Lucky

*

THE MAN FROM IRONBARK by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
"'Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the Sydney toff up home in Ironbark."

The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are,
He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar;
He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee,
He laid the odds and kept a "tote", whatever that may be,
And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, "Here's a lark!
Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark."

There were some gilded youths that sat along the barber's wall.
Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they had no brains at all;
To them the barber passed the wink, his dexter eyelid shut,
"I'll make this bloomin' yokel think his bloomin' throat is cut."
And as he soaped and rubbed it in he made a rude remark:
"I s'pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark."

A grunt was all reply he got; he shaved the bushman's chin,
Then made the water boiling hot and dipped the razor in.
He raised his hand, his brow grew black, he paused awhile to gloat,
Then slashed the red-hot razor-back across his victim's throat:
Upon the newly-shaven skin it made a livid mark -
No doubt it fairly took him in - the man from Ironbark.

He fetched a wild up-country yell might wake the dead to hear,
And though his throat, he knew full well, was cut from ear to ear,
He struggled gamely to his feet, and faced the murd'rous foe:
"You've done for me! you dog, I'm beat! one hit before I go!
I only wish I had a knife, you blessed murdering shark!
But you'll remember all your life the man from Ironbark."

He lifted up his hairy paw, with one tremendous clout
He landed on the barber's jaw, and knocked the barber out.
He set to work with nail and tooth, he made the place a wreck;
He grabbed the nearest gilded youth, and tried to break his neck.
And all the while his throat he held to save his vital spark,
And "Murder! Bloody murder!" yelled the man from Ironbark.

A peeler man who heard the din came in to see the show;
He tried to run the bushman in, but he refused to go.
And when at last the barber spoke, and said "'Twas all in fun—
'Twas just a little harmless joke, a trifle overdone."
"A joke!" he cried, "By George, that's fine; a lively sort of lark;
I'd like to catch that murdering swine some night in Ironbark."

And now while round the shearing floor the list'ning shearers gape,
He tells the story o'er and o'er, and brags of his escape.
"Them barber chaps what keeps a tote, By George, I've had enough,
One tried to cut my bloomin' throat, but thank the Lord it's tough."
And whether he's believed or no, there's one thing to remark,
That flowing beards are all the go way up in Ironbark.

The Bulletin, 17 December 1892.

For years the dog next door had barked ceaselessly. Sometimes, when bored, he would count the barks, losing track somewhere after 30 or so in the first few minutes. It just kept going on; and on; and on. Ceaseless. Why the dog's vocal chords didn't fall out from over-use he would never know. It was the same sad obsessive repetitive behaviour he had seen in other caged animals, circus elephants in the Australian landscape tethered tightly to poles, rocking back and forth under the gums. And this deranged dog, known ironically as Lucky. Lucky!!! It was the old joke, seen a one-eyed three legged pooch answering to the name of Lucky? It's yellow eyes glared up, absolutely deranged.

The concrete yard where the Alsatian was kept was small, typical of inner-city terraces. The views across Darling Harbour and from the often yet-to-be built fourth floor attics gave the sense that one day these terraces would be worth money, built as they were along a natural ridge line. Where he could still hear the ancient voices where the bush once was. Animals scurrying under trees. And in this modern era, the trapped, tragic barking of Lucky, as he prowled restlessly his concrete domain, desperately lonely, barely if ever walked, barking and barking, please hear me, please see me, please touch me, for God sake someone show me some affection.

So it barked and it barked and it barked. To the point where one day, sent home from work after he coughed, spreading fear of swine flu, and he cowered in the front room away from the noise, with the door shut, the only room where he could get any peace. And even then he could still hear it barking and barking and barking and barking, on and on and on. And he picked up the phone. Several days before his neighbour Craig, a kind-hearted dog-loving man, had told him that the rangers had been around asking whether Lucky was bothering him. There had been some kind of complaint. No doubt from the shift workers at the back. They had complained before. They had even come knocking on his door when that foul smelling miniature sausage dog Estie had been dumped on him by the Ex, and Estie, an indoor dog who absolutely hated being outside, had joined the barking chorus; driving the shift workers insane.

They had come knocking on his door pleading for it to stop. It had. But Lucky never stopped. Maybe they were new people. There had been council notices about planned renovations. Whatever, we who lived there, who had tolerated the noise and tolerated each other for years, would never have complained to the authorities. I told him I didn't mind Lucky at all, and I told him, because you weren't home, that you didn't mind either. That you were more concerned about other noise in the neighbourhood. He raised his eyebrows. Well, they'll take Lucky off to the pound, they'll kill him. That's what they do. No body's going to want a dog like Lucky, an Alsatian which has spent its entire life on a block of concrete. Mad. I couldn't be responsible for that, sending it to its death. Just as well for Lucky I wasn't home, he said. The damn thing drives me insane. It just never stops; you wake up with it barking, you go to sleep with it barking.

And then he'd been sent home from work, and could find no peace inside his own home. I'm paying more than $400 a week rent and I'm cowering in a room trying to get away from the noise, it's ridiculous he thought, and picked up the phone and rang the council. A nice young woman answered promptly, took all his details, empathised with the situation, empathised with him that he didn't want anything bad to happen to the dog, there just must be a way to stop it barking all the time; training, a special collar or something. And then the silence descended. Within hours. The thing which had been driving him insane for so long had ceased. It seemed spookily, frighteningly, dangerously quiet. It was quiet, too quiet, as the old saying went. He couldn't believe how the fabric of everything had opened up; he could hear a bird in the gum tree out the back, the rumble of traffic at the front. The deranged barking of a desperately sad animal no longer populated his every minute at home. He no longer, after a crescendo of barking peaking over several hours, yelled out: Shuttup Lucky!!! Shuttup!!!! And he felt guilty for the nervous pleasure of all that silence. And sorrow for an animal that should never have been called Lucky.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/value-of-natural-capital-priceless-20090528-boxa.html

Prince Charles: Extract of Speech:

To me, three dimensions provide the framework to Copenhagen.

