An Australian Experience-landscape and age

The relatively young country of Australia was founded on a continent of extremely ancient land, formed at a time about 60 million years ago. Time beyond imagination has passed, leaving, erasing, and reforming traces on this continent in countless rounds. Time for the human race, on the other hand, is short and matters little in this long process. Strolling along Australian coastlines or venturing into inert and motionless outback, this sense of agelessness is helplessly overwhelming.
The great state of Victoria boasts a famous Great Ocean Road wondering along the southeastern coast of Melbourne, a stunning scenic drive stretching over 400 kilometres. The coastlines along this road attest to the forever aging process of the nature. The famous "London Bridge" had its name from a wide and thick section of rocks linking the shore to a pillar standing in the water, an arch resembling a bridge of man made. The "bridge" felt and looked solid enough to carry groups of sightseers. One sunny day two decades ago, I took pictures of that bridge and walked with my wife to the other side of the bridge like walking on a track field. It is hard to explain in words when you were actually at a place hundreds of yards from the shore while you were still dry and could run around on "solid" ground, hollow underneath. The waves fumed loudly over twenty metres down, pounding hard on the bank, retreating and pounding again. From the top of the bridge platform, one felt safe to watch all these spectacular scenes of sky, ocean, and rocks in one amazingly coordinated setting.
Unfortunately, that pounding washed away the shorelines inch by inch, and finally succeeded in knocking off the "bridge". The section of earth and rock which supported passing tourists and sightseers gave way to weight and collapsed on January 15 1990. My pictures taken in 1998 could only catch the sight of something nowhere near a bridge. The local tourist bureau reluctantly changed the name to London Arch, as a lone and unapproachable stack standing awkwardly in roaring waves.
Nearby along the Road, another hot spot of sightseeing is "Twelve Apostles", with a dozen or so pillar rocks standing separate and alone in sea water, in the shapes of chimney or watch tower. It is not hard to link these separate rock pillars to the now defunct London Bridge. These were the bridges ages ago, standing there over a long time span of perhaps tens of thousands of years, and from losing the arch section due to erosion and pounding of powerful waves they became the apostles we see today. The nature works in mysterious ways, as one never can tell if one rock formation is going to disappear tomorrow or in 10,000 years. Time changed it all, and forms of rocks are merely testaments to the presence of unending change. No matter how solid and formidable a rock bridge is in the eyes of human, it is temporary and stands no chance against the almighty time. I reckon the "London Bridge" is the best place to imagine the moving experience summed up in a common Chinese sweat talk for love or marriage proposal, "when seas dry up and rocks turn to dust", proclaiming the eternity of one's love feelings.
Age cut deep into earth. With no humans or even life form around, the universe runs its natural course of formation and dissolution. "May the Force be with you". In Chinese philosophies, this force is the "Way", unexplained and self-generated functioning and running of the universe, rather than the deliberate making by an almighty God. The formation of things was meaningless, senseless, and purposeless, in a casual and even careless manner. No life beings were able to live that long to view a formation in full, and even early tribes as first settlers on this vast land felt nothing of these formations. The nature has its own ways.
We can be sure that the abrupt ending of the splendid London bridge there in fact happened numerous times in the past. This is nothing unique or spectacular to the earth and the forces; it is only when the human race held the sense of awe that these things became the subjects of admiration or even worshipping. Imagine when the human race cease to be active or evaporates for some reason, the earth will continue to run its course to mould or dissolve rock bridges or apostles as it goes. To an outsider, an alien perhaps, nothing worthwhile has happened before and the marks the human race left may well be even less visible than those rocks in shapes of chimney or watch tower.
It is in this regard that the long age of the Australian continent needs to be fully appreciated. This illustration provides an acute reference point to the popular claim of "end of history" in recent years. It is bluntly clear to people with common sense that there is hardly an end of history. Of course, if lunacy and triumphalism went over board, the human race can be brought to an abrupt end, without doing much to the course of earth rotation. The universe will also create planets similar to the third rock from the sun and foster some life forms or other. To regard the working and intelligence of humans at this particular stage as supreme forever and an ultimate conclusion to all seems to have far stretched the truth, at least an odd way of portraying a baby step forward as a great leap in knowledge.
I understand that the "end of history" claim is more complicated than this and is fairly down to earth political and ideological. The core of it reflects people's desire to set up frameworks to believe the existence of an end, a kind of utopia or climax. This kind of reasoning also identifies a certain power to be the bearer of that eventuality, be it Germany, the Soviet Union, or more recently the United States. This episode of triumphant outburst just shows how in the heat of euphoria a shocking and sensational catchphrase can be rashly coined by some genius and how a disregard of reality in evolution tossed people and their minds off the balance. In a somewhat awkward comparison, the blue print of the Third Reich of one thousand years was perhaps more practically and less grandly drafted. It is painfully clear that the human race is prone to misconception and muddling, and it has yet reached a stage of genuine process with satisfactory balances. Grand schemes and various types of new world order are simply illusive designs by humans unaware of their fatal limitations in facing the tyranny of time. Unprecedented great achievements in one's life time strengthen egos, leading to further disillusions of invincibility and over-confidence in making reckless decisions which involve and endanger people's lives. Time will tell and ridicule those once powerful and belligerent.

