Dear reader, there’s more on the Journal of the Plague Year in our next issue.

Sadly the timing is a bit awry. We all know the fire was meant to follow the plague. This time the plague has followed the fire. Its a bit back to front, and the wrong way around.  An insight into just how far things have skewed. Fortunately, the Editor in Chief of the Catholic Boys Daily, (Paul Kelly, The Australian)  sums it up, ” Just weeks ago it was the climate crisis dominating the headlines, now something much more profound, an economic meltdown”. You are so right Paul.  To place the significance of the economy over every living thing cannot be understated. Proof once again that all in our world is safe and in its correct place under the embrace of an all loving God, who forgets his cares, (as he is very old and subject to corona attack) and occasionally commits millions to unnecessary suffering and death.

Still there is brightness, ‘For all the casualised employees, those who reap the benefits of the enterprise bargaining agreement  and those silly enough to be self employed, there is humanity in knowing they will receive no benefits, though they have paid taxes. Their evictions and demise will ensue that the mainstay of the economy, (like God), the banks shall prevail.

Now it’s time for a bit of lightness of touch. We were going to introduce group singing with the introduction of ration books, but as the Federal Government has no cultural memory, we’re just posing a ban on anyone of Chinese appearance found in an airport or transit lounge. To ensure all of us feel SAFE! This is not policy on the run, but the edict of a thorough and well reasoned approach bounded by science and clear thinking.

Now for  another couple of fragments of poetry from Lawyer X. He’s now in digs with Witness K, and together with the soundtrack recorded by Alexander Downer of chit chat in the East Timorese embassy, they’re working on a double album with liner notes written by Julian Assange. Should be a cracker for the Christmas stocking with live action ‘cracker sounds’ courtesy of the SAS.

So … enjoy the poetry.

The Cockatoo

I walked out the front gate.

A familiar piercing screech knifed through the thick air.

I looked happily toward the gum tree canopy.

Where are you my crested cockatoo?

Another screech.

I turned.

Realisation.

Wrong bird.

Mother-in-law.

The Train

On the train home from work.

Reading a book about guitars.

Looked out the window to the west.

Grey clouds with a serrated gap revealing an intense blue sky edged by snow white with honeycomb beams of light.

Gifts.

تحيات أصدقاء

In 1958 when I was a bright eyed bushy tailed teenager the MS Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the ship that brought me to Australia called into the picturesque port of Aden.

Before you ask- how’s the book coming along? Well, before I started I didn’t realise how much happens in a lifetime. Also, I have always admired writers, now more than ever. At the beginning of this exercise a friend paraphrased the late Malcolm Fraser : “writing a book isn’t meant to be easy”. Indeed.

To bundle it all up into a readable story that readers read without their eyes glazing over is what I’m working on now. With a little help from my friends I expect to maybe succeed or at least give it a decent crack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3LQ-FReO7Q

From the latest draft of L’oevre:

Incidentally, ‘You can’t see the wood for the trees’ is a proverbial saying first found in John Heywood’s 1546 glossary: ‘A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the englishe tongue’

Mary Laughren’s linga is carved out of mulga wood and the grain of the wood faithfully follows its regular sinuous curves. A Warlpiri person looked into the mulga scrub and exclaimed:
“Look there is a snake!”. He was able to discern both the wood and the trees.

Thus while we are navel-gazing: Will I get a refund on that plane ticket I bought last month? How will the Stock Market nosediving affect my superannuation nest-egg.  Will I run out of toilet paper?

In Yemen the cholera epidemic which started in October 2016 has claimed around four thousand lives from a suspected two million cases.

Aden is no longer picturesque.

دعنا ننسى

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6ePyLcpElw

Dear reader, these are strange times.  Perhaps this is the new normal. Still as these diary entries prove, there’ always room for optimism. They arrived by plain paper parcel, neatly tied outside the pcbycp offices. In our frenzy, ( thinking they were the corona virus detection kits we ordered last January) the cover was rudely torn, and pages of foolscap and quarto thrown to the wind. What we have here are but mere fragments.

The anticipated Corona detection kits

Incidentally the Corona detection kits still have not arrived. We wait in hope.

The Corona Diaries. Day 15

Dear reader hot on the re-printing of “Journal of the Plague Year’, we bring you this first from pcbycp, the Corona Diaries. 

Day fifteen. 

