Recently, Number-One Daughter took a photo of the spoodle prostrate in front of a Buddhist statue. Was he praying or merely enjoying the sun on his hairy body? Or, the thought just struck me, he may have been offering obeisance to the Sun.
Walking along a bush path, it is almost impossible to tell the weeds from the ‘real’ Australian plants. Actually, ‘weeds’ is the wrong term – there are indigenous plants and exotic ones, the exotics having been brought here by non-indigenous people. The exotics seem to have settled in well and are thriving.
It would be easy, in a weekly column, to comment on current or recent events. I am more interested in looking at what allows events to unfold as they do and to ask questions that help me better understand why what is happening is happening.
Millions of people are still suffering from the colonial and imperial activities of European governments from the fifteenth through to the twentieth century. Territories were seized and the people living there were subjugated, often with disastrous results for their cultures and livelihoods.
How far does our ‘community’ extend? In the past, it might have been limited to our village or, more recently, our suburb. This would be overlapped by our extended family and, for many working men, the crowd that gathered after work at the local pub. In the countryside it may have been a collection of farms and the Country Women’s Association and in Australia it would also have been indigenous tribes. Some of these communities still exist.