It's the middle of the day in the middle of summer and it's so dark I have all the lights on so I can see the keyboard. The rain has been non-stop for ever. It seems. A part of my old tin roof is leaking. Intermittently. But I am dry. This is Australia. Bushfires and floods in the same week are standard.
The poor weather has motivated me to once again arm wrestle the digital demons that rule my little laptop. Most of the time I don't understand the digital realm. It has its own logic and pecking order. A truce has been settled and the 11001101 army allow me to log into my own blog. Well I didn't buy my blog but I have visited it for awhile and I do feed it type and pixels. So it's mine. Like Granite Bay is mine because I have visited it for 40+ years.
Ownership is an odd concept around here - especially on Australia Day, which we just had. One of my friends once said
"we don't own the land, the land owns us". Her family has been here for thousands of years. The rest of us came here on boats some time in the last 200 years or maybe even last week.
When I whinge about crowds on all manner of crafts, my friend will gently remind me that Australia ain't the same as it was 250 years ago and the crowded surf point is a metaphor for the country. We all arrived here on all manner of crafts. Hoping for a better life. There's ample opportunity for aggro selfishness or for sharing, for being well mannered or being rude.
Happy belated birthday to Australia. Here's to a better life for all of us - traditional owners, long term locals, fly-in-fly-out miners, wage slaves in the city, battlers in the bush, aliens in UFO's, nature spirits, new migrants and refugees on leaky boats.
(materials used in today's blog were sourced from Germany (cameras), Japan (cameras, film, scanner), USA (film), Great Britain (film), Australia (images, food, electricity, water), China (clothing, analogue camera), Brazil (thongs), Switzerland (watch), New Guinea (coffee) and the whole earth (air))
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