And It's Only October

Have you ever hated somewhere so much as I hate you now! Darwin you Bastard! There's nothing sweet about you I hate yer stinking guts and I want to leave! 

In our small but comfortable housing commission house we have no aircon, definitely not complaining about that, we prefer it that way. The louver windows allow reasonable airflow, ceiling fans will do but are poorly placed and barely cut it in the heat. 

The problem is that our house is like a noise magnet! We hear everything from Dogs barking all night at drunks who won’t go home, kids who roam the street, the Pokemon Go freaks or sometimes at nothing at all. Our neighborhood is cluttered with the sound of angry and miserable households with nothing nice to say. I still can’t get used to the sound of violent Chinese soap operas at 4am! 

Fear of being robbed leads one neighbor to leave a floodlight on in their backyard all night! It shines right through our bedroom window! 

And the children! 
The kids in our street are a living confirmation that the zombie apocalypse is just around the corner. They appear to have lost the ability for verbal communication and seem only capable of screaming, grunting or swearing… nothing in between. The 'C' word is flung around with gay abandon regardless of who is present! For sport they tremble with delight at the prospect of tormenting some unsuspecting weaker victim. Younger children, or the single mother who lives across the road seem to be their current targets. Throwing stones at baby birds and snapping the branches off trees are a standard recreation till something more exciting comes along. 

The constant rank screaming and abuse of neighbors on all sides, hateful and vulgar as the racist misogynistic gangsta rap that blasts through our cyclone mesh fence! The vernacular here is a form of hateful profanity which has replaced human conversation, the Morlocks now rule! 

Surely this place is proof that the Zombie apocalypse has arrived and I must face it without rest because the dog next door didn't stop barking till two hours before dawn! Buildup mornings are always the same! Sleep deprived and in a lather of coffee scented sweat, with a pounding head I prepare to face the day!

Damn you Darwin! Damn your shopping malls and your wide streets full of impatient drivers, Damn your false sense of security ‘cameras’ and your V8 utes, Damn your ‘sporting fishermen’ your pig hunting yobbos and your endless piles of goon filled coke bottles! To hell with your FIFO workers in bright orange shirts! Damn your drunken fornicating fuckwits destitute and lying in their own waste! Damn the stink! 

I have never felt a love so dear as how I hate you today. 

Oh and this little gem from Andrew McMillan pretty much sums it up re: the heat!

A Postcard from Hell in October > poem Andrew McMillan > video by Annaliese Ciel Walker from slam tv on Vimeo.

(Edited 12/10/17)

The Edge - Life on the margins

This is a post about The Edge - Life on the Margins

Permaculture Principle 11: 

Use edges & value the marginal

The Edge is a Permaculture concept

In the words of Charlie Mgee “The Edge is where it’s at”

Some words relating to this highly fertile, volatile place: Edge, fringe, border, margin, verge, periphery, outer limits

There are many benefits to life on the fringes of a habitat (or society). But it’s not a ‘safe’ place.   

The edge is the interface between two worlds it’s a place where one niche interacts with another and borders are never truly fixed, there is a constant interplay and struggle for dominance. It is also a place which has potential to support a greater diversity. This can be viewed in terms of ecological / biological interplay but can be easily translated as a social metaphor. 

A lot of wild foods can be collected from verges and edges. Blackberries are often found on marginal land close to cities in southern Australia. Here in Darwin when weather becomes dry collect Rosellas from sites where the soil has been disturbed.

Edges: 
Kitchener Drive at Darwin's Waterfront. There is a steep drop off between the city and the waterfront in Darwin separating what would have been an open woodland environment from what was once mangroves. There is not much left of either of these habitats any more but the cliff face is a very different environment. Along the cliff is a thin strip of Monsoon vine forest. It is lush and green and provides an amazing fringe habitat for various species in Darwin City.

