Aspies For Freedom

This is a start for Aspies in Australia - but much more needs to be done;

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/...049778.htm

There is a comments area which is now closed, but there was mention of older children and young adults. One family situation was followed up on here;

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/...050347.htm

It's good to know that this may become an election issue - even though the election hasn't actually been called yet here in Australia. I expect it to be called by the time Parliament is due to resume on October 15. And a little birdie told me that the election will be held on November 24.

I think Little Johnny would like to hang on for as long as he can as the polls are not looking so good for him right now.

I'm telling you right now, Tenacious - as I assume you are in the seat of Herbert - you would be better off voting for the ALP. So would all Aspies in Australia. I don't expect Howard to do anymore than what has been announced. It's a positive move of course, but nowhere near enough. Rudd on the other hand will do more. But he has to get into the job as Prime Minister first!

It's still a huge difference, Zakkie. I don't know if you are young enough to remember, but the union loudmouths weren't happy with Bob Hawke in his first term either. So much so that the man he beat Malcolm Fraser described him as a very good LIBERAL PM! I think the voters will be happy as long as Rudd and the ALP don't lose sight of the social grass roots. And that doesn't mean the unions either.

And IIRC - the sackings were mostly to clean out the dregs left from the Bjelke-Petersen dictatorship.

Well, thanks to the sackings at that time, we lost our town railway station. It wasn't just high level Bjelke sympathisers who got the chop. The draconian IR laws we now have must go but I would not expect Labor to get rid of them, just water them down.

Timelord, I'm not talking about Townsville. I'm talking about Bowen, the town where I grew up and I apologise for not making myself clearer before. We had a lovely little heritage railway station but it was closed down years ago when the Goss government was in power.

It has never been re-opened and the building was demolished. If you want to take the train to Bowen (200 km south of Townsville), you get dropped off at a siding several km out of town and if you don't have family or friends to pick you up, you've really got no way to get to town apart from walking.

Much as the Joh Bjelke-Peterson government was criticised, at least they kept the infrastructure in good repair and didn't keep cutting jobs in the railways. You now have a situation where trains sit idle because if several drivers get ill at the same time (as in the flu season) there aren't sufficient staff in reserve to take up the slack.

So I'm the odd situation where I don't like recent Labor state and local governments in Queensland and Townsville but would slightly prefer to see Labor in power federally. Our Liberal Federal member of parliament is reasonably okay but his seat is fairly marginal so things could go either way this coming election.

Tenacious, being up north you wouldn't know that Bjelke-Petersen ripped up the electrical wires in Brisbane, and also tore up the tram tracks (the last city to do that leaving only Melbourne with trams). It took the Goss government to restore the electricity, and that would have cost heaps.

While I was typing that I opened a new tab to check for a current train timetable through Bowen. Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure it's not on the Bruce Highway (ie by road you have to turn off the highway to get there). At a guess, the Bowen station may have been closed (if it was in the centre of town that is) to cut times on services between Brisbane and Cairns. I'm not saying that was the right thing to do - although I'm not sure (and you can correct me on this being from the region) that Bowen isn't very high on the tourist radar so to speak. Mind you with the filming of a major picture there right now that might change.

Now according to the Sunlander timetable which I have just brought up it does stop at Bowen - as you say. I guess the question is - where is this "siding" you are talking about? And it just struck me to check out the Greyhound timetable and there's a meal stop at a Mobil about ten minutes out of Bowen. I don't know if that's anywhere near the siding or not, but two of the four Sunlanders can actually connect to that.

Just to finish that - public transport across the country gets neglected in many different ways. If you think Bowen's bad, spare a thought for a few towns of the same size in this country that don't even have a rail service at all!

But Bowen had a good rail service and we didn't need to lose it. The siding is way out in woop woop. Bowen has been a tourist town for many years but being off the highway was often forgotten about. I think the Goss government was mainly concerned about Brisbane and too bad about the rest of the state. We also lost the meatworks and Bowen went from being a prosperous town to being a poor town.

There is a meal stop at the Rio Don outside Bowen if you go on the Greyhound but I prefer to go on Premier coachlines because they don't stop at Rio Don and go straight into town. If one is so close to the town, it's annoying having to wait around for 40 minutes or so. Premier is much cheaper than Greyhound and the drivers aren't so grumpy.

That reminds me, I must organise to visit my mum in Bowen again.

Oh I think they were thinking about the larger towns, Tenacious, like Cairns and Townsville - as well as Brisbane. I guess Bowen got caught in the rush. It's hard for a town like Bowen (and I am talking as an outsider - you have to admit to a bit of hometown bias and I'm not calling that a bad thing BTW) to compete with what's close by. Townsville on one side and the Whitsundays on the other - the latter being a lot closer. I'm sure if Ayr wasn't on the same line (ie it was off to the side like Bowen is) it would have copped the same treatment. And as I recall Ayr is about the same size as Bowen.

But like I said - if you think Bowen has been treated badly, there are a number of worse examples down here in Victoria.

You got another coachline up there that's cheaper? Are they on the Net? Link me if they are. My experience with Greyhound isn't so bad but then I haven't travelled with them up in Queensland.

Ayr and Home Hill got to keep their stations and their population was around about the same size as Bowen's. I think Bowen had a liberal local council at the time and that could have had some bearing on the decision to axe the station.

Yeah, I heard about how a lot of Victorian towns got "Kennetized" a few years ago. Australia must be one of the most urbanised countries in the world. If somebody wanted to attack us, they'd just need to knock out the capital cities and a few of the larger regional cities and we would be in major strife!

I had a Premier Coachlines timetable somewhere but I think it just had Brisbane to Cairns. I could check anyway when I find it. No doubt they would be on the net. I think they originated in NSW?

We used to have lots of coach lines, such as Deluxe (probably my favourite), Greyhound, Ansett, McCafferty's, and a few others. Now we mainly have Greyhound and one Premier service each way per day (used to be four each way about 5 years ago)

Yes, well is there any mention of "older adults", you know the ones who didn't get diagnosed until their late 20's, their 30's, 40's or even older. Sure, we might have muddled along and learned coping skills over the years but that doesn't mean our needs should just be brushed aside.

Also, we would have much to offer in helping parents understand their aspie kids if only some people would listen to what we have to say.

It's almost got to the stage where I am tired of hearing about the children but I also feel bad that the politics of this issue have put a wedge between children with autism and adults with autism.

And it's about time us adults did something about it! A good start would be to vote ALP at the next election. Really - I think they're the ones more likely to listen for all the right reasons. The Coalition will only listen for all the wrong reasons (that is - political gain against all the states and territories who all just happen to be ALP at the moment!)

Looks as if the election has been called for the 24th of November: only a bit over 5 weeks to go.

No real idea. It's not just the monetary cost - it's the psychological cost of lost opportunities and lives stunted by misunderstanding, ignorance, and prejudice that's concerning me.