11th February 2009

Dear Britain,

Everywhere you turn you can see people trying to recreate a little bit of you here on the other side of the planet. People desperately try to get roses to grow in this ancient, dry earth, refusing to give in to scorching heat and droughts. It seems half the country wants a traditional English garden outside their front door. Is this their way of pining for their home land or are they just struggling to adapt? It seems like a curiously British trait to try and clone a part of you wherever they go, just look at the Costas in Spain or colonial times in India. In Australia this has been as fruitless as ever. People have tried from the beginning to tame this wild land and have had little success. The contrast with the native plants with their spikiness, furry flowers and bark that peels away could not be greater when compared with the delicate little flowers of the 'exotics'. It still seems bizarre to hear the familiar, pretty plants of home described as 'exotic' whereas these alien, dramatic plants are the norm.

It is not only plants us Brits brought with us. We bought rabbits and foxes for sport. You wonder how much intelligence you need to realise that this was a bad idea. The animals here are stranger than the plants. Possums are maybe one of my favourite. We have squirrels, but here they have animals as big as cats with fluffy or curly tails that scamper about with their babies in their pouch. They will eat all your carefully tended fruit and vegetables, but somehow you have to forgive them. Echidnas are another one I love. Think of a giant hedgehog with enormous spikes, fur and a long nose that bury themselves into the ground. They are monotremes, mammals that lay eggs, like the platypus that early scientists thought was a hoax. Then there are obviously the kangaroos, wallabies and koalas, anything that carries it's young around in a little pouch is ok with me. Anyway, why anyone thought when surveying these strange animals that what was missing was a rabbit is beyond me.

I suppose it's human nature to want to change things, to tame them and to make them more familiar. There does seem to have been a resistance to accepting this beautiful, wild and strange land as it is. I can't help but think it would be easier to embrace things for all their bizarre glory, to try and learn from the people who had been living here for so long before (but more of that another day).

I'm a little under the weather here. Something about being sick makes me want to be back home, all I want is a big bottle of Lucozade and some Tunes but the supermarket has neither.

I hope you are surviving the cold weather and the storms unscathed.

Until next time,
JC