Australia stock-taking

 

Gumbayngirr country, today called Coffs Harbour. Where the original inhabitants were pushed into fringe camps. A detailed account of this time can be found here.

Expansion seems to be hard wired to the European project, or even 'man'. Grabbing the neighbour's stuff, walking into other people's places and behaving like 'vandals'. The new 'living space' is always gotten by military aggression. The world is a playground to extract and enlarge the pursuit of more and more. A planet becomes tabula rasa to subdue and treat as a quarry in the metabolism (pdf) of rapidly multiplying flag-waving chest-pounding nationalists in a post-nationalist world. The 'blank slate' to project the pathologically insatiable hunger for more is actually a bio-diverse array of life and culture which is eradicated to convert all into a machinery of fossil fuels, stuff, meat and profit. "Nothing but bush" thinks the Australian mindset and bulldozes bio-diversity and replaces it with a dull and impoverished mono-culture. Land, water, ocean and air degradation follows. The unique Australian flora and fauna is replaced with poodles, ponies, meat, and pink weeds.

Pandanus

The project of 'civilisation' comes to a grinding halt as it becomes obvious that the 'stuff' is running out, the bills are piling up for the heritage damage and pollution. The planet itself has been brought to the tipping point of becoming uninhabitable ( for life as we know it).  A culture of mean stewardship and dysfunctional oikos management is a bankrupt 'lifestyle'. As we drive our only home against the wall with eyes wide open, we are already eying the next habitable planets for evasion and expansion.

So much could have been learnt from the way of life of indigenous peoples, living in small populations and valuing human culture and law...


More viewings:
I am Aboriginal, film by John Pilger
Australia Day,  Ken Oathcarn, Rap News Video
"Nothing but bush" cartoon


More readings:
Aboriginal history of the Coffs Harbour region, PDF
Australia Day is a time for mourning, not celebration, Guardian,  260115
Henry Reynolds: If We Are To Re-Think Australia Day, Where Should We Begin, New Matilda, 220115
Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Tradition, Truth & Tomorrow, The Monthly


Audio:
Padraic Gibson / Paddy Gibson, 1788: War for Eora Country - Genocide and resistance in early colonial Sydney


There could be 50 C days in Sydney and Melbourne... Guardian / CSIRO


Images
via Old Camp at Coffs Creek, Tony Hart