| #vicfires |
[10 Feb 2009|09:12am] |
Leave the house, the family home.
It's only mortar, sticks and stone.
You are flesh and blood and bone.
White ash.
A necklace,
A watch,
A wedding ring.
A burned-out car.
Put down the garden hose
And run like hell.
Though Elvis is an angel,
He too must fall.
|
|
| Summertime |
[08 Feb 2009|01:18pm] |
Summertime is when I sit down with a pen and try to pour forth words and stories from the contents of my head.
Yet year by year I've felt the source narrowing from a flood to a rivulet to a trickle. It's listless now, drought season, a few shallow pools of ideas lingering in a cracked, dry riverbed. Stirring through these murky puddles, there are glimpses of things that might have been. Ideas nestle back into the mud like heavy toads; the main thing now is to persist and to survive.
Flourishing is for another season altogether.
|
|
| Who |
[07 Jan 2009|04:01pm] |
|
*materialise*
*exposition*
*run*
*run*
*scream*
*technobabble*
*run*
*run*
*technobabble*
*explody*
*exposition*
*dematerialise*
|
|
| Ain't It Heavy |
[17 Dec 2008|08:19pm] |
| Exercise | Weight |
|---|
| Back Squat | 67kg |
| Bench Press | 40.5kg |
| Clean and Jerk | 44kg |
| CrossFit Total1 | 409 |
| Deadlift2 | 93kg |
| Front Squat | 49.5kg |
| Overhead Press | 34kg |
| Power Clean | 48kg |
Bodyweight |
62kg |
1. "CrossFit Total" (PDF, 281KB) is (Back Squat + Overhead Press + Deadlift) in lb.
2. I could probably physically lift more, but I have only 93kg of weights to work with.
|
|
| Godspeed, Dorothy |
[10 Dec 2008|05:47pm] |
Dorothy was generous enough to write back in response to the letter I sent her. I had the privilege once of seeing her read her own work. She was a person I was lucky enough to have met, not just a name on my bookshelf.
|
|
| MP3 Shuffle Poetry Meme |
[06 Dec 2008|02:48pm] |
Put your MP3 player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first is the title.
Keep It Comin'
Once upon a time...
(Huh? Get a job?)
Been looking up some recipes for mixing sugar and honey.
No one's picking up the phone.
I got me some horses to ride on, to ride on.
She came from Planet Claire.
Bouncing off of clouds we were.
Just for a change I got no money to spend.
You're not safe in this house
When I reach to hold you.
We're just a little starving.
Summer of love, summer of love.
Now that we've met.
Mother said straight ahead, not to delay or be misled.
It was a thousand pound weight.
Then it was frozen.
You're gone, the trees are so quiet.
Directing traffic.
Dearest darling momsy and popsicle.
(Whooo! Uh.)
|
|
| Beagle Unstitched |
[27 Nov 2008|09:47pm] |
|
Rory's stitches came out today. She's doing very well indeed.
|
|
| Beagle Shaped Space |
[13 Nov 2008|07:45am] |
Rory is at the Animal Referral Hospital, to undergo surgery for Intervertebral Disc Disease.
We left her there overnight last night to avoid another two bumpy uncomfortable car rides between the consult and the surgery; being in the car only aggravates the excruciating neck pain she's been experiencing. Best for her to spare her the discomfort, but there was a beagle-shaped space in the house where she wasn't - on the couch, in her crate, in the crook of my knees when I sleep - which I don't like at all.
I'm hoping and praying all goes well today. She may have four legs, a tail and awful breath, but she's my little girl and I want her back home where she belongs.
|
|
| Photo Meme |
[19 Sep 2008|10:18pm] |
Take a picture of yourself right now.
* Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
* Post that picture with NO editing.
* Post these instructions with your picture.
Friday night, after a long week at work, two beers and no dinner.
|
|
| The Tragedy of the Abandoned Blog |
[28 Jun 2008|12:09pm] |
It's a sad thing indeed when a favourite blogger stops maintaining their site. How long before you cancel your RSS feed? How long before you stop wistfully visiting just in case? How long before virtual tumbleweeds and dust bunnies accrue?
