Monday, September 23, 2019

Conversation with an old home-town friend



I suppose you’re with all the climate change delusionals?

Bob, can I ask you a question? You remember Googilup Brook?

Of course, ran right through town.

I know you lived on the Boyup Brook side, but when I walked home from school I had to cross it every day and you could put your hand in and pull out a pygmy perch, a minnow, or a gilgie. You seen it lately?

It’s a filthy ditch, full of rubbish.

Who did that?

People.

Remember when the cockatoos flew overhead in their hundreds?

Yeah, would blacken the sky.

They're loosing habitat, right?

Yeah. All that clearing.

Who did that, Bob?

Right.

And you remember my grandfather, the bent over guy, the hunter, the bushman, one of three Wadjellas in town who spoke Noongar?

Yeah, who could forget him. A legend.

I sat out on the veranda with him one day in 1972, you know what he said to me? Jon, we have to stop cutting down the trees. Too many gone already. The animals and birds need the habitat.

Right.

So you will admit that in your little town region, you have seen the degradation caused by people? 

Okay.

And you know about the continued clearing and the human lit bushfires all over the planet?

What's your point?

 All you have to do, Bob, is remind yourself that humans you know have had a massive impact on your immediate environment and climate. Then multiply it across the globe. Forget the confusing science, just use your common sense. You still got some haven’t you?

Yeah. Right. I see what you’ve done there.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

April 7, 2019, IRAN



A brief chat


While on a recent trip I spent some time with these two chaps and, at the end of it all, we had chat.
They are from YOMADIC

Friday, May 10, 2019

Message sent to Iran on a Stick

Iran is a land full of poetry, food, music and contradictions. On my first visit two years ago I was mesmerised by its art, history and people. Our tour guide that year regaled us with tales from the glorious days of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, the rulers of the first and the greatest Persian empire.


All except for the final paragraph.
Here it is.


Then I stood and told him how much we all admired his great poet, his great country and his great humour and that I had a gift for him from a great people of the great south land.
With Noongar message sticks firm and safe in the in the hands of three of Iran’s finest, there was only one thing left to do. Recite my favourite Hafez.

I Got Kin - Hafez

Plant
So that your own heart will grow.
Love
So God will think,
“Ahhhhhh, I got kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
for coffee and rolls.”
Sing
Because this is a food our starving world needs.
Laugh
Because that is the purest sound.









Thursday, January 10, 2019

The Man at the End of it All

That's a book title.
It's the third in the trilogy I was always writing, the journey of young Jack Muir to manhood.

Book 1 - Boy on a Wire.

Book 2 - To the Highlands.

Book 3 - see above.

The contract is signed. I am now working on the editor's notes.

Arrival date - January 2020.

More to come.