Australia Day 2006

Today (26/1) is Australia Day. Also known as Invasion Day as it was the day James Cook landed in Australia in 1788 and through a turn of events, pushed the indigenous population away causing much social discontent. The Australian Aboriginals are less than pleased at our presence and let that be known. In return the right-wing constituents of this counry let them know that their culture is not welcome here - white man is here to stay so they'd better like it. That is obviously an over-simplification. How I look at it, is that the Australian Aboriginies lived here for 40,000+ years, living in perfect harmony with nature ('the environment') and in return for this, nature them rewarded them with a rich life. Modern man, of which Europeans who populated Australia are part of, have been around for only a couple thousand years and already we're wiping out species at a non-natural rate, we've poluted the planet so badly that is changing the global climate. Modern Man though, has made significant strides into Science, technology and allowing us to "have fun". What we haven't discovered is what Science can't directly prove. There is so much we don't understand and we are not going to while we continue along the same path we are.

Anyway, I'll finish my ditribe by saying that the terrible situation we have put ourselves and all live on this planet in doesn't have to be. The technology we've established, and the Science we've used to develop our fantastic understanding of the universe and almost everything should allow us to prune off the bad bits of our existance, and keep the good ones. This will then allow us to achieve what we ultimately want to - to "find god". More on this in another blog post.

James Cook also came "down-under" for another reason - to observe the Transit of Venus which only happens every 70 years or so. They needed to do this to establish our distance from the sun (now termed as "1 AU").

Finally, as an Australian, I'm glad that Captain Cook helped establish a colony or else I wouldn't exist (as the person I am / in the body I inhabit).

Australia Day is also the day of the JJJ Hotest 100. JJJ is a public radio station, which means it paid for through taxes. This allows it to be non-commercial and to not have to bow to commercial interests such as the "Lowest Common Demoninator". My post on Musical Intelligence goes some way to explain the relevance of this. I just need to survive the next 2 or 3 weeks now where they'll play the top 10 songs over and fucking over (breaking well beyond my threshold). Ultimately this will be done help promote the JJJ Hottest 100 number 14, 15 or whatever its up to. Don't get me wrong, I love JJJ, but when my threshold is constantly being broken, and my love has so long ago turned to hate, I find it kind of unpleasant.

I love to have a good winge! Life wouldn't be interesting without one.

I celebrated Australia Day by spending it with friends at Brisbane's Botanical Gardens. The central figure is "Trav", as we used to call him when we were teenagers in Canberra where we grew up together. Trav is the man with very short blonde hair. Trav is part of the Brahma Kumaris spiritual organisation and all other people were friends with him through that. It was a good day with friends, playing a bit of volley ball without a net, walking through the park and generally having a chilled-out time. The photos can be found at Flickr set - Australia Day. I love nature and this offered the best glimpse of it I've had in, ummm, 3 weeks since I was at Dad's (he has a property 60km from the nearest major town (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia), on the edge of a national park and with sensational views across the valley to another national park. That will be the topic of a blog entry sometime.

NOTE - I CHANGED THE URL IN FLICKR AND ITS STOPPED WORKING FOR ME, SO THE Botanical Gardens photos won't be available until I've fixed the problem up.

The last bit of news for today is that I've started a Flickr account and thus this is where my photos are now coming from.

Sleep well my little lamb chops.

NE