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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Accommodation for Aboriginals?

Off to Australia later this month for the INTERNATIONAL VIOLA CONGRESS (Yeah!!!). Being a cheapie, I will be staying at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. I have some little doubts about that because in Scotland, if you combine 'royal' and 'hospital' a lot of the time you get a psychiatric institution (though there might be a Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley which definitely is not).

Having fankled up my booking for the accommodation and the flights, I thought I'd try and change the booking, and found the hospital accommodation website. Apparently it has many accommodation options for patients (who don't need to stay in an expensive bed) and relatives, the former nurses home being one of them. That'll be like the cheap hotel I stayed in just before the Minneapolis viola congress a few years ago, where you'd see people shuffling along in bandages...For 17 Oz dollars, what can you expect.

But anyway, so there are lots of accommodation options - and at the bottom there is a list of accommodation options for Aboriginals.

Excuse me?

Aboriginals have separate accommodation? These places all seem to be hostels (though I suppose my 17 Oz dollar bed won't be much better either). But why is there separate accommodation? One hears that Australia does not have a wonderful history in dealing with its native population, but I just hope there is a good logical explanation for such apartheid.

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