Aral Sea disaster
I saw a disturbing report on SBS news last night about the Aral Sea disaster in Kazakhstan. The world’s fourth-largest inland sea has been decimated by commercial exploitation and mismanagement. Here are some of the facts:
Forty years ago the Aral Sea surface was 66,100 square kilometers with an average depth of 16.1 metres and a maximum depth of 68 metres. Salt content was 1%. Then in the 60s, the flow of water into the Sea began to drop alarmingly. Upstream irrigation schemes, for the growing of rice and cotton, consumed like a sponge more than 90% of the natural flow of water from the Tian Shan mountains. As a result the Sea’s surface area declined. Some 27,000 square kilometres of former sea bottom became dry surface. About 60% of water volume was lost. The sea level declined 14 metres. Salt concentration doubled.
Needless to say, this catastrophe has had a huge impact on the local population. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their livelihoods and suffer adverse health effects. I saw footage of fishing boats abandoned on a dry lake bed.
The communist rulers of the former Soviet Union created this inexcusable nightmare.
It’s disappointing how little coverage we get in mainstream Australian media about real news like this. I’m tired of hearing about Iraq and its political problems when there is so much else happening in the world. The cynic in me suggests the presence of cameras in Iraq guarantees coverage, while events in Kazakhstan and Sudan, among others, go unobserved.
It’s also sad that Australian environmentalists do little to highlight problems in the former communist world. The Chernobyl tragedy created severe ecological impacts and there are numerous other examples.
Again, the cynic in me suggests the communist sympathies of left-leaning greens precludes them from facing the reality of what that evil system created. It’s easier for them to rally against capitalism as an ogre that exploits the environment for commercial gain while ignoring that worse examples of this exist in the former Soviet Union.
Hornet Flight by Ken Follett
Ken Follett’s Hornet Flight is a gripping wartime thriller. I enjoyed this novel immensely and I’m pleased to say it’s restored my belief in this writer.
Having been introduced to him via the epic Pillars of the Earth I felt deflated and let down after reading his first book Eye of the Needle. It’s good to know that Pillars wasn’t a once-only effort.
Hornet Flight is set in Denmark during World War Two.
I’m going to cheat here and use the summary from the author’s web site:
“It is June 1941, and the low point of the war. England throws wave after wave of bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Lufwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies — indeed the war itself — seem to belong to Hitler.
“But on a small Danish island across the North Sea, Harald Olufsen, a bright eighteen-year-old with a talent for engineering, stumbles across a secret German installation. Its machinery is like nothing he has ever seen before and he knows he must tell someone — if he can only figure out who.
“With England preparing its largest aerial assault ever, what Harald has discovered may turn the course of the war — but the race to convey the information could have terrible consequences for everyone close to him.
“For his older brother Arne, a pilot in the grounded Danish Air Force and already under suspicion of the authorities. For Arne’s fiancee, Hermia, an MI6 intelligence analyst desperate to resurrect the foundering Danish resistance. And most of all for Harald himself, because as the hour of the assault approaches, it will all fall to him and his friend Karen to get the word to England.
“And the only means available to them is a derelict Hornet Moth biplane abandoned in a ruined church, a plane so decrepit that it is unlikely ever to get off the ground.
“Pursued by the enemy; hunted by collaborators; with almost no training, limited fuel, and no way of knowing if they will survive the six-hundred mile flight, the two will carry with them England’s best — perhaps only — hope of avoiding disaster.”
That’s a good summary and it saved me some typing. I liked the Danish setting and the historical information about how Denmark surrendered to Germany without a shot being fired. I’ll now research some of that history in more detail.
Follett must have abandoned his stilted and confusing narrative style after Eye of the Needle because Hornet Flight flows like a raging river. It’s fast paced and entertaining.
