Anzac Day connection

This is a picture of my small collection of Gallipoli pieces. The story behind them may be of interest. In October, 1988 I took a small group of College students on a visit to Gallipoli in Turkey. At Canakkale I went to the Troy Anzac Travel Agency to obtain advice and a guide for our day at Gallipoli. Here I met the very helpful and knowledgeable elderly proprietor, Hussein. We spent a few hours wandering the battlefields with our guide. During this time I found the small eyelet that can be seen in the photo. Khaki still surrounds the eyelet. The guide said I was lucky because the battlefields had been well picked over. One can only wonder if this piece came from a jacket or other piece of clothing or personal gear.
In the afternoon we revisited many sites at our own pace and without the guide (we had a hire car). One highlight was a quiet reflective walk along Anzac Cove. We were the only people there. It is a very small stony beach. Another student and I stripped down and swam out about 30 metres until the strong current told us not to venture further. I still get goosebumps recalling turning in the water and looking up at the hills and cliffs as I made my way back to shore. How frightening it must have been to struggle to the beach back in 1915 with rifle and pack amid the congestion and bullets and shells. The stones in the photo are from the beach at Anzac Cove.
After watching the sunset from The Nek I drove the students back to Gelibolu and caught the ferry back to Canakkale. The mood was somber. Late that evening I went back to Hussein at the travel agency and had a long chat about Gallipoli and history and our countries and fate. When I told him I was from Canberra he said he’d heard about our grand war memorial and asked if I’d send him a photo. He had a wall adorned with postcards from old customers including some from Australia. I promised I would and some weeks later I took some photos of the Australian War Memorial and posted them to him.
In 1998 a friend of mine, Sue, was going to Gallipoli and asked for some tips. I suggested she visit the Troy Anzac travel agency and get their advice. She went there and Hussein was still there! Sue noticed some photos of the Australian War Memorial on the wall and commented that she was from Canberra. When Hussein told her that a fellow who’d come here some years before had sent them Sue was able to establish that it was me and told Hussein she and I were friends. Hussein was thrilled and insisted on giving her a present for me. He opened up a drawer full of Gallipoli bits and pieces and handed over the 3 bullets in the photo.
A friend at the memorial identified two of the bullets and cartridge as being .303s and the other as German. I treasure these pieces and the story of how I came by them.

Water matters!

Finally the Howard Government comes up with something I totally agree with. They suggest pumping water from the mighty Clarence river in northern NSW over the border to the huge population centres of Southeast Queensland. At the outset I must declare that such a project would have to have strict controls. NOBODY is talking about draining the Clarence DRY!!! To be viable it would be about harvesting the excess water only to the extent that the Clarence's ecology and biodiversity would not be harmed. But of course as soon as the idea is raised political and self interest jump right in. Consequently there is no way this proposal will get off the ground. The (Labor) NSW government won't countenance a (Liberal) Federal government idea that might be popular in Queensland where votes in the November election will be critical. Then there are the locals who see the proposal as the end of the world and think the Clarence is to be replaced by a large empty drain. So...... mateship in Australia does not extend to sharing water.
EXCEPT where I live. Premier Peter Beattie is working 24/7 building a pipeline from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast so that water can be pumped from our full dams to Brisbane's near empty dams. Of course this is a stopgap measure that governments excel in and it would be more visionary to construct a pipeline from the bountiful rivers of northern Queensland. A short pipeline from NSW's northern rivers would be the simplest and most logical but simplicity and logic don't sit well with experts and governments.
FOOTNOTE 1: I wonder if the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island intended sharing the wood with his mates or whether it was for his exclusive use and if so whether he was beaten to death by envious others. It was after the last tree disappeared that Easter Island society declined and ultimately abandoned the islands leaving only the huge statues as evidence of their skills.
FOOTNOTE 2: Gee....... I actually advocated pumping northern NSW water to Qld in my 21 January blog post. Does that mean I am ahead of the game or just smarter than Malcolm Turnbull? If Malcolm should read this before hell freezes over, I am available for consultancy work - I have plenty more ideas to save the country and my fee is miniscule!

Anzac Day (25 April) and Gallipoli Pines

These are photos (taken March 2007) of what I call my Gallipoli pines. They are 6 Allepo pines or Pinus halepensis. I planted them at my property at Bungendore in 1987. They were struck from seeds from two old Allepo pines which are located on the banks of the Shoalhaven river where the Kings Highway crosses it about 15 kiometres west of Braidwood, NSW. There used to be a schoolhouse where the pines are and the story goes that a Braidwood soldier returned with seeds from the original Lone Pine at Gallipoli in Turkey and distributed seeds to schools in the district to be planted as memorials to the Australians who fell in battle at Gallipoli.