Gubernatrix last posted on April 19th. Since then, not a peep.
Anyone else mourn some neglected corner of cyberspace, and hope for its return?
|
|
| Anzac Cove |
[25 Apr 2008|06:38pm] |
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
- Ataturk, Memorial of Anzac Cove
|
|
| So It Is Written |
[26 Mar 2008|09:55pm] |
"I didn't know you wrote," said one of the guys at work today.
It used to be that I was known for little else except writing, me with my notebook compulsively in hand, scribbling on the bus, at lunch, wherever and whenever an idea surfaced.
Today when he said that, I had to stop and think about when I last put pen to paper and came out with a piece of fiction. And it would really have to be as long ago as NaNoWriMo 2006, for which I managed barely half a dozen pages.
I went digging on my hard drive at work for things I had written, found the original typed-up version of "Embodiment", my NaNoWriMo 2004 piece. I re-read the whole thing, fifty thousand words of roughest draft - plot discrepancies, inconsistent characterisations, egregious typos, all poured out in one three-week marathon of scrawl - in one sitting.
And you know? For what it is, it really isn't bad at all.
|
|
| Further Posts from the Road: Mudgee - Lithgow - Sydney |
[23 Feb 2008|04:11pm] |
It seemed such a pretty camping ground: lush, soft green grass underfoot, the park all set about with trees, a riverbank just beyond the treeline. There was even a small, convenient tree to lean my bike up against. The soil was dense enough to hold the tent pegs firmly, yet not so hard that I needed to hammer them in. All this for $15 a night, and conveniently just two blocks from the tourist information centre where my coach would be departing in the morning.
My tent pole snapped while I was putting the tent up. The metal cracked and sheared right through. Bugger. No problem. It's only the foot end. It's only sagging a little.
I left the bike box leaning up against the opposite side of the convenient tree, ready for the trek to the coach stop in the morning.
It was still hot when I crawled into bed, still late evening, not long after sunset. I eschewed the sleeping bag, draped the liner over me like a sheet. The day's heat dispersed as the night wore on - and then the wind rose...
You could hear it creeping through the trees, a malicious, puckish breeze, before it rolled over the tent and left it shuddering. The bike box bumped against the tree trunk, a muffled, hollow sound. The corrugated roof of the camp kitchen, just across the grass, groaned. Then there was a thud, as the box hit the side of my tent, crested it like a surfer does a wave, and rolled onto the grass a few metres away. I peeked out to see my bike lying on its side, and the contents of the box - mudguards, fork spacer, packing tape - scattered about the place.
I wheeled the bike into the camp kitchen, wedged it between a table and the wall with the box alongside it, and crawled back into my tent to pretend sleep for a few more hours.
I'd set my alarm for 5am, but I was wide awake at quarter to, still listening to the wind in the trees, so I got up and packed up. Wheeling my bike, with the box propped awkwardly across my panniers, to the coach was a slow and awkward process. Disassembling the bike and packing it into a box by the light of an LED blinkie was just as awkward; I can't be sure I didn't do some damage to Alice in the meantime. I taped the box closed, wishing I had the Tardis handy - the bike fits, the bag zips closed, and best of all I can carry it over my shoulder - and watched the early morning cyclists blinking like fireflies in the pre-dawn as I waited for the coach to arrive.
Another passenger came to my aid in lugging the bike box (ungainly, rather than heavy - remember what I said earlier about encumbrance?) from the coach to the platform lift at Lithgow. He appeared again later, on the platform at Sydney, and helped me carry the box all the way to the ticket gates with barely more than a shy smile and a wave. The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing.
And now I'm home sweet home, with only my strange tan lines to show for my travels.
|
|
| Further Posts from the Road: Hill End - Mudgee |
[22 Feb 2008|03:52pm] |
Dist: 78.18km
Ride time: 4:26:56
I'm not much good with eating breakfast: my stomach seems to take an hour or two longer than the rest of me to wake up. If I eat too early, it just leaves me feeling nauseous. I'm still working on balancing this with an early start and a full day's cycling; at home, I just have a bottle of Dare when I get to work and then leave it till lunch.
