The Australia I knew has gone

Hello World, I have known you for 80 years.

I have adored your beauty, been overwhelmed with awe by your majesty and fascinated by the variety of peoples and their cultures who live in you.

I have almost circumnavigated you, driving my car from India to London via Moscow and then across the USA, coast to coast, from sea to shining sea. I have lived for years in five of your countries, made countless trips, each one a lesson in the value of other cultures.

I have embraced you, World, with empathy and admiration, only to find that most of your peoples have now banded together to reject me as if I were a cancerous growth.

Your peoples of the West – Europeans and the English speaking countries – are the unkindest cut of all. They have been sucked back into their ancient prejudices and hatred of me, orchestrated by a huge militant movement which has cleverly infiltrated itself into their cultures and joined forces with those who are filled with self hatred, guilt, envy and a sense of powerlessness.