by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Australia was formed from penal colony beginnings.
But only because the Brits lost the War of Independence in its American colony.
So in what became the USA, The Brits could no longer use Maryland & Virginia to house its ‘crims’.
The Pitt Govt in England considered Africa, then Canada, but went with Cook’s ‘recently discovered Australia’.
It made sense – a massive mostly inhospitable isolated island –
In many ways – it was already a giant prison.
And so in 1788 the First Fleet sailed out of Portsmouth.
Over the next 80 years the crims flowed like cheap wine,
Australia’s went from from what it already anciently was, to a penal colony chrysalis, then to dirty winged butterfly.
But official slavery became unpopular & the Molesworth report found the obvias:
A society made & dominated by a penal colony and it’s unfree & freed criminals is imperfect, and full of unneeded vice.
So Pitts lot agreed & it was slowly wound down.
Though Van Dieman’s land continued for some decades longer.
Finally in 1868 their were no more ships coming for penal colony reasons.
And so ‘Modern Australia’ in theory started to form.
This is all very interesting.
But I find this philosophical question most interesting:
Could & can Australia ever escape its beginnings?
Or is there a forever 1788-1868 ‘penal colony cultural field’ pulling its cultural strings on the puppet citizenry?
If so there is something dark about Australia that cannot ever be wound back.
And perhaps the scariest thing that follows from that is this:
Without knowing it, everyone will be cultually programmed to re-create ‘penal colony Australia’,
By something unseen in the mostly scorching hot dry air that surrounds them.
‘All tarred with the same brush’ – if you will.
It’s a script that keeps playing – like a cosmic cultural recording & playback machine – if you will.
It is a scary thought.
And of course if this ‘permanent originating cultural field theory’ is correct –
Australia is but grain of rice among many fields of wheat.
All nations will suffer or benefit from their ‘permanent originating cultural field’.
And I personally believe the theory to be a good one –
For in my life I have seen many people all showing the signs marks of the same very-old-but-still-alive hands.
So perhaps the saying ‘The more things change the more they stay the same’.
Is more of a pyscho-physical law rather than a glib,vague, social tendency.
But in saying all this – I must must must throw some sunlight on this moonlit mire
For many people do escape a seemingly this limiting cultural field.
But how?
Perhaps they tune into, and resonate with, a higher level underlying field than the ambient one.
So let us not give up is hope for the Australians in all of us.
After all,
We know from Flanders that vibrant red poppies bloomed in the warring-rolling-fighting-fields.
Flowers can indeed bloom even if raised in a bad culture.
Flowers will always bloom in the fields of war.
Even as the invisible hands of the cultural field quash the greater rebellion.
Will all the Australian’s one day defeat the permanent penal colony cultural field?.
Well, some of them well at least some of the time.
But while Ned Kelly & Vegemite still is seen as there ‘national heros’.
The chances of redemption are slim to not great.
And yes I can here their distant psychic retorts:
“But at least we’re not New Zealanders”.
They have a point – for the NZ ‘permanent cultural field’ ain’t that flash either –
As will be covered in in my next week’s prose poem:
“The Great Trans Tasman Debate: Is it better to be dim, disloyal & lazy or scrappy, potty-mouthed & criminal”.
But all jokes aside,
I do hope we can all defeat the handcuffing fields,
Rise upwards and all find our true higher vibrational plane –
Our “fields of gold” if you will.
There is surely more and greater things out there than those things that meet and enter the eye and body.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 