A flutter in time

As a boy the future was vast and untouchable, tempting, full of mystery and promise...

In my memory the known world of my own domain extended from my bedroom, to the back fence and toward the street but not across the road.

I went to pre-school and learned the way home, half a block, past the straggly mallee tree where the rock that looks like a turtle rests, waiting

The street, from our house to the corner and the paddock across the road became my turf

On to primary school and I had a bike! I pushed the limits of what was permitted and rode beyond the field of my parents view. 

I ventured to the creek at the end of the street where micro bats flew out of the pipes that carried water from under houses up the road. There were still turtles in the creek then, but the creek is now a drain.

This was the time of my great expansion. The world began to open broadly before me, as far as I could travel before the street lights came on became open ground for discovery. 

The horse paddocks of the Christian College, the wastelands of the proposed freeway, the derelict aquaduct all were my domain. A haunt for kids like me, proving ground for delinquency. 
We knew these places like the back of our hand. Smoking cigarettes and drinking pilfered wine, lighting fireworks and escaping marauding motocross bullies. We hunted rabbits, collected mushrooms and were always off fishing. 

By High School (Technical School) greater distances were traveled. Kids spent time at the mall, but the Plenty River became my second home. From Partington's Flat to Blue Lake every scrap of clay, all trees, every rock in the creek the weeds, the rabbits, the Redfin and eels, the stink of onion weed, the elusive maiden hair fern and swamp wallaby, the Rosellas and the sugar gliders, the floating pummis rock and the hidden shafts of old mines, the platypus, the echidna, the cow shit and the water troughs, the rusted tin shelter and the horses that follow my drunken self through the paddocks at night, all. 

As I got older cars and motorcycles took me far beyond my territory, by then I couldn't wait to get away, I had a wandering spirit and visited the gorge less every year.

Eventually I moved away but to the gorgeI always returned. Just for a visit, just to say hi and to ground myself in 'My' country.

Over the last couple of years it's been a great joy to see Wombats have reestablished their territory in the silty soil of the river flats. Rabbits diminished by a nasty virus. There has been an increase in native animal populations.

The invasive Rainbow Lorrikeet has appeared too and taken over many nesting hollows... Red-rumped parrots and Rosella's are now few. 
Mountain Bike riders discovered the gorge and have made many erosive tracks but the landscape has remained constant despite their intrusion. I haven't seen a platypus for a while the river is not as healthy as it was, but the general habitat has persisted and continued to support a diverse population of many species...

Until the fire...

Now With all the ground cover gone the soil has turned to dust and as expected there has been torrential rain. Soil and ash will be swept into the river and choke everything... Yes given time the land can recover... unfortunately with global warming comes increased frequency of extreme weather events. Time for recovery will not be granted.

The brief period of my existence on this earth, spending time in, on, around the place we call Plenty River I have had the great privilege to know it intimately. I have been a 'part of' it and it is a big part of me. When I walk on it I take off my shoes and I breathe it. I let the hard clay cut my feet and the coarse river sand get between my toes. The thorny wattles have scratched and pierced my skin, mud from the exposed hillside has entered my grazed knees and shins. This river valley has fed me and kept me. I am of it and I will always return. Though my life is a hollow flutter in time, may this gorge keep me my breath, and blood, dust and ash. Return me to the River let my cinders mingle there. 

 

Some sunny day

It was a sunny day, in the Darwin wet season, no rain, humid as ever. 

After cutting back a some of the exuberant growth from around the garden I’d worked up a bit of a healthy sweat. It felt good to sweat out some of those fruit mince pies from Christmas. 

A couple of hours into the job I decided to drink some H2O instead of coffee, wow that felt good, who'da thought? 

Peaceful place - Portion of painting by Geoff McKenzie

I’d just finished mowing the lawn, the grass was thick and green, the sweet smell of freshly cut grass was rising in slow convection through thick January air, Paul Kelly piped directly into my ears, good volume passionate soulful tunes absorbed into my spirit. 

On the grass

No humbug, no other thoughts a euphoria was rising through my body and then I felt an odd cramp in my chest and I thought… 'THIS is IT'!

Wow what bliss! I could fall backwards to the ground in perfect peace and die now with music in my heart and the soft green grass beneath me and the clouds and sky and trees above me.

The moment passed, the cramp vanished and I went inside and had another cold glass of water. What joy to live and die in this thin space of peace and beauty?

A jaw on the road

Loss as being

I gave up the retreat from life

The frantic quest for oblivion

Quit my drug of choice 

Turned my back on a lie
Cheated chemical dependence

I gave into the fact of my feeble existence

Stopped turning away

Turned off the TV

Opened my eyes

Saw… and I wept

I turned back to the world and loved it without fear

Witnessed the cost of our indifference

Then accepted my place and I lived...