An Australian Experience-Australia, a beauty

I shall now take the journey to Australia for the purpose of tracing the paths and directions of this continent sized country. At the outset, it ought to be made clear that this writing is not a tour guide of Australia; there are countless detailed travel books just for that purpose. Furthermore, tourists don't feel the joys and pains in the real life of Australia, away from scenic tourist attractions. Only with life experience and close encounters over a long period of time does one get certain degree of familiarity with norms and emotions of the people.

The Most Liveable Place and Pleasant Diversities
This is a clean and temperate environment. It may sound odd to many if Australia is described this way, since images of that remote part of the world "down under" are generally of an incredibly harsh land. Pictures of Australia show enormous wilderness with amazingly exotic creatures and unbearable (except to the Aborigines) natural conditions. The once popular comedy movie "Crocodile Dundee" starring Paul Hogan projects this distinctive image of other worldliness abundantly clearly.
The incredible reality is territory-wide hostile inhabiting conditions. The continent of Australia is the driest in the world, known for its world famous barren outback and large expanses of emptiness under punishing heat. This is largely a red and brown country. Living things in Australia, flora and fauna, have to adapt to dehydration and dire scarcity of food sources in their unique processes of evolution, leading to strange looking forms fitting more to the age of dinosaurs. One has no alternative there to endurance and sweating hard work for a survival. That is the main background theme of an Australian company making tough jeans and work wear named "hard yakka" (yakka for hard work in Aboriginal vocabulary).
Despite all these commonly facts of an unrelenting nature, there is another side of the same coin for the claim of an oasis in both symbolic and practical senses. In a twist of fate, this tough landscape apparently scared off numerous early European explorers who ventured randomly to the northern and western coasts, and handed an unexpected gigantic bounty to late-coming English explorers who happened to have docked at a tiny, more inhabitable area along the eastern coast, a hard to beat odd in human history. Australia is now recognised as one of the most liveable places on earth, obviously no thanks to the major proportion of barren territories, but mostly to the fertile and well developed coastal belt of the eat and vibrant urban centres around the country where people can afford temperate climate and comfortable living environment. These coastal areas are perhaps within the zones of 200 kilometres from shorelines of the east and the south, with an approximate line being drawn along the Great Dividing Range, starting from the south eastern end of the continent up to its north eastern end. This lush and green belt covers three states of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, with the state of South Australia offsetting its great deserts with certain green zones of valleys for good name wineries.
One of Australia's first virtues must be that this is so far an unpolluted continent, with pristine clean environment and high standards of its protection. Occasional pollution does occur, but with high awareness of environmental protection and vast land areas, that did not and will not make visible negative impact on the overall situation. In other straight words, these guys have a lot of room to pollute before it is getting to the point causing serious concerns. Bars have been raised high in this country as precautionary responses to those duly concerns and some pessimistic predictions.
Blue sky is freely and commonly available in Australia, even in densely populated metropolises. Morning fogs are often thick in suburbs to blur the views of motorists. This is due mainly to the fresh air and moisture rising from expanses of farmland and green meadows along the meandering roads. Bright sunny follow the retreating fogs. Air quality in Melbourne is evidently high that there is a slight worry that people's minor facial defects or thick make ups are clearly visible under bright sunshine. Stepping out of Melbourne's tidy, modest, and unassuming Tullamarine Airport, the first inhaling of the air is always fresh and refreshing. A friend of mine called the trips back to Melbourne from Hong Kong as a journey for a thorough "lung cleansing". Such trips certainly serve to improve the health of those people who bury themselves deep in dusty, misty concrete jungles of high-rises for too long.
In Australia, at least in Melbourne in the south, people have supply of best quality water for their use and are able to drink right from the taps. Aussie friends are fond of making jokes of my preference to take a sip of boiled water; to them tap water is good enough and worry free. During tours around the state of Victoria, I pondered times and again along some large reservoirs, and they are in effect well maintained beautiful natural parks, fitting for a holiday resort or country retreat. This gives me an impression of the slightest chance of contamination or lowering water quality for the consumption of the people of Melbourne.
Australia as a whole is ranked one of the most liveable places of the world. From the southern ends of Melbourne and Tasmania, temperature moves only one direction, up, with plenty of sunshine from the territory of NSW to Queensland. It is unfair to say that there are no other excellent places to live, and many European and North American countries are indeed quite nice and picturesque. Their major drawback is just too cold, even comparing with some freezing nights in Melbourne. Many Englishmen, and women, would prefer warn weather in Australia to their wet and chilly days. I heard on a train in China from travelling Canadian managers about their dread of cold winters back home. Norway is routinely regarded as a beautiful country and ranked the best country to live from time to time, but their people cannot say much to praise their extreme cold weather. A Norwegian student I met in university years, Rita, fled her country to study in Australia ad vowed never to return. When Melbournians scream freezing cold sometimes, they have no idea what a cold chill feels like. Australia is blessed, in a sense, by average warm temperature across the country; heat is instead often the problem to some: I had my first ever sun burn in Sydney while a new comer not heeding the warning.
(to be continued)

