And Then It Was All Over

*

My Country

The love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance, brown streams and soft, dim skies-
I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror- the wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us we see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again
The drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country, a wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her, you will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea MacKellar

And then it was all over and he found himself sleeping under the stars. So many things had happened, but there was no continuity, no easy story to be told. He did his morning walk past the ramshackle working cottages of Tambar Springs; watched the children running along dilapidated verandas before school. He wanted to delve into everybody else’s life because there was nothing in his own. Observer status was all very well, but in the end it was cruel, no way to live. And then it was all over. The voices had gone. His lungs hurt. His heart ached. One minute the beach, the next the inland. One minute the waves crashing on the shore, the next the wind whispering in the trees.

He’d been done over by the local yokels and was not impressed. Anyone could have done this. He was sure there was an answer. He made his way through the dark. He said a little prayer, like a deranged dog being tortured by a stick, howling and snapping at his tormenter. The flies were persistent. The place was in chaos. The life he had known for decades was gone. Everything was up for grabs. Well, it obviously needs a second coat, he said of the floor, preparing for a fight. He was sick of being ripped off because he was from the city. Nobody did anything here, in Tambar Springs. Most of them were on disability. Most of them were useless.

Why do something in one day when you can take five, was the motto, or so it seemed. All too soon. He poked through the tiny park, allegedly the oldest cenotaph in Australia dedicated to the soldiers of World War One. He was shattered by what had happened. More the fool you. He was determined to make a go of it, but nothing was right. He wanted to be free, but didn’t know how, the trailing demands, the nasty little sparks. Oh how he ached for something real to happen in his life; there in the distance, lost between thoughts, clouds of chaos drifting through his consciousness; and nothing, nothing was right.

Bugger this, I’m off, he thought. It’ll all be here when I come back. The wind whispered in the trees and threats encroached on every side. He was shocked by the disrepair his life had fallen into; and ashamed at the missed opportunities, the passing days. I never expected this to happen, he declared, and the woman raised an eyebrow. It was all too much. Treacherous little pricks pretended nothing had happened. He felt utterly betrayed; and yet there was no point in hanging on to grudges. They festered in his own mind and hurt no one else. He had been betrayed because he had allowed himself to be vulnerable; and they were the mistakes of a lifetime. They were the things he should never have done, the courses in life he should never have taken.

The pathroads to a better life were everywhere, and yet he could barely see them, so caught up in old images and old lives had he been. This was a different era. It didn’t have him in it. The elder statesmen of the ghost whisperers, the empath tired of the broken lives with which he could so easily commune. He could turn anybody’s tragedy into poetry just like that; obscene, really, how easy it was to turn the ordinary into the spectacular, to make something profound that was barely a whisper in the larger cosmos. He could see the stars and the night clouds drifting across the sky; he could hear the mosquitoes persistently dive bombing him; and he turned, indignant at everything that had been done to him.

It was time to no longer care. It was time to put everything behind him. Those small groups of talented young people with which he had so closely identified were gone; disappeared into history with barely a trace. Friends he had thought would last a lifetime were never to be seen again. Accidental meetings in the street of the few survivors brought back floods of memories, how’s Russell, did you hear Colin died?

And now he was in the bush; where for years he had wanted to be. You left the house in a shambles and thought I would pay and pay. He was not impressed; they were everywhere, the local yokels, clutching at money, hoping for the best. He was ashamed of what had happened; and yet here he was, freer than he had ever been, a whole new life in front of him.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/tony-abbotts-climate-change-plan-a-populist-con-job/story-e6frf7l6-1225826185124

TONY Abbott has promised to attack climate change with a $3.2 billion plan that does not cap carbon emissions but instead proposes direct action such as planting trees.
And while Kevin Rudd has ridiculed the direct-action plan as "a climate con job", most business groups have backed the plan, agreeing with the Opposition Leader's assertion it is "cheaper, simpler and more cost-effective" than Labor's proposed carbon emissions trading scheme.

Mr Abbott used his policy launch yesterday as a springboard for a frenzied attack on the Prime Minister as Parliament met for the first time in 2010 - which will almost certainly be an election year, The Australian reports.

On the same day a Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian found he was closing the gap on the Government, Mr Abbott accused Mr Rudd of floundering on climate change since December's Copenhagen summit failed to settle on a new global deal to reduce carbon emissions.

He demanded Mr Rudd "move on" from the concept of emissions trading and accept that Australians were "sick of being treated like mugs" by his Government

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/as-bad-news-bites-rudd-gets-drum-on-gillards-popularity/story-e6frgczf-1225826101173

IF Newspoll is the drug of choice for the nation's politicians, Kevin Rudd was dealing with a double dose of unsolicited advice yesterday, including a rogue poll on his deputy, Julia Gillard.
The unpleasant news of the Tony Abbott-led Coalition outgunning Labor on the primary vote greeted the resumption of federal parliament.

And while the polling in The Australian fitted neatly into the Prime Minister's attempts to spook his MPs and voters about the threat of Labor losing the next election, there was more unpleasantness on the ABC's website The Drum.

"Gillard shines as Labor's rising star" was the headline on a piece by Insiders TV host and political veteran Barrie Cassidy, who once worked as Bob Hawke's chief media spinner.

"Private research has confirmed what most political observers have suspected for some time," he wrote. "That Julia Gillard is the rising star in Australian politics and if the government wants to maximise the vote at the next election, then she will need to share with the Prime Minister much of the campaign spotlight."

Whether the Prime Minister was rattled we may never know. But the endless parade of the Liberal leader's naked flesh at the beach, and his Lycra-clad ride up Canberra's Red Hill early yesterday morning, complete with heavy-breathing news grabs on Newspoll, were enough to prompt a brain explosion of sorts in parliament.

Mr Rudd declared: "The Leader of the Opposition has changed his position on the ETS probably more often than he's changed his undies."

But who commissioned this rogue poll on Julia Gillard? The Labor Party is adamant it is in the receipt of no such "private research". Plenty of unions are known to be in the polling field. And it all seems strangely reminiscent of some unhelpful Emily's List polling leaked after the 2004 election, suggesting then deputy leader Jenny Macklin was failing to "cut through" in the job, with Ms Gillard's campaign talents second only to John Howard's.

Ms Gillard ultimately took the deputy's job, and the rest is history.

Regardless of the ALP's denials, Ms Gillard's biographer, Christine Wallace, who will publish her book this year, believes the polling on the deputy leader is strong.

"Gillard does poll strongly, but Rudd's resilience isn't to be underestimated," she said.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/abbott-starts-day-two-with-poll-boost-20100203-nbdl.html

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott starts day two of the parliamentary sitting with a new climate change policy and a comfortable lift in the polls.

Even Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who encountered Mr Abbott at the traditional pre-parliament church service, remarked on his good result in the polls.

The coalition was up two points and the government down by the same margin on the two-party preferred basis.

Mr Rudd said there was no guarantee first-term governments were a shoo-in at the next federal election.

"Look what happened to the Hawke government back in 1984, very close-run thing, the Howard government in 1998, a very close-run thing," he told ABC Radio.

Only three people out of 100 needed to change their minds in order for Mr Abbott to become prime minister, Mr Rudd said.

But first the public will have to make up its mind on Mr Abbott's climate change action plan, which he released on Tuesday.