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Sandy, queen of Green Island
The Easter holidays arrived in the middle of April, with bucketing rain and gusty winds. “The cyclone season's started up north again,” my husband sighed from the back seat of our truck, checking the camping gear packed next to him. “I hope we won't get flooded again, like last year.”
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What About Your Neighbour’s Trauma?
I squeezed my little three year old daughter’s hand as we stood in the crowd, proudly chanting: “Let us be free!” Just then there was a commotion as the soldiers tried to disperse us. One of them knocked my daughter’s tiny head with the back of his gun and she ended up in my arms.
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From a Diary of a Farmer
In the late 1960s I grew up in my grandmother’s house that was surrounded by a small organic farm that fed whole our family.
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Gina’s Business Trip to Mar-a -Lago
My previous boss's wife invited me to meet Gina, our richest person in Australia, who just returned from Mar-a-Lago. She does not speak to press, she said it is bad for business. It is just a story take it with a pinch of salt...
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Once Upon a Time in Perth Western Australia
A true story I needed to write down because it was happening in front of my eyes and I needed to somehow make sense of it and like always it makes me realise more than ever, it is so easy to be racist and so hard not to be, it is so easy to feel like you are better than others and so hard not to ...
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A Mother’s Travel Across Australia
The pair of them were working on new solar panel fields around Darwin, stretching as far as our eyes could see. “In the next decade, all of Darwin will run on this energy,” my son said proudly as he hugged his girlfriend.
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Meeting an Australian of the Year
“Children have no filters. They ask questions that force us to think more deeply about issues that we haven't considered much before. They know that the ultimate legacy that we leave them is not how much money we have in the bank, but how we leave our planet for the next generation.
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A Glass Eel on the Palm of My Hand
“Hans we both grew up in very different world, you a free person not even afraid to change your sex or be in the centre of attention but I am just like my glass eel, transparent and barely visible kept in a glass jar.”
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Australiana and Pollyanna
Polly licked her finger and touched the red dirt their ute was covered in while waiting for her dad to fill up the petrol on the remote petrol station up North the Gulf of Carpentaria
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What Do Nikolai Gogol, Dalai Lama and Jeff Bezos Have in Common?
There was nothing else to be said. Maybe the monk was right, the real enemies lie inside us not outside of us…we humans are our own worst enemies…
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Sometimes All There Is Left to Do Is Leave
’Just read Alexi Navalny’s instagram post, of Russians not become a nation of frightened silent people but you know Sergei was in our Moscow bank yesterday and bankers discuss financial plans like nothing happened.’ ‘What mothers of those boys in Volgograd did except crying their eyes out ?'
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Sofiyko’s choice
“Do you remember the movie Sophia’s choice?” my Ukrainian friend asked me suddenly. “The one with your favourite actress Meryl Streep I sent you on a CD many years back?” ‘Sofiyko’ smiled at me from the WhatsUp screen: “I still have it,’ she quickly added:”Had it, stayed behind in the rubble."
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Is There Any Point in Creative Writing Anymore?
I wrote another creative piece about a snake on my path but again HubPages automatic duplicate system rejected it claiming again I used some words that are duplicate. I am too tired to scratch my head as I did in my university time and guess if the word is snake or vaccination?
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Before Time Defeats Us
In ten thousands years our idea of time and our progress through universe might be very different to our idea of time of today. In many ways it is challenge and what kind of time systems and time cultures we want to have in ten thousands years but also in in hundred years or ten years?
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We Love Only What We Understand
Those Fleeting Serendipitous Connections of Ours teach us in the end we will value only what we love, we love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught...
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Power and Prejudice
Casual encounter with the 24. Prime Minister of Australia and Nanda people representative. Two main questions stayed unanswered: 'Australia's first settlers, who were they?' Australia's future inhabitants who they will be?'
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Isolation Is Australia’s DNA.
Our desert heart beats together with the tropics of the north. Our many Oceans create vast never ending blue frame. It is the foundation stone of its remote country towns and communities and the frame around the isolated capital cities. Yes it is unusual place. Isolation is Australia’s DNA.
