strikes

california has the highest (absolute and, i think, relative) number of prisoners per state in the usa. one of the reasons is the "three strikes you're out" rule. analogous to the game of baseball where you lose your turn when you swung the bat and missed the ball three times, in california, when your convicted twice, the third time will yield you life imprisonment. even if the third is shoplifting, three strikes and you're out of the ballgame and out of society.

back in the 1800's in britain, one strike, even for petty theft, meant being sent to australia and two strikes meant sarah island on the inacccessible west coast of tasmania in macquarie harbour who's entrance was incidentally called hell's gates where many ship sink because it is extremely narrow and the rocks come close to each side of the passage from the rough sea.
the voute family and laurians parents went there today (wednesday). it was the same area where in 1998 60 whales had stranded (some say because they had a safe passage through hell's gates programmed in their brains but couldn't find the entrance) and where back then several break-out efforts were done that frequently ended up in canibalism within the escaping group because they could find any food.
the penal colony of sarah island had a boat factory with the convicts as workers. it was only running from 1822 to 1833. in 1833 it was ordered to close down in favor of penal colony port arthur near hobart, which had just opened. an interesting story is that the very last of the 100+ ships that were built there, was sailing out to port arthur with the last convicts and some militaries on it but got hijacked, militaries dropped off board still in macquarie harbour and off they went... to chile! they made it there safely. however, after a whikle the long arm of the brits actually caught them and they were brought back to hobart, sentenced to death but lateron it was turned into life imprisonment. what a sad end for such a heroic effort!

port arthur was the stop before sarah island for the voutes. there were a lot more buildings standing up, which made it a lot easier to imagine what went on back then, including a monument for the black day in 1996 when a 28 year old mad man shot and killed 35 people around there. the man now serves life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. as a tasmanian told tom: "what he did wrong, was not shooting himself first". first strike and he'd been out.

ever since, australia has passed new gun laws and gun crime has been down substantially.

tomorrow night the ten day visit to tasmania ends. what a beautiful island and state of australia it is. it feels like new zealand: hilly, friendly people, cool and a bit rainy. but that's also because it's on the same lattitude as new zealand.

mettes quote of the day:
* autau, ooto (recapping the day while alone in bed, she practices how not to and how to pronounce the dutch word for car)