Some 17,000 years ago, so it is believed, this point of land was 14 kilometres inland. The sea has risen and eaten the land; and the beaches are cold and everything is cold; and the fevers of his imagination were as calm as they could be under the circumstances. He didn't want to be free, he wanted to be possessed. Instead of obsessed. Yes, the beaches he had not wanted to see again were cold, largely empty of life. The occasional fisherman, the occasional jogger. But enveloped in a silence that was so far reaching, swept so deep down beneath the sands, that a million years could not have reached out and saved him. The images on the so-called Indigenous Walk at Bass Point, sponsored by the Shellharbour Council, weren't his direct ancestors, his having come from the inland of Australia and the coastal villages of England, each poverty stricken in their own ways, the strain of inconsequence, of outage, of deinquent deaths in stormy bars and scattered campshaving spilled down the generations like an ancient curse.
But he could see the complexity of survival in an environment like this. In his dreams he was flung through other places, and fretted about past injustices. During the day he thanked them for the story and cast them back over his shoulder, those who had fed on a decaying corpse, who took what advantage they could, who stole from him so repeatedly. They thought it was funny. They thought it was in their perlieu. Their God given right to act with the masses. To rob a foreigner. To be here in the dense, fervent ignominy. He just wanted to say farewell to a story that should never have been, that he wished had not been.
We were of consequence and no consequence, longed for things that could never be, marched away all that was, and shouted: "Yes. Take me now." "Some people think you should be in jail," the policeman said, fishing him from of a potplant outside a Chiang Mai nightclub and sending him back to a guesthouse, where nothing but trouble and treachery lay. There would be no peace in the Land of Smiles. They would follow him everywhere. As if the truth was not allowed to exist in this hostile place; as if no one was allowed to express themselves. Or say what really happened. Or dare to suggest they were imperfect.
Even the Royal Thai Tourist Police had turned and robbed him; and lied and lied and lied to cover their own cooperation with the local police, and thereby the local mafia. Everything was treachery. Nothing was to be believed. He dreamt these things that wouldn't leave, while the "victors" moved on to fresher, naiver targets. And the sun came down. And the temple on the hill offered a way he never took. And he wished he was back in Nepal.
THE BIGGER STORY:
The United Nations demanded Syria give its chemical weapons experts immediate access on Thursday to rebel-held Damascus suburbs where poison gas appears to have killed hundreds just a few miles from the UN team's hotel.
There was no sign, however, that they would soon be taking samples at the scene of horrors that have drawn comparison with the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in 1988.
President Bashar al-Assad's opponents gave death tolls from 500 to well over 1,000 and said more bodies were being found in the wake of Wednesday's mysterious pre-dawn killer fumes, which the Syrian government insists were not its doing.
Talk, notably from France and Britain, of a forceful foreign response remains unlikely to be translated into rapid, concerted action given division between the West and Russia at Wednesday's UN Security Council meeting, and deep caution in Washington.
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Syria must let the UN team already in Damascus investigate "without delay". French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said world powers must respond with force if allegations that Syria's government was responsible for the deadliest chemical attack on civilians in a quarter-century prove true. But even Fabius stressed there was no question of sending in troops on the ground.
If Kevin Rudd could simply wipe away what's gone before and make the 2013 election a two-and-a-half week dash to polling day, it's a fair bet he would take it.
For Team Rudd, the real campaign effectively starts now, or more accurately, it began on Wednesday night at Brisbane's second leaders' debate peoples' forum.
Rudd's performance at the Broncos Leagues Club finally unearthed the feisty energetic persona he needs to project to have any hope of building excitement in what has been, until now, a surprisingly dull affair.
That Rudd knew what was required was obvious from the moment he opened his mouth in the debate - a format with far fewer restrictions than the first rigid debate, which more or less demanded woody performances.
And there was another key difference between the two debates. Where in the first one both leaders went in with the main aim of not losing, Rudd entered the second debate clearly trailing, and with his campaign showing the telltale signs of drift.
Low morale, breeding discontent, and ultimately transmitting that outwardly.
In short Rudd knew he could not win the election in Brisbane but he could easily have cemented a loss, if he bombed out.
It was a real possibility.
Observers of the campaign have noted a curious lack of focus from Labor and a powerful sense of its leader appearing flat, light on for detail and frequently distracted.
After the methodical way he went about things when he replaced Julia Gillard, ticking off in rapid succession longstanding problems such as the faceless men, the carbon price, and asylum seekers, the absence of a discernible program of announcements and the articulation of vision since calling the election, has left supporters mystified.
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