gg@gordongregory.net – Gordon Gregory's blog

Workplace risk: the case of the Hunter Valley coach crash

The bus driver responsible for the horrific crash in the Hunter Valley in 2023 which killed 10 people received a 32-year jail sentence with a non-parole period of twenty-four years.

According to reports of the trial, in his sentencing the judge said that the penalty handed down was extreme because of the number of families affected by the tragedy. In addition to the ten fatalities, 19 were injured.

This seems odd.

In New South Wales there are four bases of liability for a charge of murder. They are an intent to kill; an intent to inflict grievous bodily harm; reckless indifference to human life; or the commission of a crime punishable by life imprisonment or imprisonment for 25 years. On the first, second and fourth of these, the coach driver is totally innocent. The degree of his contrition and his words of hopeless regret speak loudly of this.

Murder is punishable by life in prison, with a typical non-parole sentence of 20 years. A person convicted of murder in the middle of the severity scale will typically serve 20 years in jail.

The bus driver in the Hunter Valley case is deemed to have committed murder of higher than average severity.

Murder is a crime not mitigated by personal conditions in the life of the guilty party or the circumstances which led to the event. It would seem to be reasonable for a sentence to be related to the number of times it is committed; but proportionality with the number of victims less so.

The driver may well be – may well have been – the model of a good husband/father/brother, perhaps a member of a local community group, someone with an unblemished driving record for 30 years. Or perhaps he spent too much time in the pub.

Whichever, he made one ongoing miscalculation and one at a moment in time. His chronic mistake was, as reported in media coverage, to become dependent on opioids despite being warned about addiction. His acute error was to take the shift that fateful day when he was under the influence.

Before the law this constituted the risk of “reckless indifference to human life”.

People who become addicted may be seen as needing support for their mental health. As for the acute error, he may have needed a stimulant to help keep awake on his shift. He may have been unwell but in need of the work to provide for his family.

The veracity of these possibilities – ‘good man’, ‘bad man’, – is immaterial. What matters is the extent to which character and motive are considered in determining the length of sentence.

Consider three hypothetical circumstances. In the first a train driver makes a medically-determined decision which leads to a crash killing 100. In the second a lone cyclist crashes into and kills a pedestrian on the cycle path. And in the third a bus driver takes a stimulant and kills 10. Which of these three guilty parties is more culpable, which less?

The law is an ass but not so much for the length of sentence to be determined by the number of fatalities. More germane are the characteristics of the guilty party and the particular circumstances which led to the outcome.

One of those key characteristics is the extent to which the individual was aware of the risk posed to others by their behaviour. In some workplaces the risks managed by one individual are imposed on large numbers of others.

The Hunter Valley case should shock anyone who on some occasion has breached rules and regulations relating to safety and civic responsibility.

Some of the families affected by this tragic event in the Hunter have turned their attention to education and other work to prevent such accidents occurring in future. In the circumstances this is most welcome and admirable. Ultimately it comes down to individuals recognising public risk and their role in managing it.

George speaks – 2 The farmer as writer.

The story so far: George Gregory (1879-1940) left behind a typed record of much of his personal, family and community history. It is not known how many pages in all were written, but just over 100 came to light among the papers of one of his seven grandchildren. Sadly, even this collection is incomplete, with some missing from the beginning of the story and the set ending abruptly halfway through the description of a tragic matter concerning his third son.

The manuscript is more than George’s autobiography. It is a memoir of his own life plus reflections and recollections of the lives of those who came before him and were around him. He tells what he knew of his father and mother and the life they had. So, although George himself lived from 1879 to 1940, he gives insights into the period from 1850 to 1919.

Sadly there is nothing in the found document for the period after 1919. It is impossible to know whether tales from 1919 to 1940 were yet to be written by George or whether they have been lost.

