The Wild Reed: March 2025

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

A Light That Will Always Shine

The Wild Reed’s 2025 Lenten series continues with a third excerpt from The Awakening of the Human Spirit by Inayat Khan. (For the first installment of this series and an explanation for why I chose this book, click here.)

________________

Ripening is a desirable result, and it is the aim of every object in life to ripen and to develop; therefore in the awakening of the soul one may recognize the fulfillment of life’s purpose. . . . The moment the soul has awakened, music makes an appeal to it, poetry touches it, words move it, art has an influence upon it. It no longer is a sleeping soul; it is awake and it begins to enjoy life to a fuller extent.

It is this awakening of the soul that is mentioned in the Bible: unless the soul is born again, it will not enter the kingdom of heaven. For the soul to be born again means that it is awakened after having come on earth; and entering the kingdom of heaven means entering this world in which we are now standing, the same kingdom that turns into heaven as soon as the point of view has changed. Is it not interesting and most wonderful to think that the same earth that we walk on is earth to one person and heaven to another? And it is still more interesting to notice that it is we who change it from earth to heaven. This change comes not by study or by anything else but the changing of our point of view. I have known people who seek after truth, study books about it, even write many books about philosophy and theology themselves, and in the end they were standing in the same place as before. That shows that all our outer efforts are excuses; there is only one thing that brings one face to face with reality, and that is the awakening of the soul. . . . It is not for the outer world to help us understand life better, it is we ourselves who should help ourselves.

Then there is a further awakening, a continuation of what I have called the awakening of the soul. And the sign of this awakening is that the awakened person throws a light, the light of the soul, upon every creature and every object, and sees that object, person, condition in this light. It is their own soul that becomes a torch in their hand; it is their own light that illuminates their path. It is just like directing a searchlight into dark corners that one could not see before, and the corners become clear and illuminated; it is like throwing light upon problems that one did not understand before, like seeing through people with x-rays when they were a riddle before.

As soon as life becomes clear to the awakened soul, it shows another phase of manifestation, and this is that every aspect of life communicates with this person. Life is communicative, the soul is communicative, but they do not communicate until the soul is awakened. Once a soul is awakened, it begins to communicate with life.

. . . Those who are awakened become guiding lights not only for themselves but also for others. And by their light, often unknowingly, their presence itself helps to make the most difficult problems easy. This makes us realize the fact that [each one of us] is light, as the scriptures have said, a light whose origin, whose source, is divine. And when this light is kindled, then life becomes quite different. . . . [Awakened ones speak] a universal language, a language of vibrations, a language of feeling, a language that touches the innermost sense. . . . [They are] able to communicate with the innermost being of another person [because they know] how to communicate with themselves, their awakened selves.

The personality of an awakened soul becomes different from every other personality. It becomes more magnetic, for it is the living person who has magnetism; a corpse has no magnetism. It is the living who bring joy, and therefore it is the awakened soul who is joyous.

And never for one moment think, as many do, that a spiritual person is a sorrowful, dried up, long-faced person. Spirit is joy, spirit is life; and when that spirit has awakened, all the joy and pleasure that exist are there. As the sun takes away all darkness, so spiritual light removes all worries, anxieties, and doubts. If a spiritual awakening were not so precious, then what would be the use of seeking it in life?

A treasure that nobody can take away from us, a light that will always shine and will never be extinguished – that is spiritual awakening, and it is the fulfillment of life’s purpose.

– Inayat Khan
Excerpted from The Awakening of the Human Spirit
Omega Press, 1982
pp. 118-122

NEXT:
A Living Light

NOTE: Each post in this series is accompanied by Sufi music. Today it is an instrumental piece called “Echoes of the Divine” from the YouTube channel Blueberry Meditation. I find this music perfect for times of meditation and prayer. Perhaps you will too.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

AWAKENING
• For Acclaimed Songwriter, Activist and Humanitarian Buffy Sainte-Marie, the World is Always Ripening
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Peng Roden Her
• Awakening
• An Extraordinary, Precious Opportunity
• The Task at Hand
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Shining On . . . Into the New Year

THE SUFI PATH
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• The Sufi Way
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• Bismillah
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

INAYAT KHAN
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness

THE MYSTIC JESUS
• Jesus: Mystic and Prophet
• Jesus and the Art of Letting Go
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• Called to the Field of Compassion to Be Both Prophet and Mystic
• Mysticism and Revolution

