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One could argue that in terms of culture and landscape Australia is an acquired taste. Australians are proud of their “rough diamond”, “larrikin”, “democratic”, and ostensibly “fair go” culture - as opposed to Home Country English “refinement” and Jane Austen-style “manners”. (Although, to be realistic and frank, there is not much of a “fair go” for the 0.3 million Afghan infants who perish avoidably each year in Australian-occupied Afghanistan nor for the 0.6 million bereaved parents). Further, Australians love the sharp light and harshness of the Australian landscape – as opposed to the moist, verdant, lush European landscape. This is beautifully captured in Dorothea Mackellars’s famous and iconic poem “My Country” which the Australian poet (1885-1968) wrote while homesick for a “sunburnt country” and a “wide brown land” Australia while living in green, grey, misty, wet England at the age of 19 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country ) : The love of field and coppice Of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, Brown streams and soft, dim skies I know, but cannot share it, My love is otherwise. I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me! The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil. Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain. Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze… An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly. In short, “My Country” - the painting – can be conveniently “read” as 4 key sub-set images from West to East, from the Red Western half of Australia that is experiencing a Red Dawn some hours after the Sun has already illuminated the now heavily European-dominated Eastern sea board. Thus in the West (Right Hand Side, RHS) we have initially a red, sunburnt country, Uluru (formerly Ayer’s Rock) in Central Australia, kangaroos, emus, other bird life plus, at the bottom, images of the Northern Territory wetlands with water birds and crocodiles. Next we have the very yellow Western Plains with wildlife and burning Sun plus, at the bottom, images of flood inundation i.e. of “drought and flooding rains”. In the next quartile we have a Green, lush, well-watered country around the Great Dividing Range (the Eastern spine of Australia) plus, below, an image of drought. Finally, in the Eastern Left hand Side (LHS) we have the European, Eastern sea board with skyscrapers, Bondi swimmers, shark fins, Sydney Harbor Bridge, hump-backed whales and the brilliantly-colored fish of the Great Barrier Reef. This is “My Country” with its huge variety of dichotomies in one large painting – a labor of love indeed. However, when in a few months you see brilliant young Australian athletes scoop the swimming gold medals in the Beijing Olympics, just remember that “all that glistens is not gold” and that My Country has differing facets, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Only the truth will set us free – and save the Afghan.and Iraqi infants dying at the rate of 1 every minute in White Australian–occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.
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 Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality ---
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