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Jozef, Maria and a baby Jesus
We all depend on our shared morality, agreed norms of behaviour, mutual trust, altruism and a sense of "all-of-us-together." THE LIBERTY CRAVED BY 'ME' COULD BE SUSTAINED ONLY BY 'US'.
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We Are Born to Share
‘Hear this, my friend. Love is a precious object. it cannot be given to anybody. Love is a respectful object. It is, but to suffer and enjoy. Love is a great and wealthy object. Mountains fall and ashes remain. It becomes a fire for the heart. It makes kings servants. Love is a confident object.
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Let Us Keep Our Order, Our Unity and Our Charity as It Is All We Have Left.
There is no order without charity, there is no charity when the full forget starving and where there is no order there is no unity Looking out for peace is our duty, it is everyone’s duty, if there is no peace, there is no justice, where there is no justice, there is no community and no state.
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Ask Me After the Election.
"If you want to bring the world closer to peace, be a peacemaker by creating peace whenever you can. If you find yourself engaged in an argument that only stirs anger in the heart, quickly make peace and carry on.” Suzy Kassem
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Paranoia and Fear Make People Act Inhumanely.
"Fear has a large shadow, but fear itself is small. “Move, but don't move the way fear makes you move"! Move like a free bird~~
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Once Upon a Time in Red and Blue Midwest
Rosie beamed at her squeezing her hand: “I hope there will be more colours in America once than only blue and red, it is time for us to be more multicoloured and more equal.” “We can do it Rosie, we can do it.” Josie picked her hand up to bang on the first door in the first line of run down houses.
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A Boy From the West Coast of Australia and a Girl From Midwest America
Abbey sent a whole line of thumbs up. Bryan smiled to himself, closing his phone and grabbing his surfboard. He whispered to the wind.... if only today's politicians could hear him. The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
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Let Us All Respect Quiet Rural Life
The lockdown eased with the early summer and people are out and about visiting rural wineries and country manors for fundraising purposes. Let us all respect quiet rural life and its residents if you can please…
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We, Three Kings, of ...............
The three kings rule their walled off kingdoms with their iron fists. What about the rest of the world? The rest of the world, they just divide between them or fight over it, as they see fit. What about the rest of us?
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Nowhere to Run Anymore
The everyday life of my predecessors was never remote from history. The past was always there, wrapped in my Grandmum’s bedside stories. A place of shadow, pain and defeat. Wars, famine and pandemics, fragments of extremes in human inhumanity
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Life Versus Death or Young Versus Old
The young people of today demand more from those Prius Dusters who still occupy government posts. Don’t worry. They picked up your flag. Everyone will follow them. People have no other road to follow, as climate change creates chaos worldwide.
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My Mum Does Not Care
We came to the crossroads and I replied: “Every leader has a choice - to be a short sighted leader, securing his power and money, or a long sighted leader. He's looking after his own interests and keeping the public happy with enough money in the treasury.” “What is more dirty? Politics or coal?”
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Picking Olives With ‘King Alfred of Wessex’
Alfred picked up his chipped mug and stood up ceremoniously: “Of course, it makes sense, biologically derived materials already fit into how Earth works, spaceship Earth can digest this stuff.” All the backpackers stood up and clinked their mugs: “Cheers to our spaceship captain, cheers to our boss
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Those Who Die Unnoticed in the Time of Pandemics.
If we want to build a better society, COVID-19 isn't the only thing we need to get rid of. What do you want to see left behind when lockdown ends? For me if we leave behind the disregard for human life it will be enough.
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Once We Can Travel Again, What Road Will You Choose to Travel On?
Take the road less travelled Alone or with someone close Just the two of you A lonely planet guide in your back pocket To guide you through an ancient Bulgarian city on the plains of Saskatchewan Or the unspoilt mountains on Polish and Slovak borders Where no one goes
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This Year I Am Not Travelling Around the Globe.
It gives me time to appreciate the law and order and trust we Australians have in each other. It is not a common thing - not everywhere in the world, as I have found many times on my travels.