In the pages found it is George’s voice telling the story of George’s immediate family as he remembered it. It is not clear who was doing the typing. Did George’s household have a typewriter? Was he a capable typist? Or did he dictate it to Ilott, his wife, or to Richard, his eldest son? Richard certainly had literary and poetic capability and interest, having had one or more of his short stories broadcast on the BBC.

It is may be fanciful to think that after dinner each evening for a period Ilott and George would settle down to another page or two of the story. Ilott might remind him of things yet to be covered. His wife’s first name is sometimes spelt ‘Illott’ and there are just a few typographical errors caused by homophones, such as ‘Brightleigh’ for ‘Brightley’, all of which suggest that a copy typist was working from an audio source – a tape recorder. But in 1934?

Accompanying the manuscript is a single page that might be described as an aide memoire for George’s book. It is a list of the events, anecdotes and characters that someone thought could or should be mentioned.

George and Ilott’s third son, Kenneth, was born in 1912. At one point the narrative reads: “Looking back these 15 years, I realise that if he had lived life would have been different. He would have been twenty two now.” This places the creation of the manuscript in 1934.

The narrative does not follow a strict chronological line but the main stages of George’s life are revealed in due order. First he describes the situation of his father and uncle and the process by which the former, the younger of the two, came to have his own small farm and flour mill. There are short sections dealing with George’s teenage years, during which his brother Arch was his chief companion and playmate, and then his experience on the rugby field and in the Boer War.

There follow major sections on his working life with his father at the mill and, most richly, his courting of Ilott, his wife-to-be. It is in this section that George’s writing reaches a glorious descriptive pitch – in places more poetry than prose. The events are set in the Exmoor region, on the border between Somerset and Devon – an area that is new to George and which he comes to love very dearly.

The descriptive authority and confidence of much of George’s writing in these necessarily ‘romantic’ episodes is what captures the imagination and interest. How is it that a full-time farmer in an isolated part of the UK’s West Country came to possess the style, the observational acuity, vocabulary and literary tricks (metaphor, simile) to produce such material? What was the process through which George developed the confidence to produce written work that is consciously designed as art rather than mere reportage?

Whatever its provenance, West Country Tales is a true delight and an authentic and valuable record of rural social history in the south-west of England from 1870 to the end of the First World War.

‘George speaks’ – 1

In July 2023 I discovered, in a box of papers in my study, a large manila envelope. It was addressed to me, in a hand I did not know, at Sutton Bonington, where I was between 1968 and 1971.

In the envelope was a manuscript. It has become the focus of my time in the study and the main reason for being unblogged.

It is about 120 pages of typed material on onion skin paper. It is George Gregory, Tauri’s great-grandfather, speaking from the grave which is my study.

That is even more telling now that social media records everything, with none of it being entirely lost to the public record.

A quick glance at the manuscript revealed the treasure that it is. It is essentially George’s autobiography, from 1879 to 1940. Much of the material is about the characters in his family and those with whom they lived, worked and socialised. He describes the experience of going to the Boer War and witnessing Queen Victoria’s funeral in London. On one of several occasions when the author reflects on the cruelty of Nature relative to that of children, he describes his horror on finding fly-blown sheep and with the use of a certain kind of rabbit trap.

The narrative is a treasuretrove of insights into the way isolated rural communities were made up and maintained in the hundred years from 1850 to 1950. He describes in great detail the countryside of Exmoor and North Somerset (around Lynton and Minehead) and the deep respect and love he has for it. His descriptions of the combes, the sea and the built infrastructure of roads and farms are both informative and richly poetic. They are the context within which he courts his wife and gets to know her family.

Then the reader finds him espousing progressive views on (to mention just two) sex education in schools and the way poor people are treated in the workhouses. He – a farmer, not a lawyer – writes of the need for families to share deer meat ‘under the rose’.

It was hard to reconcile the contents and style of the document (described at one place by its author as “a book”) with my father’s father. Of grandfather George I could bring to mind just a single image and nothing more of fact than that he was a farmer near Exmoor, on the border between Somerset and Devon.

