My brother sent me the following story. I am not sure of the origin of it, but it sounds a little familiar. Maybe print it out and pass it on next time one of these people knocks on your door.

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well-groomed, nicely-dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: “Hi! I’m John, and this is Mary.”

Mary: “Hi! We’re here to invite you to come kiss Hank’s arse with us.”

Me: “Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who’s Hank, and why would I want to kiss his arse?”

John: “If you kiss Hank’s arse, he’ll give you a million dollars. If you don’t, he’ll kick the shit out of you.”

Me: “What? Is this some sort of shake-down?”

John: “NO! Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank OWNS this town. He can do whatever he wants, and what he wants is to give you a million dollars, but he can’t … unless you kiss his arse.”

Me: “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Mary: “Who are you to question Hank’s gift? Don’t you want a million dollars? Isn’t it worth a little kiss on the arse?”

Me: “Well maybe, if it’s legit, but …”

John: “Then come kiss Hank’s arse with us.”

Me: “Do you kiss Hank’s arse often?”

Mary: “Oh yes, all the time.”

Me: “And has he given YOU a million dollars?”

John: “Well no. You don’t actually get the money until you … leave town.” Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s no fun lying here starving to death, I just want to go to sleep and not wake up”. Those words were said by my father a few days ago. He is dieing of stomach cancer and the tumour is so large there is no room for food. He is slowly wasting away to nothing and some time in the next fews days his body will give up. If this was happening to a dog you would put it out of its misery and that would be acceptable. However if we were to end my father’s suffering and help him in his desire to go to sleep and not wake up we would be charged with a crime.

Our legal system is based on the Judeo-Christian moral code and since the bible says “Though shalt not kill” then we interpret all killing as a crime. Well almost. God likes a good bit of smiting and occassionally commands his followers to kill others and of course, if your government commands you to kill, that is acceptable as well. So if my father was a perfectly healthy innocent civilian, walking down the street in Bahgdad, the government would deem it acceptable to kill him  with a bomb dropped on him from 40,000 feet (as collatoral damage in the War on Terror).  However as an unhealthy citizen of Australia, suffering from a terminal disease, which is leading to a long and painful death, he gets no relief. Our laws say it is wrong to end his suffering even though he has requested it. After all, life is sacred.

The law sometimes has a very perverse view of right or wrong and it is always the innocent who suffer the most.

It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain, and much like hitting your head against a brick wall, an Outward Bound course feels good when you stop.

Over the course of nine days a group of eight particpants and two instructors navigated by land feature and compass bearing through open forest, farmland and thick tropical rainforest. Carrying old style rations (mostly tins and heavy fresh fruit and vegetables)and all of our water for each day, the going was tough in places and it was meant to be.
The story goes that Outward Bound was founded by Kurt Hahn who wondered why so many fit young merchant seaman were dying in lifeboats in 1941, whilst their older colleagues were surviving. He determined that the young sailors had not experienced enough hardship and set about establishing courses to introduce them to hardship and toughen them up.
So the course is meant to push people outside of their comfort zone and has a lot of hardship for hardship sake. For example, when navigating, we were forced to go directly across country when the destination was accessible by walking along the road.

Among the challenges were abseiling 35m out of a tree, climbing a large swinging ladder while connected to your partner, paddling the length of Toonumbar Dam, performing community service and spending 24 hours alone in the bush.
We also played some of those silly games you play in those corporate development courses. I say ’silly’ because the games themselves are ’silly’ by design. It is how the game is debriefed that the power of the game shines through. Unfortunately we were let down in this respect. There was no real debreifing model that was followed and as a result people merely talked about what they did, not how they felt when they were doing it, the other times in life they feel the same way and how they might do things differently in future. As a result the level of personal development within the group was nowhere near what it could have been and that was disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week as part of my Outward Bound course, we performed a community service job. The job in question was helping to clear Water Hyacinth off Toonumbar Dam near Kyogle. The job was supervised by Craig Gascoigne, a local asparagus farmer who loves kayaking on the dam.

When Craig saw the weed taking over the dam and clogging up his kayaking playground he figure something needed to be done. When he heard that a “Licence to Pollute” application had been lodged with DECC to permit aerial spraying on the dam with herbicide, he feared that the native plants would be killed as well. He then set about physically removing the plant himself.

Hundred of hours and tonnes of weed later, the job continues, although the scale of the problem has reduced dramatically. One of our party said of Craig, “You always say to yourself, ‘Someone ought to do something about that.’ Well, I’ve just met a someone.”

Craig is a typical Aussie larrikin and reminds me a bit of Steve Irwin, enough for me the christen him “The Hyacinth Hunter”. By co-incidence, Craig is also a bush poet and entertained us with a few yarns before we went on our way.

As a tribute to Craig I have come out of poetry retirement and penned The Hyacinth Hunter which I hope will inspire Craig to carry on his good work.