A bit of history

As some of you might know, I have a double citizenship. I am Danish/Australian. I have lived my whole life in Denmark, but have close ties to Australia, where I have a lot of family that I try to visit regularly. As a matter of fact, I am going to visit them in a few months.

My parents met each other while my father was living in Australia, mostly traveling from place to place, doing odd jobs. They met in Alice Springs, where my mother had arrived at, after leaving her parent’s home, and traveling around. My father’s travels where much more extensively and over a much longer time than my mother’s travels.

For some reason, I today thought about the fact that when my father first arrived, he had gone by ship. This lead me to wonder if I could find any record of what ship he had traveled to Australia on.

It turns out that the National Archive of Australia (NAA) has a passenger record search for passengers arriving up to 1972.

Searching my father name, turns up two records, both from 18 Mar 1965.

The first record shows that my father arrived on the ship GUGLIELMO, which upon closer inspection turns out to be Guglielmo Marconi of Lloyd Triestino. The record from the NAA contains the passenger manifest, which should my father is getting of at Melbourne.

Front page of passenger manifesto of Guglielmo Marconi Page of passenger manifesto with my father's name

 

The NAA also contains the disembarking papers of my father (the incoming passenger card)

Disembarking papers of my father

 

Both the NAA record and the disembarking papers for my father, shows that he was going to stay at “ICEM, Bonegilla Camp VIC.”. This is the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre, which mainly handled non-English immigrants. Since my father was from Denmark, he fell into this category.

I looked at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience website, and found out that it was possible to look up the id cards of the people who lived at the camp. As the website says:

Each person or family group at Bonegilla was registered with an identity card which recorded dates of arrival and departure, the ship or flight they came on, the block they lived in and more.

Using the lookup tool, I found the ID card for my father

First page of camp ID belonging to my father
Second page of camp ID belonging to my father
It shows that he arrived on March 23rd 1965 and left just over two weeks later on April 7th 1965, where he was going to take up residence at the Maribyrnong Hostel in Melbourne. The Maribyrnong Hostel was a migrant hostel, originally named Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Center, and later renamed to Maribyrnong Migrant Hostel, and finally Maribyrnong Hostel. The buildings of the hostel seems to still exist, even though it seems that there has been a proposal to demolish them in recent years.

Unsurprisingly, there are no further clues about my father’s travels from there.- At least not for now.

The Brony fandom

I came across this interesting video about the My Little Pony fandom (the Bronys). It is by Jenny Nicholson, who has a great long-form YouTube channel, and who was an active part of the Brony fandom, so she is a great guide.

It is not a fandom I know much about, so this was a fascinating introduction to me. What I appreciated is that Jenny Nicholson is non-judgmental but is also not afraid of pointing out negative things about the fandom.

I’m still around

This blog is somewhat quiet due to my work/life balance not being as healthy as it should be. I am working hard on fixing this, in part so I can blog some more.

A lot of stuff is happening in the world right now – the indictments of Trump moving forward in several different courts, the war in Ukraine continuing, more and more right-wing grifters grifting for Putin etc., so there is plenty of blogging material. I just need to tap into it.

If you want to keep track of what I am doing between my rare blog posts, I would suggest following my Instagram feed, where I am the most active.

 

A Danish yes to more EU

Denmark has been part of the EU since the EU was created out of the EC, but it has never been a full-blown member. Rather, Denmark has held some opt-outs since joining the EU. This was because the Danish citizens rejected joining the EU in full in 1992, but accepted a watered down membership in 1993 (interestingly enough, the last election I couldn’t vote at, and the first I could vote at, respectively). Ever since then, there have been attempts at getting rid of the opts-outs, but every time the Danes rejected this  – that is, until yesterday, where there was a national referendum on the Danish opt-out on defense, where the Danes voted yes.

This will allow Denmark to participate in EU missions and to use the resources of the EU. This is a historical development, as it is the first time since joining, that Denmark moves closer to the EU.

The abolishment of the defense opt-out was endorse by most major parties in the Danish parliament, with two far-right and one far-left parties being against. But even among the far-left party’s voters, there was some support for the idea.

Unsurprisingly, those of us that supports stronger ties to the EU are very happy with the results.

Unrelated, yet somewhat related, I just want to mention that while I was at a referendum-day party with the political party I am active in, we had some rather prominent gate-crashers, as five ministers from the government, including the Danish Prime Minister, dropped by for a short period to celebrate a together with us. This was pretty interesting, since my political party, is not the government party. This was a good gesture, showing that the fight for overturning the opt-out was a common cause among the parties.

Also, it is great to live in a country where it is actually possible for the PM and 4 of her minister, to drop by a party more or less unannounced (I am sure some people heard about it before it happened). There was not security screening of people beforehand, and while there obviously were security along, it was not particularly noticeable. And even before the PM and her crowd showed up, there were several members of parliament (members of my political party) at the event.

Knowing your limits

Yesterday, I feel down a hole of watching clips from past episodes of Masterchef Canada. I like the Canadian version of the show, because the people in it are truly skilled, and the judges are not assholes (unlike the US version). While watching those clips, I came across this clip

The setting is that contestants are split into two teams, who have to make the food for the customers at one of the judge’s restaurants.

The video is focused on the eventual winner of that season of Masterchef Canada, Beccy Stables, but I wanted to share the clip not because of her performance, which was outstanding, but because of the great example of the team captain, Kaegan Donnelly. He realized that he was out of his dept, and instead of trying to cling on to this position, he stepped aside, and let Beccy Stables take over the role, allowing their team to win.

I have worked with many great people over the years, and this is one of the rare skills that set them aside – the ability to look beyond their ego, realize what is needed while knowing their limits, and then step aside, and let other do the job.

Gorillaz 20 year anniversary mini series

I guess most people have some kind of weird hobby, and I am no exception – I collect vinyl mini figures. Not funko pops, but a lot of different others.

Recently, I received a package from the US that I was quite happy to get. It contained this:

Boxes of Gorillaz figures

Two boxes of Gorillaz vinyl figures

Those two boxes are display boxes with 12 blind boxes of figures from the Superplastic X Gorillaz Mini Series. As a Gorillaz fan, and as a collector of vinyl figures, this was something I could not pass on getting.

Mystery boxes of Gorillaz figures

Mystery boxes of Gorillaz figures

Close-up of figure

The collection of figures were pretty cool. Very few duplicates, and some chase versions (different color variations) of different figures.

Lisa showing her moves

For anyone who follows Blackpink, it is no secret that Lisa is an incredible dancer. She frequently demonstrates her skills during solo dance acts at concerts, and through releasing small dance clips on her own YouTube channel. Two days ago, she released her newest dance clip, this time in the form of a mini movie. Like her other clips, it is choreographed by Cheshir Ha, who really knows how to show case Lisa’s skills.

Cheshir Ha is one of the backup dancers in the clip, but all four of them are choreographers as well as dancers, which probably explains the amazing quality.

Over at her Instagram, Cheshir Ha explains the reasons for the choice of music

I chose this song “Tomboy” because the meaning behind it really spoke to me. Through dance I wanted to express that girls can do what boys can in the 1st half, similarly to general meaning of the word “Tomboy”. Then switch it up for the 2nd half by doing heels to show we can do both. Regardless of gender however, you should feel free to dance and express yourself however you want.

Oh, and if you wonder what impact it would have for a fairly unknown artist to get her song picked for a dance clip like this, then it is massive, if the dancer is Lisa

Judging from Destiny Rogers’ twitter stream, she wasn’t aware that her song was going to be used, so this must have been a mind-blowing experience.