To be continued one day at a time until it is ended.

Back in the dry season while spending time in nature, not far from home and work.

I slept on the ground in a quiet space. One night I heard a rustling in the grass, then a thumping as something hopped away. Then it returned again and retreated, it edged closer and closer as time went on until finally I caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye. I slowly turned to look and by the pale din of half-moon light, I discovered a bandicoot only a meter away from where I was laying. What a beautiful treat! Such a curious animal, he came to sus me out, had a bit of a sniff, then scampered back into the pandanus. Before I met him I felt a bit lonely and slightly worried about my safety, wondering if someone might find me sleeping there in the open scrub. Having met my bandicoot friend I felt assured that nobody is likely to come this way.

Yesterday on my way to work I traveled along the road which passes my secret bush camp. As I peddled along the bitumen wetted from monsoonal rain, I saw a mound in the road right by that place. It was an animal, dead… a bandicoot!

I kept riding, I’d had enough of the destruction in this place and just wanted to tune it all out! Give me a movie, TV, morphine…. Something to stop the pain, block the persistent and eternal reminders that nobody cares for anything! I kept riding but I knew I couldn’t go on. I can’t block out what I know is true and must be dealt with! I slowed and pulled across to the verge, looked in the middle of the road and found another one! Right there! Right where I had stopped! I removed the mangled carcass from the road as drivers slowed and looked quizzically at why I would get in their way! I laid the fur and bones in the grass under a tree, pieces of meat hanging from sinew. 

Jaw bone in part

Got on my bike and moved off, back the way I had come and found the terrible remains of my little friend, I pealed the body off the road and gathered the larger pieces. Still fresh, red lumps of flesh held together by bits of fur, bones jutting out on every angle. I walked a little way into the trees and lay it down on the ground. I didn’t cry. I just wondered. Is this it? Does it have to come to this again? Does the indifference of people and progress have to be my constant tormentor? God bless the fragile ones.

Pushing it

Sometime over the weekend, while I was not at work, my bicycle was stolen from the Church office in Parap. It was quite a nice bike, even though it was just a Kmart special, one of those single speed Fixies. I found it in the cyclone clean up pile one day, pushed it home, gave it a bit of a clean-up, a new inner tube and replaced the front brake calipers with a set I got for a bargain $5 at a local bike shop. All up the bike cost me $15 exactly! 
I'd come to rely on it over the past week and had become quite comfortable scooting swiftly around town on my new little rocket. No racks or baskets for carrying things, no gears to get distracted by just the absolute basics of peddles, chain, bar and saddle (Oh yeh and brakes). I delighted in the unencumbered agility of such a basic machine, this lairy little rocket with it’s green rims and purple tyres. However at the weekend I decided to leave it chained up at work so I could take old faithful home. Big mistake! When I got to work on Monday it was gone!
So now I’m in that peculiar space where I’m feeling a bit angry because I was stupid to leave it there and angry at being robbed... but not so much. I’m not so bothered by the loss as I would expect to be. I guess I’m a bit confused about how I actually feel about it at all. Actually, if I think about it, I'm not really bothered at all. Just for an exercise in dribble here are the thoughts that come to mind when I think about the bike. 

• I really liked that bike 
• I shouldn’t have left it there 
• I wanted to sell that bike 
• I could have given it to someone who needs a bike 
• I wonder who stole it and why 
• I wonder if they actually needed a bike (I really hope so. If they need a bike and look after it they can have it with my blessing) 
• I bet it was some user who doesn’t give a shit about other people and just took it because they felt like it and think they can just take stuff from other people any time they like! 
• I should be angry about this 
• I’m not angry 
• I hope thieves don’t s start hanging around trying to steal things from my workplace 
• I wish the people I give bikes to would look after them and appreciate them 
• It’s only some old bit of trash someone chucked out on their junk pile 
• Why do people throw away useful and beautiful things 
• I’m glad I had the experience of riding that bike 
• I like my old bike 

This week Bill Mollison the father of Permaculture died, I never met him but have seen him, read some of his writing, yada yada yada... I like his style, he was a cheeky, cranky old Wisefool. 

I recently heard that an old lady I knew died, her name was Mary, she’d reached a very respectable old. 

Yesterday Aunty Alice… (we called her that but she was actually the mother of my Father’s Brother’s wife. Not sure what Anglo /Celt name is for that relationship…. We just called her Alice, the Aunty bit was an unspoken, unofficial title, or maybe that's the official formal way to address such relations, I don't know)… died. I liked Alice, I will miss her. 

