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The streets were packed there were thousands of people there to march in solidarity with us. It was so incredibly heartening. Australia is growing. The only time I have felt this atmosphere was in Sydney in the 1988 march on Australia Day. But this time was different very different it was predominately young people under the age of 30. They get it, they do see it.
The Vietnam Moratorium in Melbourne was one of the most momentous events to occur in Australia in the post world war two era. It led to a seismic shift not only in Australia politics but also within society. The moratorium, held fifty years ago today, was a historic achievement in how it united diverse groups behind the goal of ending Australia’s role in the Vietnam war.
We are at the end of the beginning. ‘If you feel you have coronavirus…’ I tune out emotionally and daydream as the public service announcement plays over and over in empty trams and trains, and in deserted shopping centres.
Since late 2019, both President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Scott Morrison have come under fire for their shortcomings in times of national crisis. China as a hotspot of COVID-19 and Australia with the quartet of severe climate change, a lengthy drought, an horrific fire season and the inevitability of the coronavirus crashing onto our shores.
From just up here, on the lip of mountain mileage, that pooling river mouth below, half salt but also hill-fresh, could seem a lagoon. On its low point, surmounting asphalt and breaking waters, sits the verandaed pub, a focus once of holiday shorescape.
This communal outpouring during the bushfires has an opportunity to perpetuate itself indefinitely, even though the embers have been extinguished and those not directly affected by the fires have gotten on with their workaday lives. For even as the fires burned, Tourism Australia was mounting a campaign to encourage Australians to holiday locally instead of taking their patronage abroad, and to persuade international tourists to visit, too.
Shortly after Christmas Day, the sky disappeared. It was only then that I realised I’d always taken it for granted. The sky, and the air. I’d always taken the air for granted too, and now it was hazardous.
In the Apology to the Stolen Generations the Australian Government spoke on behalf of all Australians in recognising that it acted wrongly in removing Indigenous children from their parents. It recognised also that the reason for the removal was the disrespectful claim that its targets were defined, not by their shared humanity, but by their race. This disrespect caused lasting damage to the children and families.
My dog I've had for 14 years dies, and I decide to spend two days in bed. I look online and see that more than a billion Australian animals have died in the fires. Guilt spirals on top of guilt. How gauche, to feel this private grief, when there is such public grief already.
Australia Day would be wasted if it were devoted simply to self-congratulation. In the wake of the catastrophic fires we need to ask questions about how Indigenous Australians before settlement managed the land and how our agricultural and economic practices have contributed to the perilous situation in which we now find ourselves.
This New Year saw me becoming a Twitter tragic so that I could keep up with the news of disastrous fires in Australia, and fires of a different sort in the Middle East. It all seemed too much. On the day after Epiphany, a major feast day in the Orthodox Church, I found myself outside Kalamata's Church of the Archangels, and went in to light a candle.
Toxic air, dwindling water supplies, extreme heat: it's bleak stuff. And yet, on Sunday, COP25 finished with very little progress. Our planet will warm to +3C or higher, unless we also do something about the vested interests that continue to profit from our demise. And they aren't going to give up their power (or profits) just because we ask nicely.
73-84 out of 200 results.