My Mother, two brothers and their families live in Perth, Australia and now my nephews and nieces have reached the marrying age, so trips to attend weddings occur frequently. I was in Perth in January for a wedding and I just returned y’day from attending another delightful wedding. Perth is on the other side of the world from Atlanta and it takes about 34 hours to reach there door to door. There and back takes 68 hours and if you call it 72 hours then it is 3 days travel. I was gone a week so 3 days travel for a 4 day visit. But well worth it.
You cannot make a threat with impunity and Australia’s prime minister learned this when he said he would “shirt front” (grab a guy by the front of his shirt) Russian president Putin over the destruction of the Malaysian airplane which carried > 30 Australians. This threat was intended for Putin’s visit to Brisbane for the G20 summit last weekend. But when I arrived 2 days before the summit, Australia was distracted by the sudden appearance of a Russian flotilla including a nuclear armed cruiser, a heavily armed destroyer, a large tug boat and supply ship, and maybe a submarine. There was much discussion and some anxiety about their purpose, whether they would enter Australian waters etc. In the event nothing happened but I don’t think Putin will be verbally threatened again by an Australian PM.
Australia is a beautiful country and with wealth derived over the past decade from its natural resource sales to China, an excellent infrastructure. In Perth real estate is highly priced and more relevant to me is the cost of more than AU$4 for a “flat white” coffee (similar to a latte). But the big decline in iron ore, coal and copper prices as a result of the slow down in China, has hurt the economy, produced budget deficits and weakened the currency from more than US$1 a few years ago to US 0.86 per Australian dollar on my recent visit. Which made the high prices more swallowable.
Australia, the birthplace of Permaculture, after much agonizing took a tack away from regulating CO2 emissions. With the recent U.S./China agreement on steps to combat climate change, it was caught wrong footed and there was some embarrassment. It has to manoeuvre adroitly to keep both its banker (China) and its bodyguard (U.S.) happy. A day after it was censored by the U.S. for not doing enough about climate change, it was happy to report a new free tariff agreement with China.
I like to find an Australian book to read on the journey back – fiction or non fiction, I don’t mind. A nephew mentioned Monash and I bought the paperback “Monash – the outsider who won the war” by Roland Perry. Monash was an Australian general and is credited with organizing and executing the fierce attacks on the German positions in the first world war, which broke the German army and ended the war. I was unaware of this. He is described as an “outsider” for good reason. He was a volunteer not regular army, he was from Australia not Britain, his family was from Germany (though he was born in Australia) and in WWI anyone of German descent was regarded with suspicion, and finally he was Jewish. Who would have thought that someone with this background would achieve such power and regard.
I have fired up the wood stove and wait for this early Arctic chill to abate. Some say it will be a harsh winter. My greens are holding up and the chicken were cheered when I tossed them some scratch. No sign of life from the bee hive – hopefully they will emerge when it warms up the next couple days.