Fires and Drought

The  driveway to Rivendell 2003 with our grandson Max on his bike ( all green with thriving poplars.)

 

 

The same driveway of Rivendell, a few days ago. 1-1-2020

The whole world now knows how Australia is in the grip of dreadful fires and a seemingly never ending and heartbreaking drought. But, more importantly, the world now also knows that Australia is lagging in doing something to avoid those catastrophes in the future by tackling the reasons for those disasters, and that is climate change.

Australia emits more than twice as much pollution per person as do similar countries elsewhere. https://www.acf.org.au/analysis_shows_australia_lagging

I thought of showing you in pictures how the drought and fires have effected our environment.

Here our two grandsons riding their bikes through the causeway of the Wollondilly river that our farm had a 1km frontage to. Things were lush and green. (Dec.2004) Plenty of water!

Our Pizza oven at Rivendell.

Here a picture of some of the garden next to the our farm. (2003)

 

The Wollondilly river running alongside our farm (2010)

 

Old Australian cottage.

Here the old convict build cottage that was also part of Rivendell property and made into a B&B

 

The living room at Rivendell.

 

Fire and smoke. That little yellow spot is the sun during mid-day.

And yet, our Government is loath to tackle climate-change. Our prime mister is an ardent believer in burning coal and even took a lump of it into parliament.

 

 

The Bushfires keep on burning.

 

Bushfire smoke hiding the sun. 2.30pm on a ‘sunny day’.

The above photo shows how bad the smoke haze can be. The sun has trouble cutting through the smoke. I wonder now many millions of tons of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, those fires are adding to the atmosphere? How much wildlife is being lost. Koalas, kangaroos?

Yesterday, Australia recorded its hottest overall day ever.

Over three million ha of bushland has been destroyed by fire so far. Near us a fire of over 150 000 ha is burning out of control threatening a power station and a coal mine.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-18/australia-heatwave-registers-new-hottest-day-on-record-bom-says/11810632

Our Prime minister is on holiday in Hawaii. No one would want to deny the PM a holiday but right now he should be here and watch the heatwave coming over the next few days. The bushfires have linked up and now form a front of almost 3000kms.

 

 

our PM, Scott Morrison, (Scomo) soaking up a pleasant sun in Hawaii. Not a care in the world.

 

Photo: Scott Morrison has faced online criticism over a holiday, speculated to be in Hawaii. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)

In my state of NSW there are over a hundred fires burning and many of them are out of control.

NSW RFS
(@NSWRFS)

At 5:30pm there are 100 bush & grass fires burning, 54 uncontained. Gospers Mountain remains at Emergency Warning. Dangerous conditions are forecast for tomorrow. With school holidays starting check your travel plans &current fire conditions along your route and your destination. pic.twitter.com/hb7LHuC

NSW RFS
(@NSWRFS)

EMERGENCY WARNING – Gospers Mtn (Lithgow & Hawkesbury LGA) Fire increasing Dargan & Clarence area. Fire in Valley View Rd, crossed Chifley Rd. If you’re in Dargan & Clarence area, it’s too late to leave. Seek shelter. Protect yourself from heat of fire. #nswrfs #nswfires #alert pic.twitter.com/BkVC1b6…

Twitter · 2 hours ago

Bureau of Meteorology, New South Wales
(@BOM_NSW)

Are you ready for the heat in NSW? The next three days will see very hot temps in most of the state. Have a plan to Beat the Heat: ow.ly/vcyK50xCNEe Smoke will combine with the heat in some areas, so know how to also cope with the smoke: www.health.nsw.gov.au/e… pic.twitter.com/QeARU44…

Twitter · 2 hours ago

Stopping Morrison, not the Boats.

Who would have thought that the now well worn mantra of ‘stopping the boats’ still holds Australia up to ridicule in the rest of the world? Those three words meant hell for several thousands of refugees held in off-shore detention for many years now. Australia is flaunting international law that give a right to people seeking refugee status escaping from wars.

How has it been possible for Scott Morrison, and his henchman Peter Dutton, to have hijacked a nation’s conscience and soul for such nasty political point scoring, and for so long! Surely we can’t allow this government (lower case) continue to ignore the public opinion that have shifted to what we once were; a humane nation who cared for others, especially those from war torn countries, especially the refugee, especially those who came by boats.

This coming week the government will again vote on the medevac bill allowing doctors to decide on  refugees in need of medical treatment to be evacuated to mainland Australia to get the  medical care instead of Peter Dutton who seems to get a special type of pleasure in unhinging refugees to the point of suicide…More than twenty refugees on Manus have attempted or have committed suicide so far.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-29/growing-surge-in-refugee-self-harm-since-australian-election/11156064

Out of sight but not out of mind.

