Patriot Realm

Another 26th of January is on our doorstep. Only a few more sleeps before we gather our daggy thongs, ( not from Woolies, of course) search out the shorts with the flag plastered all over them and order in a few slabs, a keg or 3 and assemble around the barbie at the appointed hour ( normally around 11 am ) to tell a few mate jokes and have one too many.

We'll dust off the cricket bat and ball while the missus makes the salads and the kids are reminded that beer always lives in the bathtub on Australia Day.

" Oi !  Get your Dad a beer! " will resonate around this great dusty island and we will pull each other's leg and tell jokes about who had a convict in their ancestry.

Will this happen this year?

For over 100 years our country’s economy was wrought from gold.

The gold that was mined from the ground and the gold that came from the golden fleeces of our unique strains of merino sheep. The common expression was that Australia rode on the sheep’s back.

John Macarthur is rightly credited as being the father of the wool industry in Australia but he was not the one who introduced them. That honour goes to Governor Hunter and closely followed by Governor Macquarie.   

Two naval officers, Capt. Henry Waterhouse and Lieut. William Kent were ordered by Governor Hunter to bring the first merino sheep to Australia. 

The sheep had come from a flock originally given by King Carlos III of Spain to Prince William V of Orange. In 1789 Prince William sent two rams and four ewes to the warmer climate of the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope under the care of Col. Robert Gordon. In 1791, Gordon returned the original breeding animals to the Netherlands but kept the offspring.

It has been nearly three weeks since I was last outside my four walls. Too long since I last entered a store or saw another human being, except for delivery people dropping off food or the building manager dropping off a wheelie bin for my rubbish twice a week.  Why the maggots in the lead image? 

Well, soon it will become clear. 

Today, I managed to stumble, hobble, limp and with grim determination, make it to the community bin area to drop my bag of household waste. A bag chockers with discarded convenience meal packaging and never have I been so delighted to make it to the bin.

I am not a fan of maggots. Let us be clear on that from the outset. Horrible little squirmy things. Writhing and thriving. . 

I do not care who tells me that they are full of protein, I am not eating one. 

Yet, they are both fascinating and repulsive. Lifesaving and yet destructive. It all comes down to what kind of maggot they are. 

Yet, the bottom line is that they feed, breed and feast. Upon death. Or upon life. Depending upon what kind of maggot they are. 

These days, we are surrounded by maggots. Breeding in our cities, our countries, our everyday.  

 " A 3-metre wall of water came without warning, tearing through Toowoomba — Queensland’s largest inland city — when rain of “biblical proportions” fell on already soaked earth after months of record-breaking falls across the state  "The inland tsunami swept through Toowoomba, washing away cars, damaging buildings, picking up tanks, and thrusting people into the torrent. "

I will never forget the day. It had been raining in Toowoomba. It had been raining across much of Queensland and everywhere was soggy.  The rain had been falling steadily all over the state and I had no idea just how bad things were about to get.   

I  was at an appointment with a client. Just after lunch. 

It was coming down more heavily than previously. It got heavier and heavier.

I called an abrupt end to the meeting and decided to head home "just to be on the safe side. "