Joshua Thomas Stalling

In memory of a little boy only got to live a day,

but that day weighs heavy of those of us left behind. 

 

9 July 2008-10 July 2008

Mother and Child: a story

 

The mother and child. The north and south islands. Two enemy countries greedily eyeing each other over a black sea of tar.  Whatever we called them the rocks had always been there during our childhoods.  Our home outside the flat we inhabited with our mother.  There was a father too, somewhere.  He lived in hotels and only visited us when in town. “…earning you layabouts a living…” he’d half joke.  A half stranger.  Mum in comparison was always there.  Not that she didn’t work; but the priority with work was not making a living but having a life.

“You kids don’t need me during the day.  You’re at school,”  She’d say to justify her need to work though we never complained, “besides I hate being cooped up in that flat, I think I’ll go mad if I have to stay any longer than I have to.”

So, after school everyday, Christine and I would be found outside playing invariably in and around the mother and child rocks. We didn’t want to go mad either.

The rocks were perched on what had once been a tree clad hillside made of almost solid sandstone.  At one time we guess the mother and child had been one solid monolith, wider and deeper than the units that later ringed it.  We didn’t know what cataclysm blew them apart, but when we were kids we imagined their pitted weathered surfaces surviving some cosmic impact; The end of the dinosaurs and the rise of the megafauna.

From on top of either you could see down into the basin that makes up Greater Western, a mass of suburbia that reached from our place on mother and child all the way to the shimmering sea, way out on the horizon.  It was our whole world and from on top mother and child we were kings and queens.

Because of these firm foundations, city planners in their wisdom had stripped the hills bear and planted units.  Anthills for people, termite mounds for the nation, pimples on the arse end of the world.  We hated the flat.

The road that lay between the two sections of rock was no more than a glorified driveway to car parking and more units further up the hill.  It made it safe to play most of the day, depending of where your imagination took you.  If it was white water rafting on the Zambezi on an old door lined with wheels taken from abandoned shopping trolleys, safe was relative.   But that day, the day, we were playing Rescue.

It was hot, had been all day.  The flat was stifling when we got home.  We quickly wriggled out of sticky uniforms and into t-shirts and shorts and ran back outside for the relief of the freshening breeze.  A storm was coming there was no doubt.  It was in the breeze as it made the leaves in the parks down the slope shiver with the excitement of it.  It was in the light, a yellowing-green glow that made everything look unreal.  It was in our very nerve endings making out whipping hair stand on end.

No one was around, unusual for after school but not unexpected.  We’d been brought up unafraid of the fury of storms and the tension in the air of that afternoon meant only one thing.  RESCUE!

I, as the eldest, stationed myself on the mother rock, the north bank of our great and raging river.  Below on the sheltered side away from the road was a small sandstone cave where our supplies, a few cans of drink and packets of chips, were stored.  Christine positioned herself on the child, the south bank, with stranded refugees from our rising floodwaters.  Because of the real pending storm we hadn’t brought our any of our soft toys but she had a good supply of human and semi-human action figures, bath toys and the odd tomboyish Barbies.  But how to get them across to safety, food and shelter on the north bank?  What could two young rescuer do?

Mum!

She’d just driven home and seen us playing on the rocks.  We explained our predicament in stereo so that she may understand the urgency, then she took one end of a string from north bank, braving the rapids of the flooded river until she reached the south and handed the line to rescuer Christine.  Saluting her brave deeds as she departed, mum gave us farewell and gods speed to complete our mission before the storm struck.

Unconcerned, we tied off our lines to stop signs either side of the river-road.  I threw Christine the ball of string, keeping my end and we were set.

Some of the action figures had utility belts or grasping hands to hold the safety line while we pulled them across the river.  For the less able, Christine knotted a strip of bark to the line and that was pulled to and throe with some success.  There were casualties.  Though the plastic duck from the bath rode the bark litter with ease even through the growing breeze, my little pony was not so lucky. Top heavy, its huge head tipped the plastic pony off the litter and into the raging river of bitumen.  If we were unconvinced by the black substances ferocity, we had only to look up and know what a broiling, seething mass looked like.

The Barbie’s were to start their trip as the hail came.  Their arms, not articulated enough to hold their weight on the line, their legs too long and gangly for the litter, Christine cursed their plastic hides and tied them directly to the line, once around the ankles and once around the neck.  The hail was small, the stuff that disappears as soon as it hits the ground and makes you wonder if you were looking at hail at all.  It hit our ears and the tops of our heads, got inside our t-shirts and made us giggle and jump.  Barbie, swinging from her neck was caught above the raging river.  All that lay between her and watery death in the turmoil below was her rescuers wriggling in their pants as another piece of ice slithered down our hot backs.

The hail started hurting as it landed on our unprotected skulls making a solid tock!  Hunching my shoulders, I forgot stranded Barbie and took in the storm around us.  Drifts of ice were forming on the roadside, piling up against the mother and child.  The park across the road with its shivering trees was a blur though the hail’s frosted pane.  I could see, but not hear our mother call us in from the car park beside me and even as I moved to comply, I knew it was probably too late.