Interesting anagrams
Another e-mail from the same source as the words of wisdom contained these anagrams:
When you rearrange the letters in the word DORMITORY:
you get DIRTY ROOM
When you rearrange the letters in the word PRESBYTERIAN:
you get BEST IN PRAYER
When you rearrange the letters in the word DESPERATION:
you get A ROPE ENDS IT
When you rearrange the letters in THE MORSE CODE:
you get HERE COME DOTS
When you rearrange the letters in SLOT MACHINES:
you get CASH LOST IN ME
When you rearrange the letters in the word ANIMOSITY:
you get IS NO AMITY
When you rearrange the letters in MOTHER-IN-LAW:
you get WOMAN HITLER
When you rearrange the letters in ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
you get TWELVE PLUS ONE
When you rearrange the letters in the words PRESIDENT CLINTON OF THE USA:
you get TO COPULATE HE FINDS INTERNS
Words of wisdom
I received an e-mail today with sayings attributed as Maharishi Fattifatbastard’s Guide to Zen:
* Don’t aspire to become irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
* Never forget that you are unique, like everyone else.
* Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
* If you think nobody cares whether you’re dead or alive, try missing a couple of mortgage payments.
* Before you judge someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you judge them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
* Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
* If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
* Some days we are the flies; some days we are the windscreen.
* Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment.
* There are two theories about how to win an argument with a woman. Neither one works.
* Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much if your lips are moving.
* Never miss a good chance to shut up.
* Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
* Remember not to forget that which you do not need to know.
Mungo National Park
During my spare day at Balranald I visited Mungo National Park. It’s 150km from the town along mostly dirt roads.
This is the official blurb from the National Parks brochure:
“Mungo National Park covers most of an ancient dry lake bed on the plains of south western NSW. During the ice ages, Lake Mungo was one of a chain of freshwater lakes strung along Willandra Creek, then the main channel of the Lachlan River.
“These dry lakes preserve one of the longest records of Aboriginal life in Australia, dating back around 50,000 years ago to the present day. Dating of ancient burials shows that these are the oldest known fully modern humans outside of Africa.”
There’s an old woolshed at the park entrance, also a modern visitors’ centre and good amenities. Bunk accommodation can be booked in restored shearers’ huts.
I completed a 2.5km “foreshore walk” and read the interpretive signs, which were interesting and informative. There are diverse geological formations and a mix of other natural features in close proximity. Kangaroos were hopping among the cypress pine.
You can easily believe it was once a lake bed. As you stand inside it you can see the lake walls on each horizon. The eastern shore is called the “Walls of China”. These are windblown sand dunes that eerily resemble Saharan desert sands.
There had been some rain and the tracks were pretty slippery. A strong wind also made it rather cold. Mungo only has about 250mm of rain per year and would be baking hot in summer.
Mungo is about 110km from Mildura and 120km from Euston. I returned to Balranald via Euston, which is on the Murray River. It was interesting to see how much bigger the Murray was after being joined by the Murrumbidgee.
Darkest Fear
Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben is a witty suspenseful novel that entertains and enthralls.
I found it much better than Gone for Good and Deal Breaker. The story here was more believable.
Readers of fiction will grant authors licence to stretch the facts, but a plot still needs to be credible. A credible thriller is more frightening than a fanciful one because our natural tendency is to place ourselves in the story.
In Darkest Fear, Coben creates a scary scenario in which a kidnapper terrorises the families of his victims. He threatens, teases and cajoles them into silence in exchange for a faint hope their loved ones may be returned.
The police know nothing of this man because his victims are too afraid to report the crimes. Then a newspaper journalist is given exclusive access to perpetrator and victims, only to be unmasked as a plagiarist. But was he?
The central character is again sports agent Myron Bolitar, with support from his partner Esperanza and financier/trained killer Win. They solve the puzzle and help apprehend those responsible, with a fitting twist at the very end.
There were emotional sidelines surrounding the revelation that Myron has a son he didn’t know was his (the final kidnap victim) and the boy’s battle with a rare bone marrow disease.
This all sounds very serious, and it was, but Coben has a rare gift for interspersing the heavy stuff with a constant barrage of one liners.
There’s literally a gag a page and nearly every one hits the mark to at least raise a smile. The writing could easily cross into corny land, but Coben manages to stay on the right side of the line.
This is a book that will make you laugh, cry and fear in one great package.
Blue Horizon
Wilbur Smith is a master storyteller. He has the rare gift of making every word count, and Blue Horizon is no exception.
I love the way that Smith maintains the pace throughout his novels. There is no slackening; no time to draw breath; and at no time does the flow slow to a trickle.
Blue Horizon, first published in 2003, is chronologically earlier than previous novels in the Courtney series, covering a period in the early 1700s. That was initially confusing for me, but the plot stands powerfully in its own right and doesn’t require a previous or later novel to set the context.
