So this is where it all began. 

When I say "it" I don't mean the universe, or life on the planet or the advent of Christianity. This time "it" just means this. What you are reading. This blog. A small thing.

See, not everything is big. Not everything is grand or destined for greatness. Some things are just little things in the mighty scheme of big things. 

When the dramas in my life used to get me down, I would imagine that all the actions and reactions and heartaches and intrigues were just too small for anyone's spare care - they were like a game being played out on a giant board in a cosmic fire station of some alternate universe.
I used to envisage an alarm ringing and the firefighters running off  to slide down their slippery pole to go and rescue some ethereal princess who was doing really important stuff - way more important than my failing relationship and impending single motherhood, or my inability to pay the latest electricity bill, or the size of my growing butt. 
I used to wonder what would happen if, in the quiet empty room, cockroaches raced across the surface of the playing area to nibble at a near-by abandoned lunch. Would we feel the earth shaking stomp of alien feet across the globe? 
Or if the station mascot, a playful dalmatian approached the board and bumped it with a wagging tail would we all simply fall into the abyss? "Naughty Spot. Now look what you've done. Hey guys, we'll have to start all over again.  The bloody dog wrecked the game. Somebody get some beers and we'll scrap this lot and start over". Small actions can have a big consequence - Exit humanity.

When I was 13, I was going to be a netball champion and play forever or until I married Gary Shannon, whichever came first. Neither did, but both were my all consuming passions. When I was 16, I was going to be a famous Broadway musical theater actress or a rock star to rival Donna Summer or Rickie Lee Jones - at that stage I had grown out of Gary and was thinking more along the lines of Jackson Browne - that dream hung around until I was 25! 
(Though I WOULD still consider giving Jackson a run for his money). No 'little' life for me.

My idea of myself was always big. I never thought I would just be a mum or a tobacco picker. I never thought I'd work in a quiet office or care so little about the way I appeared that I would go to the shops in my PJs. I never imagined I could be in so much physical or emotional pain, that waking up each morning might not be the blessing it's cracked up to be. Yet all of these things, inconsequential to the vast majority of humans, have been among the threads that hold my life together. Little tiny things.

Just little things. Little things that in my reality, were very big things. Yet ...

A few weeks ago and idea hit me when I saw some photos on Facebook. For the past five years I have been working as a photographer and journalist for a rural community paper (www.echo.net.au). In the course of my work I am always looking for the big or interesting news stories, or an item that is a scoop or controversial. Newspapers rarely publish the mundane - well a good news service doesn't. It's the nature of the beast.

But one man's mundanity is another man's treasure or life blood, or in the case of the FB photo: poultry apparel.

Recently a North Coast artist, mum and chook fashion entrepreneur, put her creativity to good use when her friend's daughter was approaching her fifth birthday. Rather than just wandering into the local Toys 'R' Us and purchasing the first Barbie on the shelf, Frankie Sharman took the time to think about what the child might actually want rather than what would be good gift from the giver's perspective. She cared enough about the happiness of a little girl to do something small. This wasn't a grand gesture, just the time it takes to consider another person's feelings -long enough to think what the child wanted rather than what she wanted.

So ... Frankie thought about what Marni would like for her birthday. As it turns out, the thing that Marni likes to play with the most are her choox: 'Honey Bunny', 'Gert', 'Percy', 'Scambo' 'Toby', 'Ozzi' and her favourite 'Rainbow'. The thought struck Frankie that a few scraps of material and elastic she has floating around the house would better serve her little friend than Mattel's Most Majestic Masterpiece, and she set to work sewing the worlds most exclusive line of chook frox.

This might sound just too simplistic and on one level it might be, but on so many other levels it is the most massive and generous thing one human can do for another. When do we really think about someone else? When do we care about not only about how someone thinks but how they feel? When do we really take into consideration how our actions may positively or adversely affect another human? 

When a junkie robs someone for their next fix do they care that what they take might be the last few dollars to support a meal for a poor family and that the stress of this may cause terrible damage? (This is not melodrama, this happened in my life - no I wasn't the junkie).

