The Project
When I set out to write something about The North in mid-2012, it seemed simple: I’d write something about my part of the world, a region I’d arrived in just over fifty years ago and never wanted to leave.. Since then, a great deal of water has flown under several bridges.
After many twists and turns, that vague and undefined ambition has evolved into six main strands, supported by a wealth of reference material. While I have called it The North, and there is some overlap with the Northern Territory, the subject under discussion is Queensland's northern half.
It started as an attempt to get a handle on the region as I have known it. However, I can only make sense of the past sixty-odd years by considering the region's migaloo history, and that only makes sense with some understanding of the physical and human environment the people who came here after April 1861 encountered.
From there, it becomes complicated.
The settlers who arrived in The North brought their historical baggage with them. Their experiences were shaped by an environment that, in turn, had been shaped by those who came before them.
Those First Nations People encountered a landscape formed over aeons.
So, as it turned out, the vague intention I started with — to write something about The North — morphed and mushroomed until a folder containing thousands of text files surpassed half a gigabyte, with no end in sight. Gradually, it became clear my project would remain a work in progress indefinitely.
It all comes down to my equivalent of the Elephant Child's ‘satiable curtiosities in Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. The Elephant's Child
... filled all Africa with his ‘satiable curtiosities.
He asked his tall aunt, the Ostrich, why her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the Ostrich spanked him with her hard, hard claw. He asked his tall uncle, the Giraffe, what made his skin spotty, and his tall uncle, the Giraffe, spanked him with his hard, hard hoof. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity! He asked his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, why her eyes were red, and his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, spanked him with her broad, broad hoof; and he asked his hairy uncle, the Baboon, why melons tasted just so, and his hairy uncle, the Baboon, spanked him with his hairy, hairy paw. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity!
He asked questions about everything that he saw, or heard, or felt, or smelt, or touched, and all his uncles and his aunts spanked him. And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity!
While I might have escaped an assortment of claws, hooves, and paws, I have amassed a veritable mountain of accumulated data. What appears on this site is my attempt to wrestle some of it into some kind of order.