A cracking of timbers, a roaring, an explosion, a shattering all at once from the park as a massive chunk of ice impacted with the play set sending ice, wood, metal, wind, stone and fire rocketing in all directions.  Before I had been too awed by the storm to move fast, now I was too terrified to move at all.  That wasn’t a hailstone, but what was it?  Why did the mother shake so and where was my mother?

Mum?

I was aware of a sound that I couldn’t hear but I felt through mother’s hot flanks.  A roaring grumbling so low it didn’t register in my ears but in my toes as I stood and looked up into the clouds above us.  I couldn’t understand how a sound could come from above and only be felt below.  I realised it wasn’t just mother that was shaking, but the air itself was vibrating.

Above, in the river of cloud, a glow was forming.  Starting like persistent sheet lightning that grew in intensity until I was sure the sun was falling on us.  Then I saw its leading edge break through the cloud.  It was a long way away, over the basin.  So large I could see nothing else, far enough away to see steam rising from its surface close enough to see light reflecting on its icy heart.

I think I screamed.  At least I started screaming sometime then and didn’t stop until it was over.  I don’t know when Christine left the child but as the icy mountain of rock and steam colided with the earth she tackled me, sending me backwards, rolling over mother to the cave carved in her side.

A flash of light that made it past my shut eyelids and the solid comfort of mother and then…the noise.  There was only noise.  Noise that roared and screamed, noise that tore and buckled, noise that rumbled and shook.

I could see nothing my eyes shut tight, hear nothing but the noise, taste and smell of dust and ice, but I could feel Christine’s arms around me, mine around her.  I could feel her body shake like mine as we screamed unheeded into the chaos.  I could feel her hot tears as the noise eventually gave away to cold rain.

We lay shivering under the protection of mother’s cave for a long time.  Only when the cold rain found its way into our refuge did we finally stir.  Untangling us I discovered my wrist didn’t work and Christine had a nasty gash in her head that bled everywhere.  She couldn’t stand, but with help I did step out of the cave and into the rain.

Already the rain was lessening, though it never ceased, and as my view grew the less I understood.  Where were the trees? The park? The units?  I couldn’t understand where Barbie on her safety line could be until I realised the poles were missing.  In the end I knew that nothing remained, everything had been stripped clean except for us.  Christine, me and the mother and child.

 

 

Words of wisdom

 

 

 

Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
  - Gerald R. Ford

Believe it or not!

 Imagine a Sunday afternoon in tropical Darwin.  Dr Peter Beaumont  is preparing dinner, Thai fishcakes.  An egg he cracks into his bowl of ingredients seems a little cloudy so he turns over the egg shell to see a tiny gecko pinned between the outer hard shell and the inner shell membrane.

Ugh!  I imagine you’re saying.  But how did it get in there?  Darwin is crawling with geckos that get into any tiny space they can find, but inside an unbroken eggshell?  Besides, the gecko is imbeded in the egg between the outer hard layer and the membrane.  So the gecko somehow got to the egg sometime while it was forming.

Are you thinking maybe the chicken ate the gecko  and it somehow made it through all the chickens digestive system to end up in the egg.  Not possible, it seems, and the gecko is intact, preserves in natures clingwrap.

And so now you maybe coming to the conclusion that our doctor friends, President of the AMA (Australian Medical Association) in the Northern Territory, has struck upon.  Sometime while that egg was being made the gecko climbed up the chicken’s bottom (colaca) and died.  The suggestion is that the tiny lizard went looking for a feed of fresh egg, took a wrong turn and ended up dying trapped inside the chicken.

Sounds disgusting but theoretically understandable doesn’t it.  At least it does until you realise where the egg came from.  Bought from a supermarket, the egg was traced to a farm in New South Wales.  The gecko is of a variety that  is not native to Australia and not found in that area. 

This is just the sort of story that sets me giggling all day.  Not only does this story come from Darwin (Australia’s answer to Ireland), not only a doctor but the President of the Medical association, not only a lizard found in food, but a lizard that shouldn’t even live here in Australia,  and not only has the gecko got into said food in the most extraordinary way but it seems it’s the only case of its kind in the entire world.  It has scientists baffled and that is always a good thing.   Who needs fiction when real life provides such unbelieveable stories.

We’re happy little Vegemites

I a recent episode of Good New Week (GNW) an American  contestant was given a large jar of vegemite as a clue for a news article.  After tasting some and complaining it taste Iike beer (…and your problem is?) Paul McDermott encouraged the live audience to sing the Vegemite Song.  As a single choir the audience of maybe 200 sang…

“We’re happy little vegemites,

As bright as bright can be.

We all enjoy our vegemite for breakfast, lunch and tea.”

“I feel like I’m in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.”  The American said after the audiences dying notes exploded into applause for their own cultural sychronisity.

If you think that is strange, you will be pleased to know that the Aeroplane Jelly jingle has recently been added to the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.

These are examples of  memes at work.  A meme is like a gene for culture, a small identitifiable something, song, phrase, action, thought…etc that is shared within a community. 

