Australia seems a rotten place today. Why? I ask myself do I say so? The sun
is warm and tiny zucchinis are in place next to my little heart shaped tomatoes. The peas have yielded enough
bounty for a lavish accompaniment to the scallops mornay I plan for dinner
tonight. Whence the discontent?
Last night I watched
Four Corners from Nauru where eloquent and intelligent teenage refugees cried
out for liberation from their three year captivity on that horrid island. They are there only because they survived
a dangerous boat journey and didn’t die like so many others.
My sister in England forwards, somewhat
smugly I think, a letter from her from her local MP celebrating the arrival and
ongoing concern for unaccompanied
refugee minors living until now in Calais’ Jungle camp which is being
disbanded.
How can I enjoy the
simple and complex pleasures of gardening on my roof and putting Tung oil on my
beehive while my government and my opposition are so lacking in pity and there
is nothing democratic or even criminal I can do to right the wrong being done
in my name?
New Democracy time is coming close again and in the light of the rights and wrongs of the world at the moment at first it seems a Liliputian endeavour. Why fuss about pathways and tourism and youth when those poor kids are being imprisoned on Nauru?
I think back to our last meeting which I have to say I rather enjoyed. It reminded me of an energetic dinner party darting and diving between topics and giving what you could to each one. The twenty eight jurors are beginning to differentiate themselves and the seeds of respect for some people which were sown last time have grown up while others strengths still sleep underground until their season. The jury is a sort of garden after all. Will there be fruit, I wonder. Will there be pathways snaking through the shire, and wealthy but thoughtful foreign tourists making a beeline for the Eurobodalla Aboriginal Culture Centre in order to understand a world not based on acquisition and property development? Will our faeces and urine become a bounty for the starved earth? Will our empty council buildings buzz with volunteer associations doing good works? Will our youth (at least) find all the fun and fulfilment that is its right?
I don't know really but at least we are talking about doing something and the old elephant council seems to be doing the same bless its heart. We learnt today that it too is being processed like us and given green dots to stick on issues to prioritise them.
Is it different, I wonder, to be a citizen than the person I was before, doing my gardening, watching my grandchildren grow and minding my own particular business? All I can say is that I think it is a slight consolation in these beastly times to be doing a little something. Maybe it is fiddling while Rome burns but better to fiddle than just hang about in despair.
People who call other people smug don't deserve a response -
ReplyDeleteBut -the UK is as bad. The reason we are (very reluctantly) taking these unaccompanied children, (many of whom have an absolute right to be in the UK as they have family here) is because Lord Alf Dubs pushed and bullied a bill through Parliament. The point is that he, himself came over as a child refugee from Nazi invasion.
I believe England (unlike the USA) took in 10,000 European children in 1939. And look what we got. Wonderful painters, surgeons, writers, politicians and many many other useful citizens. They gave us their lives because we welcomed them and they enriched our world.
I have just edited Julia and my Great Aunt's World War One Diaries for publication. As a result I discovered the UK had refugees then too. On October 14th 1914 16,000 Belgians landed in Folkstone in Kent. 250,000 Belgians are said to have come to Britain in the course of WW1. They were spread out all over the country and the diary gives an account of how one little Gloucestershire town deals with the influx.
If I was a teenager stuck in the Jungle at Calais or I imagine on Nauru, scorned, feared and excluded, I wouldn't grow up to become a surgeon, a lawyer, an actor, a writer or an artist and serve the country that gave me refuge, as the refugees of 50 years ago did, I would become a terrorist and wreak havoc on those who not only failed to take me in, but actually caged me up and failed to offer me love and succour and a home.
A final comment about smugness and space. UK population per square mile 650. Australia population per square mile 2 - and don't go on about it all being desert.