Tag: suicide

Sustainable Development #15 Personal Survival

Sustainable Development can only happen for societies when individuals can survive.

This time last year I believed it was impossible for me to survive well into this year in Australia.

I was wrong.

The key reason I have survived is kindness and intellectual engagement from some very decent people: Graeme, Justin, Eddy, Jarrod, Kelly and Shelly, the above words from John Wesley describe the best of the human spirit and I see this type of goodness again and again in you.

Thanks for being my friends.

Geoff Fox, 17th July, 2020

Sustainable Development #9 Waltzing Matilda in Indonesian

This version of Waltzing Matilda is sung as best I can in Indonesian language. I hope a better singer will take it up. Click here for an instrumental version.

We must understand the problem of suicide to solve it and stop losing those lives. The Australian nation embraces this song about suicide in poverty. Why?

GLOSSARY

BILLABONG a small pond which used to be part of a river

BILLY a tin can for boiling water

COOLIBAH a type of outback tree

JUMBUCK a sheep

MATILDA the swag (see swagman below)

SQUATTER someone who gained possession of land by occupying it; they were rich men by the late 1800;s when the song was written.

SWAGMAN hobo, itinerant worker who carried all he owned rolled up in a swag on his back.

TUCKER food

WALTZING to travel on foot

Geoff Fox 22nd March, 2020, Terra Nullius.