In letter and in spirit

The pedagogue is cut down in the scourge of paralysing attacks hitting the contemporary world.
He comes to the edge of the gyre, as good as gone.
Recalled to life, he’s out of time. A dud cheque, a total wreck.
He comes up with a story to suit.

Throwing him a lifeline is the NSW public health system.
The diehard is fortunate to be accepted into a medically screened and fully supervised exercise program
Balmain Hospital helps him keep his hard pressed mind and body together.
While the Strong Centre doctors patients, he doctors their details.

Born at a very young age, our free range youngling grows up in the Bush.
He occupies a propitious moment of history. Capitalism’s post-bellum golden age.
Taking care of business, he walks the social, political and religious divide.

Developing a consuming interest in the arts,he is informed by a wide range of contributions.
The two Peters instruct him in new, offbeat ways people can be funny.
He takes work such as theirs, breaks it down and spreads it out.
Applied to his own efforts,it enriches both his inner and outer life.
He devises a novel literary concept- the story within a story within a story.
He attends the opening act at the Sydney Opera House.

The fresh faced, watchful plainsman makes it up the mountain range, coming of age in the cathedral city.
He sets the scene of the collegiate campus, being exposed there to different ideas, perspectives and experiences .
It provides him with a political and emotional awakening.

He learns about the power and influence of socially shared events.
The way each cohort develops a unique set of beliefs and attitudes.
How these guide it’s members’ behaviour and shape their cultural works.
He looks at the battered generation surviving the First World War.
He looks at the ‘angry young men’ following the Second one.
He learns about the officials selected to control ideas of the youth.

He takes on the persona of Chu-I, Mr.Red Coat,the protector of students.
He assists those who present themselves at examinations with a light equipment of English knowledge.
Encountering China through the writings of Sai Zhenzhu, he learns about many customs and practices that have now vanished.

Louis Leakey invites him to increase education and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behaviour and survival.
He considers the Multimates carrying out field research of primates in their natural habitats,
He decides on studying chimpanzees in their captive habitat.
He learns how the past of humans in Australia is unearthed.

While reading conventional economics he becomes an advocate of alternative strategies.
Those which prioritise social justice, sustainability and the pursuit of a fairer society.
He investigates the nature, causes, and consequences of economic inequality, a defining issue of our age.
He concludes that, although governments are often committed to ‘growth at all costs’ and‘trickle down’ economics, there are alternative public policies that could be used to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

He studies both the humanities and the inhumanities.
In considering international relations he reflects on the nature of appeasement, the Cold War, and decolonisation.

He discovers the force of planetary love.
Having grown up during the dawn of the space age he keeps vigil during the orbital flights.
He witnesses humanity leaving its ancestral home and stepping on the surface of another celestial body
A pair of the crew behind these feats thanks him for his support .

Undergoing basic military training,he learns how the values inculcated diverge from those of the larger society.
He works together with other recruits to overcome a series of arduous tasks and obstacles.
Driven by manly patriotic urgings, our weekend warrior buys into the grand project.Forward Defence and the casus belli.
Looking under the hood of the massive military machine,he studies the how and where it drives things along.

With everything falling into place, he runs headfirst into the moral complexities of the real world.
Coming face to face with the vagaries, hypocrisies and amoralities of contemporary politics,he discovers the grand imperial imposture.
Increasingly disaffected with it’s system of control, the sap rising, he goes from renouncing to denouncing .
Reversing course, finding a code he can live by,he travels to the beat of a different drum.

Reflecting on the role of theatre,film,and music, he directs his thoughts to some outstanding writers and composers, to those acting out and interpreting their works.
He looks to those creative talents from ‘Hamlet’ to the Global Village.
Those who tell and perform stories for us,transmitting words and sounds to celebrate, challenge and provoke.

Our hardedged innocent discovers something very sustaining in travel.
He is driven by two impulses – to get away from home and to pursue different landscapes, people, and exotic places.
Setting off from his hometown,knapsack on his back,he embarks on an epic road trip.
Overland through the scorching Outback, up through the Malay Peninsula and on to an Indochina on the brink of catastrophe.

