Friday, December 03, 2004

The Confederated Peninsular Territories

From the distant shores of Patonga, to the bridge at Koolewong and to the wreckage of the Rip Bridge, the CPT is consituted by the survivors of the tidal wave that swept the Eastern Coast of the Former Nation-State of the Australian Commonwealth. with much of the lowlands wrecked, it took several months to clean up the area, and develop into a working independent community. Due to the absolute lack of government assistance, the community decided to break all links to the outside area, trade only possible by riverboat, or from the ocean. with the main rail-link tunnel destroyed by sabotage, courtesy of the more radical elements (read: bored kids), the region was no longer considered strategically important, and the residents left to take care of themselves. divided between the Grove, The Umina Hills, and the Patongians. food specialities were separated with The Grove providing grain crops and citrus on the land along the former Orange Grove Road, the Hillfolk chiefly offering hunted foods, and the Patagonians holding the shorline with the best fishing, and the micro climate for the more tropical fruits.
Language began to shift within a single generation, with the youngest children, when meeting children from the Shire, the Highwaymen, and the Principality of Kincumber, were unable to decipher the slang they had developed independent of any overpowering cultural influence, such as radio or television, or even regular meets.
Because the richest people from the old time lived in the hills, and in Patonga especially, it was only those that had earnt their wealth that were able to work hard enough to retain some standing in the new community. there were relatively few individuals with a terteriary education in a useful occupation, so several were imported from the inland farming regions, who became the elders and educators, and because of the different educations these individuals had, some differences emerged in the outlooks of the different territories. The Grove were landed with a farmer who had indulged in some left-wing sociology, Umina Hills suprisingly devloped into the cultural centre of the region, along with it's only wine industry, under the guiding hand of a Vitriculturalist who delayed her degree for two years to spend some time studying the Arts. Patonga's specialist was a traditional farmer and his younger son, who managed to encourage a peculiar church to develop, which included the books of Thomas and Mary Magdelene with the traditional King James Bible.
The second generation spawned a radical shift in the direction that the communites were travelling, as the coming of age ritual involved a group travel to distant regions, with favourite destinations including, for the boys, Surfers Paradise, enticed by the name and the tales the old ones told of "Schoolies Week", a drunken orgy of sex and drugs between 17-20 year olds. The young girls of the CPT preferred the distant capital of Melbourne, in the hopes of finding new and amazing clothes to outshine all the older young women, and to ensnare a sophisicated husband. the Loners, and the smarter individuals often trekked to the distant shore of the continent, to the capital of Perth, to return with knowledge of the outside world, and some highly developed and useful technologies that could provide a source of income without hard labour.
This generation developed the second layer of cultural ties, those between age groups and the sexes, where the first cultural ties were between the region, background, and education. by the third generation, the culture was effectively cemented, with children essentially stuck in the traditions already developed. The accents of the local dialect were enough to make the difference obvious, while the dialect was enough to bind the region together against outsiders. The community was to grow beyond the basic size that traditional agriculture could provide for, and a Permaculturalist was brought in from the Island of Tasmania, and though the language differences took some getting over, eventually the practices were developed, first in Patonga, and once proven viable, within the Grove and Umina.
When The Australians came from their capital of Canberra almost a century after the Wave came, they found countless such communities all over the East Coast, with many opposed to a return to the nation state. they had found that their way of life was easy-going, and that the fruits of their labour remained in the community, from roads, sustainable food sources, and their developing culture. These pocket communites were able to push back the tide of the Federation, for at least 50 years, but as the Coming of Age Ritual brought the young and impressionable into Federal Zones, many were tempted to stay in the Federation, and Populations began to dwindle, and eventually The Grove became the dominant community in the CPT, because it's left-wing slant kept the fire burning in the youth, and they were not tempted by the mirage of wealth in the Federation that so many of the Christians and the Artisans succumbed to.
The people of The Grove began moving into the empty dwellings left in Patonga and the Hills, further stifling the dormant communities, to the point where almost 200 years after the wave, The CPT was renamed The Grove, with the support of the elders from the Hills and Patonga, to encourage strength against the Federation.

To Be Continued...
posted by Keegan at 7:45 pm

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