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It's no surprise that three of the federal government's shortlisted sites for the proposed national radioactive waste facility are in South Australia, the 'expendable state'. And it's disturbing to find that the owner of at least one of the sites has been misinformed, believing 'It's basically only a medical waste facility.' In fact the farmer and Indigenous opponents of the sites are right to be concerned. The intermediate level waste housed at such a facility will be hazardous for thousands of years.
'Bloody amazing in life, isn't it, how things link up when you don't want them to.' Mac was now talking to me over his shoulder because he was putting mail in the local boxes. 'The man's son is in IT, and his specialty is security. But the young bloke's just got married. He's on his honeymoon and, though he's due back on the very day this scam business happened, he can't come home because where do you think he and his wife are honeymooning? In Bali. Under the volcano. All flights grounded.'
Our local council has announced the end of hard rubbish. As an adult, my enthusiasm for what the council calls 'scavenging' has become the source of many beautiful and useful items. But my objections are philosophical as well as practical. Ugliness has its place, and at clean out time, we literally bring to our doorsteps what we would rather put of sight and mind. Hard rubbish symbolises the costs of our throw-away consumer society while going a small way towards recouping some of them.
400 years ago, when Mauritius was still uninhabited, a cyclone thrust three tall ships of the Dutch East India Company against the coral reef. As the ships were ripped apart and thousands of Ming porcelain pieces on board smashed, the crew fought for their lives, but 75 men including the fleet commander Admiral Pieter Both, drowned. I picture that Sunday afternoon in the 1980s when my mother and I were wading in the water close to a familiar beach and found washed up shards of the porcelain.
Veronica was one of Phillip Adams' 'favourite Catholics'. He likes larrikins, mavericks, with a mind of their own. Last week I sat in my car and listened to the replay of an interview Phillip did with Veronica some years back. I could not predict what she was going to say next, even as I recognised certain characteristic speech habits. There is the touch of the nun-teacher there, but don't mistake it for complacency.
The CEO of my company is on $10.7 million a year. He did a floor walk today. He glanced at me for less than half a second. I worked out that he's on $41,152 a day. Then worked out his glance at me was worth about $7.80. I feel ripped off. That was a crap glance.
The language of martyrdom is being used to recruit young Australians to brutal stateless warfare. Because martyrs are morally superior to suburban burnouts. IS propagandist Abu Ismail described Melburnian Jake Bilardi as 'a lion on the battlefield although he was at a young age and with a weak body'. So, Bilardi was a weak young lion and therefore ripe for battle. How obscene!
Although a country atheist, my mother often used to say, she rather hoped there'd be a heaven, where one day I would have to pray, forgiveness for my voting record, my sell-out to the 'other side', by telling my large-looming grandpa, what made me cross the 'great divide'.
What they thought could not be read in faces pinched with need. They plodded on, a ragged band of hungry, thirsty refugees, hoping for a crust of bread ... Perhaps tomorrow, there'd be grapes and oranges awaiting them; farmers who would pay in kind for harvesting.
I attempted to manage my mental health with good intentions, stern self-talk, guilt and cigarettes. Finally, exasperated and desperate, I started taking an anti-depressant medication, and when it actually worked, I was stunned to feel happy. But like any new relationship, the honeymoon period is brilliant... and temporary.
The woman from the provinces must have disturbed someone. Listen: the noise from below the Square. Countless faces aslant, breathing heavily. Rusting in the shell of broken words.
Mental illness is no laughing matter. Except when it is. Frank is a musical genius, who spends his life with his face concealed inside a comically oversized head. His bandmates are in awe of him, especially starry-eyed keyboard player Jon, who in his naivety envies Frank's illness and the strange creativity that it entails. Things turn ugly when one member of the ensemble commits suicide during the recording of the band's debut album.