A Traveller's Journal - Part One

02 May 2018 – I’m sitting on a farmhouse verandah in the middle of a cattle stud farm among the rolling hills known as the Blackall Range, inland from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. The cows and calves on the farm are known as ‘blondes d’Acquitaine’, bred without horns and really quite passive. This is ‘chewing the cud’ country.

As usual, I bought a couple of newspapers to bring myself up-to-date with events, local and further afield. The material I read and viewed on voyeur-vision news programmes was/is much the same as the material on offer 12,000 miles away back home.  That’s a bit sobering to take on board, I thought.  I probably couldn’t be any further away from home without also leaving the planet yet the same problems abound.

Some banks are accused of cheating their customers and one ‘lost’ 20 million customer records; some politicians (including the Mayor of Ipswich, Qld.) are accused of lying to the electorate; the education system is unfit for purpose; and French President Macron is in Sydney en route to New Caledonia where, clearly, he will try to influence the outcome of an imminent referendum as to whether or not New Caledonia should remain French. No doubt while in Sydney he will try to point Australia towards EU trade, too. In other words, as I’ve often said, there is nothing new under the sun.

Not a lot is reported about Mrs May and her problems although it was nice to learn that Kew Gardens has reopened. No words at all about J Corbyn . . . . it is all about priorities, I suppose.

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04 May 2018 – This peaceful environment is beginning to lead me to think now about things ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’.  For example, does ‘natural’ equal ‘good’ and ‘unnatural’ equal ‘bad’?  Nope, I don’t think so. There is more to it than that.

Here on the farm our water supply is rainwater collected into an enormous storage tank as it drains from the farm house roof.  There is no piped-in town water supply. To that extent the water is both ‘natural’ and ‘good’, provided the ‘unnatural’ tank interior is clean. Certainly, there is no chlorine or other chemical in the water but townies like me prefer to boil water for drinking purposes, just to be sure. Locals are well beyond needing that.

I could go on and make other comparisons but what I wanted was to awaken your mind to the words ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’, neither of which has anything to do with good or bad, but is to do only with natural and unnatural. Think about that next time some advertiser tries to exploit for commercial gain the naturalness of his product.

The cows on the farm graze on untreated grass – no chemicals of any sort disturb their several stomachs and their methane production is pure. A couple of chickens scratch around the garden eating whatever comes out of the ground and then lay their eggs somewhere we can’t find them easily. How good is that? How natural? And you wouldn’t believe how tough their eggshells are.

There are no curtains to the farm house windows because they would serve no purpose other than ‘unnatural’ decoration. We switch off our unnatural electric light and go to sleep in the light of a silvery moon (and stars) and waken when the sun rises, to the sound of kookaburra birds and crows. Other than that, there is no noise except the noise of children running around the house as they get ready for breakfast and school. 

Then we re-introduce the ‘unnatural’ into the home by switching on voyeur-vision, or a radio, or a computer. Best of all, nobody wants an I-pod thingy while they have breakfast. They do the most natural thing of all and talk to each other - sometimes!  Can I hear you sigh “Wouldn’t it be luvverly?”

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07 May 2018 – Bank Holiday Monday and it poured most of the day.

08 May 2018 – We share the farmhouse with untold numbers and types of spiders, some enormous and some deadly. We have also some mice, and zillions of miniscule ants. Spiders spin their webs to capture anything that flies. Mice emerge at night to forage for any food items we might have left uncovered, and leave their ‘droppings’ to let us know they’ve been. The miniscule ants come out in their thousands to swarm over even the slightest trace of fat or butter left uncleaned. All of which is quite natural. We might not like it but it is natural.

Now it’s my turn to chew the cud. No matter how many ants I might destroy, there are as many and more to reappear later and replace them. There are more of them than there is of me – and that leads to my thought for today. 

There are many, many more of US than there are the elite who rule over us and the elite care no more about that than we care about how many ants we destroy to achieve our own version of ‘acceptably clean’. It adds a ring of truth to the slogan on my t-shirt which reads: “A politician is someone who will lay down your life for his country.”

So, how does it feel to know that in some quarters you and I are looked upon as little more than irritating ants among trillions of other irritating ants? Put that in your ‘I know my rights’ pipe and smoke it. And while we’re at it, what kind of reasoning are we using that leads us to vote in support of giving a fellow ant the ‘authority’ (some even claim it to be sovereign authority) to look after our interests? It seems to me that he/she will look after his/her interests long before it occurs to anyone to look after mine or yours. And that’s natural, too. Think about it.

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Truth is, of course, that we don’t always like things ‘natural’ or in accord with nature. That’s why we try to change them and the effect they have on us into something else, something that is un-natural. Sophisticated, if you like. Therein lies danger.

Whether we like it or not, something which is truly natural impacts upon each of us without fear or favour. Nature is senseless but we are not. Therefore, we are able to respond to nature in our different ways and try to change things to suit our different selves, which mean we will devise an ‘un-natural’ outcome that doesn’t impact upon everyone else in the same way. 

I ask myself this most astonishing question: Have I just discovered the origin of politics? I can hardly wait for tomorrow’s musings.

(MD)