The find is exciting and it is reprehensible to have kept it from the family and other public gaze for so long. I feel a responsibility to honour the piece and the man who wrote it.

Beyond that, nothing is yet clear about what can or should be done with it. But it’s taking up a lot of time.

Megan and Steve’s kalbarriage

April 2006

This piece of doggerel describes some of the good times and happiness at an important family event in April 2006. It was a holiday in Kalbarrri, at the mouth of the Murchison river in Western Australia, to celebrate the wedding of Megan, one of my nieces, and Steve Noa. They lived at the time in Melbourne but have since ‘defaulted’ to the Perth hills where they are bringing up their two delightful and accomplished daughters.

When Moggs met Steve, and Steve met Moggs
They thought that they would marry
They could go down to Melbourne town
But their friends were in Kalbarri.

They hired a bus with little fuss
Steve’s driving all did charm;
But the Melbourne crew were overdue –
Alert but not alarmed.

This meant the lunch at Geraldton
Became a trifle late:
Not twenty-three at half past two
But three at ten to eight!

Lady played some major Rolls
For Moggs (her owner’s daughter);
But at Dongara she showed her age
And damaged her hind quarter.

The bus was stopped, the tyres were changed
She soon felt wheely better;
With all at sea Greg – patiently –
Made Geraldton to get her.

We put to sea in an easterly breeze
To do a spot of fishing;
Megan’s catch: a lifelong match
To ward off constant wishing.

The men toiled hard, the women starred
And Kirsten caught a few fish;
The gender save was made by Dave
Who caught a lovely dhufish.

The cricket game was sadly off
It rained in little splashes;
Too bad then for the Aussie lot –
The Poms retained the Gashes.

In Albany in years gone by
They did a little whaling;
To see Moggs hitched, two thousand six
Saw several guests abseiling.

Viv went up and Dave went up
And Alpha tried to top ’em;
She reached the face, came down with grace
And landed on her bottom.

Moggs and Steve I do believe
Don’t need a rope to bind ’em;
A ring will do for these fine two
And in Melbourne you can find ’em.

Finlay’s was the scene one night
Of a feast of food and song
Dan and Chris sang up a storm;
Then Megan came along:

She crooned to Steve her favourite tune
(We feel her music still):
“Love me tender, love me true
And I always will”.

Prue came by to see Steve off
Was pleased to travel northward;
She hopes they both will be like her
And put their best foot forward.

All their friends turned out in force
As witnesses and aiders;
But the only Force that worried Dan
Were those against Crusaders.

You’d have got good odds from Centrebet
On The Force not standing tall.
Who’d have thought it! What a contest!
Twenty-three points all

Some stayed at Lola Rosa’s place
The breakfasts there are heaven;
For all of us a busy time
Just once we slept ’til seven.

So here’s to Moggs and here’s to Steve
For a loving, healthy marriage.
For rhyming’s sake let’s re-gazette
And call the town ‘Kalbarriage’.

Organising around Parkinson’s: How is Australia doing?

April 11 is World Parkinson’s Day. Its main purpose is to raise awareness and advance research for better therapies and, potentially, a cure for Parkinson’s. But we might also use the stimulus of the international Parkinson’s Month, Week and Day to check on what’s happening with advocacy and organisation around Parkinson’s on the home front.

Parkinson’s 101

The condition affects about 10 million individuals worldwide, and 200,000 in Australia. In Australia thirty-eight cases are diagnosed every day. Twenty per cent of ‘persons-with-Parkinson’s’ are under 50 years old and 10 per cent are diagnosed before the age of 40.

In Canada it affects 1 in 500, with over 100,000 Canadians living with the condition and approximately 6,600 new cases being diagnosed each year

Parkinson’s is a progressive, degenerative neurological condition that affects a person’s control of their body movements. As is well-known, the symptoms and their progression vary wildly among those affected. Parkinson’s UK reports that there are over 40 symptoms, with The Big Three being tremor (shaking), slowness of movement, and rigidity (muscle stiffness).

