Shouts From Down Under

Sunny empty fields to the horizon, but mind rocks & stumps!

The Northwest of New South Wales, Australia is a sunny vast place, where the sky overhead can somehow become a frightening, inexplicable oppression.

This big land is easy to underestimate. Especially when everything seems to be running so smoothly, and look so tranquil, friendly and harmless.

Panorama

Invalid Photo #1034568

We were cutting firewood today, with plenty of modern equipment on hand to make hard yakka into a relatively easy job.

With 4 blokes on chainsaws, and sometimes 1 on a Wacker Neuson "Bobcat" it didn't take long for the cut logs to build up.
The Bobcat man forgot though, and thought he was on an Easy Boy, and sat back for a short nap.



Three wives turned up, and our daughter was there already, and sat for a while until the small trailer arrived. They helped us fill the trailer with firewood.

Under those tussocks of grass are rocks. Almost submerged, they have a solid grip on planet earth. If you hit one with your vehicle, connecting underneath on the oil sump, then the rock won't be concerned. It will just sit there and say nothing.
But your poor old alloy engine will cop a pounding, and may be damaged enough to spring a leak of oil.

We drove the red car back very carefully. On the way out, one of the wives walked ahead through the taller grass, the better to spot the offending lumps of moss covered lava.

Australia. Don't look at an empty blue sky, if you're out by yourself miles from anybody, for long lengths of time. You could go mad. There's something about the silence, the blue globe arcing overhead, sun beating down, more silence and just your tiny little minute microscopic and even minuscule self.

You are alone. That experience, when you are miles from anywhere, nobody around for a long way, no contact available, nobody coming, nobody to call out to for help, that feeling can become a deep sense of horror. Horror at the emptiness and the stark reality of your insignificance.

Nevertheless, like a writer who is bravely navigating totally new territory, (even if it's only new to that author), it doesn't have to be so frightening. Yes, the world is a big place. Yes we are less than the size of a molecule in the big picture. Yet, we are human. We matter. If one of us is injured it matters to others. People DO care.

I heard just now of a school in Uganda where 200 girls were stolen and have not been found.

There are some horrific tales we hear these days, and probably no worse than any other era, its just that we probably have faster media to tell us all the gory's.

I feel we need to keep a calm perspective. Yes, there are evil people rising up, and perhaps their feelings and craziness stem from similar atrocities carried out on them. Perhaps their upbringing was cursed from the beginning. Perhaps not.

But will being bitter, worried, angry, full of hatred, revengeful and all that tiresome stuff, will that make any difference? We don't have to go along with that behaviour. And we can state how we feel and what we believe in.

Then, though, I feel it's something to not be all anxious about. There are greater powers, by far, than evil people. These ones have their day and die. They are forgotten so completely that back past a few hundred years (if that) we don't know what people did, apart from sketchy history.
Their memory truly DOES become erased, as will ours, and whether evil or not, all of us only have this day to live in.

Living in the moment is something people cling to, thinking they can ignore reality, and put off the future consequences of today's choices. Today's way of living WILL impact on our future.

You can count on that 100%.

Write with the thought in mind, that our communication today may echo for generations to come, and help untold numbers of strangers to step back from the brink, back away from the feeling that they don't matter.

To all the people of the future, I say this.

You matter.



Sparky