When a teacher belittles a student in the sixth grade, do they know that the child might leave that trauma to go home to the worse trauma of an abusive or substance addicted parent and the teachers flippant jibe is one more thread in their life - a thread in a hanging rope?

When a youth steps off a footpath and smiles at an old lady to let her pass without getting her feet wet on the nature strip, does he think that it might be the only human contact she has that day? A small smile can make a person's day.

When bigoted and racist comments flow freely from your lips do you imagine that the recipient of your venom is just another human like you - with parents or children, with fears and responsibilities, with love and hopes and dreams?

How we treat each other matters. How we think about each other creates ripples that reverberate beyond our control. Little things become big things and these things are not necessarily on the news or in the paper but they still count.

The thing is, there was nothing for Frankie to gain from the exercise - well nothing but the love and adoration of a five-year-old, but in terms of what would she 'get' for her efforts the answer is nothing. Not a single, solitary thing. The 'non-news' of the chook frox would have passed into oblivion but for a random photo I saw on Facebook of the aforementioned garments.






This is just a little story about someone  thinking about someone else.

altruism: disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others. 
                                           - Oxford Dictionary




Let this be our new religion.

About a year ago I fell in love with a man, who as it happens, is an Australian Aboriginal.

Since then I have seen the result of 200 hundred years of white oppression - it's scary and it's sad. I don't get racism...

I remember when I was about 12 walking to the shops with my nana. She stopped along the street to gossip with a neighbour who began a rant about how the Chinese were going to invade the country. On and on the woman rambled and my nana just stood there, blank-faced waiting for the tirade to end. I was getting a bit nervous because I knew something that the neighbour didn't. When she finished her little racist speech, nana looked at her straight in the eye and said, 'Well when those Chinese invade I'll be right because I am one of them.'

She turned her back, walked away and said no more. The moment left a huge mark on me.

The older my nana got, the more Chinese she looked. Beautiful. She often recounted a story of her grandfather 'Tommy' Ah Poy, a full blood Chinese, who unusually tall for the people, cut a fine figure in a suit and hat. In his retirement, he would often stroll the streets of Wangaratta as any gentlemen would in the early 1900s. Nana told me that he warned his grandchildren not to acknowledge him in the street. 'If I walk past the school, don't run to the fence,' he would say. 'Don't wave. You don't want people to know we are related.' Not wave to her grand-pa? I loved my nana dearly. I couldn't imagine not waving to her as she walked by. I didn't understand what she was trying to tell me. This was long before I witnessed the neighbour slagging Asians.

My daughters have a skin tone that defies definition. They look vaguely Greek-Indiany-Spanish-Thai-Irishy-Aborignal. Everyone has to be nice to them becasue no one is really sure where they are from, so people are careful about what they say. I love it! Their heritage includes genes from pools and puddles in England, Ireland, Scotland, China and quite possibly ancient Australia (though that branch of the family tree has bleached history so we can't be sure. Fortunately the bleaching has been reversed by my Cantonese great, great grand-person).

My Coffee Coloured Rainbow Babies will eventually create a rich blend with other coffee coloured babies and save the world. I can't wait because human history sucks.

I grew up in Wogville. I am allowed to say wog as I am a Melbournian and they (the wogs that is), were cleverly, one of the first ethnic groups of the world to reappropriate a previously derogatory term and reclaim the name as a term of endearment. Acropolis Now and Wogs Out Of Work, Kuh-lassick Maaayte! I reckon 70% of the folk I grew up with were wogs: Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Yugoslavians - this was before they became Serbians v Croatians - Albanians, Chileans, Lithuanians, Romani, Maltese, Maltese and Maltese (that lot breed like rabbits).There were also Chinese, Japanese, Ceylonese who morphed into Sri Lankans, Indians, more Greeks, Irish, English, Welsh, Scots a few Queenslanders and a Darwinian.

