Last Sunday lunchtime, Obadiah did his best to avoid any of the three marches (anti-immigration, pro-Palestine and anti-anti-immigration) that filled various streets in Sydney. Instead of protesting, he was on an errand to retrieve his lost mobile phone, which Find My Phone faithfully had tracked to a community theatre in Rockdale.
Sydney, unlike Melbourne, had been mostly peaceful up till then, according to reports. Mostly peaceably. Mostly. Until Obadiah got to Macdonaldtown station.
Where the guard announced, “This train will not be proceeding from Macdonaldtown until the police arrive, owing to an altercation on the train.”
And Obadiah thought, “That might be related to the marches, but I hope not.”
But it was. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Tuesday, “Police are investigating an alleged assault against two Palestinian-Australian brothers – one wearing a keffiyeh – who were told ‘we don’t want you in our country’ on a Sydney train after Sunday’s pro-Palestine and anti-immigration rallies.
“NSW Police confirmed on Tuesday that an investigation was underway into allegations that brothers Shamikh and Majed Badra had been threatened and assaulted by a man unknown to them who was on board their train from Town Hall bound for Stanmore.
“The brothers, who have had family killed in the war in Gaza, had attended a rally for Palestine in Sydney’s CBD. An anti-immigration march, which attracted thousands of protesters, was held in the city at the same time.
“The pair say they sat together on the lower deck of the train, with Majed wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh, a garment associated with the Palestinian cause.
“Within minutes, the pair said they were subjected to unprompted verbal abuse from four men.
“Video captured by the brothers and provided to this masthead allegedly shows two men and a woman hurling racist insults at the men.
“’We don’t want you in our country, we don’t want you here,’ one man yelled.”
Obadiah, while outraged, is thankful no one was hospitalised, and ruefully thinks the anti-immigration mob really mean it. With the emphasis on the word “mean.”
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Graham Lineman, creator of Father Ted, Black Books, and The IT Crowd TV series, was arrested arriving at Heathrow, because of his three X posts that were considered anti trans. Here’s a line from his substack on the arrest, which amused Obadiah:
“The police themselves, for the most part, were consistently decent throughout this farce. Some were even Father Ted fans. Thank God the Catholic Church never had with the police the special relationship granted to trans activists.”
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A correspondent in Adelaide sends Obadiah details of a depressingly long list of Anglican churches sold or closed in that fair city.
There’s St Aiden’s in Marden on the weirdly named O.G. Road, which someone once told the boy Obadiah what it meant, but it is long-forgotten. St Aidan’s looks to be a majestic polychromatic late Victorian pile, with some work required. Here’s the pic from realestate.com.
“Ray White Port Adelaide selling agent Nick Psarros said ‘half a dozen faith communities’ formed the majority of those expected to make a purchase offer.”
Obadiah’s unworthy thought is “Oh, well, there’s still a place of devout worship in Alberton – Alberton Oval.” (Home of the Port Adelaide Football Club)
Obadiah hopes for a Bible-based church to have the money to take on St Aiden’s, which comes with a large hall as well.
• Then there’s St George’s in Alberton – sold in 2022 for $3,200,000.
• An “exceptional development site,” formerly St Mark’s, Wynne Vale, currently on the market.
• The Church of The Holy Redeemer, Ingle Farm, sold in 2023, for $3,409,520, and Obadiah understands, demolished.
• Holy Cross, Elizabeth, closed in 2023 and was sold for $3.465m to a “Korean religious group.” Holy Cross was formed from the amalgamation of three local churches in the 1970s.
That last four is a substantial number of church buildings sold in Northern Adelaide over a few years. Obadiah knows that not every church building should be tightly held on to. But brick by brick, this is erasure.
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Here’s a more positve story, staying in SA. A Primitive Methodist Church in Mount Gambier that had been sold to become an AirBnB, will become a church again for the Greek Orthodox, the ABC reports. Jodi who had hoped to turn the church into an AirBnB told the ABC she was sad her plans did not go ahead, but she was glad the building would be put to good use. “I think it wanted to be a church,” she said.
“This sounds really silly, but there were obstacles that kept coming up in the church’s favour — it felt like it was divine intervention.”