Went to Coles. No use. Queue stretched halfway down the street.  After waiting in the queue for half an hour I gained the attention of the person (1.8 metres deemed safe distance) in front of me, to discover that in actual fact I was in the wrong queue. He pointed to the queue of drab-clothed people stretching the full length of the street, looked like a column of Russian prisoners after the first happy days of June 1941. This bloke, he flashed a card, “Brett” (he was playing it safe on vocal communication) signifying the conversation had reached its safe limit.  His queue belonged to those intent on  purchasing  face-masks from the local Chemist. Coles had run out of stock, and now they were putting a restriction on one item per person. 

Five hours later only thing left on the shelf at Coles, a dented tin of asparagus spears. Cleary no one knew the prophylactic potential of a well cooked asparagus. My eating requirements were settled for the next few days. Still, I glumly reflected, no toilet paper.  Took a circuitous homeward via the Royal Botanical Gardens. The Serrated Patagonian Tussock, (Thelopsepsis Vulgaris) answered to my basic intestinal needs. And a slow dunking of my posterior, (the medical journal warns of skid marks) in the ornamental lake ensured basics of hygiene, were up-kept. 

Avoided all possible close contact with humans. To be on the safe side, walked through the parliamentary precinct, and then via the Federal Liberal Party Headquarters.

After dinner last night, learning to be self sufficient, braised possum and vine leaves, washed it down with half cup of Dettol mixed ( lightly stirred) with Brasso. Cleanses the larynx and as instructed keeps the throat dry and free from effluvium. 

Our PM

This morning, looked out the window, Quiet as the grave. Nice to see St Kilda road cleansed of people. Reminded me of  recent trips to the outer suburbs. Determined not to be broken by the spirit of these times and enjoyed the splendour of the PMs address to the people over the Tannoy in Federation Square. Though the place was deathly quiet, like a funerary shroud cast over the Valley of the Kings he inspired me with his wisdom and far-reaching benediction that ‘thoughts and prayers’ will be our saviour.  As in the moment of bushfire crisis he alone stood as a man of resolute principle and imagination. With ideas bold enough to galvanise us all in a will to prevail.

Walked past Coles on my way home. Bolstered by the PMs grasp of the situation, the queue outside Coles had grown into a mad throng.  Rioting, seemed imminent. Two overly large women, (to describe them as animated bean-bags would be polite) were fighting over a singular square sheet of toilet paper. All around, the street was littered with fragments of toilet paper, sanitary napkins, and facial masks.  It looked like the streets of Dunkirk after the BEF had gone offshore. Grim talismans of these dark times.   

The one in tracksuit pants tore at her opponents eyes and face with overlong false fingernails, painted a surreal and luminous deep purple.  “You effing effing bitch, that’s moine’!, and then kicking her opponent with a well aimed Nike; ‘and it wouldn’ effing be big enough to whipe your fat effing arse wif anyway’. To whit her opponent screamed, “YOUS can get effed, it was moine, and moine before youse ever got yer stinking hands onto it’!!. 

They say the arts had been crushed by this pandemic, street theatre is clearly flourishing. 

Sport-minded Australians ensuring a fair go for all.

Shocked at this decline of public morality, I consoled myself with a cup of tea and ABC classic fm. There was a lovely interview with a person of great public standing, Mr Kevan Gosper AM, and he spoke of his life of sacrifice for all sport minded Australians.  I reflected if only we were all just a little bit more public spirited like Kevan, what a difference it would make.  A profound difference. 

Went to bed listening to News 24. More from the Prime Minister. He  admonished some amongst us for being “Un-Australian”. I washed my hands again. They had no been washed for several minutes since I last looked at the death count. In Italy they’re up to 686. I looked it up. There’s light at the end of this crisis. 686 is a very lucky number for those of us who consider themselves part of the Chinese community.

A sign surely.

That optimism shall prevail. 

We have here something quirky and original from a member of the legal profession. Legal profession you may ask?

“Isn’t that a oxymoron?” Well, this legal eagle purportedly knows nothing about the lawyer X case, nor has been seen near the City of Whittlesea, the City of Casey, nor (incredibly) has allegedly no connection to Sports Funding, electoral rorts and donations to the duopoly. So it seems, (and we’ll have to take his word for it) that he is a ‘clean- skin’.  Yet his work at the bar suggests he’s been practising for some forty years. By any reckoning, that’s a lot of time at the bar, and a lot of time between drinks.

Anyway he penned this on his way to work. Which is amusing, cos these days people don’t write anymore. And if they did, the Federal Government would suggest you stop doing it. Otherwise they’ll do a Witness K on you. Or is that a witness X, before it was a lawyer X. Its all very confusing. There’s poetry hidden in all of this, cept we left it on a plain envelope at Casey Council and we have heard back from Mr Aziz yet.