In primary school I don't remember there ever being race based fights. We all knew we were different from each other but that had more to do with gender, unpronounceable surnames and lunchbox contents, not skin colour. You wouldn't dare make a racist comment. Firstly it wouldn't occur to you and if it ever did, you would know there was probably more of them than you. You were more careful with what you said. You were gentler with folk's customs and beliefs. By the late 70s, everyone was half something and you would be taking racist pot shots if you picked on anyone, so it was better to just not, so we had it ingrained in to just not be bigoted. Besides, there was all that great food. Anyone who has met me can tell by the size of my butt that I learned to eat in Melbourne.

When I ventured into the big wide world, I often had people say to me that they knew I was from Melbourne because I was so friendly - this was before I became a bitch - and in some Gold Coast Clubs in the 90s, Melbourne girls got in for free for just that reason. I don't believe we were more friendly, just less nasty. We had learned from childhood to be nice to everyone no matter their background.

Australia is now turning into a big Melbourne as we are yearly producing more and more beautiful Coffee Coloured Rainbow Babies and it is these children of many colours who will eventually save the planet Melbourne style. This will happen on many levels.

It is well know that a mongrel will generally be healthier than a pedigree. It's a fact and we should make it a law. Let's get rid of all predigree even if only in title. Health issues will not have a chance to take hold if the prototype is constantly changing. I have several genetic defects that I am hoping upon hope have been bred out of my whitened in name, but not nature offspring. If we mix it up, we will produce a stronger race of humans.

SO SUCK ON THAT ALL YOU ARYAN NAZI BASTARDS!

On another level, if we have to be nicer to everyone in case we offend them, then "we have to be nicer to everyone in case we offend them". Get it? Imagine that. Imagine all the people. Living life in peace (thanx John). 


A French woman I know recently had a baby to her Abporiginal partner - their second 'chocolate frog' - her terminology not mine. There first child is a perfect Coffee Coloured Rainbow Baby.

Once blood lines get a little darker and a little lighter, then a little browner, a blob of blonder, a splash of ranga and a bit of indigo, we will evetually have a large selection of Coffee Coloured Rainbow Humans ranging from long black, through machiatto, latte and baby cino - everyone will have to be less nasty at least, as no one will have a seperate racial history. We will all be related somewhere back along the line, as we were when when we fell from grace and the trees, and the world will be a much better place.

So there!

Coffee Coloured Rainbow Babies: 
Jali, Wyuna and Wyana

Sometimes you get to a point where you want to explode - don't you ? Good grief I hope I am not the only person who feels this way!

John Donne (1572-1631) said amongst other things: 'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.' 
                                     - Meditation XVII, 1624

But we really are islands. We feel like Islands so therefore we are.  Islands in an emotional archipelago. We all feel we are alone yet we are a collection in our loneliness. We need the plural of loneliness - what an oxymoron that is. 

Moving right along...

When I get to the point when I am going to explode, something interesting usually happens. I can never tell what, but I burst forth with something and what was once a grain of sand in my consciousness, falls to the fore and there is my explosion. As you can imagine some of these fizzle and flop. Some bear fruit and burn hot.

I turned up on a virtual stranger's (caravan) doorstep one night on a whim. Twenty-one years later I am the proudest mum in existence, so the lesson I have learned is explode and deal with the fallout later and this is why you are reading these words.

A chance peep at some chook frocks on Facebook made me realise that as a photojournalist, sometimes I tend to look towards the big deals and there are things I don't always see because they seem inconsequential. 

The simple sweetness of a woman who made chicken outfits for a friend's daughter reminded me that even though Obama is president, this year we had the Olympics and CSG sux, none of these entities care about choox in frox in a little town near Australia's most easterly point. 

And I do. 

What life is worth fighting for if we are too busy brawling to see what we are fighting about?

I am so happy that somewhere in this universe, someone made a little girl happy by sewing some material scraps to elastic to adorn some local poultry.

I'd like to put these stories where you can see them - the simple stories, the happy, the sad, the tragic and the uplifting stories.

This is not news - just life.