The plight of the family  threatened by being deported to Shri-Lanka is now reaching its final stage. No matter the outcome, the way this has been dealt with is just symptomatic of our Government’s decline in being humane. I am talking about why it was felt necessary to remove this family to Christmas Island while their case is being dealt with in an Australian Court.  Surely they could have been given a right to remain on the mainland with friends and neighbours with whom they have been living for a number of years. They have two Australian born children and have not committed any crime.

It is just sheer bastardy by the Australian government. How can one see it any other way as inflicting the maximum of punishment on people who have done no wrong? A last minute injunction stopped the plane in mid-air from flying them back to Shri-Lanka. A Court has ruled their case will be heard in due course and it seems likely this might take several weeks.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49519805

Seeing the case will be heard on the mainland why was it thought necessary to go to the extend in flying this family as far as possible from their friends and supporters to Christmas Island. Christmas Island is part of the Asian Continent and thousands of kilometres form the major cities of Australia. It was formerly used as an Australian detention centre for refugees but is now closed.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/05/biloela-tamil-family-our-daughters-are-scared-on-christmas-island-mother-says

I always thought that the Christian way was pro humane and compassionate. Our PM Scott Morrison  is a fervent Christian who doesn’t shy away from being filmed swaying his arms and jigging about inside his Mormon church. Here is a good opportunity for Scott to practise what he preaches and allow that family to stay in Australia.

 

The Virginia Creeper will just have to sustain us now.

Virginia creeper.

All our communal town-houses were originally planted with gardens which included the Virginia-Creeper shown in the above photo. This creeper grows very fast, mainly at night when everyone is sound asleep or if not sleeping, at least inside their dormitories. Originally, our townhouses had a united garden which included the Virginia Creeper. Sadly though, all Virginia creepers were taken out with the excuse that they are known to be destructive. A falsehood was spread that those fast growing climbers would by assaulting and climbing over everything, strangle brick walls and block our much revered and beloved guttering. We, against all advice and scorn of neighbours, held onto our Virginia for dear life, and even if it succeeds in strangling us and our town-house, so be it. It is amazing how gardening is so often seen as OK or mere tolerable as long as it doesn’t take over or threatens our own homes and ‘investment’ as one of our neighbours once uttered.

With last night’s defeat in Australia of the Labor Party to the Liberals against all odds, and the best of News Polls, and predictions, this contemplation of the Virginia-creeper might just have to sustain us for the near future. The near future is not to be taken in vain or too lightly. Perhaps a better phrase might be ‘our twilight years’ as both of us are nearing the eighties and for some things, time is becoming more of the essence. It would have been so nice to  have witnessed an Australia finally coming of an age where change for the better, would override the endless ennui of more of the same. How much longer can we look forward each morning to an Australia where Taxation cuts, Border Controls, sticking to contemplating the past, and Queen Victorian Gun boat diplomacy has to sustain us?

Just think how it now must feel to have for another three years a Scott Morrison as Prime Minister. A man who has on numerous occasions highlighted his belief in Christian faith but at the same time was almost manically keen on locking up for indefinite detention thousands of people who have done no wrong except for trying to escape from wars and bloodshed and look for a safe refuge in Australia. I wonder how those refugees on Manus and Nauru, now well into their sixth year of detention, are feeling today, hearing how their tormenter has been chosen as leader of Australia for another three years?

So much hope was invested in a change of leadership that would finally allow Australia to progress to a more just and fairer society. A society that would be leading in climate change and care for the environment. Today is a day where we celebrate the standing still of Australia. When will we ever learn, that change ought to be embraced even if change might at times fail? It is always better to have tried than not at all. Why is Australia often celebrating the fondness for looking back and clinging to the past? My parents who came here from Holland in 1956 would not be proud today of Australia. They wanted a better future for their children. My wife,  from a very progressive Finland and I with Dutch genes, are almost tempted to book a return to Holland.

We don’t have to look at Holland or Finland for examples of progressive countries. Just look a bit to the side and look to New Zealand. They have a leader that seems to thrive on progress, especially on a social level. Why don’t we look to our Eastern neighbours instead of our much beloved Western US, a nation that is being headed by a morally bereft President man heading his country knee-deep in a moral morass?

It has been New Zealand who offered  several times to take the refugees from Nauru and Manus. Our Australian Prime Minister with his Christian Faith held high on Pharisees  sullied sleeve, heartlessly refused each time. We will just go outside and look at our Virginia creeper. It will have to sustain us till the next time!