There are typical Smith trademarks of young men growing up into fine leaders and warriors; discovering lust and finding equally powerful women to share their life journeys.
The pattern runs a risk of stereotyping, I suppose, but the yarn is always so well told that you have to forgive him for travelling a well-worn road.
The action just never lets up. It starts in the Netherlands with plague and fetish. A Dutch convict woman is rescued from her harsh fate by Jim COurtney when her prison ship docks in Table Bay. They then run ahead of vengeance from law officers who develop an irrational hatred, born from rivalry, for the young Courtney.
Add to the brew a parallel plot involving Dorian Courtney, who lays claim to the throne of the sultanate of Oman, with support from his son Mansur. Their plans are derailed by Dorian’s evil brother Guy. The whole escapade ends in a fierce battle in a remote port, where the good guys win.
There are fascinating side characters, such as the two bushmen rivals working for opposing camps and their ongoing feud. The Courtney women are strongly portrayed, as usual, with cameos from future generational stars.
I read this book of 770 pages in three nights and could hardly put it down. My only regret is that in haste to order others in the series I went online to Angus and Robertson, only to be told the stock will be delayed. I saw the novels in a bookshop the next day.
Peter Garrett
I’ve been planning to comment for a while on Peter Garrett’s decision to join the Labor Party, so here it is: I think it’s a risk for Labor to embrace someone with such extreme views. Garrett is anti logging, and while he mouths rhetoric that new jobs have to be created in forest areas, I’ve never heard him suggest what those new jobs will be.
The people who think like Peter Garrett would almost certainly vote Labor anyhow, or at least direct their preferences to Labor, so I can’t see the political gain for Mark Latham in this?
I won’t waffle any further, but would like to endorse the comments made by Merrill Boyd in her newspaper column for the Murray Valley Community Action Group. Here’s the column:
“It’s all in the game” as the Footy Show song says. You can see the similarities in last week’s Labor Party recruitment of the former Australian Conservation Foundation President and Midnight Oil musician.
Peter Garrett, the high profile celebrity recruit just oozed the “trust me” lines when questioned about how committed he was to the Australian political process.
After 25 years in the conservation movement as an active media player he shows qualities new recruits don’t normally expound. He wants us to believe he will become a team player — he will compromise and go with the majority in the party room” well I must be Cinderella!
Peter Garrett was never prepared to listen or compromise on the issue of the environmental flows for the Murray River. He expounded from river boats and the banks of the Murray that the river was “sick” and he has never swayed from expecting 1 500 000 megalitres (1 50 gigalitres) be returned to the river for its health. He has said it without seeing the agreed science or expected outcomes from this release of water.
Garrett had a single focus — he was unable to see the social dislocation and economic security needed by our rural communities. He is expert at bending the truth for his own ends. Some might say a primary requirement in the brash world of politics.
I am sure he will find that statements made in his former life will haunt him and his new party if he is given a seat in Canberra. Labor might find that their star recruit Garrett could become a liability because of the stance he has taken on issues in the past.
The tragedy for us here in this Farrer electorate is that so far, Labor hasn’t announced a candidate to stand against sitting Liberal member Sussan Ley. They were however, able to chose a celebrity recruit for the safe Kingsford-Smith seat — says something about where we in the Murray Valley sit on Labor’s political barometer.
As they say: “its all in the game”…
The Greens
The Greens are Australia’s most radical political party with parliamentary representation and the only one I have absolutely no time for. It annoys me that they receive significant media coverage considering they’re a fringe group that attracts less than 10 percent of the vote.
So I was disgusted tonight that two minutes of the ABC state news was devoted to the Greens pre-selecting a candidate for the seat of Melbourne.
How on earth did this contrived “news” justify selection in a 30-minute statewide bulletin? Parties with higher votes will never receive coverage for ordinary pre-selections. It only confirms in my mind that the ABC has a left-wing bias.
Six months old
It’s hard for us to believe the twins enjoyed their half-year birthday yesterday. I suppose we’ve been thinking about them and sharing their little lives since we new they’d been conceived, whereas their perception of reality is today and maybe yesterday. As can be seen they’re both happy and healthy babies.
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