Cliff edge Kitchener Drive

Where the land meets the sea is an edge which is bursting with life where both land and water creatures converge. On the weekend we visited the fish feeding at Doctor’s Gully. Fish come to the edge of the water to be fed bread by the tourists, meanwhile there are various other opportunistic species waiting to prey on the unsuspecting fish.

Water's Edge

Mangroves provide a rich source of nutrient to crabs and other crustaceans and fish; these are hunting grounds for monitor lizards, tree rats, bats, snakes and many species of fish which live predominantly in this environment. The mangroves also provide crucial shelter to baby fish of various species, without which the sea populations would be greatly reduced.

In our permanent fresh water habitats land animals all converge at the edge of the water to hunt and drink. Creeks support a unique habitat called the riparian zone which is often only a few meters wide and has a biodiversity which is far greater than the surrounding bush land.Riparian zones often remain green and lush while the vegetation just meters away is dry and sparse.

Rapid Creek (fresh water)

In the garden environment edges provide unique growing  conditions where well designed landscapes combined with complementary planting can provide ideal growing conditions for diverse crops, improved resilience and nutrient uptake which bring about increased yields.

Here's Charlie Mgee from Formidable Vegetable Sound System singing 'The Edge Is Where It's At'


If you like this song there's plenty more where that came from. Buy the CD
( http://permacultureprinciples.com/product/rhymers-manual/ )

The EDGE of Society

It’s fascinating that the very place which produces the most creativity and innovation is also looked on unfavourably by society. When people get close to the edge society gets nervous.  

Throughout the ages one of the greatest punishments for social transgression has been to ‘cast out’ the offenders, condemning them to leave the shelter of their society, without which they are expected to perish. Some do, but some actually find a way to thrive outside the restrictive confines of social conformity. Society uses terms like ‘Fringe dweller’, ‘marginalize’, ‘close to the edge’ to describe people who don’t fit with the conventions of their society. However from the outer edge people can gain insightful perspective of the society they don’t quite fit into. Prophet’s and visionaries have often emerged from the shadows with important messages…

The Archetype storyline of The Hero’s Journey is a perfect example of The Edge in a social context. I believe it is actually an outline for movement from the moribund dead wood at the heart of the tree of life to living dynamic periphery of bark and sap. Close to the surface, vulnerable to attack from outside but moving and alive!

When Bilbo took off into the unknown with a band of Dwarves he ventured well beyond the safety of the Shire and journeyed at the margins interacting with all manner of other folk and creatures. Great mysteries were revealed to him, many dangers and wonders the sources of life and death. While the fate of the shire was playing out at the fringes the shire folk were oblivious, asleep. Bilbo was awake. 

Henry David Thoreau actively sought solitude in the forest. He set out to live a year by a lake, away from the company of his neighbors and the hustle and bustle of modern life. From the outer limit of his society he was able to reflect on it's value and the value of simple things. In doing this and writing about his experience he taught us not to doubt our instinct or yearning to spend time in nature simply for it's own sake. It's OK to step aside from the madness of our society. 

So much great art comes from the outsider’s perspective, but we rarely acknowledge it. Some of what we would call definitive Australian or American music and literature is produced from the children of immigrants, first generation people who have had the experience of not entirely fitting the national identity. They paint the picture, we identify with it and claim it as our own perspective but we rarely consider where the artist stood to make such observations. Jack Kerouac, Irving Berlin,

 Paul Kelly, who could have written the theme for Australia during the late 20^th and early 21^st century, has this perspective. Bon Scott, Jimmy Barnes and Colin Hay whose songs have expressed the Australian experience so well are Scottish by birth they and many others have contributed to the Australian identity.  Explorers at the fringes dragged into the centre when their perspective from the edge has borne fruit.

But these are the ones who have succeeded. The thing about living on the fringes is that there are few safeguards for failure.

