AUSTRALIAN WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY

Also known as Down Under, Australia is the smallest continent, and it consists of three countries, namely: Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and Australia. Today, we will discuss three Australian women who were naughty and brought shame to themselves. Before we dive in, I think it would be necessary to give a little background regarding the Australian continent.

Papua New Guinea

When the continent is discussed, Papua New Guinea is often neglected, so it would be wise to discuss this interesting country briefly. The islands of Papua and New Guinea were discovered by the Western world in the sixteenth century by Portuguese and Spanish explorers. In 1884, Germany took control of about a quarter of the islands, calling it German New Guinea, and plantations were established. In the same year, Britain claimed control of the Southern coast of New Guinea and called it British New Guinea. It was established as a protectorate, though ownership of this protectorate would be passed to the Australian Commonwealth in 1902.

Australia forcibly seized German New Guinea during World War 1, and during the Pacific War, the Allies defended the territory from Japanese invasion until Japan surrendered in 1945. Following this, Papua and New Guinea would be merged to form what was known as The Territory of Papua and New Guinea. While it operated as a single body, it was still under the control of the Australian government. In 1975, the territory freed itself from Western control and became an independent State.

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country consisting primarily of the North Island and the South Island, as well as over 700 smaller islands. It is regarded as one of the last land masses that humans settled on.

It is believed that it was found by Kope, a Polynesian explorer, in the 14th century. The Polynesians settled here, eventually forming what would become the Maori tribe. The Maori's way of life was disrupted when European colonialism began. In the 17th century, Abel Tasman the British explorer discovered New Zealand, and not long after it was fully mapped by James Cook in the 18th century. Conflict arose, resulting in large swaths of Maori land being seized by British colonizers.

Today, New Zealand is part of the Commonwealth, and large strides have been taken to restore the dignity and wealth of the Maori. The country is also noted for being one of the first in the world to give women the right to vote.

Australia

Today, of course, we'll be discussing Australia. Its colonial history is a long and brutal one with effects that permeate into the modern day. With the arrival of the First Fleet on the island in 1788, Europeans were confronted with a strange land that they often did not understand or appreciate.

Europeans viewed the Australian land and people as ancient, primitive, and endemically resistant to progress. Such judgments reflected the Europeans' confused and defensive reaction to ecology and a way of living in a land very different from their own. This reaction allowed the Europeans to legitimize their colonization by casting themselves as superior to the ‘savage' Aborigines.

Their failure to appreciate the Aborigines' knowledge is evident in the Europeans' responses to fire. Although many early observers recognized that the Aborigines set fire to the land, they were at a loss to understand why and certainly did not see it as a crucial land management practice. Such an unthinking dismissal of an ancient practice is characteristic of the Europeans' views of the Aborigines as uncivilized and backward.

With the contextualization out of the way, we can begin our discussion on the three women. We'll be looking at what they did, what the public reaction was, and how the women reacted to the consequences of their actions. The three women are:

• Mel Greig

• Belle Gibson

• Raina Thaiday

Without further ado, let's begin.

Mel Greig

Born in 1982, Mel Greig is no stranger to the media. In 2011, she participated in the Australian version of The Amazing Race, and she has also written for publications such as Yahoo Be.

In 2012, she began co-hosting the Hot30 Countdown on 2Day FM with Matty Acton, and then Mike Christian. This job wouldn't last for long. In December of the same year, she and her co-hosts decided to pull a prank. You see, at the time, Catherine Middleton, Princess of Wales, was in hospital in London. This was big news, and plenty of New Zealanders were sending their best wishes to the princess.

Mel and Mike pretended to be the king and queen, and they phoned the hospital, asking about Catherine. The phone was picked up by Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse at King Edward VII Hospital. Jacintha fell for the joke and even proceeded to forward them to the nurse who was taking care of Catherine. You can listen to the whole thing here:

Personally, I can't see how not one but two women fell for that. Jacintha was mortified when she discovered she had been bamboozled. Unable to face the humiliation, she committed suicide and left a note stating that the prank was the reason she did it.

The suicide caused a great backlash, and advertisers began boycotting the radio station. Mel was subjected to online bullying and hate mail which, in a strange turn of events, made her suicidal. Mel has taken responsibility for her role in the prank, and she has publicly expressed her regret at ever doing it.

I think she is an otherwise good person, and it was just an unlucky string of events that led to her being named in a suicide letter.

Belle Gibson

Belle Gibson was born in 1991, and by all accounts, she had a normal childhood. In her teen years, she picked up skateboarding, but that didn't last long. It is believed she dropped out of school in Year 10.

In 2013, Belle publicly claimed to have cancer. Not just cancer, but multiple cancers, including brain cancer and blood, spleen, uterine, liver, and kidney cancer. Shocking many, she claimed that she was shunning conventional medicine and treating herself through healthy eating.

Encouraging others to take the same route, she released an app called The Whole Pantry which outlined healthy eating for people with cancer. She also released a cookbook of the same name. Forever generous, Belle Gibson also claimed that a percentage of the proceeds would be going to charity. Her health claims continued, and she stated that she has had multiple heart surgeries and that she once suffered a stroke.

Of course, this couldn't continue indefinitely. Eventually, journ*lists began sniffing around and realized that Belle was lying a lot. Eventually, it was unearthed that she had never had cancer. She bamboozled people with a sob story to get them to buy her book. She also gave false hope to cancer patients and quite possibly turned them off conventional medicine.

Since the uncovering of her lie, Belle has been publicly shamed, and she received a hefty fine for making false claims about donating to charity. She has not paid these fines, which has led to her house being raided at least twice. She now claims that she is part of the Omoro tribe, though the tribe has denied this.

I think she's cute, and she should be forgiven.

Raina Thaiday

Despite the extent of this tragedy, there is very little information available on it. Raina Thaiday was a woman known to have schizophrenia. Despite this, she had at least nine children, and she lived with them, along with her neice and her child, in a single home. Her first child she gave birth to when she was 14.

Her oldest daughter, Norena Warrena, has described Raina as a very loving mother who was close to all her children. She was also a chronic marijuana user, which did not do favors for her mental health.

In December 2014, she had a schizophrenic episode that started with her killing the family duck and cleaning the house obsessively for a week to rid it of evil. A dove told her to kill her children, which she did. She killed 7 of them and a niece. The youngest victim was 2 and the oldest was 14. Her weapon of choice? A knife which she used to slash all the children in the home before she turned it on herself and stabbed herself 35 times.

She did not die, and after hospitalization, made a full recovery. She was put on trial for the murders, but it was found that she was not of sound mind when the murders occurred. Hence, she was taken to a mental healthcare facility instead, where she resides to this day.

CONCLUSION

Thanks for reading. Writing these is a nice distraction from the horrors of life as a poor incel. Sometimes I get so lonely it physically hurts. Tune in next time when we discuss the best Oprah episodes.