September 11

This year's September 11 anniversary went quietly. I was busy and barely gave it a thought. But I do remember. I think I will always remember.

At the time I was on an amazing trek to a small Indigenous Australian community. The trek was 10 days long and on September we had arrived in Yulara, just outside of Uluru. The first thing we all wanted to do was shower as we'd spent 4 days full on rural living. Sleeping on the ground, no running water. It was awesome and amazing and I loved every minute of it.
I remember going to see the sun rise at Uluru. On the way back our van passed another van and our teachers stopped to talk. My old music teacher, and a real clown mentioned that the Twin Towers had been attacked. We all thought he was kidding. We all gathered around a tiny radio to listen to the broadcast about what was happening to, arguably, the most powerful nation in the world.

The rest of the trip was subdued. One girl's father flew planes to America and she had no idea if he was okay. Another girl's uncle died in a plane crash and this was hard for her too. To add to the worry, all we saw on the road home were Australian Army tankers and trucks. A small group of us were also rereading John Marsden's 'Tomorrow, when the war began' series. While rationally we were sure we were safe, we did psych each other out.

That was my experience. I will never forget.




BUT I do hate all the patriotic bullshit that American's come out with. If you support terrorism in other countries you have to be prepared that it'll come back at you.

xoxo