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Lock Down; Down Under and Everywhere
My last cycling trip down the road A few middle aged men in lycra Wave from a 1.5 m distance Riding the opposite way Their faces covered by masks Headphones tight in their ears While they push up the hill Their faces red with exhaustion Wrinkled with worry
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The Fear of Unknown Virus Make People to Consume Less
The fear of unknown virus when people consume and waste less dirty energy companies are truly unhappy as the demand for their oil slow down their profit suffers while the nature can flourish for a short time again…
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Our Students Proved by Their Example That Jolly Fat Santa Is a Myth.
Until you believe you have options, you'll continue to feel stuck. People are making life choices from a position of scarcity and fear. Fear is a false story. Effort is the best indicator of success. If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.
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A Distant Relative of ‘tasmanian Devil’
Some humans put them on top of power and admiration for its unpredictability and sheer animal viciousness. These humans do it for their own personal gains they should be aware they are dealing with pests that feed on everything even their own.
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Random Discussions With Random People
We all clink our glasses and realized that many questions we ask today are not questions we ever find answers too but maybe we do not even need to because we know what we have to do and that is all that matter at the end no?
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One Old Man and One Old Kangaroo
I wanted to ask my neighbor where and when in that sudden pursuit of national pride and profit making at any cost one can cross that invisible border from kindness to unkindness? Do we even realize when we cross the line and what will be the cost of crossing it to all of us?
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The Emperor's New Clothes and Greta
I’m sure you saw Greta Thunberg at the UN General Assembly. Her speech was visceral – it was gut-wrenching. It was hard to watch. But it needed to be said. We’re part of a movement, a movement that is gaining traction and forcing people to listen, to act.
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Welcome to ‘Bleak Land’
Welcome to Bleak Land, welcome to our bleak world where custodians of our planet lack knowledge and expertise or even will power or motivation to govern our complicated unsustainable world towards sustainability and peace and reasonable fairness for all its inhabitants.
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Go and Knock Yourself Down
“We have our own revolution now nanny, don’t we, green revolution?” “Yes my beautiful one and it is your revolution now, so you still have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe in when you grow up.”
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Follow Mcmurray Road Across the World
Anthony winked at him: “Lucky us truly.” They continued their quiet ride among their beloved green giants they loved so much and they loved back even more providing shelter, food and air every day for the rest of their lives.
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Welcome to the World’s Largest Black Hole of Greed
Developed and also many developing countries are adopting the universal health care but ‘Trumpland’ likes its’ universal healthy wealthy care’ and there is the reason why.
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Living Your Own Big Story
“Who am I?” One catholic priest asked one renowned astrophysicist. “You are a collection of particles governed by the law of physics.” He replied.
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Living in a Stolen ‘fish and Chips’ Land
Sophie listened to the story and suddenly stopped me: “But Fish and Chips are not Australian, they are English, she stole them from us no?”
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Meeting at a Jewish Synagogue
I winked at him: “It seems a family trait to want to grow things fast hey, I am sure Atta would be proud of you, we will continue to grow his company, the Kiwi and Aussie partnership, there is still time.”
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A Land to Be Loved, a People to Be Hated
One of the soldiers stopped and lifted up his gun. He was coming towards their hiding place. Saranda had a feeling that he was looking straight at her. Her legs were heavy, she couldn’t run, she couldn’t move. Then the man turned towards the approaching woman.
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Three Teachers on a Beach of Sorrow
The student went back to his desk using big black marker to make his statement: ‘There is no such thing as clean coal, our Prime Minister, but there is such a thing called clear conscience!’
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The Unbearable Hotness of Being and the Unbearable Coldness of Being.
I am not afraid to admit that I am an environmentalist. I live in a bush and my best past time is to go camping. Recycling is part of my every day life. Like the rest of us I am seduced and horrified by a devilish problem of climate change. The deadly problem for humanity that is immediate and dista
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One Old Man, One Young Man and the Highest Mountain in the World
The bus-ride from Kathmandu to the mountains was 9 hours long, that was one rough journey in the overcrowded rickety old vehicle. I noticed one old local man barely holding onto the rails. He reminded me of you, Pop. You would not have enjoyed it either.
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Talking to a Man Who Has Died 40,000 Years Ago.
Jim Bowler, late in his 70s lives in a bush hut close to Lake Mungo. Lake Mungo ceased to exist 40, 000 years ago becoming a dusty rocky unforgiving place far away from civilization as you can imagine.