There are also numerous non-motor symptoms such as sleep disturbance, constipation, voice and speech malfunction, and loss of sense of smell. Because of a compromised autonomic nervous system, people with the condition can have poor control over body temperature.

Some of these non-motor symptoms can pre-date motor symptoms by as much as a decade.

The strongest domestic organisation dealing with Parkinson’s has been Shake It Up Australia. It was founded by Clyde Campbell in 2011 and he is still at the helm.

There are six State-based bodies, and a national body, Parkinson’s Australia.¹ All six are independent from each other and from Parkinson’s Australia. So the latter has been overshadowed (some would say neutered) by the former.

This is the archetypal challenge for national bodies in a federal political system. For a national representative body to be successful the state bodies need enthusiastically to cede a certain amount of power, authority and resources to it.

The struggle for Parkinson’s Australia¹

There has been a Parkinson’s Australia for a long time, but it has never had the support and close engagement of the populous states. It has therefore been poorly funded and unable to build a strong national presence.

In 2012 the CEO of Parkinson’s Australia was Daryl Smeaton. As a senior public servant Daryl had been an integral part of Prime Minister John Howard’s successful gun buyback scheme in 1996-97.

In 2012 Daryl took the national conference of Parkinson’s Australia to Brisbane. It was opened by Australia’s first female Governor-General, now Dame Quentin Bryce. (She was kind enough to stay for the opening address I had been invited to present.)

More recently the head of Parkinson’s Australia was Steve Sant, after his time with the Rural Doctors Association of Australia.

For much of the time Parkinson’s Australia has been a body without representation from Victoria and New South Wales. Other jurisdictions have battled valiantly to have the organisation become a real umbrella group. But it has been holey and not entirely successful.

Its website advises people who are seeking information, resources or advice to visit the independent Parkinson’s organisation in their home state. In the case of the ACT (where I live) the running is being taken by a South Australian entity: the Parkinson’s section of the Hospital Research Foundation Group.

The larger state bodies tend to be abut service provision rather than political advocacy and lobbying. Parkinson’s NSW, for instance, provides counselling sessions, information and education sessions, and help-line calls. And it was in NSW – a long time ago – in which specialist Parkinson’s nurses were first road-tested with great success.

A new Alliance

The Parkinson Alliance was active from 2004. It closed its doors on April 30, 2023. It completed over 35 patient-centered research reports covering motor and non-motor symptoms. It supported over one hundred research projects, including many on exercise. It put its money where its legs were by managing the Parkinson’s Unity Walk from 2001 to 2021.

Even when shaken, Nature apparently abhors a vacuum. The space vacated by that Alliance last year has been filled this.

On 26 March 2024 Shake It Up Australia launched the National Parkinson’s Alliance. Itaims to build a network of groups to lead nationwide advocacy efforts. It has urged the Federal Government to allocate an initial $400,000 for the development of a National Parkinson’s Action Plan.

Curiously, the members of the new Alliance, as listed, are ten individuals affiliated with universities and research institutions. Just one state Parkinson’s organisation is mentioned: Parkinson’s NSW.

This new organisation is described as “a collaborative initiative bringing together the stakeholders living with Parkinson’s and leaders from those backgrounds to work towards aligned outcomes for the Parkinson’s community”. CEO of the Alliance is Vicki Miller.

On 26 March 2024 it organised the Australian Summit to End Parkinson’s.

About thirty people living with Parkinson’s from across Australia attended alongside members of the Alliance and the research community.

Both Parkinson’s Australia and the new Alliance made pre-budget submissions to the federal government.

Enough of this melancholia! Why not read the piece on my blogg (aggravations.org) entitled Parkinson’s brings out the best – in other people.

It tells of some of the human spirit and kindness that no mere chronic condition can put down.

Go to: www.aggravations.org [August 2022]

¹ to try to avoid confusion, the name of the organisation is italicised.

repurpose/ˌriːˈpəːpəs/

verb

adapt for use in a different purpose.

