Another pearler from Frank.
Arguably, the fire that destroyed the Alexandria Library had a bigger cultural knock-on than the Sydney Luna Park Ghost train disaster.
Seriously, (and lockdown aside) though air fares to Alice Springs are more expensive than a seat on a Russian Oligarchs Lear-jet, (anyone heard of Navalny lately?) Franks Book launch seems poised to be bigger than the fire that consumed the Alexandria Library way back 48 B.C. And the last DC 3 for the book- launch with VIP seats is almost booked out. We’ve been told the Alexandrian’s have been pursuing a Federal Government grant to restore the library, but been told than none other than SCOMO himself that they are ineligible by not being in a Coalition Seat. And besides, like the National Archive, Libraries, (unlike Sportsbet 365 or Crown Casino or the Gas-Led recovery), do not produce wealth. Good point. In the end literature always falls short of short term gain. There’s a paradox there.
“The library itself cost possibly more than the Yuendumu police complex in todays dollars, but probably held less value to society at large’, (Herodotus)
Anyway, before we release the full transcript of his epoch making treatise for the ‘Daryl Maguire oration on political opportunism’, this insight from Frank is telling…..
In a William Tell kinda way.
He writes…..
G’day friends and others,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2yqcE3gZF0
Según tu punto de vista
Yo soy el malo
El villano en tu novela
El gran tirano
Cada cual en este mundo
Cuenta el cuento a su manera
Y lo han de ver de otro modo
En las mentes de cualquiera
Desencadenan en mi
Tenebrosos/venenosos comentarios
Después de hacerme sufrir
El peor de los calvarios
The ruins of the Alexandria Library. All that remains of the Gaming Lounge and the High-Roller Suites. .
According to your point of view
I am the bad one
The villain in your novel
The great tyrant
Everyone in this world
Tells their story in their own way
And make them see a different way
In other’s minds
Unleashing to me
Gloomy/poisonous comments
After making me suffer
The worst of cavalries
An olden-days picture of what the library probably looked like before it was torched as a budgetary requirement.
Two years after the Intervention, in 2009, Peter Sutton’s ‘The Politics of Suffering’ was published. I found it highly disturbing in that Sutton’s point of view differed so radically from mine. Thus, I can understand how those whose point of view is challenged by Bruce Pascoe’s ‘Dark Emu’ feel about that.
Published in 2014, I found Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu to be a great, interesting and well written read. After all of the negative propaganda and ‘facts’ stereotyping Aboriginal communities as dysfunctional, depraved, disadvantaged places, I also found Dark Emu refreshingly positive about the people I was now living amongst.
I wasn’t and still amn’t interested in the vicious ad hominem attacks Bruce suffered at the hands of the shock-jock/dogmatic press infantry. I contend that Bruce Pascoe’s essay ‘Andrew Bolt’s Disappointment’ in the Griffith Review put paid to that nasty episode.
The Juukan Gorge undergoing a similar treatment, (Image courtesy Rio Tinto).
So now seven years after ‘Dark Emu’s publication and its subsequent run-away success, that part of Australian society which have a different point of view to Bruce’s have, after their infantry rout, rolled out the academic artillery.
Keryn Walshe and Peter Sutton’s ‘Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? – The Dark Emu Debate’ has just been published.
The Lighthouse at Alexandria was also given the chop. Due to unprecedented demand for CCM’s (Cost Cutting measures)
I’ve read a review of Walshe and Sutton’s effort and countless comments. I won’t be reading it; I don’t get the impression it is a rollicking great read.
Last week I went on a one-day trip to an outstation northwest of Nyirrpi. A Warlpiri lady told us there was a patch of wanakiji(Solanum Chippendalei) on the way and also pointed out several places where she and her friends had dug up yarla (Ipomoea costata) yams, which are prolific this time of year.
We drove on a side track to reach the bush tomatoes patch and as we harvested a significant quantity of wanakiji one of the young ladies in our party sang out with glee:
“Welcome to my garden!”
A GREAT AUSTRALIAN, writer, bon vivant, aesthete, raconteur will be attending Franks Book launch at Alice Springs via Lake Alexandria.
A week from now is my book launch- wish me luck.
Frank