Bikes are fun to ride, possibly even fun to steal…. I like fixing them and getting them to do what they were made to do... In the end they just transient mechanical devices for our transport and amusement. 

I love the living things, the people, plants creatures and places, my heart is with those who live and who have lived.

I felt a trembling

"...They built a prison and it tempered in the sun

It rose up off a plateau like a last tooth in a gum..."

  (The Drones - Locust)

This week grief, depression, hopelessness, rage, sadness crept through every crack and crevice of the barely adequate spiritual blockades I’d erected around my torn soul and aching heart. I touched the deepest craving for oblivion and silence and threw myself out with the bathwater and sludge of 10,000 opinions of the greedy selfish mob, I cast myself naked to the great Whatever…! I asked for death and embraced it’s blank empty promise… As I peddled to work I felt the weight of malice and my rage consumed me. Tears dripped from my cheeks and flowed back across my face while my legs persisted against my will to continue on my way to work, tears in my ears and bloodshot eyes I sang hurt songs for Wisdom at the top of my voice and my dry throat hurt… I met with the Christian son of man and God they call Jesus ‘Christ’…

Memento Mori… MEMENTO MORI!.... memento mori. Not some day! NOW!

Grace… peace...  

My despair burned into my skin left the mark of a Celtic Cross on my back. Give up grief. fight FIGHT!

 Yesterday I met a fella who cheered me up... The answer? Spread the love!

Why did I feel so low?

Today the life of a small child is in our hands, she is not the only one but she is real and we have heard her story.. Her tiny hopeful body is in our Prison her mind and soul already tortured and enslaved, she is damaged and condemned to be broken for our sake.

It’s just down the road, not far from here where others like her are kept behind razor wire in preparation to be sent back to an unbearable and intolerable fate on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! Nauru… HELL!

It’s not new children have been sent there for a couple of years now at the pleasure of the Australian Government. What makes this child different is that they can no longer say this child will come to no harm! (We have the Moss Review on Nauru) We know she will. This is no time to sit back and read about it in the news. NOW is the time to make the news, break the silence TURN THE TABLES!

(Updated 24/04/15) 

Whose streets are they anyway?

Today got fairly difficult filled with anger and despair. Only now at 11pm have I been able breath out and find some peace and mental quiet... quiet.

Life will always present us with adversity... but how do we fight a society that would seek our demoralization?

I have to confess I occasionally struggle with the obvious futility and meaninglessness of many things in this life. I know I am prone to seeing the darker side of things but most of the time I manage to keep it fairly real and just get on with things... Actually I'm not a depressive kind of person, I just don't like to kid myself too much about what's going on. Honestly I try to get a great deal of pleasure out of this world, but today I got a glimpse of the dark side and have struggled not to be overcome by it.

(Side note)

I recently received word that a man who has been on hunger strike for the past two months may soon succumb to severe malnutrition and all the unpleasant consequences that go along with it! I am not writing this to invoke an argument or stir any kind of reaction. I include this piece of information only to suggest that there is cause for despair! If a person has gone to these lengths to defy the callous nature of his imprisonment and the dehumanizing system that would treat him and other asylum seekers the way the Australian Government continues to do, then any human being with a heart must ask themselves is this justice? To loose all hope for a future and be driven to take such action must surely be the response to an absolutely intolerable situation. My heart goes out to this man and his family. I believe it is too late to rectify the harm starvation has done to his body and he may only have days to live.

"When I was your age...."

Yep I think it and I say it all the time and I know that every generation seems to struggle to relate to the one before it or after but!

The tipping point for me today came when this happened!

When I got home from work the kids and wife appeared having just ridden their bikes back from the local park. It's not far and they only had to ride on 'quiet' suburban streets. Sadly there is no such thing as a 'quiet suburban street'!

In just a few hundred meters ride my boy was nearly hit by a car and apparently soon after another car passed my family, and in a completely unrelated incident some dickhead yelled at them to get off the road and ride on the footpath! (Not on a major road but a suburban street with a speed limit of 50km per hour and 40 during school days!) This scared the crap out of my children and caused my wife to feel vulnerable and intimidated! 

The kids got home and were in tears, they vowed never to go out on their bikes again! We talked through what had happened and the kids were reassured to know they'd done nothing wrong but this did nothing to restore their faith in their fellow humans or their entitlement to be outside at all! I could not lie and tell them that on the whole people are OK. As a cyclist on Australian roads generally we have to assume that our countrymen and women are NOT OK! They act with such a sense of entitlement on the roads and an almost narcissistic disregard for human life that they need to be regarded as extremely dangerous.

