recently when his straight mate coolly and pragmatically asked him for sex.

The mate’s rationale for such an unusual request was simple. "I think I’d make a better lover if I know what my girlfriend feels."

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g) Lots of non LGBT issues

Reconciliation

Is reconciliation being used to block justice for aboriginal people?

(published in the Sydney Star Observer, June 2000)

I don't wear red ribbons. I've refused to ever since an evening in 1994 when I noticed one on the lapel of the then Tasmanian Attorney-General, Ron Cornish.

I was sitting in the Tasmanian Parliament's public gallery listening to yet another protracted and heated debate on gay law reform when Cornish turned to me and pointed to his red enamelled broach.

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