Unchartered Waters

Today, 22 March, is World Water Day. There are lots of ways to take part; the easiest being an online purchase or donation.

About a month ago, I promised my new buddy Rowan I would promote this excellent day of awareness. So here's a snapshot of why it's important, courtesy of the Red Cross:

• Some four million people die each year from diseases associated with the lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. 

• Dirty water and poor sanitation are the second biggest killer of children worldwide. Some 4,000 children under five die every day from those same associated diseases.

• Worldwide 2.7 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

• And 880 million people do not have access to clean water.

I must apologise to Rowan. I had the best of intentions to write something devastatingly clever in support of World Water Day.

But today was somewhat distracting.

For you see, while the course of politics never did run smooth, today was rougher than navigating the Horn of Africa in an upturned tortoise shell. Today the Queensland political landscape capsized, sending all sprawling a-midships.

Lawrence Springborg, the now former deputy leader of the Liberal-National Party, put it best when he said the organisation was now in "unchartered waters".

I'll Give You a Ride - Remembering "The Extraordinary"

For me, the 1990s really were an extended prime-time fright-night geek-shriek fest.

Back when I was 13 or 14, I used to stay up to be terrified by the villains confronting Mulder and Scully on The X-Files (remember the stretchy-liver-eating bloke? The toilet fluke worm? The fat-sucking vampire dude?); then strap myself in for the out-and-out freakiness of American Gothic ("Someone's at the door! Someone's at the door!").

But my favourite scare 'em silly show was Channel Seven's The Extraordinary. This was Australian television's take on the supernatural, the paranormal, the bizarre and unexplainable, the eerie and spooky - all words which could be used to describe the voice of host Warwick Moss.

I Have a Flag

I co-hosted a radio show again on Saturday, and took great delight bringing up a police story about a giant 8m by 4m flag that got nicked from a flagpole outside a southside storage business that morning. I said I couldn't decide whether it was "unAustralian" or "totally Australian". After all, the modern Australia, the white Australia, was founded by a bunch of crooks of varying degrees of nastiness. Flogging a flag to celebrate that seemed somewhat appropriate.

Of course, I then remembered that listeners to the radio station I work for believe even looking at the flag inappropriately should be punished with a public lashing and a good six years of national service, preferably served on the Kokoda Track, with Sporting Shooters re-enacting the role of "The Japanese". I shut up about the flag after that.

They may not all weigh 10 kilograms and big enough to wrap a two-car garage, but geez there's a lot of flags around for Australia Day this year. They had them as giveaways on every seat at the Citizenship Ceremony I covered at City Hall this morning, and I believe various bottle shops and newspapers have been running flag promotions.

Now I'll admit to having bizarre bouts of patriotism at times. This morning's ceremony finished with a rousing version of "I Still Call Australia Home", and thanks to those damn Qantas choir kids, I can't hear that song now without a tear welling up in the peepers.

But I've never been a flag-waiver. I understand it's an important symbol of our nation, but I don't believe that it's holy, or sacred, or above all criticism. I don't believe people "died for the flag" and therefore any desceration of it is a jail-worthy offence. Surely they died in service of their country, and a flag is just a bit of material? I'd rather the flag be stripped and used as bandages than kept whole to drape over a coffin. And I don't believe flying the flag makes someone a BETTER Australian than me - in fact I believe that's often just a cheap gesture designed to make someone look patriotic without much effort.

But perhaps I'm wrong? Am I - gasp of dread, fear of all fears - unAustralian? After all, I do have a picture of Elizabeth I on my keyring. But then I am a filthy first-gen Aussie with a disturbing keen-ness for British history, after all.