Vanishing Beauty.

It was the night of the Supermoon, when Luna is at its perigee, and my wife and I went out to stroll through the bush in the moonlight.

We parked the car in the industrial estate a couple of kilometres from our house and set off to get some peace and perspective about life. In that blue monochrome world, under the full moon light, we strolled the concrete path that ran beneath the melaleuca and eucalypts. As we walked, I explained how this was one of the last green strips in the area. 

In the nearly 20 years I’ve lived in Queensland, I’ve watch the greenspace vanish, bulldozed to make room for housing development or light industry.  Our local councils have worked hard turning the green bits on the map brown, while out here in the real world  we watch all these little pockets of wildlife and bushland vanish. 

In our haste and our greed, we are ripping out the lungs of the world, and if we don’t stop, we will all choke on our fetid dying-breath. But there is hope, I’ve seen it once or twice. Like the people who are willing to replant native trees, remove weeds and restore greenspace to some of its former glory. These people deserve to be paid, yet they receive no fanfare, they just get on with making the world a better place.

Local governments see only dollar value when it comes to these last few remaining pockets of bush. The larger ones near my home are sealed off, one being a military firing range and a couple of others are Housing Dept. Land, earmarked to be sold off and bulldozed like all the rest at sometime in the near future.

When I moved to my current address, there were farms and large stretches of green where I could walk and think and attempt to retain my sanity. I would be dead if  not for those little  parcels of nature.

In that monochrome world of last night, under the light of the moon, I clung to that  little patch of green between the industrial park and the main road and breathed a little easier.  

When the Supermoon comes around again in 2034 I wonder what it will see. Will we have changed, or will we have turned the planet into a carpark as we fight each other to steal the last of the oil. We stand at a crossroads, every single day. At each new decision we help or harm each other and the world in which we live. Talk to each other. Share each others dreams, and fight for what makes the world a better place for everyone.

Chris K