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Sunday Morning, Demo against war crimes in Gaza

Aug 24

‘The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do – but who is that ‘we’? – and nothing ‘they’ can do either – and who are ‘they’ – then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.’ Susan Sontag [i]

Blue Lab Beats are playing, the rain gone and the sky prefers a skein of Ibis to clouds. As we cross the Kalang, a Sea Eagle sails over the windscreen, unusually low, wide wings gleaming like a fish. Such moments of wonder temper the horrors punching the news every single day. It heads up river – we are going to the demo. Who would want to be clairvoyant?

Great weather for the march, it’s 21 degrees down at the Jetty. ‘Tens of thousands protest in nationwide action against war in Gaza.’ ABC, 24 August

Young women are playing beach volleyball
Girls are surfing in a squad
The markets are on. Two children are interested in a Brush Tukey wandering around their feet, one is distracted by a Silver Gull.
An apparition in the air is too sleek and colourful to be a drone.

I have a falafel for brunch. The cook is from Syria, his wife from Iraq. She is stressed – her Square is not connecting to the frantic flows of global capitalism. I chat to him about how much Palmyra meant to me. He says it will never be the same after Islamic State. I realise later I never asked their names.

​We are giving regular donations, obviously inadequate. I am wearing red as instructed, put a fifty note in the box, don’t buy any mech.

Waiting, I take a self-portrait in the optics from the South Solitary Island Lighthouse. Eight cut-glass prisms revolved, floating in a bath of mercury. A Gumbaynggirr woman stands still in metal – I don’t know who.

It’s sunny in Gaza too, max 33° minimum 26°, too much sun, too hot for those who are thirsty and the starving. Less than four percent of tap water is drinkable (Oxfam). ‘Israel is intentionally depriving Palestinians of water,’ (Médecins Sans Frontières, August 21, 2025). Sometimes death might not be the worst thing that can happen.

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‘‘What’s the point of writing another story about the war?’ he [Peter Ruzavin] asked. Having written several myself, I knew what he meant. A lot of other journalists do, too. No matter how hard you try, the stories become repetitive. People start ignoring them, or reading them, as Susan Sontag once wrote, only to reassure themselves that they ‘are not accomplices to what caused the suffering’.’[ii]

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We are so happy here – how? Yesterday, below my window, a short sharp piercing squeak- the Buff-banded Rail, a beauty is back! It’s been six months or more. I can feel my heart adjust to a moment of joy/ excitement. Last summer, two giant-footed, fluffy, black chicks stomped around our garden. And the Green Catbird appeared, and the Gecko and Fig birds and Black-faced Cuckoo Shrikes all at once – spring sprung!

I could not find the name of the artist

 

[i] Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Penguin Books, 2003

[ii] M. Gessen, ‘He Was a Star in Russia’s Media World. Now He’s a Corporal in Ukraine’s Army’, NY Times, Aug 25, 2025.

 

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