Recently in an eight week period Darwin has had 5 hit and run incidents.

This incident coupled with the knowledge of the condition of a man who'd rather starve himself to death than entrust his future to the care of the Australian people has left me once again wondering if humanity is only a romantic myth.

Things were different when I was a kid! And the differences cannot be ignored!
When I was my kids age, I was free to play outside without any great fear of being killed by my neighbors. We all played in the street. Cars slowed down when they saw people on the road and it was expected that we would share the road! Without that kind of liberty how long will it take for our children to reach the same level of despair experienced by our friend who is now lying in his death bed? If we allow the bullies to determine the culture and don't actively start caring for each other pretty soon we may lose the capacity to care for ourselves!

Peace.

Precious

The clock has ticked past 12, it's now the final
day of 2014. Just another day really.

Tonight Sam and I remembered, quietly and sadly friends who have died this year. 

It has been a tough year I have spent the past week just hanging out at home with Sam 

and the kids but in the back of my mind I worry about friends who are alone. This year we have seen too many unnecessary deaths! 

3 lost to suicide (all unrelated) and the tragic loss of two more beautiful children whose lives were cut short.

I know so many lonely people, so many people who are under pressure and too often alone, they suffer from loneliness but often they keep their despair to themselves.

When I look back over the years I have lost way too many friends to this thing! Something is wrong! Something is broken that so many would think there's no other choice but to take this most drastic step.

I don't know what I can say really, except acknowledge their passing and remember that our time here is short and soon we will all be dust.

We will all pass and before long forgotten. It's no great matter once we're gone. But while we live maybe there's room for just a little more kindness.

Candles still burning for Jenny and the kids. Morning after memorial on Rapid Creek.

In June this year news spread of a shocking incident which took place on a friends property in Jingili. The death of Jenny and her two children left our community numb and confused. Our hearts were broken to learn what had happened. The final report stated it was double murder suicide. How do we deal with such a tragedy? Can we ever understand the effect this has had on the families of those two children? I have thought of them over the Christmas period and pray they get some respite from their suffering. For the care of children it is right to ask ourselves what more could I have done!
A couple of days after the incident an impromptu memorial was organized by close friends and held on the bank of Rapid Creek. I am sure I'm not the only one who felt ambivalent about the situation. I was angry and sad, rage swelled in me to think a parent could do this to her children, yet it happens a lot. Pain! Too much pain. By the end of the service had resolved a lot of my outrage and could only think to care for so many lonely people, I had no idea at that time I would loose two more friends just 5 months later.

I left the memorial alone, without talking to anyone but returned the next morning before dawn. 3 candles were still burning. I sat by the river and watched the sun rise. Around me life went on as usual. People jogging, cycling, walking their dogs. Over night the tide continued it's rhythm, I threw some left over flowers into the creek, the creek continued to flow and carried the petals out to sea.

Stay - Leonardo's Bride

"...And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
  For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
  (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and
      about death.)

  I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
  Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

  Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
  I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
  In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
  I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd
  by God's name,
  And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
  Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

  And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to

  try to alarm me..." 

 - (Walt Whitman. from Song of Myself of the book Leaves of Grass)

5

Your hearts were torn in life, may God bless you as you rest.
Tonight we'll light 5 candles.

3:30am

3:30am,
I woke with a headache and a crystalline vision in my mind.

I HATE this Australian government, because:
They are proof beyond all doubt that there is no enlightened future for the human race. We are doomed to go down clambering for power, clutching at wealth and personal reward, stepping on the heads of our fellows as our civilisation crumbles.
When we had the opportunity to cooperate and work together in a united effort to realise our great potential and when we most needed enlightened leaders, they gave us self interested autocratic fascists.
And so this is how we will end!
And when the going gets tough the Australian people will light a BBQ and cook their neighbors for dinner.

It is the truth about us which keeps us in a state of constant denial. When we see it clearly our hearts sink and we tremble with dread. Better to live in a hopeful lie than accept that reality. 

There is no magical future where The Scientists solve all the problems we have created. There is only now and the decisions we make NOW. We chose a heavy night on the piss, burned all blueprints for a sane future in one final lust filled romp with no looking back, slept through the alarm and didn't wake up in the morning. The cupboard has been eaten bare, weevils are in the rice and the well is dry (or contaminated with fracking waste...) 

Good Night.

Over...

As always there have been too many things to write about and I haven't had the time, access to my computer, or the inclination to write about it. The past month has been full of trauma, sadness and struggle.