Anyway here’s lawyer J’s Poetry…

The Currawong. 

I was walking west in Bourke Street earlier today, having just passed King Street.

A sound pierced the crushing chaos of noise.

The magnificent call of a Currawong.

Whether anybody else heard the call, nobody else stopped.

It called again.

And again.

Until I last positioned my heralding friend across the road, but unseen, high in a plane tree.

Where is the beauty that caused me to pause?

It left the tree, wings spread in glorious calm as it quietly glided to another perch out of sight.

In those brief moments of flight, the shards of noise around me reduced to the whisper of a ripple on a summer pond.

The Currawong and me.

and another. This one he calls…. Train to Melbourne

On the train into Melbourne – the last two days at work justifies a late arrival.

All around me, eyes are lowered to electronic devices.

One young chap in scuffed shoes staring at a screen is distractedly picking his nose.

The electronic isolation is no different from the wall-to-wall newspapers of yester-year.

And then, through the door, comes a mum with her infant son in a pram, clutching a cloth book.

Wide with wonder open eyes – and from whom I learn to live the life I have.

Through the next open door, a young lady in lavender wearing high heeled silver snake skin-patterned space boots. 

Joy.

Just to let you know there’s more to the north of Kalkallo than the genius of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, clean coal and the certainty of Franking Credits as the singular greatest initiative of the century. From our sage of the near north comes proof that in some places, uncorrupted by consumerism and corona virus people still READ BOOKS!

That’s it folks, they can be found with the telly off, the I-pad discarded and the mobile muted, actively engaged in the act of reading. This phenomena could spread, and like coronavirus, the Federal Government has no idea how to tackle the insidious creep of thought and ideas. So stand with us, and breathe deeply as we read this scintillating review from Joe Blake. Once again, he has transformed his styli into a hammer, and nailed it.

We dedicate this review to Sergeant Tanner of the near north who clearly knows how to make the system work. And if you don’t believe us just ask Lawyer X.

Take it away Joe:

Bowraville, by Dan Box, Penguin Viking, rrp $34.99

Reviewed by Joe Blake

Dan Box

You don’t need to be Einstein to know that Aboriginal people get a raw deal in this country. There’s all sorts of statistics about life expectancy, incarceration rates, school retention age … the list goes on. They’re all general; this book talks about the horrifying particular.

The small town of Bowraville sits somewhere near the north coast of NSW; its 1000-head population is about one quarter aboriginal. Nearly 30 years ago, three Aboriginal children were murdered there in the space of about five months. Despite an ongoing campaign by their families from 1991 to the present day, no-one has ever been convicted of those crimes. This outstanding book points to one overriding cause for the lack of convictions: white Australia just doesn’t care enough. It’s almost like: “Well, they’re only blackfellas, so why should we bother investigating properly?”

The initial reaction when each of these kids disappeared was predictable: they must have gone “walkabout”. If they’re Aboriginal, they’re not really a missing person until they’re proven dead. Even when the bodies of two of them were found, and the clothes of the third, the cases were not considered to be related, despite all three being last seen in houses in the same street. 

There are other glorious legends at Bowraville. That symbolise and celebrate something way more profound in the making of Australia GRATE!

Local police worked incredibly hard to try to solve these crimes, but the official attitude of their superiors was woeful. Most murder cases have a posse of detectives assigned to them, and the best technology the force can muster. For Bowraville, it was three part-time officers with some butcher’s paper and a few textas. 

Like most white people who are lucky enough to spend time with indigenous Australians, the cops soon came to love the community they worked with. They got beneath the veneer of mutual misunderstanding, and dedicated themselves to the fight for justice. Everybody involved believed they knew who did it, but the lack of resources, combined with lack of interest further up the justice scale, meant nothing was ever resolved. The community showed incredible resolve and staying power over 27 years, even at one stage forcing the government to change the law of double jeopardy (you can’t get tried twice for the same crime), but all to no avail.

Journalist Dan Box came late to the scene of these crimes, at the request of the tenacious cop who’d been chasing a conviction for 20 years. He wrote a series of articles in the Australian, and produced a number of podcasts which gathered a huge following. The main suspect for all three murders, who had maintained his silence after his acquittal for one of the murders, even agreed to be interviewed in one of his podcasts. He joined in the community’s campaign to hold a retrial. In the end, nothing happened, probably because the initial investigation and court case were so badly bungled. 