THE DIVINE PRESENCE
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Source Is Within You
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III

THE LENTEN JOURNEY
• Blessing the Dust
• “This Beloved Quickened Dust”
• Ash Wednesday Reflections
• The Ashes of Our Martyrs
• Lent: A Season Set Apart
• A Lenten Resolution
• Lent: A Time to Fast and Feast
• “Here I Am!” – The Lenten Response
• Let Today Be the Day
• Pope Francis on Lenten Fasting
• “The Turn”: A Lenten Meditation by Lionel Basney
• Lent: A Summons to Live Anew
• Now Is the Acceptable Time
• Lent With Henri
• Waking Dagobert
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 1)
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 2)
• Move Us, Loving God

Recommended Off-site Link:
Inayat Khan and Universal Sufism – Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion, December 8, 2024).

Opening image: Artist unknown.
Image 2: A portrait of Inayat Khan (circa. 1914).

Monday, March 24, 2025

Progressive Perspectives on Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour

Here’s the comment I left in response to an Our Revolution Facebook post that celebrated the “Fighting Oligarchy” speaking tour of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Greg Casar and other Democratic figures.

I’m concerned that Bernie and AOC’s important words and activism will be for nought if an unspoken goal is the sheep-herding of disillusioned voters back into the Democratic Party, a party that continues to show itself unwilling and incapable of embodying the progressive populism needed to defeat Trump’s authoritarian populism. Indeed, the Democratic establishment is hostile to such progressivism. We need a new party, an authentic grassroots party of, by and for the people; a party that’s not part of the corporatist/oligarchic duopoly. This is the logical next step of the rhetoric and activism of the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, and yet the tour’s initiators and speakers simply aren’t going there.

This past Saturday, March 22, podcaster Sabrina (“Sabby”) Salvati shared a video segment that focused on the same concerns that I raised in my comment above. It’s a 30-minute segment that’s well worth watching.

Related Off-site Links:
Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism – The Humanist Report (March 6, 2025).
Wimpy Democrats Cannot Lead This Fight Against Trump – Ralph Nader (Common Dreams, March 24, 2025).
Sanders and AOC Draw Biggest Crowd of Their Careers at Rally to Fight “”Oligarchy” in Denver – Eloise Goldsmith (Common Dreams, March 22, 2025).
Bernie Sanders Attempts to Divert Opposition to Trump Behind the Democratic Party and Support for War with Russia – Jacob Crosse and Andre Damon (World Socialist Web Site, March 6, 2025).
Sanders: Tour with Ocasio-Cortez Meant to Encourage More Independent Candidates – Tara Suter (The Hill, March 20, 2025).
Sanders Pushes Progressives to Run as Independents in Response to Election Losses – Austin Denean (NBC-15 News, March 21, 2025).
Jill Stein and Kshama Sawant on the Fight the Rich Movement – Sabby Sabs (January 26, 2025).
Trump Is Unpopular – and So Are the Do-Nothing Democrats – Jeet Heer (The Nation, February 18, 2025).
If You’re a Democrat Annoyed by Outraged Voters, You Are Doing It Wrong – Norman Solomon (Common Dreams, February 24, 2025).
Democrats Are MIA – Just When the Country Needs Them to Counter the Trump-Musk Blitzkrieg – David Corn (Mother Jones, February 24, 2025).
Dems Reportedly Angry That Progressives Are Pushing Them to Act Like an Opposition Party – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, February 12, 2025).

UPDATES: We Need More Independent, Working-Class Political Candidates – Nick French (Jacobin, March 25, 2025).
Is There a Fourth Way for the Democratic Party? – Jared Abbott (Jacobin, March 26, 2025).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Building Solidarity on the Left
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Democrat Talk on the Eve of Trump’s Return
• Breaking the Mold: Why Progressives Should Push for Marianne Williamson to Lead the DNC
• Inauguration Day Thoughts
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Election
• “A New Chapter of the Democratic Party Needs to Begin”
• What the Republican Party Now Stands For
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden Administration
• Jill Stein: “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• Butch Ware: “You Can Actually Vote Your Conscience”
• Peter Bloom on the Unmasking of the “Democratic Charade”
• The “Green Smoothie” Option
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis
• When Democrats Undermine Democracy
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• AOC Falls in Line
• The Cassandra of U.S. Politics on the “True State of the Union”
• Will Democrats Never Learn?
• “The Next Step Is a Green Step”: Cornel West Endorses Jill Stein (2016)
• Hope Over Fear: Voting Green

