My mail-order album is this a desert ? is now available ...
it's ... a few things I s'pose ...
an ode to the australian continent (lower case proper noun intentional)
... and a diatribe about the way politicians and citizens of the country of Australia using and abusing the concept of 'nothing' or 'desert' or 'noone' in terms of the vast expanses of the 'outback' as a way of lowering the significance of these places.
Language is used politically all the time ... It bugs me that by saying that there is noone out there in the desert or that the land is good for nothing, not even cattle etc etc, you pave the way for things such as nuclear waste dumps which get put in quickly and with very little fuss with little consideration for water-tables and the artesian basins far below that will be affected hundreds of years from now if an accident occurs; immediate surrounding areas; very little press interest ... consequently people believe the rhetoric because they have little interest in places that they have been told are barren and infertile - useless.
It's bizarre that Australia can have a cultural identity that has for a large part been built on this place called the 'outback' ... everyone knows that there's nothing there ... we have a big nothing in our backyard ... but not many Australians have even seen it ... if they did they might realise there's not nothing (double negative) there ... there's places, people, history - recent and distant; concepts of distance are different to the city ... the phrase "down the road" means a lot further than when you were a kid riding your skateboard to the milk-bar for a mars bar.
If you'd like to have a copy ... click is this a desert ?
Sunday, October 1
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