Reference :- It's nearly time for New Year's fireworks . As if we haven't seen enough fireworks already .

Reference:-     More than a quarter of a million people in Sydney have signed a petition calling for the New Year's fireworks display to be cancelled because there is already enough smoke to make breathing difficult .

 Well , you have to admit they have a point .  And the money would be better spent helping the firefighters , but it probably is too late to change plans now .   Everybody has stopped talking about the Christmas retail figures already , so I guess that means they were disappointing .  But there is hope yet , as thousands arrive in Sydney to spend up big and see the fireworks .

  Out here in our little town , "Kooralya "  , we never have fireworks .   One spark in the wrong place and the whole town would go up.     My son Ken junior's mate  , Gabbo ( the aborigine )   says that " Kooralya "  is an aboriginal word for bat .  There used to be a lot of fruit bats here years ago , before the heatwaves , so that makes sense .   These days I tell people the town is so named because you would have to be batty to live here .

 Anyway , while everybody is incinerating  millions of quid worth of foreign made fireworks , here in Kooralya we do something quite different . It might be of use to the folk in the big smoke ( no pun intended ) next year , in lieu of fireworks , assuming they don't burn the place to the ground with this year's effort.  

  It was actually Gabbo's idea , a few years back , and it was such a success we have run with it ever since .    Everybody hangs out down by the creek , now sadly dry , and after the big countdown to midnight , Trevor , who runs the local power substation , pulls the kill switch and all the lights go out .   We then look up at the sky , and as the rods and cones in our eyes make adjustments behind the cataracts , the milky way slowly reveals it's billions of stars , twinkling in the distant heavens .  All is silent as everybody , awed by the spectacle , contemplates  the vastness of the universe and our breathtaking insignificance .   Ken junior's mate , Monte , says he always feels insignificant anyway , even if he is indoors .  But you know what I mean .

  I reckon some of those tourists coughing away in the Sydney smoke would probably find the night sky in Kooralya a lot more impressive than fireworks .   Young Gabbo tells us stories about the stars and the constellations that have been handed down from the Dreamtime , and everybody finds them fascinating .   I suspect he makes a few up on the spur of the moment , but nobody cares , since he has quite a whimsical way of telling a story .  ( he shuns the word " narrative " which  he says is about as poetic as a leaking bore pump . ) 

 And here's something interesting .  Ken junior tells me that Betelgeuse , the red star in the constellation Orion,  has dimmed a little and astronomers say this could mean it is about explode .  That would be quite a spectacle since it is twelve times the size of our own sun .  And if we do get to see it explode one day , the explosion would have happened 650 years ago , since the light takes that long to get here .   Imagine that .  It sure puts my concern about the chipped laminex beside the kitchen sink into a different perspective .

 Happy New Year  ,    Your comrade ,  Ken