The first is urgency. There is now only a mercifully small (if vociferous) number of people who do not accept the science of climate change and who should know better, but there are still a great many who fail to recognise the urgency of the situation.

Even in the past few weeks there has been further evidence from scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Oxford that it will take much longer for the climate to recover from excessive warming than previously thought. We are already in the Last Chance Saloon.

We have only 97 months in which to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions reach their absolute peak - otherwise it may well be too late to stop temperatures rising beyond dangerous levels. This would render unbelievably large parts of the world uninhabitable as sea levels rise, bringing massive disruption to global food and freshwater supplies, and eventually lead to billions of environmental refugees, with all that means for global security.

Global decision-makers must be persuaded that strong, committed and coordinated action is needed now, not in 10 years, not even five, but now - otherwise there will be little left on which to base our economies.

The second dimension is human interactions with nature. Climate change is undoubtedly the greatest challenge of our age but it is far from the only global ecological challenge we face.

In our human-centred world, with its emphasis on economics, and following decades of apparently unending material "progress", it has become all too easy for us to believe that we can continue to take what we wish from natural systems on the assumption they will indefinitely replenish themselves. As we are discovering, in the real world it doesn't quite work like that.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25552775-5013479,00.html

Ian Plimer:

The Emissions Trading Scheme legislation poises Australia to make the biggest economic decision in its history, yet there has been no scientific due diligence.

There has never been a climate change debate in Australia. Only dogma. To demonise element number six in the periodic table is amusing. Why not promethium? Carbon dioxide is an odourless, colourless, harmless natural gas. It is plant food. Without carbon, there would be no life on Earth.

The original source of atmospheric CO2 is volcanoes. The Earth's early atmosphere had a thousand times the CO2 of today's atmosphere. This CO2 was recycled through rocks, life and the oceans...

The fundamental questions remain unanswered. A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored? Why is the main greenhouse gas (water vapour) ignored? The limitation of temperature in hot climates is evaporation yet this ignored in catastrophist models.

Why are balloon and satellite measurements showing cooling ignored yet unreliable thermometer measurements used? Is the increase in atmospheric CO2 really due to human activities?...

Comments by critics suggest that few have actually read the book and every time there was a savage public personal attack, book sales rose. A political blog site could not believe that such a book was selling so well and suggested that my publisher, Connor Court, was a front for the mining or pastoral industry.

This book has struck a nerve. Although accidentally timely, there are a large number of punters who object to being treated dismissively as stupid, who do not like being told what to think, who value independence, who resile from personal attacks and have life experiences very different from the urban environmental atheists attempting to impose a new fundamentalist religion.

Green politics have taken the place of failed socialism and Western Christianity and impose fear, guilt, penance and indulgences on to a society with little scientific literacy. We are now reaping the rewards of politicising science and dumbing down the education system. If book sales, public meetings, book launches, email and phone messages are any indication, there is a large body of disenfranchised folk out there who feel helpless. I have shown that the emperor has no clothes. This is why the attacks are so vitriolic.

Ian Plimer is emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne. His book Heaven and Earth is published by Connor Court.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/a-little-light-music-and-action-any-idea-what-this-vivid-festival-is-about-20090528-boxb.html

A little light, music and action. Any idea what this Vivid festival is about?
Elicia Murray

What's got five arms, six heads and is run by a committee? Sydney's winter festival. But that's not what it's called. It's called Vivid Sydney. Even though it kicked off this week, you could be forgiven for not having the faintest idea what it's about.

The event has about as many elements as dollars spent on it. For what? It's hard to say, as there is no unifying theme. It's supposed to be a celebration of music, light and ideas. I've been quite fond of music, light and ideas for some time, but bundling them together and calling them Vivid Sydney strikes me as an Iron Chef approach to events management. Reach into the cupboard, pull out a handful of mystery ingredients and serve a dish that will make the kooky Japanese actress gush, "Oh, what a delicious combination of flavours."

Take the title, Vivid. A lovely word. No doubt it rolled off the tongues of the creatives enlisted by the Government's events and tourism agencies to spruik the city during the dull winter months. I might even be able to cope with Vivid Sydney if it stopped there, but come summer, we'll be asked to remember that a disparate group of warm-weather activities are lumped under another banner, Vivacity. Turning a gorgeous word into a cogent concept takes more than a few ideas scrawled on a whiteboard. No idea might be a bad idea in a brainstorming session, but plenty turn bad once inflicted on the real world. And the closer you look at Vivid, the harder it is to understand.

It has four festivals. There is a light festival, but it is not the one called Luminous. That's the name of the music festival, curated by the British music supremo Brian Eno, at the Opera House. The light part is called Smart Light Sydney. It has its own theme, "city and memory". (Eno also has a bit-part in the light extravaganza, having led a team that splashed fancy colours onto the Opera House sails.)

Then there is Creative Sydney, which pumps the city's role as the creative hub of the Asia-Pacific region. And, finally, Fire Water re-creates an exploding convict ship for three nights. With music. And light. Geddit?

A river park in western Sydney.