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Quote of the Day

The world’s refusal to sanction Israel is not an act of neutrality – it is an endorsement. Every bomb dropped on Gaza, every child buried beneath the rubble, every deliberate act of starvation, siege, and ethnic cleansing is carried out with the certainty that there will be no consequences. The impunity granted to this rogue regime does not just deepen the suffering of Palestinians; it unravels the very fabric of international law, rendering meaningless the principles meant to protect all people from atrocity. And in that unraveling, the world grows more dangerous. When justice is selective, when laws are bent to accommodate power, when genocide is excused with the language of self-defense, what remains to stop the next massacre, the next unchecked brutality? This is not just about Gaza. It is about the message sent to every nation, every despot, every future war criminal: that the powerful may do as they please, and the world will look away.

– Ahmed Shihab-Eldin
Excerpted from “World’s Refusal to Sanction Israel
Endangers Us All”
Ahmed’s Perspective
March 23, 2025

Saturday, March 22, 2025

Where We Belong

Who knows what tomorrow brings
In a world few hearts survive
All I know is the way I feel
When it's real, I keep it alive

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the worlds we know
Up where the clear winds blow

– From “Up Where We Belong” by Jack Nitzsche,
Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Return to the Great South Land
• In Birpai Country
• Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast (2010)
• Happy Birthday, Buffy! (2018) – includes Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “songwriter’s version” of “Up Where We Belong”)

Image: The hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. (Photo: Michael J. Bayly).

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Inayat Khan and the Alchemy of Happiness

The Wild Reed’s 2025 Lenten series continues with a second excerpt from The Awakening of the Human Spirit by Inayat Khan. (For the first installment of this series and an explanation for why I chose this book, click here.)

________________

Happiness cannot be bought or sold, nor can you give it to a person who has not got it. Happiness is your own being, your own self – that self that is the most precious thing in life. All religious and all philosophical systems have in different forms taught humanity how to find it by the religious path or the mystical way; and all the wise ones have in some form or another given a method by which the individual can find happiness for which the soul is seeking.

Sages and mystics have called this process alchemy. The stories of the Arabian Nights, which symbolize mystical ideas, are full of the belief that there is a philosopher’s stone that will turn metals into gold by a chemical process. No doubt this symbolic idea has deluded people in both the East and West; many have thought that a process exists by which gold can be produced. But this is not the idea of the wise; the pursuit of gold is for those who as yet are only children. For those who have the consciousness of reality, gold stands for light or spiritual inspiration. Gold represents the color of light, and therefore an unconscious pursuit after light has made people seek for gold. But there is a great difference between real gold and false. It is the longing for true gold that makes people collect the imitation gold, ignorant that the real gold is within. A person satisfies the craving of their soul in this way, as a child satisfies itself by playing with dolls.

This realization is not a matter of age. One person may have reached an advanced age and still be playing with dolls, and their soul may be involved in the search for this imitation gold, while another may have begun in youth to see life in its real aspect. If one studied the transitory nature of life in the world and how changeable it is, and the constant craving of everyone for happiness, one would certainly endeavor at all costs to find something one could depend upon. Humanity, placed in the midst of this ever-changing world, still appreciates and seeks for constancy somewhere. People do not know that they must develop the nature of constancy in themselves. It is the nature of the soul to value that which is dependable. But is there anything in the world on which one can depend, which is above change and destruction? All that is born, all that is made, must one day face destruction. All that has a beginning has also an end; but if there is anything one can depend upon it is hidden in the heart of each one of us. It is the divine spark, the true philosopher’s stone, the real gold, which is the innermost being of all.

A person may follow a religion and yet not come to the realization of truth, and of what use is their religion to them if they are not happy? Religion does not mean depression and sadness. The spirit of religion should give happiness. God is happy. God is the perfection of love, harmony, and beauty. A religious person should be happier than one who is not religious. If a person who professes religion is always melancholy, their religion is disgraced; the form has been kept, but the spirit has been lost. If the study of religion and mysticism does not lead to real joy and happiness, it may just as well not exit, for then it does not help to fulfill the purpose of life. The world today is sad and suffering as the result of terrible wars; the religion that answers the demand of life today is one that investigates and gives life to souls, that illuminates the heart of humanity with the divine light that is already there; not necessarily by any outer form, though for some a form may be helpful, but by showing that happiness that is the desire of every soul.

