Ants in the Big City

Maybe they were right, whoever it was, Plato I think, who said we were all villagers at heart; that the ideal sized community was around 5,000. You got to know a large number; here in Sydney we get to know each other mostly out. It's not Melbourne, where as far as I know they're still big on dinner parties. The splashes of the harbour and the glittering, well catered functions on renovated modernist rooftops, didn't hide the fact that in the crushing crowds nobody knew anyone anymore. It was of no interest to anyone whether the person standing next to them lived or died. In the crush his own spirit was being crunched.

This was the morning, looking up from the road by the docks into renovated warehouses and cafes several floors up through glass; looking for somewhere that would take a credit card for breakfast because we had run out of cash; just being the working joes. Sydney was a city totally divided between those who had property and those who did not. On the north shore houses comfortably changed hands in the million dollar plus range, while the crushing crowds were often short of ready cash. The bills just kept on coming.

Iraq, where Australia is contribnting to the war effort, remains an absolute mess, on the edge of civil war. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in Sydney, although many think it is just a matter of time. Surprisingly the time has extended into the distance. Perhaps the raids have genuinely kept these things at bay. I need a tragedy in a lyrical landscape, get out of the office, he would say. But the gut wrenching tragedy of what he feared would come was something he hoped he would never have to face; not just the difficulties of reporting it, the gut wrenching horror of it all as people's lives are torn apart, there one minute and gone the next.