Mourning
At the beginning of June while most of us were enjoying the first cool days of the dry season, our community was struck by a terrible tragedy. Our friend Jenny and her two children Lenny and Tighe were found dead on the grounds of the property where they lived. I don't know what we do with the grief from such a thing. There have been vigils and memorials and people have cried and lit candles, we've thrown flowers into the river and visited their favorite places but nothing makes right what has happened. Now one month has passed and many things have happened in that short time but our grief for this family will take a long time to pass.  I am sure most of us have unresolved feelings about the circumstances of their deaths. I have had immense feelings of compassion and care for all my friends who are alone and struggling, especially to care for their children. How do we care for each other and be there for each other when we are needed? 

A vigil was held at the mouth of Rapid Creek, many people came. It was a powerful and emotional time, and there was a huge sense of togetherness combined with bewilderment... how could this have happened?

The next morning before dawn I went and sat on the sand on the river bank where the candles were still burning. I thanked God for the dawn and cried for Jenny and her innocent beautiful children.

Candles at Rapid Creek the morning after vigil

Looking back at the footbridge, morning after the vigil

Carnage on the road:
One week later, while sitting in my office which happens to face the Stuart Highway I heard a terrible heavy crunch which sent vibrations up through my seat! I looked at the other workers and thought it may have been a heavy truck hitting a pothole. It wasn't. We looked out the window to see smoke and dust rising from the corner and the remains of a vehicle turned on its roof on the other side of the road. Two of us ran out of the building and across the road to find a 3 car pile up. Two cars were overturned and crushed, another sitting smashed up in the middle of a traffic island. Fuel was leaking out of one of the vehicles and the driver was turning the key trying to start the engine! It was an horrific scene. Others had already arrived and were assisting people out of the vehicles. We assisted where we could but thankfully professionals were on the scene. Three people were injured two seriously, but there was still a body in one of the cars, I sensed something terrible there and actually couldn't bring myself to look, it turned out that one man had died in the crash. When we were sure there was nothing more we could do to help we went back to the office, shaken by the scene. Out of respect for the people involved and their families I took no photos. But one week later I marveled at the irony of the Super car parade passing through that same intersection with support trucks displaying alcohol promotional logos!

The V8 Super cars are in town.

Refugee Day:
The 14th June was World Refugee Day. Every year here in Darwin we hold a kind of carnival on Refugee Day where people who have come to Australia as refugees show their appreciation for the opportunities they have been given, share their food and culture with us and all the refugee and asylum seeker support agencies and community groups set up stalls and share information. It seems weird to say we are celebrating Refugee Day... after all what is there to celebrate about people being displaced from their homelands? However there is a real festive feeling in the air at refugee day. It is a celebration of life, opportunities and what people can do if given a second chance! This year we were at the Soccer field in Marrarra, so on top of the music and dance there were soccer games all day.

(On the way there I took a wrong turn and ended up outside a football ground where I was summarily abused for being a "bicycle freak!" Oh what a world we live in) 

Amid all this celebration of life is the overlying fact that the Australian Government is now taking deliberate action to prevent refugees from entering Australia. Our asylum seeker policies breach international treaties and Government agencies routinely commit human rights abuses. This week the Minister for Immigration was responsible for the Australian Navy delivering a boatload of Tamil Asylum seekers back into the hands of the Srilankan regime who they were fleeing. Refugee Day was a chance to just spend time with people who have at least had the opportunity for a second chance in our country and for those who fight for the rights of asylum seekers, to put the struggle aside for one day and just enjoy the company of our friends.

 

Kites fly free at Word Refugee Day

Work:
Many low moments in my work this past week. We've just had our AGM (where I work it is called Synod). I raised an issue which started a fire and pretty much consumed the whole 4 day meeting... that's a story for another time.
On Monday night we had a big celebration for the Graduation of Theology students. Two of my yapas received their certificates in theology. Congratulations to all!

2014 Certificate 3 Theology Graduants

At the end of a week long marathon of work, 15 hour or more per day, on Tuesday I took a morning off picked up a mate and we went for a canoe trip in the harbor. Not far just out across to a beach near East Point where we could sit and watch the sun rise. It was the coldest morning so far 16 degrees, there was a bit of wind around but the water was flat enough not to sink us. We paddled among the mangroves for a while, saw a sea eagle and collected a bit of rubbish off the beach before heading back. Nothing much that has happened this month makes much sense to me but paddling on the water some how relegates it all to just 'other stuff'. This is real. ;)

Trev steps ashore

(Written from my computer at home... I've got a shocking cold and keep falling asleep. Think I have exhaustion or something....)