As for the question of how this method of alchemy is practiced, the whole process was explained by the alchemists in a symbolical way. They said gold is made out of mercury; the nature of mercury is to be ever-moving, but by a certain process the mercury is first stilled, and once stilled it becomes silver; then the silver has to be melted, and the juice of an herb is poured onto the molten silver, which is thereby turned into gold. This, if course, gives only an outline, but one can find detailed explanations of the whole process. Many childlike souls have tried to make gold by stilling mercury and melting silver, and they have tried to find the herb, but they were deluded, and they would have done better to have worked and earned money.

The real interpretation of this process is that mercury represents the nature of the ever-restless mind. Especially when he tries to concentrate, a person realizes that the mind is ever-restless. The mind is like a restive horse: when it is ridden it is more restive than when it is in the stable. Such is the nature of the mind – it becomes more restless when one desires to control it. It is like mercury, constantly moving.

When by a method of concentration one has mastered the mind, one has taken the first step in the accomplishment of a sacred task. Prayer is concentration, reading is concentration, sitting and relaxing and thinking on one subject are all concentration. All artists, thinkers, and inventors have practiced concentration in some form: they have given their minds to one thing, and by focusing on one object have developed the faculty of concentration, but for stilling the mind a special method taught by the mystic is necessary, just as a singer needs to be taught by a teacher of voice-production.

The secret of this concentration is learned in the science of breath. Breath is the essence of life, the center of life, and the mind may be controlled by a knowledge of the proper method of [meditative] breathing. . . . When the mind is under perfect control and no longer restless, one can hold a thought at will as long as one wishes. This is the beginning of phenomena. Some abuse these privileges, and by dissipating the power thus obtained, they destroy the silver before turning it into gold. The silver must be heated before it can melt, and with what? With that warmth that is the divine essence in the heart of all, which comes forth as love, tolerance, empathy, service, humility, and unselfishness, in a stream that rises and falls in a thousand drops, each drop of which could be called a virtue, and all coming from that one stream hidden in the heart of each one of us, the love element; and when it grows in the heart, then the actions, the movements, the tone of the voice, and the expression all show that the heart is warm. The moment this happens a person really lives, they have unsealed the spring of happiness that overcomes all that is jarring and inharmonious, and the spring has established itself as a divine stream.

After the heart is warmed by the divine element, which is love, the next stage is the herb, which is the love of God. But the love of God alone is not sufficient; knowledge of God is also necessary. It is the absence of the knowledge of God that makes a person leave their religion, for there is a limit to their patience. Knowledge of God strengthens a person’s belief in God and throws light on the individual and on life. Things become clear; every leaf on a tree becomes as a page of a holy book to one whose eyes are open to the knowledge of God. When the juice of the herb of divine love is poured on the heart, warmed by love for one’s fellow humans, then that heart becomes the heart of gold, the heart that expresses what God would express. [None of us have seen God, but we have seen the effects of God’s transforming presence in our lives and the lives of others], and when this happens, then verily everything that comes from such a person comes from God.

– Inayat Khan
Excerpted from The Awakening of the Human Spirit
Omega Press, 1982
pp. 2-6

NEXT:
A Light That Will Always Shine

NOTE: Each post in this series is accompanied by Sufi music. Today it is an instrumental piece called “As You Start to Walk on the Way, the Way Appears” from the YouTube channel Buddha’s Lounge’s RUMI Spiritual Music Live Stream. I find this music perfect for times of meditation and prayer. Perhaps you will too.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

THE SUFI PATH
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• The Sufi Way
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• Bismillah
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

INAYAT KHAN
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness

THE MYSTIC JESUS
• Jesus: Mystic and Prophet
• Jesus and the Art of Letting Go
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• Called to the Field of Compassion to Be Both Prophet and Mystic
• Mysticism and Revolution

THE DIVINE PRESENCE
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Source Is Within You
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III

THE LENTEN JOURNEY
• Blessing the Dust
• “This Beloved Quickened Dust”
• Ash Wednesday Reflections
• The Ashes of Our Martyrs
• Lent: A Season Set Apart
• A Lenten Resolution
• Lent: A Time to Fast and Feast
• “Here I Am!” – The Lenten Response
• Let Today Be the Day
• Pope Francis on Lenten Fasting
• “The Turn”: A Lenten Meditation by Lionel Basney
• Lent: A Summons to Live Anew
• Now Is the Acceptable Time
• Lent With Henri
• Waking Dagobert
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 1)
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 2)
• Move Us, Loving God

Recommended Off-site Link:
Inayat Khan and Universal Sufism – Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion, December 8, 2024).