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What Does a True Progress Really Mean or Less Is More and the Greener Is Better.
I tip my hat off to these young people and I believe our future will be good because once all those old self important overweight and rich mostly males die who rule our world today and rule it so badly, once they are gone IT WILL BE THEIR TURN AND THEY SEEM TO HAVE IT RIGHT DON’T YOU THINK SO?
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A Red Rose Of December
Attending to my red roses that bloom so beautifully every December on my hot and dusty down under farm I alway come back in my memories to my childhood and the first paper rose I picked up from the frozen ground in Christmas time
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The Bay Leaves of Australia
Refugees unlike Australians that take charge of their county and name it, they just want to go quietly around their daily business and work hard to eventually bring out the best in Australia, to round it out, complete it
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What Is Your Destination to Tick off From Your Bucket List?
What about you? Are you going to roam the internet to find less well-known places or you just follow the crowd? People in 99% of countries in the world are crying out for more tourists to show them their original precious culture or nature and help to boost their economies.
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The Sweet Taste of Syria
When I visited Budapest in 2015 the terminals were filled with desperate Syrian refugees that were deported forcefully back. One carriage with those returning against Hungarian orders was set aside and locked with whole families jammed like sardines inside and no air to breathe to teach them lesson.
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Leave the Door Open, I Am Coming Back.
One evening Samira and me have walked along the banks of Swan River adored by blooming bottle brush trees when she stopped and picked up few branches making them into beautiful wild Australian bouquet. She threw it in the water to remember her mother dying alone in Gaza. Alone but not forgotten...
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Travelling With Respect
OUR HIGHEST CURRENCY IS RESPECT
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Keeping an Open Door for Veiled and Unveiled
Walking to my backapacker’s through Montreal’s cobbled narrow streets I was reflecting on the Quebec’s politics. The fact that Montrealers were prepared to sit outside all night to bring in more refugees shows that Legault's populist anti-immigration popularity is running out of steam
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I Spend My Time on This Earth Doing My Bit. That Is All I Can Do.
I am my OWN MAN AND I have my OWN MISSION. I do not have time to question if God is there or not, I do not have time to question if communist ideology is the best for people. I do not I do not have time if making big bucks is solution to all of our problems. I do my bit every day that is all I can.
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From Tasmania to Florida and Back
“The flaws make people special and the gun shots kill them.” When I was child, my Mum used to say to my brother,
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For whom the red desert sings, for the brave girl from the Alice Spring
The proud Warlpiri woman peers at the bushland across the street from her mother’s place at the edge of the Alice Spring’s township. She is about to give a voice to those who have none...
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A Casual Beach Encounter
What was the first piece of rubbish you picked up on a beach, who was the first stranger you met casually on a beach and open your heart to?
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Tramping Alex Knob With One Quiet American
Puffed up and sweaty after three hours of walking up the hill I stopped to admire the view of Franz Jozef Glacier that suddenly appeared out of clouds across the valley. 'I never seen glacier before.'
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There Are No Foreign Lands
it is better just let things pass, forget, move on, you have a good day and you have a bad day, you put it together and that is life...so let us travel together, my fellow traveller through life...
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What Are Your Strategies for Coping With Negativity?
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new, not on fighting the negative, but on building the positive. Socrates
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What If Life Is a Constant Déjà Vu?
Have you been here before? Me too...and we will be here again....
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Have You Found Your Soul Mate Yet?
We are made of thoughts, emotions, experience, perceptions, perspectives and more and each of us is looking to find their mirror image among other billions of people on this planet
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Dance of a lifetime
A dance of mutual dependency trapped in a rectangle of light each elbowing for a place of their own in the well deserved spotlight
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What Attracts You to Other People?
When I was a little girl, Grandmum told me a secret: "If you really want something, there will be a way." Is it angels or the power of positive thinking? Is it determination to act or the courage to be guided? Between these impulses...
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Are You Ready to End the Drug War Yet?
the science of addiction for a species wired for survival we have an odd habit of getting hooked on things that can kill us and we kill each other for them too... Can we stop drug wars? Can we stop addiction? Can we stop...