I got up about quarter to seven, showered and dressed, and headed across to the Hill End General Store for the usual start to the day. Packed my bags, wheeled the bike out the front all ready to load up, and headed into the bistro to find breakfast. There was a bit of a wait while Chad Lindberg (I never did find out his name) fried up massive brekkies for a party of five grey nomads who'd arrived before me. I managed to choke down one fried egg, half a tomato, a bite of toast and a glass of orange juice before my stomach decided that this would be all - better than nothing, but probably not enough.
I paid up at the office, chatted to Chad about my planned route for the day - I'm not sure if he was sad to see me go, or just anxious about the size of the hills that awaited me - and then it was time to go.
Beyers Avenue, the main street of Hill End, is planted all about with leafy, deciduous European trees. It was shady and cool, verdant under a clear blue sky, as I headed out of Hill End on the road to Mudgee. My map warned of a dirt road starting 4km out of Hill End, but there was still no sign of it when I reached the day's first big hill 13km later. Obviously things have changed in the last seven years: the roadworks of a previous Christmas, perhaps?
The next dirt road arrived on cue, and I jolted my way on towards the historic town of Hargraves, 33km from Hill End. There's not much more to Hargraves than a school, a church, a public phone and a general store. I stopped at the phone and tried to send an SMS (still no Optus reception out here in the boondocks), but without success. The general store supplied Staminade, water, ice cream and those powdery lollipops I was addicted to at university. I sat at one of their outdoor tables to eat my icecream, and watched as a truck full of dogs pulled up at the bowser.
Lucy was a scruffy little Toto terrier who wanted - nay, demanded - that her chin be scratched, but hid from the camera. Duncan was an ugly old mutt with steel wool fur and a sweet grey face; his owner, just as grizzled, said Duncan was seventeen. The dogs were tourists, along for every ride with dad. It was the kelpie girl in the back seat who'd been a working dog, till she'd lost her left foreleg.
The guy from the general store was unloading case after case of Toohey's Extra Dry from the back of his station wagon. Apparently Friday night is fish fry-up night, and all the locals gather for the evening. When they run out of fish in the freezer, they head up to the Central Coast and catch some more, freeze it up for the next bunch of Fridays.
Both Lucy's owner and the general store guy warned me about the two hills that faced me between Hargraves and Mudgee, but neither hill was anything by comparison to the hill I'd walked up on the way to Hill End.
There was a long easy downhill that I coasted for nigh on 3km, milking the last dregs of speed I'd accrued - 50km, 40, 30 ... it wasn't till I hit the bridge down on the flat, at 19.6kph, that I started pedalling again. And from there on in it was fairly flat, past vineyards and olive groves, all the way into Mudgee.
I called and booked my bus ticket home from the all-but-defunct railway station (it's all cafes and craft shops now, not tickets and trains), and discovered that I'd need a box for my bike to get it home. The Lonely Planet, my little orange bible, listed a Mudgee Cycles on Perry Street but when I coasted past and found only an empty shop, I thought at first that I was screwed.
But no. As the tourist information office informed me, they were now on Church Street. I called in, obtained a bike box, bought a front light to replace the one ruined by the rain in Apollo Bay. I got some strange looks lugging the empty box back down Church Street to the campground.
I need to get myself and my boxed bike to the front of the tourism information centre for a 6:30am coach. It's going to be a very early morning indeed.
|
|
| Further Posts from the Road: Rest Day, Hill End |
[21 Feb 2008|03:00pm] |
Today is a day to recover from yesterday. My legs would not be up to the task of the 70km ride to Mudgee just yet. My arms are still a little shaky, even for something as simple as holding a pen.
