Sunday, January 14, 2007

Deni Sun Festival - benign reality?

Had the pleasure on Friday and Saturday of dropping down to the park in the middle of Deniliquin and enjoying the delights of the Sun Festival.

It was very easy to be at. The weather was very pleasant. There was a good balance of sunshine and shade from heaps of trees. There was music ( jazz ), icecream, Dennis Murphy's excellent puppet show entertaining young and old, a small market, a range of different activities for kids, vintage car display and more. There was water in the billabong and birds and kids in the trees. Generally speaking, people were behaving quite well as well. It was easy to be there.

The organisers were to be congratulated. The world, at least that part of it, was a better place because of it. I wonder how we can do something similar more often in our lives?

I suspect that a goodly portion of how it worked was a spirit of cooperation. There was nothing desperate about it. When little bits of distress surfaced it was pretty easy to not take notice of them and to concentrate on the beauty of the park and creativity of the people in it.

I wonder what it would take to get that to happen more on the national and global levels?

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Southern Rest and Recuperation

Been down south in Deniliquin for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year and starting to feel like I've been on hols. We went for a bike ride with young Peter this afternoon. Out through the houses and into the bush. The roo tracks and forestry roads make for great fun especially when they zoom down into the dry old river beds or billabongs. The forest is so dry with summer and drought. Everything is crackly but then it's down to the river with its gently flowing irrigation water.



It's such a luxury to be riding along beside a river and not being on a concrete or bitumen bikepath - ducks, blue wrens, cormorant in the water.

Wwwwhhhh. What's that. Kangaroos bounding off. Sorry kangaroos. You could have stayed.