If you’re looking for an uplifting read, this book is certainly not for you. If, however, you want some indepth understanding of what’s causing all those depressing statistics mentioned earlier, you’ve come to exactly the right place.

This poem by Maya Angelou comes to us from Maria Popova’s Brainpickings  

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

When we come to it – then Happy New Year!

Hola Amigos,

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift- Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception.
Sometimes it behooves us denizens of remote Aboriginal Australia to exit our Plato’s cave and see ourselves as others see us. The same could be said for the Australian nation as a whole.

Thus it came to pass that Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia a Peruvian academic linguist travelled through Yuendumu days after a 19 year old Warlpiri man had been shot.

With Luis’ permission I here repeat his unredacted Facebook entry:

My parents experienced five years of occupation by a foreign power with a different language, Luis I believe lived through the dictatorship of Fujimori in Peru, myself I lived through the relatively benign popular kleptocratic dictatorship of Juan Domingo Perón.
I don’t think I’m drawing too long a bow when I perceive remote Aboriginal Australia to be under kleptocratic occupation by a foreign power speaking a different language. Luis crossed the border.

This one dedicated to Donald Trump and his border wall:

Calexico- across the wire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkryXbJ14dE

those with so much, no show of heart…..

Take my word for it- this 10 min video is well worth persevering with:

Los Luzeros de Rio Verde whose parents made it across the border and now live in Houston

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvh-7dmZmcY

Hasta pronto,

Franklin

Bonjour,
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose- the more things change, the more they stay the same.Some years ago I read Bruce Pascoe’s ‘Dark Emu’. I couldn’t put it down. What a wonderful beautifully crafted piece of writing. What an interesting subject. After two centuries a readable denial of the denial. Thus it came to pass that Malthus’ consumers of loathsome worms were no longer universally seen as the primitive uncivilised barbarians who by having been consigned to the lowest ranks of human society had by default justified their mistreatment and the appropriation of their lands.

To me the most significant sentence in Dark Emu is “…then all of us must be alert to that greatest of all limitations to wisdom:- The Assumption…”

In the winter of 2012 Bruce Pascoe wrote an essay in the Griffith Review entitled ‘Andrew Bolt’s Disappointment’, it included “…we are looking at each other across a gulf of incomprehension…”

Very restrained was Bruce. Myself I perceive a “Grand Canyon of malicious ignorance”

Thus as the chorus of recognition for the book got louder so too the deniers of the denial of the denial counter attacked. Leading the charge is The Bolt Report, a TV programme on Sky News.
Bruce’s Aboriginality is being questioned. Pedantic questioning of bits of the book are being promulgated. Instead of enjoying the book as a fresh look at the history of the First Australians, we are now witnessing an obnoxious messy hate motivated argument. The trolls have been incited into action so that a staffer in Ken Wyatt (The current Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians)’s office resigned because she couldn’t cope with the anonymous vitriolic abuse on the phone and on line resulting from Ken Wyatt having sprung to Bruce’s defence.

Is it possible that Andrew Bolt’s obsessive attack on Bruce Pascoe is the result of him having had his nose put out of joint by Bruce’s 2012 essay? As they used to say in Dutch ‘Was hij op z’n pikje getrapt?’ (had he had his little dick stepped on?) Methinks Andrew’s response is disproportionate.

When Joseph Conrad wrote ‘Heart of Darkness’ was his English or Polish identity questioned? Was his entitlement to write about the Belgian Congo and about London questioned? Did his colleagues and friends cop abuse? Was a vicious campaign to discredit him and his book launched?I don’t think so.

So what has all this to do with Yuendumu?

Just as books like Dark Emu can bring out the darkest instincts in Australian Society, so too the very existence of remote Aboriginal communities seems to seriously bother a significant proportion of mainstream society. The First Australians and their descendants are either pitied or hated, both inappropriate and unfair responses to such as the proud Warlpiri Nation.

My Warlpiri friends and neighbours are a great bunch of people, and this is a great place.

I don’t know what it will take for the outside world to stop making assumptions and portraying and treating Yuendumu as this dangerous dysfunctional place inhabited by wild out of control violent black fellows, and brave white fellows facing dangers and privations so as to bring order, safety and civilisation to these colonial outposts.

I just hope that the tide is turned before this stereotype becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

A bientot

François

Dark Emu, heart of darkness…….Don’t be afraid of the Dark- Robert Cray….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra2Qndv_xeE