I got up at 7am - the filmy lace curtains of my hotel room do nothing to keep out the light - and walked down to the public phone to call Meg. Past the old Presbyterian church, the empty lots and the rubble where the Church of England used to be, past the school, the police station, a sagging brown stand of sunflowers, and a big black dog. The phone box itself is on the verandah of the post office. A call to a mobile phone chewed through my fist full of change at a clip.
A couple of grey kangaroos were foraging in a paddock just across the road. I crept closer to get a better look: two, no three of them. They stared back at me, judging my next move. Not for the first time, I wished I had a longer lens on my camera.
I picked up a bottle of Dare at the general store (how can they be cheaper out here in Hill End than in inner Sydney?) and retired to the leafiness of the Royal Hotel's beer garden to drink it. There are fruit trees here: an apple tree, dropping red apples the size of tennis balls into the dew-damp grass. There's a fig tree, all shaggy leaves and small green fruit. Another tree with tiny maroon apples in clusters.
The kangaroos must visit here too: I had to pick my way carefully between the droppings in the grass on the way out to the shed to collect my water bottles from the bike.
Breakfast was fried eggs, toast and grilled tomatoes, cooked by a guy in a blue butcher's apron. He looked like Chad Lindberg.
I'm still so tired: is 9:30am a valid time for a nap?
It's been a quiet day, which I suppose is just what I needed. I spent what was left of the morning, after my nap, wandering the streets of Hill End and looking at Beaufoy Merlin's photographs and the empty lots that now remain.
Two motorcyclists on dirt bikes, dangling saddlebags and a pair of dirty thongs, passed me several times on my walk, their engines buzzing like insects. They pulled into the Royal Hotel while I was across the road at the general store eating my lunch, but were gone again before long.
I took some bits and pieces - including my copy of "Servant of the Empire", which I'd finished reading - to the Post Office, saving myself 2kg of weight for the ride to Mudgee. After walking to and from the end of Tambaroora Street so many times this past day, it's becoming almost familiar.
That left the afternoon to kill, which I did in leisurely fashion. I devoured the stack of Australian Good Taste magazines on the table in the pool room, sat and talked to Donna (a miner's wife from Clare - near Adelaide) on the front verandah of the pub while the local cop's Jack Russell, Shelly, sat perched on my lap. We played fetch with a random red cattle dog which passed by and brought us a stick. I hung out in the beer garden - sunny and green, shady with leaves and umbrellas - and ate apples fresh off the tree with a self-described "country builder" named Peter. He said he'd been passed - twice! - along the Bells Line of Road by a female cyclist with yellow panniers, and was surprised to learn that it wasn't me.
And finally I got dinner from the Courtyard Bistro while, scarcely ten metres away, a mob of grey kangaroos grazed beneath the fruit trees.
I'm feeling much rested, and tomorrow I'm off to Mudgee.
|
|
| Further Posts from the Road: Bathurst - Hill End |
[20 Feb 2008|06:11pm] |
Dist: 86.1km
Ride time: ~6:15:00
I'm in Room 4, upstairs at the Royal Hotel, Hill End. The wallpaper is floral, strangely fluorescent stems twining about one another.
It hurt to walk upstairs, over the worn green carpet and the dip in the rug caused by the passage of feet over the course of a century. My quad muscles are raw, if such a term can properly be applied to quadriceps muscles. My fingertips are numb, and my biceps and deltoids ache from overwork.
Today was a very long day.
It was coming on to 9am when I left the Bathurst Panorama Caravan park, once I'd dried the condensation on tent and fly, eaten breakfast, rescued a woman who'd locked her cabin keys in the amenities block, and packed everything away into panniers. Despite having been woken by the cold at 4am - it was a restless night, not helped by the highway noise - it was already warm when I picked up the requisite Dare from the BP, and turned onto Gilmour Street headed for Sofala.
The first seven kilometres, through suburban streets, were easy. At this rate, I would be settled in at the Old Sofala Gaol (Sofala's best-kept secret) by a little after noon. The road, with scarcely anything worth calling a shoulder, undulated through yellow-turning-green farmland. Unlike yesterday, when the passing trucks all smelled like carrots, today's trucks stank of sheep.