He meets up with ‘Bookshop Bob’ to stock up with reading on the war.
Bob fills him in about the welcoming party for the Vietnamese strongman.
Back in Armidale he discusses the reception with his friend from Saigon.
The Cambodian head of state thanks him for his expression of friendship with his country.

Fresh out of graduation, he appears before the legal eminence.
He consults him about the upcoming Teach-in about the war and the demonstration against it.k
He is drawn into discussion with him over the nature of the Australian character.
In a war of words he stares down the foreign minister .

He is greeted by one of the main players in the Arab world.
With collegiate fellows he discusses the ruler,his family and the stature of his country .
Built on its prestige as the custodian of the birthplace of Islam, it’s status is based on it being one of the world’s largest oil producers.

Newly minted, the bachelor is sent out on life’s stage.
He teaches young people navigating the turbulent years of adolescence.
This was 1968,a very turbulent year in all kinds of ways.
Determined resistance to the war, large scale opposition and a spirit of rebellion swept through the world.
The presidential challenger,opposed to involvement in the much-hated lost war, thanks him for his support.

Armed only with a smile, a piece of chalk, a suit, the ambition to succeed and that most precious possession, tomorrow ,he is reappointed to another country high school.
He drops in on the Thompsons, a rustic,colloquial family of proles.

Footloose and fiancee free, our everyman steps out gamely into the larger world.
In this modern Pilgrim’s Progress, in search of fame,fortune and the better things of life,he sets out across the Eurasian landmass through a world now largely forgotten.
Driven by burning visions of a liberal city, in pursuit of hormonal and cultural urges, he aims to shake off prudes and prejudice.
After being wedged into packed train cars,he journeys along the Hippy Trail.
He comes across an Afghan scholar in Kabul and American military trainers in Tehran.

The seventies wraps its arms around him.
He travels north to Wonderful Copenhagen.
He gains residency in this cold climate country.
His work makes everything more palletable.

Hacking his way into the blackboard jungle.
He travels from school to school.
Putting older heads on young shoulders.
The Queen of Mean hits the scene.

He adventures through the various stations of the class system.
With other promenaders he attends the season of orchestral concerts.
He clearly hears Flash Harry’s choral influence shining through.
All suited and booted with somewhere to go, it’s up the stair to Vanity Fair.

He chooses to study the student movement of the 60’s.
He compares the events in both France and England.
He examines the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends.
He is brought up to speed on events in Brissy.

He strengthened the hope of the Irish head of state.
That his message on the moon come true.
From Dublin to the north the long way.
The people of Belfast tell him about ‘The Troubles’.

Prague offers him it’s gothic beauty and old world charm.
It offers him evidence of cultural resistance.
It’s hammer and tickle jokes as an artform.
He uncovers an illegally produced book.

Sent in by the military to clean up the former eugenist run academy, he carries out mopping up operations.
He flushes out the truth about the moral degeneracy and fascistic form of training it had been freed from.
He makes contact with the former head of the secret intelligence apparatus.

He finds the allure of the German Democratic Republic to be curiosity, plain and simple: the chance to see and experience a system that had intrigued him.

His rude boys and girls go through many doors and classrooms .
He draws on their various accents, use of words, and patois.
This eases his way into their minds.
His flatmate voices his heartveldt feelings on the breakaway colony.
Our man of goodwill joins preparations for the biggest bash in Europe.

He takes his class to hear out the Secretary of State for Industry.
The Minister prescribed state and co-operative ownership of industry.
This memorable and moving oratory was testament to the power of political speech.
It delivered a promise the young audience could keep.
Hopefully they would, in their actions, become worthy of his words.

He moves at a trot to the Land of Snot.
Saturday Night there comes a warning.
The swivel eyed runt from the Front,
A chundered heap on Sunday Morning.

