The Tampa Affair remembered in #Ballarat : Grandmothers Against the Detention of Refugee Children - Ballarat and Rural Australians for Refugees

Yesterday, Grandmothers Against the Detention of Refugee Children - Ballarat (GADRC - Ballarat or Grandmothers Ballarat) accompanied by Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) remembered the Tampa. Thx to Ian Hall for his contribution to the slideshow below.

Ruins of post-industrialisation - a sign of our times? #ruins #urbandecay #photography

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East Side Public Library, Detroit, Michigan, USA.

After just posting the cheerful repurposing of the chest of drawers below, I came across here a series of wonderful photographs depicting what appears to be a whole city in need, desperate need, of repurposing and rejigging. This is not just one photo essay. Here is another by a different photographer. Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino hints at the urban decay facing Detroit. But we see nothing like this.

For me, the scariest picture of all was the one above. As a book-lover, knowledge gnome, information junkie and former librarian, I wondered why - even if the building was vacated - why no one packed up the books and put them into appropriate storage.

Clearly, Detroit is still there. It is not the end of the world - but (as the saying goes) you sure can see it from here.

Is this the fate of globalised, post-industrialised economies? 

The National Party and Agricultural Socialism : The Shearers' Strike: Mudginberri

Mudginberri Meatworks, Northern Territory

And I thought I was an optimist.  I don't think I hold a candle to Paul Pickering  who is deputy director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University.


You see, Networkers, Paul has a piece in this morning's Age commenting that the Nationals should have embarked on some deep and meaningful negotiations with the Australian Labor Party  to secure for their constituency goodies similar to those negotiated by the country independents.  All this, Paul says, is on the basis of the sort of agricultural socialism that the Nationals and their constituency seem to favour.


Unbridled optimism - or does Paul have his tongue firmly embedded in his cheek?

The once glorious now dead Tree of Knowldge, Barcaldine

I suggest for Paul a trip to Barcaldine in Central Western Queensland, home of the Australian Workers Heritage Centre.  Barcaldine is one of the significant centres of the Shearer's Strike of the 1890s and is regarded as the birthplace of the Australian Labor Party which arose out of the strike.