It is often difficult to be on the fringe. Sometimes we are forced to the outside in a violent way we are rejected. It's easy to see this happening all around me today. I only have to consider the 1,000s locked up in immigration detention, or the Aboriginal people living on the streets of Darwin, rounded up constantly by the police, or looked down on by people in the street. People with disabilities are subtly denied full membership in society, I'm sure there are a thousand other examples and many of them can simply come down to one's own perception. The thing is that by being cast outside the bubble of social acceptance we are given a very special opportunity to wake up from the illusion. To break out and take a look around from outside the fish bowl. To see what those inside are incapable of seeing while they '...stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're they're used to...'  (Waterfalls by TLC)

Bikes and poverty

I've been thinking a lot about bikes lately... again!
Having spent the past week crawling from bed to panadol and back to bed I am very grateful to be back on my feet (more or less) and back on my bike! What makes this even better is that just when the long-bike was about to fall apart completely my friend brought back the Avanti (The third new bike I've ever owned!) which I'd left with him about 8 months ago.... and (drum roll please assorted happy crickets and birds) The Dry Season appeared this morning as if from nowhere!

What a great day!

So, this afternoon I spent tinkering around with the kids bikes in the back yard, sipping a much longed for cup of coffee and delighting at the prospect of my eldest moving up to a larger frame. A chance encounter with a local bicycle Wizard also helped renew my enthusiasm for fixing stuff! I even dared to think about the forgotten 4 wheeled project bike I'd left squashed between the canoe and the compost bin in the darker regions of the back!

Time to clean out the bike shed and get some wheels on the road.

This evening I even managed to catch up on some of the bicycle blogs and amongst them I found this an interesting video about a bicycle project that is helping to reduce poverty.

(VIDEO REMOVED)

Check out: The Bicycle City. Trailer from Greg Sucharew on Vimeo.

Since mobility is a major issue for many people I have been inspired to try and find a solution to the two halves of a 4 wheeled bike in my back yard. Let's hope something good happens with this pile of wasted bike.
There's a lady somewhere in Darwin who has a son with mobility problems who would really love to be able to get out on a bike. I promised her she could have this one if I ever got it going.... It's killing me to think it may never get there. 

The 4 wheeled contraption which I hope to resurrect 

RFK speech and the state of our own nation

It seems this country has fallen into some rather ugly habits when it comes to the way we treat our fellows. Whether they are people of different ethnicity, asylum seekers or even other teams on the sports ground. We have sacrificed environmental as well as social values for the sake of becoming more affluent and less responsible. Australians have gained a reputation for being less than progressive in many areas of social and environmental development, and hypocritical in terms of our values and and expectations of others. How do we articulate our disappointment and sadness at the seemingly deliberate degradation of our values and the exclusion and demoralization of our fellow human beings?
It seems to me that we have been experiencing a time of darkness and fear in this country which in a large part is due to the to the manipulation of our response to it by the recently replaced Federal Government.

Kevin Rud appears to have snatched the opportunity to bring us back together and make us stronger by speaking of a unified country. No more talk about 'Mateship' as though it is an exclusively anglo Ausie value, or implying that this is the true and only interpretation of the word. Let's see this country get back on it's feet after having groveled in the gutter!

Last night I saw the film 'Bobby' which was loosely centered around the time of the 1968 US 'Presidential Candidates' election and the assassination of Robert F Kennedy. At the end of the film they played this speech! It was an awesome speech and should be remembered... What Robert Kennedy was addressing way back then was a cancer within American society that threatened to tear the country apart. 40 years later they are still battling the same problems.
The issues he addresses in his speech do not belong only to the USA. They are ours too. Please read this speech and consider what kind of world would you rather live in? The consequences of our actions can reach far beyond the here and now. They are the foundation for the future of our local communities, our countries and our world but most importantly our children. How would you have it?

On the Mindless Menace of Violence'
(City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio April 5, 1968: by Robert F Kennedy)

"Mr Chairmen,Ladies And Gentlemen

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

There's also audio and a slide show on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Vll-t0H6A