Commuter Diary 5 Warning: This column contains words like stra****, out****s, deliv******s, prior***** and syn******, which some readers may find offensive. At twilight, we creep back to our evening train. Pale and listless after a day in the towers of Melbourne, peering at important pieces of paper, many a Castlemaine Commuter takes narcotic comfort in […]
Training for Melbourne
Commuter Diary 4 Among Castlemaine’s veteran commuters there are hushed whispers of a train to Melbourne which is believed to depart Castlemaine at 5.28am. This is the Ghost Train, because within that witching hour, no human being can survive more than a few minutes. On the space-time continuum, the polar opposite to the Ghost Train […]
Why your remote doesn’t have a dumb button
What is dumb, and what is mute? Earlier this year, Deaf Victoria asked journalists not to use the expression “deaf-mute” to describe deaf people who use sign language. This followed newspaper reports on the police investigation into an incident in which a deaf man died. What journalists write, what words they choose, is governed by […]
The Chosen Few, the Six-oh-Twos
Commuter Diary 3 One frozen morning, as the train sped through the badlands of Elphinstone, we at Commuter Diary were unable to slip into a dignified doze. We were sorely troubled at the possibility, however faint, that someone could try and alter the track geometry at Woodend. Were we on track? What were the points? […]
The truth that brings untold stories from the past
The history of deaf people in Australia is a treasure trove of stories mostly hidden. How do some of these stories emerge? Imagine this: a policeman attends an assembly hall packed with rowdy deaf people. There are more than 100 of them, and they are furious that the hearing men who run the deaf-and-dumb benevolent […]
The laughter of the tribe
When I was 18, I fell in with a group of young people. Like me, they were deaf. All of us spoke; at that time none of us used sign language. Among these people I quickly found a significant point of difference between people who were deaf and people who were not. It was laughter. […]
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