There appears to be confusion and even mythology about seeds that originated from the original Lone Pine. Here is what the official Australian War Memorial web site says:
Lone Pine or Plateau 400 was the scene of a major diversionary offensive launched by the 1st Australian Infantry Division on 6 August 1915. The Turks had cut down all but one of the trees that clothed the ridge to cover their trenches. The ridge dominated by the single Allepo Pine (Pinus halepensis) became known as Lone Pine. In three days of fighting the Australians lost more than 2000 men and the Turks losses were estimated at 7000. Seven Victoria Crosses were awarded. As far as we know two Australian soldiers souvenired pinecones from the ridge that found their way back to Australia. Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith of the 3rd Battalion whose brother was killed in the battle for Lone Pine Ridge sent a cone home to his mother, Mrs McMullen at Inverell in New South Wales. Mrs McMullen kept the cone for 13 years until 1928 before planting the seeds. She grew two seedlings, one of which she presented to the town of Inverell and the other to the Parks and Gardens section of the Department of the Interior in Canberra. The Duke of Gloucester planted this second tree at the Australian War Memorial in October 1934. Today it stands over 20 metres in height.
Sgt Keith McDowell of the 24th Battalion carried a pinecone in his haversack until the end of the war. Upon returning home to Australia he gave it to his Aunt Mrs Emma Gray, who lived at Grassmere near Warrnambool Victoria. A decade or so later Mrs Gray planted the seeds and four seedlings were grown. One was planted in May 1933 in Wattle Park, Melbourne. Another at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne and another at the Soldiers Memorial Hall at The Sisters. The last was planted in the Warrnambool Gardens.
In 1990 two trees were taken back to Gallipoli with war veterans who attended the memorial service to mark the 75th anniversary of the battle of Lone Pine.Since the 1980s many trees have been grown by both seed and grafting techniques from material collected from the tree at the Australian War Memorial. These have been disseminated to many organisations including RSL branches and clubs, schools and other interested organisations.

It is interesting that this account makes no mention of the pines near Braidwood that are the grandparents of the trees I planted. Nor does it mention the ones planted adjacent to the Turkish war memorial at the top of Anzac Parade just outside the Australian War Memorial. There appears to be evidence that there may be more than the few Lone Pine descendants mentioned in the Australian War Memorial’s website. For example in the Brisbane Courier-Mail of 17 April 2007 a story about the proposed new dam on the Mary river states: ‘A 90 year old tree grown from the seeds of the original Gallipoli Lone Pine will be destroyed if the controversial Traveston Dam is built’. It is located next to the war memorial in the small town of Kandanga. The RSL sub-branch president is quoted as saying: ‘There were a few a few others but they all died. The last one died in Sydney about seven years ago.’
I wonder just how many seeds were brought back from Gallipoli and how many grew into mature trees around Australia. Clearly these pines hold special significance for Australians because of the Gallipoli connection and it would be interesting to find out.

Virginia Massacre

I am horrified but not surprised by the terrible slaughter on a Virginia campus. It is just a magnified example of the daily violence that is an accepted part of American culture. With over 30,000 deaths by guns in the US every year the gun is the answer for many Americans to many problems. The usual cliches about how this latest massacre will 'reignite' the gun control debate are already being trotted out. But as fast as those laudable cries surface they will be drowned out by the gun forces, most notably though that bastion of American values - The National Rifle Association.
While movies like The Departed continue to win Oscars, while actors like Nicholson, Damon, DiCaprio, Sheen and Baldwin give them prestige and directors like Scorsese are feted, then the massive Hollywood movie machine will validate violence and especially the gun culture that kills nearly 100 Americans every day. The issue of the US barging into foreign countries with all guns blazing is a strongly related problem. If you have any doubt about how Americans feed on Hollywood violence have a look on the internet at the gushing reviews that The Departed received.
HELLO.... America!! The emperor has no clothes!!

Risky Business

Interesting stats from last week's Time magazine. There was a 36% decline in the number of children injured by falling out of trees who were admitted to English hospitals between 1999 and 2006. It made me recall the regularity with which kids broke wrists and arms while climbing trees when I was young. At Wolaroi, the boarding school at Orange that I attended in the early 1960s, there was a huge set of monkey bars. In the first few weeks of Term 1, new kids broke arms and wrists with regular monotony as they flung themselves like Tarzan between the bars. And there was no soft landing material on the ground. Injuries declined as the term wore on and kids became more skilled or became more wary. I think we have become very protective of children and perhaps there are many good reasons for this given the number of wierdos we all have to survive. However, lawyer driven liability concerns and endless regulation and OH&S issues and daily media doses of fear have all helped to discourage risk taking among many of us and our children. It's easier to watch a video or play a computer game. Hence the other stat from Time: There was a 35% increase in the number of children admitted to English hospitals with 'repetitive-movement injuries' commonly caused by playing video games!!!

