Category Archives: Fires

Australia’s St Elmo’s Fire is a Test

This poem came from inspiration about the Australian bushfires and homelessness.

Notable excerpt from The Big Issue article below:

Fire has destroyed 8.4 million hectares of land in southern and eastern Australia, an area bigger than Scotland. And despite heroic efforts by thousands of firefighters and volunteers the relentless, unpredictable and fast-changing blazes have killed at least 26 people, more than a billion animals, and destroyed over 2,000 homes.

Refer Big Issue for homeless people in fires. https://www.bigissue.com/latest/how-are-homeless-people-in-australia-affected-by-the-bushfires-down-under/

There are over 116,000 people homeless in Australia.

The poem I felt inspired to write reveals the importance of fires in nature to clear the old to make way for renewable growth within us.

The poem rekindles the Australian spirit of who we really are when in crisis. The real phoenix is our rebuilding who we are as a nation.

Einstein said:

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. We have to think anew”

Australia’s St Elmo’s Fire is the Test

 

The burning bush,

Is not a winter burn off,

It is not seasonal regeneration,

But a towering inferno of epic proportion,

Smoke billowing blanking out the blue sky,

As communities are under siege,

Seeking to defend property,

Unaware our right to property is the real fire storm,

So help me God!

 

A climate of change in government is not responsive to the real ecological crisis,

A climate of change in business is not responsive to sustainability as they aim for more growth with less,

Yet it is market based economics that is the red hot ember that won’t go out of season,

Cutting public services as under growth is neglected,

For they cannot see the forests for the wood,

Nature is a raw material costed for production not a natural wonder maintaining ecological function,

People are human resources costed per hour
not human beings growing up to empower,

Seen through the googles of economics
life is an algorithm not a rubrics cube,

The yoke of debt is not an Act of God but unaffordable rent,

As business as usual is endless chaos not order,

As we look for the quick buck not the long term fix,

Markets have short horizons not over the horizon radars advancing civilisation to higher expressions,

For to see beyond the space time continuum of self interest is to realise the uni-verse is the one song in tune with nature.

 

The wild fires have become a fire sale,

Destroying 8.4 million of hectares in the blaze will increase market prices,

A billion animals perished in the smoke haze,

Impacting the biomass as prayers were not answered,

Homeless people camping in the bush were razed
gained no relief or went missing without alarm,

Renters were given no grants or land,

As property owners are hard working and deserving,

Government, media and business jumped on the bandwagon not on the fire truck,

Circling the wagons is not containment of disruption,

Opportunities to strengthen brand images rather than imagine no brands to ask for change not coins,

Still seeking a bounty from the mutiny,

The mutiny on the bounty is to leave GDP,

As branded cattle are piled on burial mounds,

Agricultural crops and harvesters went up in smoke,

Timbers become cinders,

Run for your life abandon possessions, beloved memories and pets,

This is the test,

To save lives not things,

To remember each other and lend an equal hand,

For this is the meaning of the aussie battler,

Bush community know common unity,

As they battle fires with families and friends.

 

Giving is to be good as gold,

Yet what if the gold is in being truly good,

You would naturally give time and all you have,

For it is human nature to give not take away,

To pitch in or risk losing all,

As livelihood is to live your life to be really alive,

This is St Elmo’s fire testing your determination and stamina,

From smouldering embers spark new shoots to push up breaking new ground,

From hardship comes rebirth of a renewable life,

From pot ash comes the phoenix resurrecting renewal,

And all can rise when you can go down no further,

For the rural farmers have suffered for years,

They lost their voice,

Mortgages as debt was the tourniquet squeezing livelihoods year on year as hard work doesn’t yield.

 

Many have been weighed down…

By what is not important in fears,

By material things that no longer bring joy,

By worries about money that never end contracts,

By conflicts from stress and out of touch bureaucracy,

By family breakdown under pressure,

By rising costs and uncertain futures,

They have been the backbone of our country.

