Australian lore, bush tucker, and digeridoo music

The chef was Capes, an aboriginal man we met at Monkey Mia. A dozen tourists from England, Scotland, Canada and Australia followed him into the bush, where he threw a broken branch of acacia onto a fire he'd built earlier. For the promised bush tucker, he spread the coals with a stick and laid out two whole mullets, turning them by the tail with his bare hands at the right moment. When they were done, he deftly flipped them open on a branch of dry wattle. Cooked to perfection, the moist white meat was soon cool enough to eat with our fingers.

In the deepening darkness, our host pointed up at the Southern Cross, called by his people the emu in the sky. For them, the seasonal changes in the constellations - seen in the shifting position of the emu - revealed the right time to harvest the huge bird's eggs.

Another cultural lesson involved the importance of kinship. Capes, he told us, was a nickname; his real name was much longer, and saying it in full meant naming several forebears. For small groups of semi-nomadic people, awareness of kinship and clan designations enabled rules that prevented marriages between people who were too closely related.

At last it was time to play music. The women got clapsticks, while the men and boys were given the chance to try playing the digeridoo. Capes explained how the instrument is made demonstrated how to play it. Then the two young boys and the men in the group had a go. Easier said than done, the men acknowledged, but the boys began to pick up the technique.

Great Barrier Reef unlike a breakwater or garden wall

Far from being a barrier, the world's most famous reef is an enormous ecosystem comprised of living coral. The aerial view reveals its overall nature best.

Approached by boat, the reef is visible first as islets with waves breaking against them. Seen from below the waterline, the variety of coral of every conceivable shape and size is part of a teeming city of sea life, including enormous schools of fish. Below left, tiny fish swim along a sandy highway between coral cliffs.

  

Convict creations preserved in Perth

Government House, built for the governors largely by convict labour, was first occupied in 1863. Below left is the convict-built Barracks Arch, the last remains of the home built for the Pensioner Force who came out as guards on the ships that carried the convicts. Not far from Fremantle Prison, these warehouses stand as reminders of Australia's past history as a destination for criminals "transported" from England. Often the crime was being so poor they had to steal food, as poignantly portrayed in "The Fields of Athenry."

 

Tall glass towers reduce world's cities to a bland similarity

Left: Opposite Sydney's Central Train Station, these generic giants show their Australian identity only by the odd flower growing bravely between them -- a Gymea lily. Looming over the unique beauty of the Opera House and the historic Sydney Harbour bridge (below), enormous new buildings blot out the older sites around Circular Quay. The same trend holds in Perth and Melbourne, Toronto and Vancouver, Beijing and Shanghai. Along with the politically embarrassing statues now being torn down, the unique history of the world's varied cities is steadily being erased. Apparently in service of capitalism.

A well-travelled Boab tree

Now growing happily in King's Park, this boab tree, called Gija Jumulu for the Gija people, has not always lived in Perth, Australia. Ten years ago, it made a journey of 32,000 km from the East Kimberly, dropping two tons of water on the way. About 750 years old, it could double that age. Uprooted to make way for roadbuilders, this venerable tree is now cared for by arborists, and attracts many visitors to the botancial gardens.

The giant boab tree is the source of one of Ian White's Australian Bush Flower Essences. Boab essence sweeps out the energy of prejudice and negative family patterns, clearing the way for healthier and more positive habits of thought.

The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty

Young and well-educated, Officer Sean Duffy works among mature provincial colleagues for the Carrickfergus police in Northern Ireland. It's 1981, and Belfast is burning. The lone "Catholic" in a station of "Proddies" (though the cops are not religious), Sean observes the false categories and black and white thinking as his station is challenged with a rash of apparent anti-gay killings and a seeming suicide.

The funeral of Bobby Sands is over. With other hunger strikers dying in the Maze, an obdurate Thatcher cuts short a Belfast visit, reiterating her refusal to "negotiate with terrorists." Meanwhile, strict social divisions are enforced by threats and violence: Catholic or Protestant, Orange or Green, from here or from "over the water." Like Anna Burns in Milkman, McKinty uses such chillingly simple phrases to telegraph extreme social tensions.

Sean Duffy wants only to solve certain crimes and prove himself. He senses the first three deaths are connected -- to each other and to the political situation. True, homosexuality is illegal, and gays are pariahs, but he reasons ironically that Northern Ireland "doesn't do hate crimes." Anyone who wants to kill, he tells his colleagues, just joins one of the paramilitary organizations.

Along with the two murdered gay men, a young woman was found hanged, an apparent suicide. But the pathology report is ambiguous, and also reveals that she recently gave birth. She's the divorced ex of a long-jailed IRA operative. For Sean, her death smacks of political revenge rather than the standard Irish trope of guilt and depression caused by having an "illegitimate" baby.

In this tale of twists and turns, the first of the Troubles Trilogy, the author portrays his setting with an unerring voice. As well as capturing a unique time and place, this novel raises universal social questions along with tension-building story questions. Fortunately, the fascinating but deeply flawed Sean Duffy returns in future works, where the reader can see what he's learned from his first foray into Carrickfergus policing.

I found this novel far more convincing and thought-provoking than Adrian McKinty's more recent work, The Chain. I look forward to reading the sequels to follow Sean's development as a character trying to survive in a bizarrely challenging place and moment in history.

The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan

I was up till 3:30 finishing this novel. The title says a lot. A bilingual triple entendre, the word ruin has a couple of meanings in Irish, as the author explains in a note. It can mean a secret, a hidden thing, but has also long been used as a term of endearment. All three meanings are evoked in this tale of tragedy and secrets and distrust. Author Dervla McTiernan handles harsh material well, portraying the bureaucratic and personal dysfunction in police and social services, as well as the desperately hard lives of children who are or should be taken into care.

Jack's apparent suicide is really a murder: he's caught witnessing a nefarious deed. On the face of it, what ties the dead man to his killer seems to be pure chance. But the killer was also a foster child -- one whose reaction to early trauma is utterly different from Jack's.