Yet we still love this impossible land, even when appalling bushfires strike every few years, and when it is not drought it is flood; much of Queensland was still flooded yesterday, with crocodiles heading south. We love it even when, at times like this when fire demonstrates it has a mind of its own, the love is unrequited.
From here. He also says, interestingly - "Don Watson says that while most Australians live in cities they still imagine Australia as a landscape."
What an odd thing.
2 comments:
well i suppose a lot of australia is a landscape...Australians just don't live it in. Can we really go so far as calling the fires in Victoria beautiful? Terrifying definitely, but I see very little beauty in them.
Yes, I think so. Terrible things can still be beautiful.
cf. Yeats - a terrible beauty is born
The flames and the fire and even the speed of their approach can be beautiful. Smoke that is orange instead of black, cinders and embers and ash are all in their way beautiful. It doesn't have to be good to be beautiful.
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