Big! Really Big! No, bigger than that!
We took a long drive today from Sydney to Byron Bay and saw first hand how nature can be turned into civilization. I felt as if I were witnessing the ancient pyramids being built, each giant boulder being laid in place by thousands of slaves under the burning desert sun eons ago. Or that I was watching from a mountain top as the mythic flood waters of Noah filled the endless valleys below until all the land was submerged and the earth changed forever.
My words are too weak to accurately describe the scale of construction, the true scope of the Pacific Highway Upgrade Project underway along the old A1 road. Instead, I’ll let a few images spill unruly across this page shouting their 1000 words.
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Massive! King Kong machines tear up Amazonian forests. They scrape the ground to strip-mining horror for endless mile after mile. Vast stadiums of emptiness where once dense eucalyptus forests stood.
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Colossal bridges redefine the sky itself.
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Mammoth pipes as big as tunnels disappear into vast chasms beneath the mountains.
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Day by day the gigantic highway claws its way across the landscape like some demon beast devouring everything in its path.
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Hyperbole? Over-dramatic? Simple exaggeration? Not at all. Up close to this construction/destruction project, the true scale is hard to express. As I say, simiple words fail. Instead, I seek the safety of metaphor and the comfort of simile.
A virgin defiled! A child torn from its mother! A mountain range shattered for pebbles! A precious secret told to strangers! The sun shining on nothing! It’s as if the end becomes visible while the precious past disappears!
Then a picture of me clarifies, filling up the gas tank of my carbon emitting machine to drive farther and faster, bigger and bigger, better and better, on a shiny new freeway…Whoopee!!
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Finally: In case you missed it, I received a rather glowing 5***** review of my book, A Family Garden. You can read the review by clicking below, and of course, the book is available on Amazon. Click here:
Books I've Written