I could not conceive of letting it go to the tip or even to the recycling shed.

Our children have a special relationship with The Family Bed.

Our French polisher friend agreed that it was very good piece – English oak, probably over a hundred years old – with elegant carving at the centre of head- and tail-board.

But there is little demand for such items. It was too big for the modern market and style; the springs sagging helplessly (the mattress stiffened with large sheets of plywood underneath). And it was too high for many, especially young ‘uns.

I thought I’d lost it. But thanks to our friend Bill, it was repurposed in time for Christmas 2023.

My special thanks to Bill for the vision, ingenuity and industry – and to anyone else at the men’s shed in Hughes who helped him. For it certainly makes a lekker [lek-uh] two-person seat.

Australian poetry

One of my brothers is on the U3A committee in his home town in the UK. Recently he was leading a discussion on poetry. He asked me about Australian poets and poetry: who were the best? which pieces would I recommend for study by an English U3A discussion group?

My immediate response was something like panic. I could name very few contemporary Australian poets (Judith Wright, Les Murray) and none of their works. The near-panic was the result of a sense of shame and disappointment. Given the time I have on my hands and the extraordinary accessibility these days of ‘information’, how could I not know about and follow certain poets?

How could I think of myself as a responsible citizen of Australia if there is no poetry in my life? Poetry is an important segment of a nation’s culture. It is a field where emotions are not just permissible but essential. There is beauty in poetry. It consists of bunches of words in particular sequences, and I have always found this fascinating.

A bit later I reflected on how my own ignorance is perhaps symptomatic of the status of the arts in Australia. (This was before I had discovered Jacket, the splendid on-line journal founded by John Tranter, recently deceased. It is now published as Jacket2.) The arts sector in Australia is underfunded and under celebrated. Whereas, as a nation, Australia punches above its weight in such things as Olympic sports and certain scientific inventions, it does not in the fine arts.

The two best-known Australian poets are still, I suppose, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. They are often paired together because of the similarity of their works. Both wrote what are called ballads, with regular rhythm, scansion and rhyming patterns. (My own doggerel uses similar rhythmic and rhyming patterns.)

Both of them wrote about ‘characters’ living in the bush. Many people are unable to distinguish their works, the one from the other. As an example, ask an Australian whether Waltzing Matilda was written by Lawson or Paterson.

The best known works of Lawson and Paterson include: Waltzing Matilda; The man from Snowy River; Andy’s gone with cattle; Faces in the street (a favourite of mine), Mulga Bill’s Bicycle; The drover’s wife; Clancy of the Overflow; and The Geebung Polo Club .

When it comes to the most famous (and over-used) piece of Australian poetry of all, Lawson and Paterson must give way to Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968). Core of My Heart was first published in the London Spectator on 5 September 1908. It reappeared several times in Australia before being included as My Country in The Closed Door and Other Verses (Melbourne, 1911). The second verse reads:

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains.

My brother and I discussed the meaning of ‘doggerel’ and whether it is distinct from poetry. We won’t go there again now. Suffice it to say that it would be brave of someone to suggest that Core of my Heart is doggerel.

Scholars would, I think, agree that Judith Wright (1915-2000)and Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971) are true Australian poets of substance.

Judith Wright was from Armidale. (There is a Wright College at the University of New England.) She is best known for The Generations of Men, the story of her family’s early days as land settlers in New South Wales and Queensland. This was published in 1959.

In the years that followed there was a huge shift in the understanding of the white settlers’ impact on the Aboriginal people and the original landscape. Armed with what she described as “a sense of horror at what had happened”, Judith Wright wrote A Cry for the Dead, published in 1981. In that book Wright recognised the real story and the Indigenous voices of the traditional owners of the land her ancestors had settled.

This is right now a very divisive and emotive issue, centred around the Referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Constitution. Wright’s personal learning and reconciliation can be regarded as an elite example of the re-learning, or truth-telling, that is needed for all Australians.

