lately, days of heat-
your email comes like spring rain
washing me in tears

Yesterday I traded my Suzuki for an Hyundai Getz. It was kind of a sad day, because I really liked my old car. But the colour (back - think, hot and hard to clean)) and declining mechanical health meant that it was time for a change. The Getz is small and very perky and should do well, under the circumstances. Because my driveway is still unaccessible, the new car (2008 SX) is sitting across the road. Below is a hastily snapped photo.

No, no...back to Earth!

Apparently a lot of people have registered interest in going on the one-way, privately-funded journey to Mars, mooted for somewhere in the 2020's. It is one-way only because the ostensible space pioneers will be going as settlers, with zero to nothings chance of stopping the ride due to queasiness or second thoughts. Mars has a poisonous atmosphere, is very cold and water may be difficult to get at, should there be reserves of it. And quite aside from the logistical problems of hauling everything needed for survival to the red planet and then having to set it all up, there is the question of people.

Apart from the experiences of crews in the orbiting International Space Station, we simply don't know what a long period of space travel might mean for human beings, nor how living in extreme conditions might affect the psychology of what is essentially a group of strangers living together, forever. Call me unadventurous and trapped in my comfort zone if you will, but I could not be payed enough money, not billions, to undertake such a journey. Additionally, I am very fond of the Earth.

A view from the living pod. It has a certain beauty, but might become tedious or oppressive with the passing of years -

After 10,000 kms of niggly little rough-running patches every now and then, my car finally broke down today. Funnily enough, it's kind of a relief. I had taken it to a couple of mechanics who were unable to locate the problem. "Just wait till it breaks down mate and then tow it to us," they invariably said. Hardly reassuring, since breakdowns are inconvenient and expensive.

So just before Blaxland, my little car, full of musical gear for my cafe gig, gave up the ghost. I sat on a verge as B-Doubles hurtled past and wrote text messages. By midday I was back home, car-less and wondering what to do with the rest of the day. Tom wants a play day this afternoon (no car makes it harder) and the weekend just developed another layer of complexity.

Try calling it an adventure. Better than a calamity!

The seventies was the high-water mark for progressive economic policies in the Anglo democracies. By decades end, social democracy had come under increasing attack from conservative theorists and commentators, whose ideas underpinned the rise of Thatcher and Reagan in the UK and the US. Tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest, attacks on workers collectivist bargaining powers (through the weakening of trade unions)a rush to deregulate and get government out of the way, and the denigration of people on welfare benefits were amongst the menu of options available.

Today, we can still see the relentless outworking of this approach. More expensive university education, work for the dole schemes and an obsession with balancing national budgets have marginalized many people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are generally the losers in austerity budgets. I see lots of these folks in my work with Anglicare. Most are genuine strugglers and the marks of their struggle are there for all to see. They suffer disproportionately from mental illness, chronic disease, poor educational standards, violence, drug abuse and so forth. They rarely complain about their lot in life. But conservative politicians and pundits seem to be believe that they are fair game for both moral correction and policy punishment.

So our democracy grows meaner. Being an optimist I think that things will come full circle, in time. In those days, the straighteners and punishers may still be seen, but will rarely be heard.

It is hard to describe the period during which Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister. Even to a teenager(albeit, one interested in politics) this was obviously a time of turbulent and ongoing change. Unlike the terms of most governments, in which less-than-inspiring characters mouth platitudes and score childish points off their adversaries, this one was unique. Closer to a revolution than a term in office, the Whitlam Government did not take pause for breath, such was the breadth of it's vision for change in this country.

To many of those in blazers and ties (and hats and gloves), the changes emanating from Canberra were but background noise. My home suburb being one of the most conservative voting electorates in Australia, it was a challenge to be left-of-centre. As elections rolled around, the mood in the playground was more hostile, our erstwhile peers parroting their parent's views, plastering stickers to their bags. My friend John Hawkins and I had only the staff as comrades-in-arms, though some executive staff were undoubtedly unreconstructed reactionaries.

The conservative coup of November 11 - a political and judicial coup- against a democratically elected government, was swift and brutal. It radicalized many on the left and essentially elevated the Whitlam Government, creating a kind of martyrdom as it did. For us young ones, it was disturbing. It was also a watershed moment.

The period of the Whitlam Government (1972-1975) was the era in which I cut my political teeth, so to speak. By any measure, there has never been a time of governance like it. And there has never been one since then either. The immutable facts of this Governments legislative achievements are documented elsewhere. Suffice it to say that it changed the face of Australia in a way that it unlikely to ever be reversed, never mind the perversity of conservative governments to try. To paraphrase PJK, it took us from a period of "Menzian torpor"into the modern era.