There was a steep climb to Wattle Flat, rising out of the valley in a series of curves that would have offered magnificent photo opportunities if I'd been willing to sacrifice my low gear and even cadence to stop and take a shot. But this, as the elevation profile told me, was the day's big climb and I didn't want to give it away.
The ascent gave way to a plateau, and the elongated township of Wattle Flat. Coming into town, two out of three houses properties were for sale. It was like a ghost town in the making: even the general store, where I stopped to chug down a Gatorade and refill my water bottles, was for sale.
It was just past noon when I cleared Wattle Flat, and then a sharp, sweet downhill to Sofala on the banks of the Turon River. Woe! Alas! The best-laid plans! When I pulled up at the Old Sofala Gaol, which was to have been my bed for the night, it was not open Wednesdays.
And Sofala, with its narrow leafy streets, is not a town of infinite variety. While I sat on the gaol steps and munched a bread roll, one thing seemed clear: my planned comfortable 44km day was about to become a whole lot longer. The sign at the crossroads said "Hill End 38km", and the Tourism Route sign beyond that warned of 75km of dirt roads between Sofala and Mudgee, 150km distant.
No rest for the wicked... it seemed that Hill End was, after all, to be my destination for the day. The first stretch of dirt road was quickly upon me, just beyond the ridge at the Sofala crossroads. And for all I'd been dreading this unsurfaced road, I quickly discovered that it offered better traction, and hence better speed, than the bumpy shoulders of the asphalt roads outside of Bathurst. Following the smooth line of tyre tracks in the gravel, and with one eye firmly on the rear view mirror, I pressed on.
Gravel became tarmac, tarmac became gravel again. 61km out of Kelso (the outskirts of Bathurst), labouring up a steep incline that showed no sign of relenting, I gave up. I could not pedal any further. I swung a shaking leg over the saddle, and began pushing the bike up the hill. This was a first for me: even on Lavers Hill I had never had to resort to walking. But the hill did not relent, so if I was going to keep moving, it would be walking - at the stately pace of 4km/hour. At last, at 64km, the road flattened out again and I clambered back into the saddle, hoping for the respite of a downhill.
When I reached dirt road again at 70km, I was unfazed. Not even the signs warning of roadwork ahead bothered me. Waiting at the stop sign, I chatted with the lollipop guy. "There'll be asphalt here in a couple of weeks," he said. "Or at least by Christmas."
Given the all-clear, I set out across the dirt. Found it slippery beneath me - cleared of stone, and sprayed smooth, the wet surface sucked at the tyres. I managed a few hundred metres, fighting to stay upright the whole way, until finally... The bulky pannier saved the derailleur hanger from impact, but the rear wheel - brakes, tyre, mudguard - was choked and rigid with accumulated mud. The wheel, even after I dug out the bulk of it with a twig, would barely spin. There was no way I could ride through here. I pushed the bike two and a half kilometres, my arms aching as I fought the accumulation of mud. Picking the debris out of the rear fender was almost futile, it collected again so quickly.
Finally I passed the road worker standing lollipop guard at the far end of the road plant, and fifty metres further on found a dry, flat stretch of shoulder to strip off the panniers. Another twig from the roadside picked clean the rear tyre, brake pads, the mud caked in the cleats of my sandals. I was back on two wheels again.
The last twelve kilometres were plain hard work. The dirt road here wasn't gravel but chunks of rock, stippled with flattened squares where some road-building machine had stamped its mark. Either way, it made for jolting, bruising progress - my fingers by now were almost completely numb, and my biceps aching. I choked down the last few mouthfuls of bread I'd been holding in reserve; after a day in my handlebar bag in the baking heat, the bread was dry, dry, dry.
I pedalled hard through the gravel, waved to the driver of the car who'd stopped to see if I was okay, and here - at the top of the next bend, 84km out of Bathurst - was History Hill. Just around the corner, the road turned to asphalt again. Hill End visitor's centre (closed at 5pm, and here it was just five minutes past the hour), a descent over red dirt to a leafy laneway. Up ahead, a handful of utes were clustered outside a building.
