I am not part of that earlier Australian generation who set off on a deliberate search for fame and fortune in distant lands. My generation was the first that didn't need to. By the 1980's when I left home, our culture had grown deep enough and wide enough to encompass all but the most rarefied of ambitions.

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence.

And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.

Yes, it seems we've got this mutant gene in our human personality that makes us susceptible to this same kind of mistake over and over again. It's really uncanny how we build these beautiful multicultural edifices and then allow this switch to be flipped and everybody goes, 'Oh, the other, get them out of here.

My sentences tend to be very short and rather spare. I'm more your paragraph kind of gal.

Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own.

But that Franklin trip changed me profoundly. As I believe wilderness experience changes everyone. Because it puts us in our place. The human place, which our species inhabited for most of its evolutionary life. That place that shaped our psyches and made us who we are. The place where nature is big and we are small.