While the billionaires play dice with numbers

In this fast-paced world we so often see something in the news with its click-bait headlines and Gosh Wow Look at That vibe and then the next day something else grabs our interest and whatever it was yesterday is gone like a candle on a birthday cake.

And that’s a pity.

At the moment the news is full of the roller coaster ride on the stock exchanges. I suppose that’s important to those with investment portfolios or those with money in superannuation but there’s not much (nothing) they can do about it while the billionaires play dice with numbers.

Meanwhile, the massive floods that have swept across the Australian outback are still causing havoc, even if most everybody has forgotten about them. Let’s put this into scale. This is dry country. The average annual rainfall is generally between 150 and 250 mm. That’s not to say it never floods out there and sometimes that’s welcome. The water fills the dams and the aquifers and in time filters down to the life blood of the Australia desert, the Great Artesian Basin. But this flood was huge.

As an article in The Guardian explains, “The extent of flood waters that have engulfed Queensland over the past fortnight is so widespread it has covered an area more than four times the size of the United Kingdom. The inundation is larger than France and Germany combined – and is even bigger than Texas.”

And while social media has moved on to the next sensation, the people in the towns and cattle stations out there wait for the water to recede so they can rebuild their lives. Living out there is never easy, whatever the colour of your skin. Governments concentrate their spending on the big cities around the coast. That’s where the votes are, after all. Bureaucrats come up with regulations that might work in Brisbane but are stupid in little country towns. Outback roads don’t get the funding they need. Even the mighty Bruce Highway which runs up the East Coast for most of its length and is recognized as the most dangerous road in the country becomes a two-lane B road in far too many places. What chance for the roads and bridges and fences destroyed by this flood? Oh, people have been given funds to help but nowhere near enough. Thousands of sheep and cattle have died, let alone native wildlife.

This short video gives an impression of the heartache out there, when you do what you can but it’s not enough.

Stock feed is coming in on helicopters to feed stranded animals. But the people need help, too. They need fresh water, supplies, medical help – and it’s coming via the military until the roads can be reopened, which might be weeks. They’ll be facing ruined homes and shops. They’re resilient people out there, they have to be. The mayor of one little town said in an interview that the best thing ordinary Aussies could do to help was give it a month or so and then go and visit. When the water has receded – the Outback will bloom. The little towns need tourist dollars – and visitors will be rewarded with the rare sight of the flowering desert.

Meanwhile, I’m re-reading Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy. It’s brilliant. The writing is sublime. I wish I could write like that. It’s the legend of King Arthur told by Merlin as it happened. I’m generally not a fan of books written in first person, but this one is a narrative, with Merlin, now an old man, telling the story of his life. It is not fantasy, it’s historical fiction pieced together from the Arthur legends, with just a touch of ‘magic’. It’s a story about real people set in 5th century Britain. If you’ve not read it and that sort of thing floats your boat, give it a try. The first book is The Crystal Cave.

“When I rode back along the lake-side the sun was setting, and a light mist wreathed along the water’s surface. It made the island seem a long way off, and floating, so that one might well imagine it ghostly, and ready to sink under a random foot. The sun, sinking in splendour, caught the crags, and sent them flaming up from the dark hangers of trees behind. In this light the strange formations of the rock looked like high embattled towers, the crest of a sunlit castle standing above the trees. I looked, thinking of the legends, then looked again, and reined Strawberry in sharply and sat staring. There, across the flat sheen of the lake, above the floating mist, was the tower of my dream again. Macsen’s Tower, whole once more and built out of the sunset.”

Stewart, Mary. The Hollow Hills (Arthurian Saga Book 2) (p. 293). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.