The Royal Hotel. Shower, dinner, bed.
|
|
| Further Posts from the Road: Tarana - Bathurst |
[19 Feb 2008|01:42pm] |
Dist: 58.2km (66km including Mount Panorama)
I left Tarana at 8:30am, and by 11:30 was in the driveway of the Kelso Fruit Market, on the outskirts of Bathurst, with a nectarine in one hand and a bottle of Double Espresso Dare in the other.
The only truly obnoxious hill of the mornining was a kilometre out of Tarana, and may only have seemed obnoxious because I wasn't warmed up yet.
This has been a very short day: I've decided that rather than push on to Sofala (another 44km down the road) today, I may as well spend the day investigating Bathurst and ease into finding my road legs again. Besides, I haven't been to Bathurst since I was fourteen.
And there's always Mount Panorama to climb.
|
|
| Further Posts from the Road: Sydney - Lithgow - Tarana |
[18 Feb 2008|06:00am] |
Dist: 44.5km
We're back, ready for Round Two.
I'm currently sitting in a little cabin on Main Street, Tarana, 43km out of Bathurst. Brightly coloured flags are flapping against the sign for the Tarana Hotel ("the only place to be"), visible outside the open door.
I spent a week back in Sydney, after riding the Great Ocean Road. For the first few days I was restless, the newly hardened muscles in my legs fitter than they'd been the afternoon I stumbled into the Beachfront Hotel at Apollo Bay and threw my east coast trip away. I walked the dogs with great vigour, I rode into town and up George Street as though it were no hill at all.
And then over the next few days I felt the inertia of home comforts beginning to sneak in. I sat on the couch, watched movies, rode down to the Metro for a six pack of grape soda. I could feel the restlessness waning.
I had three more weeks of leave time booked when I got back to Sydney: I didn't want to waste those three weeks surfing the internet and watching TV. But the more I sat there, the harder it was becoming to move.
So I decided I'd turn to the Lonely Planet Cycling Australia guide again, since it had served me well in choosing the Great Ocean Road. This time, however, I was looking for something a little closer to home. The Gold and Wine Country Circuit seemed to fit the bill: a 4 day, 300km route covering Bathurst, Mudgee and Hill End. Again it was accessible by rail - 4 hours by XPT. Or, to Lithgow, 3 hours by Intercity train which meant cheaper fares and - better yet - no need to box the bike for transit.
With no need to check luggage, I figured I could leave behind not only the Tardis and the yellow duffle bag, but I could probably squeeze everything I needed into two panniers and the tent on the rear rack. No additional weight of the Old Man Mountain front rack, no temptation to carry extra in the additional space available with the front panniers. Being a Dungeons and Dragons player from way back, you'd have thought I would have considered not simply weight but also encumbrance. With tent and sleeping mat (collected from the post office on the way to the train station!) strapped to the rear rack, and nothing but the mudguard on the front wheel, Alice moves like she's got a big bum. Gravity is not so kind as when there's weight on the front wheel pushing it down to the ground. Cresting a hill, you can really feel the moment when the bike's centre of gravity shifts, and the weight is underneath again rather than trying to drag you back down the hill.
Lithgow, the outermost railway station on Sydney's suburban rail network, along the Blue Mountains line, is 62km east of Bathurst via the Great Western Highway and a little further by Magpie Hollow Road and the Tarana Road. I used the map from the Lithgow BUG that they'd posted on bikely.com, and they recommended the Tarana Hotel as a good spot for a pub lunch during a single day's ride to Bathurst.
But I'd been up since 6am, walked the dogs, ridden into town to collect my camping gear, caught the train... The spirit and the flesh were a little too weak to push on another 43km to Bathurst from a 4pm pause in Tarana.
And I'm not really in any hurry, am I?
|
|
| Sorry |
[13 Feb 2008|10:42am] |
Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.
We reflect on their past mistreatment.
We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.
A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, to the Australian Parliament
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