There would never have been such a government without Edward Gough Whitlam, who passed away today, aged 98. Whitlam's intelligence, vigour and vision, not to mention his charisma, was both the headquarters and engine-room of the Labour Administration. Today we can thank this government for medicare, legal reform of marriage and indigenous rights, equality for women, the welfare system, the recognition of the PRC and many other progressive policies. More than that, it created through it's sheer energy and optimism a sense of a new Australia, freed from decades of tepid conservative governance.

One day, some two decades after the fall of the Whitlam Government, I was on playground duty at Penrith High School. A Year 10 student whom I knew quite well rushed up to me, almost breathless. She had just come from a history class on the Whitlam Government and she had news that she couldn't contain a moment longer.

"Gough Whitlam. What a wonderful man! What a great government!" she gushed.

It took me by surprise. Maybe it shouldn't have, because that is how I felt when I was her age too.

Vale E.G. Whitlam

I had a good weekend. I spent my 56th birthday with my mum in Dee Why. These days she is increasingly frail and even though her mind is still nimble, she has a number of debilitating ailments. Still, we sauntered down to the Italian restaurant on the beachfront, ordering some excellent pizza. The sun was out and even though a coolish south-easterly was blowing, shorts and bikinis were uniformly present. A body of surfers sat on the uneven swell, a few swimmers chancing the waves. It was a high tide and the water had the appearance of blended eggplant and spinach. Over lunch, I recalled the times I used to come surfing with my then girlfriend, Michelle, in winter, just across from the restaurant. We would slide into our steamers and look without joy into the cold grey surf. I did it for her really, but it was still exhilarating.

Later I spent a few hours on the sofa listening to my mum reflect on aspects of her life, which I know, at times, has been disappointing for her. Back in the day, women didn't have the same choices they do now, so if you got stuck in a bad marriage, that's more or less where you stayed. It is hard for a woman of 85 to find decent male companionship, or so I'm told. The pickings are few and then, very flawed. So my mum has to endure men who claim to know more than her, or who know it all or who invalidate her experience. Just like 'back in the day.'

On Sunday I whiled the afternoon with my friend Yolly, whom I hadn't seen in a few weeks. Yolly is a smart medical professional from Shanghai. She will likely be stuck in a lower grade aged care job because of her limited English. Personally I think her English is great and her company, delightful.

So, two afternoons of gentle conversation. Nothing quite beats that.

Sometimes I think about my past in parallel with what was happening elsewhere in the world. Because I have been reading widely about the Chinese Cultural Revolution in recent times, this is where my somewhat hyperactive mind has journeyed.

It matters not a whit to anyone else, though it interests me, that while I was spending my time in short-panted boredom in classes 2A and 3A at Rose Bay Public, my cohort in China were being released from their bondage and exhorted to make revolution. Freed from attending classes indefinitely, elementary school age students were at their liberty to goof off, shout slogans, engage in vicious gang warfare, join Red Guard units and even denounce their teachers should the latter to be found in any way counter-revolutionary. It must for many have been one long mad holiday. For others, of course, a disaster.

No denouncing of staff for us though. By the time Lin Biao was crashing into the Mongolian steppes, following the alleged abortive coup against Mao, I was enduring the authoritarian strictures of the kind of regime that would have been a prime target in China. Surely if Comrades Deng and Liu could be denounced and struggled against, then the Black Gang of Meyers, Welch and Pierce, whose crimes were everyday apparent to students at Killarney Heights High, were worthy of at least one dàzìbào. Not for us The Thoughts of Chairman Mao - rather - The 1000 Concerns of A.M Meyers.

At some point though, there was a real time intersection between my Australian childhood and events in China. In 1976, whilst immersed in my final year HSC, I bought a short-wave radio. Nightly, I tuned in to the Voice of America and Radio Peking. 1976 was a biggie in Chinese History - the death of Zhou Enlai,, the second purging of Deng Xiaouping, the death of Mao Tse-Tung, the arrest and imprisonment of the Gang of Four, the post-Mao power struggle. I would spend some time going over my study notes, then take a break listening to the martial female voice on Radio Peking that barked the latest production figures and loudly denounced the Gang. That was a time!

As Exhibit A, consider this elementary school textbook cover from Guangxi province.



compared with, say, this one from NSW.