 

Yet what if you look up to the stars my friend?

Take your hands from your eyes to see beyond,

That a new day dawns every day,

The sun-rises from the east setting in the west,

To know that from bad seeds come good,

From disruption comes clarity of purpose,

For you can’t get back what is a final demand,

When one door closes another opens,

And the finale of life is to let go when it is done and dusted,

To face fires, flood, famine and drought fearlessly
as dawn, midday and dusk mark time,

For we must face the phases of the moon together,

We must give a hand up and a hand out
no matter who is in need,

As you are me,

And I am you,

Learn to let go of the seed of greed marketed as need,

It is the fast breeder of fear,

It is the terminator seed,

For what you give away returns the bounty,

What you earn you give away in trust,

As abundance is not in what you have but who you are when you dig deep,

And who you are is gratitude, service and love without end,

And these are the real seeds St Elmo’s fire is renewing,

For the old must die for the new to arise.

 

We are one country under the Southern Cross,

We are stewards not owners,

We are temporary not permanent,

When every ONE is deserving of charity,

We are a nation girt by sea,

From the coast, to the forest, to the deserts,

We are free,

We have boundless plains to share to care,

And air to breathe when we see the key,

That we can regenerate our country’s spirit,

We are dreaming in the land of Oz,

Starting again resets from zero point,

To nurture shattered lives by piecing together the puzzle as the final peace in the big picture,

The deck chairs are rearranging on the titanic seeking to keep the currency afloat,

The Big Issue is that Australians are sharing the bounty not holding cards to the chest,

As friends in-deed we are stepping up to lead,

For Mount Kosciusko can be climbed in a day,

The Murray can replenish a sunburnt country,

The Snowy Mountains can rekindle Clancy of the Overflow,

As he drove cattle down mountain views where all hesitated to step off the real cliff hanger,

He proved the impossible is possible,

Courage leads whilst fear weighs the risks,

In the high country the brumby’s sniff the wind adapting to climates of change as they know which way to run.

Australians know the struggle and the peaks,

As we are heading for a depression of great magnitude,

An economic earthquake shaking ‘em up,

The Great Barrier Reef sacrificed corals to pollution favouring a crown of thorns,

The Great Artesian basin is sinking the water table as hard water is diverted and dries up,

Salt lakes muddy clean waters,

Fertilising biosciences grow at ever diminishing returns akin anti-bio-tics,

Nature is not an electrical circuit board or linear cog in an industrial flywheel,

It is a tipping point of infinitesimal sensitivity,

Where the sum of the parts is the whole.

Descartes reduced life to boxes not cells,

Newton gravitated to apples not seeds,

Einstein’s relativity theory was not absolute,

Mythical dragons breathe fire yet oxygen is fuel,

Oxford became lost in space seeking the last frontier,

Dances with Wolves chose to go to the frontier country before it was lost,

Buffalos were killed for skins not hunger,

Science invented wars losing the peace prize,

For the real courage is to face what we have truly lost and not hesitate to act,

We are lost in space unable to make peace

A priority,

For until we do we hesitate on the mountain view unable to step off the cliff of uncertainty,

As life is not predictable nor mechanical,

It is a miracle,

And only when you lose everything do you realise the true value of life,

For this is the real gold,

Or indeed the Fool’s Gold of awakening from the dream,

Fires cleanse away debris to make way for renewable growth,

To see the forest instead of the wood,

To value nature as a flow not a production process,

For the real currency is love,

What you truly love becomes visible in crisis,

To breathe is nature’s rhythm,

To speak is nature’s sound scape,

To eat is nature’s bounty given for free,

For free dominion is nature’s possibility,

That self selects when the fruit is ripe,

To fall from the tree at the perfect moment,

As love withholds no wealth from life,

As life is the real wealth loving,

And until you taste the sweetness
greed will be the bad seed replanted,

Yielding endless wars fuelling climates of disruptive change,

For until the burning bush is seen as a message from the creator,

Heralding that all people are chosen,

And that all roads lead home,

For Rome will return to the Garden of Eden,

Adam & Eve will plant an apple tree together,

Receiving nature’s bounty at the perfect time in peace,

Loving what is was all ways the peace that passeth all understanding.

