The Rapture: Australia Undone

  It has been cold, and wet. He had been doing everything he could to get out and about.  There were frequent stories of businesses going bust. Post the so-called "pandemic", a period when the oligarchs of the world stretched their muscles, and the big read giant pharmaceutical exercised their tendrils in a world gone astray, in a place where the dead walked and the population burrowed, where there was no common sense, no decency, where the putrid decay of a dysfunctional government left rotting corpses in the fabric of the culture, in the mulch decaying on the forest floor, in the wake of a sweet ignorance which now left everyone isolated and alone, for an out of control government pillaged everything they had, cared not for the consequences of their own actions, did not serve the people, and instead built giant bureaucratic edifices which in themselves were the enemy of the general public.  It was a terrifying moment in time.  We clamoured for attention and were go...

  We told you to go to the forest but you did not go. All war is deception.  The falcon stirred deep within the forest.  It was the middle of summer, another cold, non-existent summer, and he was cold. The cult kept going. It was meant to be a sign of sophistication, of intellect, of sensibility , proof that you were a good and caring person, to embrace the climate change hysteria which was disfiguring the country, destroying the landscape, and consuming billions of dollars of public funds, all to benefit the likes of Bill Gates. And to control the population. It was a travesty; and there was no use railing against it, for no one cared, no one listened, people went about their tiny lives in their own happy little circuits, and for a time he had embraced the ordinary; until in the barely sentient ordinary he realised that despite all his protestations, I just want to be an ordinary person, such a fate was not the one for him.  And so. A sinking feeling.  A warnin...

  I am here and you are where you are.  There were images of the surrounding region, and images of places he had never been, swamp lands, birds rising, an armour plated falcon preparing for war, the seagulls and pelicans nestling on the sand banks of Lake Illawarra, the flocks of cormorants flying low over the nearby shore.  There were children everywhere in this area of young families; far from the inner city streets where he had dwelt for so long. Far away, well ten kilometres or so, was Minnamurra Falls, which, the signs assured him, had been running through that narrow channelled gorge for 25 million years.  What struck him, he supposed, was how little the ancient spirits of this place cared for the war between Hamas and Israel, the desolation of Gaza, and then how insulated was the Australian population, where Married At First Sight was the most popular television show, viewed by more than two million people.  As the ABC reported: " Channel Nine's Married a...

  Well then, it had to begin again, he had to go back to the source. The country had returned to some sort of normality after the Covid years, although crushed, disengaged, and going quietly, or not so quietly, about their own lives, there was little to recommend what was happening here. The politics were putrid. Albo, the "Liar in the Lodge" as the Liberals were trying to brand him, wearing a pink hat in the seat of Dunkley for another event for women's cancer, was drifting further and further into disrepute. Although, despite their best efforts, he did not appear to have suffered in the polls for his deceit over the Stage Three Tax Cuts. Petrol had just soared over $2 a litre.  Nobody had much money. But still we forged on. A million extra people in under two years, that was the stat that got to him.  And hiding in the undergrowth, staring out from hidden wells, basking in sunlight, making efforts to return to the real world, in this realm, another realm, a place where ...