Australia’s Wild Men
A Look At Australia’s Rough and Tough
By: Phoenix Arrien
A man called Tony Mokbel is back in Australia to face the music as we say here. He is a criminal who was found in Europe and has just been brought back here.
It brings my thoughts to the criminal history of Australia. Britain, who had laid claim to this continent over 200 years ago, ignoring the indigenous population, had a serious over-population problem in its prisons at the time. So they solved it by shipping many of them over here to do hard time trying to create settlements out of a very different land and climate to anything they had previously known.
The criminal-made-good is part of this land now, as many of the convicts did their time and settled here. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s bushrangers roamed the countryside stealing cattle, the odd purse and generally making a name for themselves.
Ned Kelly is the most famous of these bushrangers. He was even portrayed in a few movies, firstly by none other than Mick Jagger and most recently by the newly deceased Australian actor Heath Ledger.
There are many places in Australia that you can travel to see where and what these wild men did. I recently visited the Victorian Highlands where towns such as Glenrowan boast monuments, shops, cafes, hotels and god knows what else, all marking the fact the Ned passed this way, drank at this bar, stepped upon this thresh hold and breathed the same air.
I think of Christopher Skase, a man involved in crime who escaped to Europe and never paid for his misdeeds. He is dead and reviled to this day.
Then there is Alan Bond. He was a hero who financed Australia’s win in 1983’s America’s Cup, got involved in white-collar fraud and ended up in jail. He is out and has been welcomed back into society with warm (if a little wary) arms and a reputation as a bit of a ‘larrikin’.
In true accepting convict fashion: if you do the crime then do the time, then you are all right in this country, mate!
Tags: Australia History, Leading Men in Australia, Men in Australia