Aboriginal Victorians by Richard Broome

I have just finished Richard Broome’s Aboriginal Victorians – A History Since 1800. (2005, 467pp)
I have known Richard since we went through Uni together in the 1960s and it is always great to catch up with him and Marg when they holiday at nearby Mooloolaba at Christmas. This Christmas just gone he generously gave me a copy of his latest history work for which he had just won the NSW Premier’s Prize for History.
My first sense is awe at the meticulous research and recording of so much detail in the story of Aboriginal Victorians over the last 200 years. As Richard says in the Preface it is a book that took about 15 years to produce!
Of all the observations in this history the one that has biggest impact for me is that there were in Victoria ‘perhaps 60,000 (Aborigines) before Europeans and their diseases arrived’ around 1800. And the evidence is that Aborigines had inhabited Victoria for 30,000 years! This population had plunged to about 500 in the 1920s. Unbelievable!! Richard chronicles the interaction between black and white in Melbourne and the many regions of Victoria. Disease, alcoholism, pastoral exploitation, bureaucratic regulation and inquiries ad nauseum, all get comprehensive coverage in the story of decline. The writing was well and truly on the wall in the first 50 years of white settlement because ‘Europeans were deemed ‘progressive’ and Aborigines ‘primitive’: a circular and self-fulfilling justification for Aboriginal decline. Colonists argued that Aborigines were inferior simply because they were inferior.’
The role of alcohol is especially disturbing. Richard tells us that analysis of annual reports for the 1860s ‘found that those locked-up for drunkenness and resisting arrest made up 76 percent of all Aboriginal convictions.’ It is easy to despair when in early 2007 prominent Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson shouts from the rooftops that alcohol is still the scourge of many Aboriginal communities. But many areas of Aboriginal life in the 1800s and early 20th century that Richard covers still have a sad resonance today. After recounting an episode in 1941where an Aboriginal man, Norman Clarke, resisted arrest, was batoned into submission by Constable De Vere, and slipped in the police cell breaking his jaw, Richard observes Clarke ‘joined a long line of Aboriginal people who had ‘fallen’ in police stations.’ Right now in 2007 a Queensland policeman, Sergeant Hurley, is awaiting trial over the death of an Aborigine, Mulrinji, in a police cell on Palm Island. Apparently he ‘fell’, sustaining fatal injuries!
Of course there are aspects of Aboriginal life for which European settlement is not responsible. Richard touches on cannibalism. The area of child abuse, domestic violence and rape is stated to be complex and related to a range of experiences and conditions that Aboriginal people have endured. Geoff Clark, the former ATSIC chairman, recently found guilty of rape, seems somehow to symbolize the enormity of the challenges that still confront Australia and the place of its indigenous people. The recent book, Bad Dreaming by Louis Nowra, puts the spotlight on the sore on the Australian cultural, political and social landscape that is Aboriginal domestic violence and child abuse. When considered against Richard Broome’s valuable work it makes me realize that although we have come so far, we still have a long way to go.

Easter Reflection

I recently read Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris (2006, 96pp). It has been a best seller in the USA because it has been caught up in the 'intelligent design' debate and in the whole religious right assault. I found it an articulate and logical attack on the absurdity and culpability of religion. It focuses on Christianity but also puts the case against all the rest! Harris speaks for many when he says: 'It is time we recognised the boundless narcissism and self-deceipt of the saved.' This little book is a timely reminder of what horrors religion has visited on humankind and the totally unscientific delusion that drives believers. The predictable pontificating of prominent prelates this Easter in the face of man made and natural catastrophes around the world just makes their flimsy case even flimsier.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, says of Harris's book: 'I dare you to read this book..... it will not leave you unchanged. Read it if it is the last thing you do'.

Visit to Bungendore and Canberra

Just got home from a visit to Bungendore and Canberra. I stayed in my hut (pictured) which is on the escarpment above Lake George. It's about 30 min drive out of Canberra. Unfortunately the Lake has been dry for about 12 years so it really should be called just George. It was nice and green around the hut because of the 120mm of rain in February. However this is deceptive because it is still very dry. A number of plants around the hut had died and some of my olive trees had struggled through the summer. Still, the olive trees are getting some size (photo). The yellow box trees I planted two years ago along Lake Road are doing well because they are native to this area.

I caught up with many friends in Canberra but it was especially good to see my sons and daughter in law. The weather was stunning and I always reckon April is the best time in Canberra. Really enjoyed watching Luke play in the cricket grand final which his team won. Also paid several visits to the wonderful National Library and the National Gallery.