An Australian Experience

An Australian Experience: Meanderings from Oasis Down Under
Prologue
My interest in Australia was first aroused by the writing of John Gunther in his "Inside Australia". This fascinating book was originally published in 1972 by Harper & Row, after the death of this famed American journalist and writer. His other earlier "Inside" books had been translated into the Chinese language, and, quite surprisingly, the Chinese translation of his latest work on Australia came out not long after the publication of the English version, making it possible for me to read the Chinese version in my high school years in the mid 1970s. It remains a mystery how, during the hectic and unsettling days of the Cultural Revolution, the translation of a travel book by an American writer proceeded unhindered. Even if one considers that Gunther's earlier books had entered China unopposed, there was no apparent urgency to complete the translation of this particular book of his. It is perhaps true to say that by the early 1970s life in China had settled down along a more or less "normal" course. The publication was not openly available in bookstores, but but considerable copies were printed, so that libraries could get hold of them. With this twist of luck, I was able to read all of Gunther's "Inside" series available in Chinese, drawn from the internal library of a research institute in Beijing, where my father worked. I grew quite fascinated about his travel series and descriptions of diverse continents of the world, including Australia.
The Chinese term for that "Inside" in the title, in fact, implies some dark secrets in the closet or inner circle stories outsider could not get their hands on. In the mid 1970s, many books were tacitly allowed by the authorities and found their ways to readers. Books with "inside" titles posed to entice. These books by Gunther, somehow, did not reveal that kind of intrigue or mystery in distant and seclusive societies, unlike those popular ones in the same period of time exposing political infighting and decadence of the Soviet Union. The book on Australia, however, infected me with fascinating ideas of an unexplored and idealised place where people sought a peaceful and tranquil existence and overcame multiple harsh conditions of the nature. These lingering impressions blended well with my college studies on politics and history, projecting a vague scenario of lasting modern longing for a utopia and real life practice finally coming into one. Australia seemed to be a modern entity bearing the marks of a Utopian society eagerly anticipated by early European thinkers. Its remoteness in geographical terms heightened the sense of reclusive refuge following an exhaustive global search for a desired destination. In reality, the images of Australia in China remained vastly different from the then prevailing ones of American imperialism or resurgent Japanese militarists. From that time on, Australia to me often popped up as an acceptable alternative when debates on future paths of the world and ideological divides were in rage.
Alas, dreams often get shattered and past impressions fade. During my stay of well over a full decade in Australia, I have gained ample first hand experience for making some of my own points of this country. Various observations have long been made by the people in the konw of the running of the country, and there are well established studies in related fields. Australia does have its own records of cruel practices in numerous areas, and its politics does not always look a pretty sight or sensible. Many past actions and policies remain controversial and regretable. Life in Australia can be mundane and unexciting affairs sometimes, while the country's economic performance or ranking has seldom been exceptionally spectacular or highly recommended among developed economies of today. When a former Federal Treasurer Paul Keating was awarded the title "World's Best Treasurer" by International Bankers in 1984, it was quite an honour and acknowledgement of achievement for an Australian politician. Overall, this is a medium sized Western country with domestic constrains of its own and constant longing for international recognition.
This mixed bundle only proves that this is a "normal" country. Of this, I mean the country develops its politics, culture and economy through stages, cannot escape internal and external threats, and is therefore not entirely an innocently perfect model or utopia readily lendable to others. Viewing Australia as a normal country in effect screens out some unrealistic expectations and personal bias. There is no need either to fantisise a model in the form and shape of Australia, or to stress the failings of this country as not worthy the tiniest of a model. Taking away ideological trappings and fervant worshipping of certain institutions or ideals, there remain the bare essentials for all modes of societies to properly handle existing contradictions and prevent major fault lines from breaking up. Australia passed these recurring trials and obstacles in pretty amazing manners, fitting well the label of a "quiet achiever". The virtue of the Australian experience is further illuminated at the turn of the new century as a likely choice of "the Third Way", in the face of tyranny of globalisation and unilateralism. In the critical area of sustanable development, as opposed to the maddening pursuit of wealth and material gains at hand, Australia undoubtedly holds enviable advantages and long term potential.
My perceptions of Australia have since come around in a full circle, from the idealised images based chiefly on curiority to reality checks based on life experience, and to the more recent idea of an oasis based on the combination of both. A research into contemporary Australia of over a century can take past writings, such as "Inside Australia" and "The Lucky Country", as path markers and ought to make more sense of those cycles of events, in light of hindsight and new realities of the 21st century. This change of perceptions is painful but healthy, since false romanising of any country as a model is to be kept at minimum, either for those eager to modernise at all costs or those feeling complacent for being in a "model" country. It is now a chance to instead highlight some of Australia's admirable characteristics over others in a world full of contradictions and confrontations. These include the advantages Australia has mainly in environment, political spheres, market economy, and resouces. These vital elements have sustained its vibrant economy and social cohesion. They are also key indicators of a positive future outlook of this country. (to be continued)