On subway platforms, tunnels and trains the busker performs his harmonies.
The rail hold up leading to spontaneous interaction between passengers.
The troubador traces his fortunes and social position to our man.
The Desert Island Discs serve as mirror and counterpoint for their progress.

Thousands gathered under the banner of various organisations.
We protested the march of the aryan warriors.
Their demographic nostalgic for empire and everyone knowing their place.
Thick walls of policemen ensured their safe passage.

As the economy goes into a sustained slump he settles in to new surroundings.
He agitates to have housing regarded as a basic right.
That the State provide decent secure tenured shelter for its citizens.
That it live up to it’s policies and provisions to do so.

Basking in the afterglow of success, he returns home on the range.
To enlarge his intellectual capacities he dives into the deep end of the pool.
He poses as a government workman to crack a house.
His rosebud unfolds and blossoms.

Rambo draws new blood. With extreme prejudice.
Citizens seek ways to support those fighting for human rights in Central America.
Activists work to obstruct US political, economic, and military intervention .
The combat rocker mocks the manifest destiny that guides American missions.

Papa Allan and his family revel in the exploding,exotic appeal of Latin American culture.
Both visible and assertive,it captures them as part of a young,diverse audience.
Aficionados who regularly listen and dance to cumbias,salsas and tangos.
Knocking them dead at the outdoor concerts is ‘The Bombshell from Bogota.’

Blanketing the field, he gets his hopes up in the public school system.
All sharp and shiny ,in his proper sphere, he gets back in the swim of things. Gangway!
Then came the detours, the backdoor tactics and the series of indignities.
He finds himself the quarry of of a very nasty hunt.

He creates a unique and innovative teaching tool.
It enables everybody to become fully immersed in knowledge of New South Wales and beyond .
It enables them to read and write about it at their own pace.

Driving through the erogenous zone.
The sights and sounds of this centre of vice.
The thrill seekers, tourists and the down-and-out.
The back street deals and random violence.
Russel recounts his blackballing by the thought police.

He joins the party to welcome Madiba to Sydney.
He instigates a scrum with admirers packing closely together to gain possession of his hand.
At the Great Hall he discusses ideas on championship with those gathered.

In a secluded cul-de-sac in Balmain , close to the water and with harbour views ,he comes to this handcrafted home of Brother Tom .
Taking its cue from the character of Tom himself, there’s a solidity and robustness to the form of this timber house.
Yet it still manages to create an element of openness and intimacy.
He chats with Tom about his life as one of the country’s most respected elders.
A digger and campaigner for the environment, peace and social justice.

The big noise from Britain blows into Sydney.
A Temptation of the first water comes to his home.
The man of Motown explains the realities of the music business

He volunteers his services to help refugees with their language skills and knowledge of their new country.
He aims to help break down social barriers, for them to feel more connected, to engage with Australian culture, customs and traditions.
The perils of conflating them with terrorists most of whom are homegrown and poorly educated.
He provides the resettlement consortium with his unique,hard won inventory of educational resources.

A precious and unique green community space is mooted to help refugee integration.
Limits are placed on this sensitive operation’s chances of success.
Our Living Story points to a successful precedent from our own history.
The current influx express their desire to master their knowledge of Australia.
The re-settlement consortium reveals it’s motto: ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’

The Middle East in Sydney’s South West.
He attends a discussion day in the ethnic salad bowl to display his knowledge about NSW.
The locale was a café with a community focus for people looking to train up in the food preparation industry.
He follows the path of the Boy from Bankstown.
He meets the Geezer from Gaza and traces the assault on his homeland.

His Italian student recounts a biker assault at a roadside cafe.

As the numbers of refugees from the Middle East explodes,he links the pressure to accept more to our reckless use of military power.
He argues that’s it’s our moral responsibility and vital to our security that we provide restitution.
To compensate in every way possible for the losses and injuries caused.
That we encourage those who make it to our shores to get back on their feet.

He sits in on a stimulating studio discussion about the burning issues.
Who gets to retain their their land ?
Who best explains the controversy over it’s warming?