How to Stop Wild Fires in Australia for a Permanent Culture

To stop the wild fires emerging from hot conditions and dry fuel is to reforest the desert.  The way to start this process is to plant salt bush all over the desert with pockets of permaculture forests.  This will attract precipitation, enrich the soils and create shade.  Furthermore, it will release more oxygen into the atmosphere, sequester CO2 into trees, revive river systems.

Many may not know that the inner interior of Australia was tropical forest approximately 12,000 years ago.  I actually saw the water fans carved into rocks at Kings Canyon (Northern Territory).  I saw the Garden of Eden (yes it is called that) which was tropical remnants of ancient forests, really beautiful.

I watch the double decker house go up nextdoor as the old house is demolished to make way for a units based development.  I watch as the builders erect lots of wood beams, I think of climate, I think of deforestation to make the timber for construction.  I question the design methods, I question the loss of land (once large backyards for children), I contemplate the greed that has to put two housing units on the one land and I see our disconnect from nature.

Until the builder sees his connection to nature, he continues to build only focused on the fool’s gold that is never real.  As I discussed in my last video on Tony Abbott the real gold is top soil for growing food.  Yet we will be facing famine as the profit motive makes foods that have minor health or nutritional value, produced with preservatives, chemicals and flavourings – again disconnecting from natural foods, natural seasons and natural health.  We are so far removed from nature it is no wonder wild fires are out of control along the eastern seaboard of Australia.

The Israeli’s had the right idea when they created Kibbutz communities and greened the desert.  I recall in Egypt on the train from Alexandra to Cairo noting the agricultural strips of food crops.  In fact, after I juggled on a platform in Alexandra one of the Egyptians who admired my juggling joined me on the train back to Cairo. He happened to be an agricultural engineer. We discussed the greening of the desert.

Here is some information on this subject.

Desert Greening

Desert Greening
Desert greening is the process of man-made reclamation of deserts for ecological reasons (biodiversity), farming and forestry, but also for reclamation of natural water systems and other ecological systems that support life. The term “desert greening” is intended to apply to both cold and hot arid and semi-arid deserts (see Köppen climate classification system). It does not apply to ice capped or permafrost regions. Desert greening has the potential to help solve global water, energy, and food crises. It pertains to roughly 32 million square kilometres of land.
 

Permaculture is the key process. It is about permanent culture. Bill Mollison the CSIRO scientist who spent a long time sitting in the forest observing.  He was the one who created permaculture which was exported to countries like India.  It creates companion planting, chicken factories, herb spirals and low maintenance food forests. 

The geening (Green Revolution) cannot be biotech or agricultural monocultures, they are not selected for natural selection by nature.  We must learn to plant in harmony with natural systems or we are simply replacing business as usual with fossil fuels with business as usual with chemicals, same processes same outcome.  Wild fires, drought, flooding, high winds, unstable weather, impact on the gulf stream, melting ice caps and increased knock on tipping points.  We all get to choose.

 
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Greening the Desert

This is just one example of how permaculture can transform the environment, and, in so doing, dramatically change lives. By evidencing the dramatic transformation possible in the world’s worst agricultural scenarios, we hope to make people stand up and listen.

Greening the Desert – the original. Duration: 5 minutes

Also watch Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East

Big Agribusiness would convince us that continuing with fossil fuel dependent monocrop systems and genetically modified crops is the way of the future, but with fuel, transport and fertiliser costs skyrocketing, and growing evidence that genetic tinkering is causing far more harm than good, we, instead, advocate tried and tested methods of working with nature for the benefit of man.

Update: Watch Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East, where you’ll learn about the current state of the original Greening the Desert site, and learn more about the work in Jordan and the new PRI project site there.