My Return Home

My last entry to this blog was about perfection and imperfection, and two months have passed since I considered the nature of these qualities.

While being in Australia, touring the eastern coastal margins by caravan, I have been challenged by the enormous variety to be found in nature - within the rainforests there are enumerable species of trees, plants, birds and butterflies, not to mention insects such as ants and termites, and, just to consider the variety of wonderful and beautiful orchids in the rainforests, is mind-boggling. All of these natural phenomena are marvellous to me, and so many of them seem perfect in their design and function, each being dependent on others for their survival. Take the shy cassowary as an example; this is a large bird that grazes on the fruit of the forest and unwittingly distributes seed via its droppings, thus sustaining the forest which the bird needs for its own survival and for the continuing existence of other creatures.

Travelling broadens the mind, so I’m told; although that may not necessarily be a good thing, particularly if one is easily influenced by harmful or bad practices readily accepted by those who live in foreign lands; for example, the white man through greed has decimated countless acres of Australian rainforest to replace it with sugar cane plantations and cattle ranches; in so doing he has virtually destroyed not only huge tracts of forests and the creatures within them, but the Aboriginal people who inhabited those areas for thousands of years without changing their nature significantly.

One effect my two month stay in Australia has had on me is to put things in perspective. It has shown me the vastness of the earth, and by contrast the smallness of man; yet despite his apparent insignificance he has wrought devastation on the planet. I confess I, to a degree, have by my boat building and travel by air to that ancient continent contributed towards man’s defilement of the earth upon which he depends for his future survival.