How I found myself in Mount Buller

I meant to do mark­ing work today and then hang out with Tien, but he can­celled and then I figured since I had the after­noon free I may as well head off early to go on a junket to Mt Buller. It’s a good thing it worked out that way because I didn’t real­ise quite how far away it was (3.5 hours) and wouldn’t have got there on time if Tien had come over. So I jumped on Astrid, took off and got here at about 3pm, freez­ing thanks to lack of decent winter bike gloves and a nasty wind. The ride was mostly uncom­fort­able but some of the forest bits are just divine and I’m really glad I came out here.

I met up with the PR woman, had a hot toddy and a chat, checked in and then soaked in a hot bath. There’s a fancy big dinner on at 7 and until then I’m sit­ting in the bar writ­ing this with a glass of unwooded chardonnay. 

Anyway, it’s been a while since I posted actual con­tent here, so here goes:

Michael Leunig’s art­icle in The Age last week­end about Anzac Day and today’s cul­ture of glor­i­fy­ing war really hit home. It’s been a no-brainer to me to reject war hero’ stuff and I’ve been etern­ally uncom­fort­able with Anzac Day and other things like it, but when someone says to me ”we’re not cel­eb­rat­ing the war, we’re com­mem­or­at­ing the poor bas­tards who fought and died in it”, it’s often hard to answer why that’s wrong, or at least not good enough.

Leunig puts his finger on it: most of those guys volun­teered to fight. Where are the remember­ences of the brave souls who refused to kill? Where are the monu­ments to peace? On the whole, human rights have been advanced after wars and not by sol­diers but because of the hor­rendous things they’ve done. Where are the public remember­ences of civil­ian deaths? Why is Anzac Day so much bigger than Inter­na­tional Human Rights Day? We’ve got the wrong end of the stick, in every way pos­sible and this needs to change. Time for a cul­tural raid on their pro-war, pro-viol­ence, pro-sol­dier cul­ture. And this isn’t about the indi­vidu­als who’ve been suckered into this, but it does tie into why I imme­di­ately cease friend­ships with anyone who joins the army. (And why I’m so con­flic­ted about friends who’ve been in the army in the past — although at least they have mostly left because they real­ised what was going on…)

And now I’ve been typing for an hour and should do some actual work.