My poor country, Australia.

Gentle rain and Islamophobia.

Jessica Whelan with Australia Prime Mister, Scott Morrison.

Our garden is getting a whisper of rain, gentle caressing the leaves and growing grasses quenching their thirst after a long and hot summer. The sky above is grey and coloured  lead with the promise of more to come. I can’t say that I dislike rain. It lifts the spirit of future growth and beckons the first of spring growth already noticeable amongst the withering Japanese windflowers. They are the Irises’ spikes that appeared  overnight when I wasn’t looking. We are having a most unusual autumn that so far has been more like a summer.

Between the gazing at our patch of growing and withering garden, and with the Manchurian pear now serious in dropping their crimson gold-leaf edged  foliage I undertook the task of cleaning our windows. It is not my most favourite domestic task which still is cooking of food. Mind you, with all the medical appointments, root canal treatment, hearing tests and cardiac investigations, we are now more likely to eat out somewhere. It seems appetites too get less with age, and with a lunch- out we might just forego a cooked dinner and instead have a salad with a piece of fish backed up by some crackers with Boursin before the comforting embrace by doona with pillow.

I have discovered that the spraying of the windows by the blue glass cleaner and wiping the glass with a soft cloth does a much better and quicker job than using the window wiper and bucket of water. Helvi swears I should not wash the windows with a sun bearing down on the glass. I refute that claim and reckon it is just an old house-wife’s tale. I proved it by blatantly (without further ado) cleaning a set of double glass doors in the full sun and they looked so sparklingly clean afterwards. No ovation from Helvi though. Does ageing make for better marital accords or do we become more entrenched in our believes, including prejudices?

Talk about radicalisation of our politicians. Who is responsible of the radicalisation of so many politicians who vent their hatred of Islam. We had this dreadful act of terrorism in New Zealand, killing 51 people and injuring hundreds, all of the Islamic fate… And yesterday the rant of a Liberal candidate in Tasmania. I am talking of Jessica Whelan.

Here some of the anti-Islam comments she made on Twitter and Facebook. “Round them up Donald, cut their clitoris’ off & sell them to Muslims in Muslim countries & cancel their passports. You’ll make a mint,” it stated.

Here another one of Jessica Whelan posts.

One called for a national vote on banning Muslim immigration and the other argued Tasmania should not accept refugees from Syria and Iraq. “Don’t bloody send them to Tasmania. We don’t want them,” it said.

And then there were those two men from One Nation Party, Pauline Hanson, who ventured to America to wax favours with the NRA in order be ‘donated money’  from the NRA in order to weaken Australia’s very effective gun laws while also making derogatory comments about Sudanese refugees raping and clubbing ‘decent’ Australians.

The question has to be asked who radicalised those politicians into this dreadful Islamophobic stance? Was it Dutton or Abbot with a nudge nudge from our PM Scott Morrison? It doesn’t come from nowhere. Who is behind it all and is it being investigated?

It seems the Liberal Party is riddled with Islamophobics and hatred.

Australia Day.

The 26th of January is the day when Australia celebrates its beginning or birth as some might call it. As the years go by, more people than ever want the date changed as a way in considering that it was also a date that started the beginning of a dreadful time for the indigenous people that lived here for tens of thousands of years. Captain Cook did not ‘discover’ Australia. Today, indigenous people still die earlier, are likely to be imprisoned at far greater numbers, and have much higher rates of suicides than white people. Their plight is still steeped in so much misery, and all that after so many decades of neglect! It is not surprising they see the celebration on 26th of January as an insult and couple it to a date that they see as an invasion of their country. Captain Cook did not ‘discover’ Australia. He merely started Australia as a penal colony for the British and from then Australia gave the aboriginals a terrible time.

It is also not surprising that our present PM Mr Scott Morrison, will have nothing to do to with changing this date that both, the white ‘invaders’ and the original Australians might agree to. Mr Morrison is now trying to whip us up in a national frenzy of flag waving and car tooting horns. He is proposing to spend millions of dollars to get a copy of the Captain Cook’s boat and sail it around Australia. He is hoping to revive national pride and a rise in his flagging popularity that will transcribe in a vote for his Liberal- National party at the next election in May.  Photos are now distributed of him surrounded by aboriginals all decked out in black and white and Mr Morrison holding a spear. He is currying favours showing he is a good friend of the aboriginals.

His hope in reviving this form of nationalism is in direct opposition of warnings that the world should concentrate on global issues and not go the way of the US in withdrawing from a global world and revelling in making a nation go in reverse, to make it ‘great again’.