Perhaps the fact that Judith Wright is regarded as one of Australia’s best poets but is arguably better known for her novels than her poetry says something about the standing of poetry in Australia.

One of Kenneth Slessor’s highly regarded pieces is Five Bells. I find it hard to see clear, immediate meaning in the poem, but the collection and juxtaposition of images is telling. So perhaps it would be a good piece to study?!

Les Murray, who died in 2019, was considered the leading poet of his generation. In An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow Murray portrays a crying man as representing the ability to deeply feel and openly express emotion—something that has been stifled by the busy modern world.

The Referendum on The Voice was good news

The orgy of self-flagellation relating to the result of the Referendum on The Voice is surely not necessary. Neither is it productive.

Little of importance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs has changed because of the result of the Referendum. But its existence has resulted in change which, on balance, is positive in terms of the most important outcome: improvement and catch-up of the health and wellbeing of First Nations Peoples.

The one exception – the saddest thing about the result – is the effect it has had on the reputation and morale of the many Indigenous leaders who put heart and soul into the Yes campaign.

Anyone who cares about the health and wellbeing of Australia’s First Peoples knows what the most important issues are. Put simply they add up to one thing: to challenge the status quo and close the gap in wellbeing between them and non-Indigenous Australians.

In working on this there are many important matters to be considered. They are complex – which is one of the reasons why we have so far failed as a nation in the challenge.

For instance, it has been agreed over and over again that closing the gap requires local participation and local ownership of some of the measures to be put in place. But what is the best way for local action by local people to be coupled with transparency and accountability for the use of national public funds?

Nothing frustrates local leaders and professionals more than a plethora of standardised questionnaires and forms to be filled out in the name of accountability and ‘program evaluation’.

It is agreed that the so-called ‘social determinants of health’ are critical: this includes good housing, accessible fresh food and water, early childhood education, and access to meaningful employment. If services in areas of such fundamental importance were woefully inadequate in Melbourne or Sydney there would be notice and action in five minutes.

But given the tangled web of governmental responsibility for such issues, which agency, which Minister and which funding stream should take the lead on these determinants for Indigenous people and communities?

Can Indigenous leaders and activists set aside differences, such as about the order in which the three elements of the Statement from the Heart (Voice, Treaty, Truth) are prosecuted? Can they agree that closing the gap is the most urgent challenge, and work together on it?

A number of things have happened as a result of the Referendum, by accident or design, to enhance the prospects of finding answers to these questions. We need to maintain the momentum generated by the existence of the referendum, rather than being distracted by its result.

This momentum is one of the best things that investment in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wellbeing currently has going for it. But for the momentum to last it needs to be fostered, rehearsed and regularly aired.

Every time we hear the Treasurer talk of fiscal challenges we are reminded of the congested queue of demands for government support.

It is said that one of the reasons for the lack of support for the Yes case was that many non-Indigenous people do not appreciate the extent of the disadvantage.

The majority of Australians do not live and work among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Many have no Indigenous friends or contacts. This means they lack personal or lived experience of the disadvantages experienced by Indigenous people.

As a result of the Referendum having taken place, there must now be greater awareness of the reality of the situation.

This will reduce the political risks of investing resources in programs differentially targeted at lifestyle deficits experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

As a result of the Referendum, leadership of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community has become better known. New leaders have joined the group. There will be some generational change.

Hopefully the current excitement about analyses of the yes and no campaigns will soon pass, once it is accepted that comparing activities in a Referendum with those of an election campaign is like taste-testing chalk and cheese.

It must be said, however, that the Referendum has provided more grist for the mill of political scientists and the like to use in their work to analyse, understand and make use of the stark differences between wealthy electorates and those that are less well-off, and between rural and metropolitan areas.

Now, with greater focus and legitimacy, it’s back to the drawing board to work on an issue that still bedevils Australia and its international reputation.

