Dark Wilderness

*

On stinking hot days when the ground burns your feet
You stare at the ceiling; the trains break your sleep
The roads have got pot holes, and your car falls apart
And the milkbar attendant would like to sell up

And our neighbours hold on to the things they know best
They sweep out verandahs and cry for their kids

The primary school children on the gravel school yard
They've got grins that start one side and go all around
Happy as they play make-believe games with themselves
For a while

And it's the older Greek women who are the ones dressed in black
Not new wave guitarists with cows on their backs

And the Thistle Hotel is a dream on it's own
And every pool table has blood on the cloth
The motor car workshop has dogs chained and tied to the fence
For the night

And the further you travel the longer it takes
Your car takes a beating, the roads aren’t the best
And I don't think the Colbys have been out to Thomastown
And somehow I doubt that they will
Somehow I doubt that they will

Thomastown.

There were so many shadows, it was like battling through a forest. But what was astonishing - and new - was that there was hope. Too easily wound back, they had said. Unfortunately their words were prophetic. Social movements came and went, but now, in the 21st century, the tyranny of the dominant ideologies had become all encompassing. No one was allowed to disagree, or debate. If questions were raised you were labelled an immoral person. It was an effective manner of shutting down debate. Everyone wants to be accepted. Everyone wants to be part of the pack, loved and admired. There was no independence of thought. There was no courage. There was no grace. The graceful cathedral towers of yesteryear had been painted in a bright, sickening yellow, and soared against a dark, polluted sky.

Their medieval origins, the faith people had put in these institutions over centuries, only made them more vulnerable to attack. He was mustering a uniform; he was seeking sustenance of the soul, to reach back and find a belief system which could service him now, in 2009. The inbetween year when the planet plummeted into the future, dizzying in speed, dazzling in intent. We were such tiny, frail creatures, and as attention moved away from the baby boomers, who had thought their generation was the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, the most progressive, most morally correct, most committed, most talented generation of them all. What a shock it was for them to realise they weren't the centre of the universe after all. Even outsiders had been caught up in the fervour, in a higher moral cause, and believed their lives worthy.

We were shadows. They had grown fast and strong, out in the paddock, in the sunlight, but they had seriously over-reached. Now their spindly forms could barely sustain their own weight. The hypocrisy of the arguments was so apparent the myths could not be sustained. I'm trying to get ordinary dads on to the show, he had said, thrusting a microphone underneath the man's nose, his kid squirming with curiosity or frustration. His own children were teenagers now. How quickly the focus had shifted, how quickly things had changed. He had loved them so dearly. They had been such georgeous little things, blonde, cute, bubbling over with personality. Now they were gallumphing big things with their own personalities and their own lives; and he had been caught out with utter surprise when the principal kissed him on the cheek. The left wing principal who was always promoting some leftwing cause or other.

She had kissed him on the cheek and his daughter had prospered, so all the tiny things he could have picked a fight over he just ignored, let through to the keeper as the saying went. Life was so busy. He hadn't slept in four days; and finally passed out from exhaustion. I don't sleep anymore, he had cheefully announced. I'm getting so much done. But in the end we're all flesh and blood, ordinary souls, ordinary frames, and the astonishing images which marched through his brain, at once like soldiers and again like random episodes, veils, sheets of half completed narratives. These glimpses of a bigger, more chaotic world, assailed him from dawn to dusk. In the wee hours the thinking became more linear, but even then the parade of images was nonsensical, urgent, pointless, emotionally overwhelming.

Disgrace had been the movie, J.M. Coetze, the winner of so many literary prizes, the author of the book on which it was based. Was this the ultimately politically correct movie? the disgraced John Malkovitch, his fine, intelligent, older face dominating the movie, the sweeping African landscape. Joyce, the 84-year-old lady he took to the movies once a week, wriggled in her Dendy seat and afterwards they looked at each other quizzically. What was all that about? Did you like it. Full of moral ambiguities, like life itself. He had sex with a student and was in disgrace, yet displayed no remorse. His lesbian daughter was raped by a gang of black youths, yet she kept the baby. Just because I'm a lesbian doesn't mean I hate children, she said. And so we shrugged, not knowing what to think, acknowledging we had been rivetted, drawn into a world, walking in beauty, as the film's theme song went, and we didn't know what would drive us, as we walked out of the cinema, how much longer any of us had to live, how fast the late-life leukemia would destroy her.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345610

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull is acting like a three-year old throwing a tantrum by refusing to co-operate with police investigations into the OzCar affair, the government says.

Senior Treasury official Godwin Grech has been leaking unofficial information to the coalition since the days of the Howard government, Liberal MPs have told the ABC.

Mr Turnbull on Wednesday said the opposition would refuse to explain to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) its relationship with Mr Grech.

'There has never been a case where parliamentarians have assisted governments in trying to trace down leaks from the public service,' he told ABC Television's 7.30 Report.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner said Mr Turnbull's actions were comparable with those of a toddler.

'His performance today has reminded me a bit of my three-year-old daughter throwing a tantrum after she's been caught scribbling on the walls,' Mr Tanner told ABC Television's Lateline.

'It's not going to work for Malcolm Turnbull, it doesn't work for her.'

An AFP search of Mr Grech's Canberra home on Monday uncovered a fake email, which purported to have Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's office seeking to give Queensland car dealer John Grant special access to the government's $2 billion OzCar financing scheme.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345547

Kevin Rudd's flair for languages isn't limited to Mandarin - he's spoken Spanish to welcome the King of Spain and his wife Queen Sofia to Australia.

The prime minister impressed visiting Spaniards when he used their native tongue to welcome the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, and his wife Queen Sofia to Australia at a reception at Parliament House on Wednesday.

The Spanish royals were on their first state visit since the Australian bicentenary in 1988.

They arrived in Canberra on Wednesday morning, part of a three-day visit to the national capital and Sydney.

Mr Rudd and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull paid tribute to the shared values of Australia and Spain as modern democracies.

They thanked the King and Queen for the contribution their homeland had made to one of Australia's iconic industries - sheep farming.

Prized Spanish Merinos arrived in Australia via South Africa about 20 years after European settlement.

Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull will both have an official audience with the royals at Government House on Thursday.

The King and Queen will then fly to Sydney, where they will open the Instituto Cervantes, a Spanish government cultural institution.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=345613

Rental vacancy rates across NSW have dropped even further with Sydney recording its lowest rate in 12 months, Real Estate Institute figures show.

The Hunter, Central Coast, Sydney and the Illawarra have fewer rental properties available, new monthly figures from the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales (REINSW) show.

Sydney's vacancy rate plunged 50 basis points from 1.5 per cent in April to 1.0 per cent in May.

'This is the lowest result recorded since May last year and is extremely disappointing,' REINSW president Steven Martin said in a statement.

Over the same period, available rentals dropped in the Illawarra from 1.9 per cent to 1.6 per cent.

In the Hunter, rates fell by 20 basis points to 1.7 per cent.

Mr Martin said first-time home buyer grants and record low interest rates had not boosted rental vacancies.

'These results are a double-edged sword - great news for landlords but grim news for tenants,' he said.