THE DAWN

Photograph by John Stapleton

The cactus flower one day a year, and flowered the day after he arrived.

At first, it did not seem that hope was being born anew, his life reinvented.

In his head life was running backwards, in every sense; across terrains of regret and embarrassment, remorse over little things, or what came to seem like little things in the grand suffering of the race. Stupid things he wished he could forget. The larger things, the torment of the authorities, their blizzards of false claims and abuse of process, that was just part of an adventure, as revealing to him as it was destructive to them.

That previous evening, with the last of the storms disappearing across the low treeline in the middle distance towards the East, that is towards the far off hinterlands of the coast, had been oppressive and he had felt fundamentally disturbed.  

Above the sky was an horizon to horizon bank of grinding machinery, slicing through the atmosphere as if the air itself was solid. Shards, each with a human face, rained down. Inch by inch, the grinding wall of steel edged machinery worked its way downwards, ever closer to the surface.

He had to survive. He formed into liquid mercury and slid away through the cracks in the rock; life would survive, he would survive.

Here in the Outback, with its flat, sandy soils, on the surface of what had once been an inland sea. 

On the surface of what often resembled Mars, or a future Mars, the struggling, haphazard outposts of mankind.

And then in the early hours: "We will speak at first light."

Old Alex could not decipher the stream of thoughts, confused as they were by dreams of those who slept in the surrounding camps, and then in a rush he got the message: Hope, Renewal, Kindness, Forgiveness. Warmth. We will take care and you will take care. The universe will provide. The unforced suffering is over.  The king tide is running out to sea. Commonsense has prevailed. Alertness will do you no harm. At last: optimism.

It did not come from the official media.

On the taxpayer funded Radio National the big news was a half percent contraction in the economy, which came as no surprise. Ever since he had returned, he had been shocked by the hapless state of local shopping centres, had begun collecting photographs of shuttered shops. Australian school children had fallen two years behind in educational standards. And a bevy of experts droned on about one of the ABC's favourite topics, climate change and emissions trading schemes, a debate which had curdled Australian politics for 20 years, justified the building of vast green bureaucracies, and achieved precisely nothing. Lo and behold a skeptic should be invited on to liven up the deadly debate; as one tax payer funded expert after another lined up to give their views. They knew where their grant money lay. An Australian delegation was heading to the Solomon Islands, where every Pacific Island leader worth their salt lined up with begging bowl for international grants to fight, of course, climate change. An island was born, an island disappeared. One place was hotter. One place was colder. China had just approved another 200 power stations. Nothing Australia did would make the slightest bit of difference to the world climate; but hot air blanketed the public space. 

Indigenous disadvantage. The empowerment of women. 

No countering debate was ever allowed to ruffle the walls of bureaucratic certitude.

The side mirror of his old blue Ford had detached, and he took it down to the local K&M garage in Lightning Ridge. It was fixed in an instant and cost $20; a bush savvy cheerfulness.

And there was a strange comfort in the ready practicability, the warmth of things. Perhaps, indeed, the therapeutic aspects of the desert, before, once more, the Gods became roiled. And decided to speak.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Syrian rebels have called for a five-day truce to allow the evacuation of civilians, after withdrawing from their last strongholds in Aleppo's old city.
They said civilians were in great danger and they would support any initiative to ease their suffering.
The US and five Western powers also put out a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire to allow aid into rebel-held areas.
The Syrian government has ruled out any further ceasefires.
President Bashar al-Assad told Syrian media that a victory in Aleppo would be a "huge step" towards ending the five-year civil war, though he admitted "it won't mean the end of the war".
"Terrorists are present elsewhere," he told the daily al-Watan newspaper. "Even if we finish with Aleppo, we will continue our war against them."Since it began in March 2011, the war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless, and created the world's worst refugee crisis.

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