If we go on celebrating this Captain Cook event, lets reflect that it was the Dutch that landed here before captain Cook and before the Dutch there were traders from other countries as well. If we are celebrating anything we should reflect 1973 when Australia finally discontinued with a ‘White Australian policy’ it was as racist as it could be. We barred coloured people from permanent residency till that date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

Even today we still hold thousands of refugees in detention. If I had to nominate any one for honours on the 26th of January I would name Julian Burnside, the QC who has worked tirelessly in freeing the refugees on Nauru and Manus. He fights for Human Rights and Refugees.

What do you reckon, dear readers?

 

Next time you buy ‘fashion’, look at how and where it is made.

 

Most Fashion items are made in third world countries. I have also been guilty of buying items and not looking at where they are made. Worse is, often we buy goods made using child labour. To add to the misery we end up choosing a Prime Minister who delights in locking up those that are trying to escape the misery. Even when Australia is finally turning a corner and most of us want the refugees freed from detention, Scott Morrison our PM, is going nuts and will do ‘Anything’ to prevent the legislation from changing that would alleviate their misery. He is a true hater of compassion and a fervent believer in his brand of Christianity!

A nervous heart.

Our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison is now comparing setting sick children free from detention with talking to people smugglers. Talking to doctors about the trauma of suffering children, and setting them free is negotiating with people smugglers. “We don’t negotiate on that issue”, he said with a broad smile. In the meantime his hatred is growing fatter.

I am feeling a bit tired and listless of late. I normally don’t gravitate to doctors. Helvi insisted I should get a check-up. “Every time I come downstairs you are sleeping,” she says. It started to get on my nerves. It reached a stage whereby I would quickly get up, when or if, I could hear her coming down. She had warned me she doesn’t want a sleepy husband. She would then hum a Dutch nursery rhyme, ” Slaap kindje, slaap. Sleep child, sleep.” Here it is. It has over 5 million hits. Helvi sings it perfectly. Not a child in Holland would grow up without that little song being sung to lull him or her to sleep. That’s why the Dutch are always on the yearly list of  ‘happiness’.

 

I went see the local doctor who referred me to get an X-ray and blood test done. Lungs are good and apart from an upward adjustment for my thyroid medication the only other problem was that I might have had a heart attack. Another referral was written to see the cardiologist. The same one that deals with Helvi’s heart after it was damaged through her chemo treatment. I went last Thursday. I was told to do a stress test. I very much looked forward to this. Nurse told me to undress and this was followed by getting lots of wires attached to my chest and back. I was put on a tread-mill.  It must have been a ridiculous sight. I was glad Helvi wasn’t there to see her husband struggling on this treadmill. Her Don Juan reduced pitifully. Old age does that.

The outcome was a script for a box full of medications. They all have impossibly difficult and lengthy names. I have an abnormal heart-beat rhythm and strange pulse. This too has a difficult name. I think it is non-valvular ATRIAL Fibrillation. I have five different tablets. Each morning I get up and together with Helvi attend to our medications. The humming of blood pressure machines before breakfast. The updating of charts etc is now common routine.  There is a box of Pradaxa, Candasan or Dabigatran etexilate and many others now. A couple of them are to extract fluids. The toilet is a hive of activity all day. Lucky we have three toilets. The prescriptions are handwritten and I don’t know how the Chemist can make sense of them. The Doctor’s account is crystal clear though.

Perhaps the events in our family a few years ago have overwhelmed. It might not have helped good health. Even so, together we laugh and live off the good memories. The sun still shines.

View from inside.

 

The view from inside.

This photo was taken from inside our home through the open sliding glass doors. So, no matter how the outside world sometimes seems, the real world is how we deal with the chaos. No better way than to look at a garden. It brings back the importance of  things that matter. It cannot but lift the spirit. Talk about spirit. Our PM Mr Scott Morrison claims to be a spiritual man. Yet, he had no hesitation to promote Sydney’s Opera house to be used as Australia’s biggest billboard. I don’t understand how such a self proclaimed Pentecostal spiritual  pious and religious man can have no qualms about assaulting such an important spiritual cultural Icon. One wonders if he ever contemplates the beauty of a garden or listens to music, read a book! There has to be a hiatus there. Something us missing. Something is wrong!

You know the ducks know a thing or two. One seems to be looking at one of the clivias. The other one, his mate, is looking direct at my camera. On top of the little table is a plate with mixed seeds that the birds flock to. It really is a world on its own. The Alyssums do help create magic together with the Mock Orange, the Spathiphyllum  and white Cyclamen.

Here is a beautiful piece of magic singing. One of my favourites. It never fails to bring tears to my eyes. I don’t know why.