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What Is the Best Thing to Do If the Person Whom You Have Forgiven Continue to Hurt You?
She answered with those plaintive eyes on full beam, "It's always anxiety, Something not done. Someone I've let down..." She carried her own demons from her own childhood, as her friend I have been in the frontline of her...
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What Would You Change in Your Family?
her plaintive eyes said it all, knowingly patting her arm, the words came out of my mouth repeated so many times to overstressed parents, whose children I had in my class. "Do not give up, never give up on your...
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How Would You Best Portray Your Town or City in Pictures?
the most remote big city on earth behind it miles and miles of inert red emptiness, before it tracherous Indian ocean full of sharks, lures you to its shore in Perfect weather blue sheen of a mirror more luminous than glass....
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What Were You Taught/Told When You Were a Kid That in Adult Life You Wished You'd Listened To?
has told me once: "Everything you need for parenting is already inside you, trust your intuition and follow your heart." When I was eleven years old, my Mother I didn't know came to collect me from the Grandmother's house. ...
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The Flying Cyprian Part 2
' ...because I was sad, I began to tell stories, when I lost my voice, I began to write them down, when I lost my sight, I began to play my harp, when the music died in me, I still had my body to feel and hands to touch, I began to heal...'
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The Bride Stripped Bare by an Anonymous Writer (Nikki Gemmell)
‘In the end, when we meet death and the light being takes us to the station of our life, it doesn’t judge, whether we did right or wrong. It will only ask: “Did you love enough?” This alone is the measure.’ (Elke) An anonymous...
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Scattered Images in My Mind - Solitary Journey of a Desert Poet
I approached an old man sitting under an ancient boab tree 'He is a magic healer', its withered leaves whispered to me. I saw a questing traveller thirsty for new sights roaming throughout the western desert, a reflective individual ...
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Scattered Images in My Mind Lost and Found in Blogosphere
' Life is like an ocean voyage and our bodies are the ships, and without a moral compass we would all be cast adrift.' I listened to the lyrics from Tim Minchin's song and I knew I need to keep blogging and hubbing on. Blogging and...
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Scattered Images in My Mind Avatar
AVATAR What will be next? fast, effortless and silent death of our unique human traits Titanic and Avatar the most popular movies of our time satisfy our hunger for the perfect copy of the past we dream to recreate or the future we are looking...
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Scattered Images in My Mind - Christmas
Christmas is here again those gaudy Christmas decorations in the stores from the early November the marketing blitz with colourful dose of good cheer and cheating us of our hard earned money just like every year It invites us to indulge and we do...
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Scattered Images in My Mind 2
Morning Across the sparkling Coral Bay I see sun rising from eternity I stand alone on top of a reef withering heights I am out towards the edge of it By wet or hand, or shine or air it forming force flows everywhere it is the...
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So-Much-Makes-Sense-Once-We-Get-the-Connections - Merry Christmas Everyone
A decade ago my last child was born around the first Christmas we nearly lost him I realised, in this world life is a fickle thing Across the world ten million children die every year Often I find I will go for an hour drive and I...
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So-Much-Makes-Sense-Once-We-Get-the-Connections4
Back to mountains with mud that slides Slippery upon our hiking boots Looking up the hills their gentle, rolling and soothing sides sharp rocky edges hiding in the mist Walking all day taking different paths We are back in Stirling Range...
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So-Much-Makes-Sense-Once-We-Get-the-Connections3
Five years ago I took my youngest son to meet his Grandparents in Europe for the first time Five years ago he opened 'his diary' looked on our aeroplane and scribbled in it: THAI while I bought a new book on the Perth Airport like...
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So-Much-Makes-Sense-Once-We-Get-the-Connections2
Who is Rebiya Kadeer? I asked myself watching 'The 10 Conditions of Love' My Czech friend invited me: " You have to see this controversial documentary about her life." So I attended the Melbourne Premiere one boring Sunday night with a...
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Scattered Images in My Mind
Forget Winter's grey skies, biting winds and heavy rains. Spring descends. It brings its warmth and colour hiding the red and rusting rocks as sea of yellow flowers envelopes the landscape and us Thick and sticky the pollen clings to...