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Published: November 12th 2022
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How soon we forget.
I wrote this blog in June 2020 to celebrate our first weekend away following the closing of Australia's international and state borders due to the Covid Pandemic.
Time to reflect...this is what I wrote back then and then returned to my Covid Cocoon as millions in the World were confined to their homes or died around us.
And in 2022 it is floods, floods & more floods that submerge the East Coast of Oz and the usually bone dry interior.
And the third World power (after USA & China) that I warned you of on our return from Russia in late 2019 has reared its ugly side in 2022...no more dancing in Putin's pastures ahead...only images of unbridled savagery, blitzkrieg and dread!
******
But back in 2019 & 2020...
Bushfires ravage the East Coast of Australia with 33 lives lost....5,900 buildings destroyed including over 2,800 homes...estimation of loss of wildlife in the billions...August 2019 to February 2020.
Then the rains came and doused the fires and widespread floods in Sydney basin, Blue Mountains and central west to the north of NSW washed 10
years of drought and potential recession away.
Or so we thought.
The Mischief Maker of Human Dread had not finished playing...No way Matey...No way.
Out of the bowels of hell a silent killer was peeking...spreading its tendrils in puffs...in touches...in freefall abuse.
The latest pandemic was let loose on the World...and much of the World are fearful but much are more concerned as to the economic effect than the inevitable human cost that apathy presents.
'Tis said it sprung from the wet markets of Wuhan, China in late 2019 and the World took notice by February 2020.
Even though the Chinese may wish to save face by denying it...avoidance is the greatest enemy to finding out how it began to try to reduce it coming again.
Yet if we can believe any of their Covid stats...that they are nailing people into their homes and dragging infected people screaming may have produced major flattening of the curve.
Interesting that infections in Beijing of about 30 have put them into a containment frenzy...but if it works tai chi in jubilance will be.
Let's face it...winners are alive to grin another day...unlike the grimaces
of those who have the lives of loved ones snuffed out and die alone.
Some say Covid 19 was released from a laboratory in Wuhan...ideas from a Presidential nutter who should know better than to unleash his vitriol to distract from his own inactivity in taking measures to protect his country from the virus spread.
I hear a lonely voice say "
That is unfair...Don't blame the carrot...even Putin echoed these thoughts". But how else can you explain his country having a quarter of the World's infections and more Covid deaths in a day than his country's combat deaths in the Great War?
I am just glad to be in Oz where our leaders made the hard decisions to lock us down and of this disease we are relatively free.
But at what cost?
Our economy is shot.
China doesn't want to talk to us as we shine lights on darkness.
But at least we are starting to open up.
With Aussie optimism and resilience...relatively virus-free...we will survive to grin another day.
Our International and most State borders still closed...can't go anywhere but our Aussie backyard.
So when the NSW
Government said the first weekend in June 2020 was OK to head bush...we packed the car...and did just that.
And weren't the rural folk pleased to see us?
So pleased they came out of their houses to say welcome back.
'Cos its the rural towns that need visitors more than we do...a few bucks here and there makes all the difference...six months ago in perpetual dust bowl...rains a few months back bringing hope as brown turned green again.
And then the virus brought economic depression tumbling down yet again.
I wouldn't be a farmer if you paid me...but boy am I glad they hang in there.
'Cos without them we do not eat...but with them...bugger the virus...we will live another day.
The Covid stats speak for themselves.
But let's not dwell on that...jump in my car and head west...across the Blue Mountains to Millthorpe where my cousin opened Millthorpe Motors many years ago...to Carcoar where our neighbour Dave grew up...to Cowra where there was a Prisoner of War Camp in WWII and the Japanese staged a memorable breakout...and after the war has been the symbol of Australian and Japanese Reconciliation with its
Japanese Garden of Remembrance.
And then the carpark of bumper to bumper from Lithgow to Sydney as we head back.
'Cos the pandemic affected all of us...quarantine rigid...but first weekend opening up...everyone was busting to get out the back.
Relax & Survive the pandemic as best you can. When will it ever end???
Dancing Dave
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His Dudeness
Ralf Kreuze
Great pictures
As always. Now that the world is open again, where to next?