Musical Dispatch From the Front - Mi Dispiace – October 2025
Frank Baarda
Amici,
If one is fortunate to reach a ripe old age, one of the joys of living in the pre-dementia sunset of one’s life, is that just about everything that happens, triggers memories from one’s accumulated vault of real and imagined past events.
I conned a good friend who revisited Yuendumu recently to bring me a copy of Arundathi Roy’s ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me’ to swap for a copy of my ‘Musical Dispatches from the Front’ (I think I got the better deal).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGj85pVzRJs
♫ ♫ ♫The Beatles - Let It Be
I’ve read some amazing books lately (which I’ll discuss sometime in future), but nothing can top Arundathi Roy. I sacrificed some much needed sleep and devoured the book in two days flat.
I won’t spoil the book for you bar mentioning a small snippet. I strongly recommend you spend your own two sleepless nights savouring it.
On page 142 there is this:
“… I saw Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi dubbed into Italian and laughed my head off at my friend Barry John … playing a policeman. He arrests Gandhi in Italian: Mi dispiace informarla, Signor Gandhi, ma lei è in arresto.”
This triggered a memory from 1986 when our family was in Europe. I had read Humberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’ and when I saw the film advertised, we took a taxi to the other side of Barcelona. With anticipation we settled in the movie theatre. The film came on, and there was Sean Connery speaking in Spanish. I spent the film whispering less than adequate translations at Wendy. Our son Donovan and daughter Jenny displayed loyalty and tolerance by sticking it out to the end, but our son Joe decided to exit the theatre not long after the start of the dubbed movie.
When we taxied back to the other side of town, we found Joe at our lodgings. He had weaved his way back through Barcelona’s labyrinthine streets. This was made possible by his Warlpiri upbringing in Yuendumu.
I was going to once again update you on Northern Territory tough on crime politics and incarceration. The NT Police and NT Government have touted some dodgy statistics to show their policies are reducing the crime rate, whilst the rednecks vehemently assert the crime rampage continues and if anything is getting worse. Neither side of this argument is credible nor persuasive.
Less obvious is the continuing horrific rate of Indigenous child removal. There is a shortage of ‘suitable’ foster carers and much effort is put into advertising, assessing, training and recruiting such. ‘Welfare’ agencies are flummoxed by the reluctance of Aborigines to take part in this industry.
Warlpiri people prefer to stay under the radar rather than be subjected to having outsiders poking their noses into their lives. ‘Welfare’ officers opening cupboards to see if there is enough food and checking how many people and how many rooms are in the house. Making decisions based on ethnocentric value judgements. No, thank you!
The ‘welfare’ system operates like Hotel California:
"… you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave …"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09839DpTctU
♫ ♫ ♫ Eagles - Hotel California (Live 1977) (Official Video) [HD]
Ciao,
Frank