So, if anyone complains that Australia has no culture, just hum them the Vegemite tune and know they are very, very wrong.

They won the moral test

You know those questions you get at school to get discussion going about moral choices about what is legal and what is right.  One of them goes, “…if you found a brown paperbag full on money in the street and there is no one around, would you keep it?”

Whereas I would happily tuck it into my bag and off to the shops, this family have won the moral test competition.  The brown paperbag (would you believe it, who uses brown paperbags?!) in question lay on their front lawn for a few days, another piece of garbage blown in from the street until the son of the household picked it up and had a look. 

I can only imagine the surprise and puzzlement on his face when he tried to make sense of hundreds of hundreds lining the bottom of this supposed garbage.  I guess two or three looks were required plus a confirmation with family member to really make sure what was being seen was actually there.

Responsible and law-abiding as this family is they then took it to the police station so claims on the money can be made…only if you can identify it.  Detective Constable Andrea Smith has said, “… the people that find it can make an application to get the money back.”  I guess it’s not a lot to do for a several thousand dollar windfall, but why should they make an application for a piece of garbage dumped on their front lawn?

Maybe that’s just my ammoral sensabilities showing.

If only he HAD been made of wax

I don’t see the fuss.  Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it and all that and it’s not as if he’s not in wax in other museums all over the world, so why not in Berlin?

What am I talking about?  Hitler is returning to Germany as a wax work model in the new Berlin Madame Tussauds.

There are concerns that his mere presence as a wax work dummy will encourage neo-nazi tendencies and that people will vie to have their picture taken with him.  Really?  Are Berliners that thick that they can be swayed by a wax dummy?  And is really such a problems that people will have their photo taken with said dummy?  I’m sure the Madam Tussauds Museum are banking on it.

We need to remember, remember the truth in all it’s aspects and that’s including the bad bits.  Not to glory in what could have been, but to reflect on how one man swayed a desperate and demoralised people into committing geocide so that when another Hitler rises again we will recognise them.

Besides, one more Hitler to the growing collection around the world is not going to hurt.  He is now in more countries that he could have ever have hoped to have visited.  Here’s a few I found online:

San Francisco

Estonia

London

Hong Kong

Let the Joker’s Run

Just imagine you were part of a social group, an organised association with members from all sorts of backgrounds who’s one driving interest brings you all together. Now, some members of this organisation have been involved in illegal activities and may have used the club as a front for these activities. Does that make you, a passionate member and friend to these individuals, also guilty of a crimes? Does it give the police an excuse to listen in to your phone conversations and raid your family home on the off chance they’ll catch you at something illegal?

Well, if the South Australian State Government have their way that is exactly what will happen. On the back on recent terrorist legislation, the government has put through a bill that can make any organisation illegal and put anyone in jail for up to five years for communication with the group or members.

It’s a pretty harsh law when you consider terrorists, but this new bill is aim not at political or religious extremists, but at biker gangs. And the law is not specific to bikies and could be used at anytime against any group with no presumption of innocence or right of appeal. Both the Bar Association and the Law society believe that this bill is unconstitutional.

Acting Premier Kevin Foley said, “I think mums and dads of this state wanting their families and societies kept safe from these filth.” except this story came to light at the same time the above. We need to remember that most crime is done by Mr and Mrs Average not your Big Bad Bikies. Destroying a community of men and women that feel they already have no place in ‘normal’ society is not going to stop crime and it may well increase it.

Make them sing for their supper.

As a taxpayer I like to see value for money in my politicians and today has seen a huge contrast in “Added Value Service”

Acting Premier Kevin Foley and Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith jammed together in a bipartisan busk in an Adelaide Shopping Centre to help raise funds for Burmese Cyclone victims.  It seems the Acting Premier sang while Leader of the Opposition played the bongos.  Probably the only time he’s had the government follow his beat.  You can listen to part of their session here.

And then we have Dr Brendan Nelson.  *sigh* :-~  In a tirade against the Prime Minister he recently showed his frustration and stated “…I wash my hands of the concerns of everyday Australia.”  Er…Brendan, your only reason for being a politician is to give a damn about everyday Australia.  You’re also in Opposition so you don’t get to decide how things are to be done, but to keep government in line.  If you are tired of doing this (after only 6 month) well then I suggest you get out, you are not suited to the position.

As one of the 21 million who help pay their wages, I know where I see real value for money.  I’ve always heard the cost of living in Adelaide was good.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/23/2253438.htm

Dreams Realised

I recently had a dream of flying.  I was given a pair  of wings that looked like they came out of the movie “Tron”, and flew over a lake with only the movement of my body to determine my directions and altitude.  Then I woke up and found reality had asserted itself once again.  I couldn’t soar over the waves at the mere thought.

But a Swiss man, Yves Rossy has made dreams possible and made a personal jet pack that is controlled directly from body movements.  Don’t believe me check out a short documentary on an early prototype on YouTube.

He’s a commercial pilot and skydiver so for he me the joy of speeding along with only my own body guiding the way will still not be possible for me but that’s okay.  I can live vicariously knowing that it can be done.