Indigenous puzzles: John Tranter explains

The late John Tranter

The big picture

In 1987, in a fascinating and most useful talk on ABC radio, John Tranter said: “From the 1960s, for a mixture of reasons, Aborigines have been more publicly visible than in earlier times. They have been subjects of greater controversy, and they have been participants in controversy as never before.”

Tranter did us all a great service by analysing in considerable detail the background for these developments. His piece is more relevant now than ever before and, potentially, more useful than the current agonies surrounding the fate of the proposal for a Voice

John Tranter and his work were unknown to me until I came across a transcript of the episode of Helicon, ABC radio’s national arts program, broadcast on 26 January 1987.

Tranter died on 21 April 2023. I only wish I had had the chance to thank him for a wonderful piece dealing so clearly with many aspects of policies in Australia relating to its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Over thirty six years ago Tranter was able to provide a most readable summary and analysis, with numerous historical facts and opinions, of issues that still trouble us greatly today.

John Tranter produced Helicon in 1987-1988. Later in his work for the ABC, and with others, he devised the radio program Books and Writing. He was also the founding editor and publisher of Jacket, an award-winning internet literary magazine.

A long-term view

The subject piece is entitled From 1788 to 1988: Visions of Australian History. I came across it in a hard copy that does not credit an author. It is dated January 1987. Given the dates of his tenure at Helicon, what I have already discovered of the breadth of his study and the style of his writing, I have assumed that John Tranter was its sole or main author.

If this assumption is false I sincerely hope that the other people involved will forgive me. My purpose is to give greater publicity and notice to the clearest of expositions of matters even more contested today, in 2023, than they were in 1987.

The piece is marvelous in the breadth of its coverage, in many senses prescient, and so clearly written. It is erudite but still accessible.

It pleases me to know that it is (back?) in the public domain, albeit on a very modest platform. My hope is that John Tranter would find my motives and intentions to be entirely worthy.

I beg you to read the article full. If it means to you a fraction of what it already means to me, it will be well worth your time.

The complete transcript is here as a PDF.

https://tinyurl.com/y67s9upn

“Why am I being offered more Aboriginal history with the milk then I was given in the whole of my schooldays?”

For the love of a cowslip

My fondness for cowslips was documented in this blogg on 24 July 2016. My fondness for the world’s Great and Thoughtful Givers was described in On the nature of giving – and the giving of Nature (October 15, 2020).

For my birthday in 2020 one of those Givers presented me with a small parcel. Inside was a damp, colourless morsel of plant life. It was Primula veris. A cowslip.

On Tuesday 6 October 2020, in a small ceramic pot in my garden, there occurred a miracle of Nature. That delicate single cowslip, despite finding itself in an unfamiliar location, proved that it was not going merely to cling to life. It was blossoming, growing and preparing for the next stage in the cycle of its existence. It was going to give perennial pleasure to verisophiles for years to come.

After six weeks of colour, in 2020 – like so much on Planet Earth – it lay low. I moved it from the ceramic pot to a prime spot in the garden. It bloomed again with increased vigour in the Springs of 2021 and 2022.

A small white tag attested not only to its name but also to some of its qualities. The tag reads: ‘Small attractive English wildflower. Tea from the whole plant, particularly the flowers, is sedative and pain relieving. Cool position, protected and partly shaded. Perennial.’

In March 2023 I took courage and spade in hand and cut it into two. One half of the rootstock stayed in the flower border where it had shown itself to be viable. The other was potted up and went off to a different zone in the garden.

The surgery was successful – so much so that right now (September 2023) the potted half is strong and luxurious, with multiple blooms of luscious yellow.

Now is a good time to pay back. The Giver has received an unwanted gift. Visits to second hand bookshops and antique galleries will be subdued for a while.

But the spirit of thoughtfulness and care will not cease. The cycle of life will continue, despite short-term perturbation. Friends will unite. Special friends will be specially united. The seasons will roll round.

Confronted with local frosts or global pandemic, the cowslip and other sure signs of repetition, resilience and renewal will not stand by – but flourish.