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
treacherous Indian ocean
full of sharks,
lures you to its shore
in Perfect weather
blue sheen of a mirror
more luminous
than glass.
MY FIRST IMPRESSION;
THE IMAGE IN MY MIND
IMPRINTED THERE
FROM THE FIRST SIGHT
OF MY FUTURE HOME
UP FROM THE AIR...
Watching blood-red sun
spreading golden rays
on the ocean horizon
in approaching night,
you dream to cross it
with a pirate flag
flapping high
proudly
freely
in the bitter wind,
all the way to Africa.
Each night you play
'dare me if you can'
games in your head,
planning travelling trips
to every part of the world,
to wake up again
bathing in morning sunshine,
feeling good,
you walk out of the door,
green streets
of your large,
modern
and clean
city
embrace you
and you know
you stay
in this most lonely place
that few pop in to visit
and not many
are aware
of its existence....
THE SECOND IMAGE
IN MY MIND
OF THE FIRST FEW WEEKS
OF SETTLING IN....
A lonely outpost
down under
with its sharp and radiant light
and yet
you will never see
the bluer city sky.
Walking above
the azure basin
of the Swan River,
in one of the largest
and finest parks
in the world
located on a bluff
you marvel on the beauty below
the pan aromatic view
of tall skyscrapers
pure golden sunlight
bouncing off their steel and glass.
THE THIRD IMAGE IN MY MIND
OF INTRODUCING
MY NEW HOME CITY
TO MY FAMILY
VISITING ME
FROM EUROPE...
Lost among
the endless lawns
and flower beds
you find a long,
lovely avenue
of tall white gum trees.
Planted long time ago
to commemorate the fallen
who went to fight foreign wars.
Farmers, shearers and wanderers
full of mischief and mistrust
of an authority
ready for adventure
and lose their lives
if necessary
among the foreigners.
No other nations,
as a proportion of population,
lost more men.
With passing years
their memory is more alive
than ever before.
Australians are immensely proud,
not of the heroes
who fought
and won the foreign wars,
but those 'unlucky buggers',
who died for no reason at all
and became a legend
of 'mateship and fair go'.
THE FOURTH IMAGE
IN MY MIND
THE DAY OF MY CITIZENSHIP CEREMONY
THE DAY I BECOME AUSTRALIAN....
The perfume and bright foliage
envelopes you
in the botanical garden
with 25,000 species of plants
you have never seen before,
a third of them never been named
or studied,
surviving fire and prolonged drought,
thriving in the very poor soil
and isolation
just like its own inhabitants.
Isolation is the golden card
for the country
that seems on the outside
hostile to the life.
For 50 millions of years
invisible island
without name and place on the map
sheltered indigenous life forms,
eucalypts in the plant world,
marsupials in the animal world,
to prosper
without any competition
or outside danger to its shores...
Isolated within and out,
scattered pockets of life
separated by great zones
of harshness
and inhospitably.
Just down,
below my city,
in the South-West
where city folks
buy their weekend homes
and cottages,
the abundance of plant species
is unimaginable,
no less than 12,000 of them
grow nowhere else in the world.
THE FIFTH IMAGE
IN MY MIND
THE DAY I BECOME A TEACHER;
A SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT TEACHER
IN MY NEW HOMELAND....
If the South is the holiday Playground
for residents of my city,
the harsh North is where they find their work.
A rancher in 1952,
while piloting a light aircraft
over the trackless emptiness
of the Hamersley Range
near the North coast
lost his bearings in a sudden storm
and made a forced landing
in a zone of flat rock
known to geology as the Western Shield.
He was standing on an almost solid iron
and owned a 100-km-long block of it.
By the end of 1960
he controlled the iron ore reserves
greater than those of USA and Canada
combined.
His daughter who inherited it all,
is the richest person in Australia
and among the ten richest people in the world.
It was the beginning
of the greatest mineral booms
in modern history,
mineral deposits
were found
suddenly
all over
the inhospitable North.
Bauxite, nickel, uranium,
copper lead,
diamonds, tin, zinc,
magnesium and lots of gold...
From a sleepy and good-natured
producer of wool,
Western Australia became a mining colossus,
the world's biggest exporter of minerals,
and much of the wealth
settled in its capital.
THE SIXTH IMAGE IN MY MIND;
THE IMAGE OF SPLIT UP FAMILIES
HUSBANDS LIVE AND WORK UP NORTH
FLY IN AND FLY OUT
OF THEIR HOMES.
THEIR WIFES ACCUSTOMED TO LIVE ALONE
AND THEIR KIDS USE NET
TO GET GLIMPSE OF THEIR MISSING FATHERS....
Before my relatives flew out,
back to their home,
the taxi driver drove them proudly
through sprawling residential zones
of startling
showing wealth,
Nedlands, Dalkeith, Peppermint Grove,
where palatial houses
basked in the penetrating sunshine
for miles
day in and day out.
Trophy homes
with big gates
and garages
for fleets of cars,
broad patios
and ugly Grecian urns
on ornate plinths
unfitted for this unique landscape.
They looked at the driver
in a sheer wonderment:
"Why did you drive us here?"
And he just laughed,
good-heartedly:
"I don't live here and bugger you if I will,
I have lovely small cottage up the hill."
They nodded their heads
and suddenly they could understand,
why Aussies resent so much
'tall poppies',
those vain and spoilt people
who like to show off their wealth,
and no one is better for it.
On the way to airport,
he winked at them and added:
"See you next time guys,
my parents come from Europe as well,
never been there,
but apparently,
you built your houses with more taste."
They thanked him,
adding
that not the buildings
but open space and people
make this place
worth of visit and they will back.
He waved his hand
and shouted from his window:
"Our Western suburbs
are just 'snobs' paradise'
and a 'pain in my ass."
He speeded off
chuckling to himself,
they never saw him again,
and yet,
this cheeky larrikin
represents our city for them
his image
pops up in our telephone conversation
now and then...
IN MY LAST IMAGE
THERE IS JUST A QUESTION
TO BE ASKED:
"Do you wonder,
why 1.3 millions of people
of a free society
would choose to live here?"