Hey mate, the world’s gone mad
Can we even say ‘mate’ anymore? John Andersen explores whether a much-loved term of affection is under threat from political correctness
SO, do we keep saying ”mate” or do we shelve it, lock it away in the archive marked Political Correctness Gone Batsh-t Crazy. There are a lot of sensible things when it comes to political correctness such as respect for colleagues – oops I nearly said “workmates” and respect for people from other cultures.
But sometimes it seems the crazy stuff outweighs the good.
Schools being directed to say “happy holidays” instead of “Happy Christmas” and letting big hairy blokes sporting gender nip and tuck surgery and who bench press 250kg down at the gym, play in women’s sport is pretty fair evidence that the nutjobs have stormed the citadel.
And now the same nutjobs are questioning should we be allowed to keep saying “mate”. New South Wales government departments had a political correctness workshop last week. There was some normal and sensible advice about not getting s---faced at work, which I must admit I have some reservations about as some people in the journalistic profession produce their best work when they are well on their way to being maggot drunk.
Back in the day it was customary to spend the morning ringing contacts before going to the pub for a steak in a glass and then coming back to the office three sheets to the wind and knocking out a couple of Walkley Award winners.
Some blokes and indeed some blokesses couldn’t knock out a coherent sentence if they were stone cold sober, but top them up with a few schooners or glasses of vino and they’d write sentences that would float all the way to heaven.
But, getting back to the subject at hand, “mate”.
The consultant told his captive audience of NSW government employees that mate was considered masculine and wasn’t understood by a significant part of the population.
My guess is that the consultant was seriously misinformed about “mate”.
This is a word that goes back to Australia’s earliest times.
In the Henry Lawson story, The Union Buries its Dead, townsfolk arrange the funeral of a young man who drowned swimming horses across a river.
They didn’t know him, but they arranged his funeral. Mateship. Lawson our most revered writer, was big on it. Lawson talks of the loyalty behind true mateship. A bloke
might say to the son of his dead mate, “here Jack. I’ll lend you the money. Your father and me were mates before you were even thought of”.
What I’ve noticed over the past couple of years is an increase in the number of females who use “mate”. ”OK, mate, we’ll get that to you ASAP,” the girl at the auto parts store might say when you order a part of your vehicle. A lot of my former female colleagues used “mate” when addressing blokes.
I’m sure it made the bloke at the other end of the line more relaxed and more inclined to give away a little bit of extra info. It’s a good trend. It smacks of egalitarianism and says in an oblique way that we are all in this together. Let’s not let “mate” become locked away in the archive marked Political Correctness Gone Batsh-t Crazy.
I’ll leave this with another quote from Henry Lawson taken from his poem A Mate Can Do No Wrong. “We learnt the creed at Hungerford/we learnt the creed at Bourke/ We learnt it in the good times/and learnt it out of work/’no matter what a mate may do/a mate can do no wrong!” Someone should read that out to the consultant who addressed the NSW public servants. Mate.
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
I’VE been going through old photos the past few months and have uncovered a few I’d like to share. The one above is of Dinny Sheahan (centre, blue shirt) and his mustering team on his Kilclooney Station west of Ingham on the upper Burdekin in 1982.
Dinny, who now lives in Charters Towers, came from a cane farming background at Trebonne near Ingham. “I used to sit on the tractor and look up into the mountains and just dream of the day when I would have my own cattle property,” he told me. That dream came true when he drew 269sq km West Creek in a ballot in 1953. Over the years he bought more land and with his then wife Nancy built up a large cattle operation.
The couple lived in a bark hut and then a tin hut for many years before building a large homestead at the Kilclooney site in the 1980s. Dinny Sheahan is one of the North’s many unsung cattlemen, who, through relentless work and a willingness to do away with the unnecessary trappings of modern life, built himself a large cattle business from scratch.
It was Nancy who told me about the young labourer who worked on their new home. “Y’know,” he said to her. “When I came up to work, I was prepared to hate you and hate the whole turnout. I thought these graziers, these cattlemen, they’re all rich snobs, they’ve got everything. I hated you and everything about you before I even got up here.
“But, now, after living here and seeing the way you live and the way you work and how you treated us, I think you’re the most beautiful people in the world. I just didn’t know before what it was like.”
And for the record, the people in the photo are from left, Ronnie Rowe (dec), Alan
Tremble (dec), Mick Sheahan, Dinny Sheahan, (unidentified on grey pony) Jackie Cashmere (dec), Mundi Collins and Kevin Sheahan.
FAMOUS FACE IN UNEXPECTED PLACE
AVIATOR and former electronics retailer Dick Smith and his wife Pip were at Cobbold Gorge Village near Forsayth last week. Pip had spent time at nearby Agate Pocket near there just after they were married, fossicking for agates.
The couple was having a drink in the bar, Dick talking to locals and Pip to tourists. Pip leant over, tapped Dick on the shoulder and said this man here – indicating one of the tourists – has your book and would like you to sign it for him”.
Dick duly signed the copy of My Adventurous Life and handed it back, but couldn’t help quietly remarking to his local mates, “how about that? I’m all the way out here and this bloke is here in the bar with a copy of my book. What are the chances of that”? Probably about one billion to one.