Opening image: Artist unknown.
Image 2: A 1916 portrait of Inayat Khan. (Photographer unknown.)

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Fairy Bower Falls

Australian Sojourn – February-April 2025 • Part 6

While recently in Goulburn, my friend Kerry and I visited nearby Morton National Park where we treked down into the gorge to Fairy Bower Falls.

Above: Fairy Bower Falls – Thursday, March 13, 2025.

Above: Back in Goulburn – Saturday, March 15. I’m pictured with my friends Kerry, Max and Sandra at Goulburn Railway Station about to board the southbound XPT to Melbourne.

NEXT: Melbourne

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Hello Australia Autumn! (2024)
• Bundanoon, Batemans Bay, Braidwood and Goulburn (2024)
• Journey to the Southern Highlands and Tablelands (2017)
• Bundanoon and the Sunnataram Forest Monastery (2017)
• Exeter (2016)
• The Southern Highlands (2007)
• Goulburn Revisited (2006)

Australia Sojourn 2025:
• Return to the Great South Land
• Heavy Seas and Grey Skies
• In Birpai Country
• Journeying South
• Goulburn

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Goulburn

Australian Sojourn – February-April 2025 • Part 5

I’ve spent the last three days in the Southern Tablelands city of Goulburn, staying with my dear friends Kerry and Max (pictured with me at left). I’ve known Kerry since my teaching days in Goulburn (1988-1993) prior to my relocation to the U.S. in 1994.

It has been a wonderful time of reconnecting with friends and taking in the sights of Australia’s oldest inland city, a place I once called home.

As I’ve noted previously, the strong and heartfelt connections I still have to Golburn and to my former teaching colleagues and friends is quite something, especially given that I lived there for just six years over 30 years ago. I am deeply grateful for all of these connections and friendships.

Above: Standing at right with (from left): Max, Kerry, Carmel, Marion, Cathy, Gerry and Mike – Thursday, March 13, 2025.

Above: With Mike and Kerry.

Above: Max, Sandra and Kerry – Friday, March 14, 2025.

Above and below: Goulburn is home to many beautiful and stately buildings constructed during the time of Federation (1846-1900). These include both public buildings, like the Goulburn Court House (pictured above), and many private homes, big and small.

Above: The Goulburn Rose.

Above: The little cottage in Clifford Street in which I lived during my last two years in Goulburn (1992-1993). The verandah furniture, mural, Greek-inspired garden statue, and the name “Robinia Cottage,” are all later additions.

Above: A Goulburn portrait – March 14, 2025. I’m wearing my 2024 “Marianne Williamson for President” t-shirt.

NEXT: Fairy Bower Falls

For previous Goulburn-related Wild Reed posts, see:
• Remnants of a Past Life (Part I)
• Remnants of a Past Life (Part II)
• Goulburn Revisited (2006)
• Goulburn Landmarks (2006)
• Goulburn Reunion (2006)
• The Southern Highlands (2007)
• Australian Sojourn – March 2015: Goulburn
• Australian Sojourn – May 2016: Goulburn
• Australian Sojourn – May 2017: Goulburn and Canberra
• Australian Sojourn – March 2023: Goulburn
• Australian Sojourn – April-May 2024: Bundanoon, Batemans Bay, Braidwood and Goulburn
• The Australian Roots of My Progressive Catholicism

Australia Sojourn 2025:
• Return to the Great South Land
• Heavy Seas and Grey Skies
• In Birpai Country
• Journeying South

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Journeying South

Australian Sojourn – February-April 2025 • Part 4

I spent about four hours yesterday morning at Sydney’s Central Station. I’d arrived there from Port Macquarie via a Greyhound bus, one that I boarded at 1:45 a.m.

From Sydney I caught the southbound XPT to Goulburn, the Southern Tablelands city where I lived and taught for six years before relocating to the U.S. in 1994.

I didn’t sleep a wink on the Greyhound from Port Macquarie to Sydney, and it kinda shows on my face in the picture at right. While biding my time at Central I took a few pics of the 119-year-old Sydney landmark. I share these this evening along with a couple of images from the arduous Greyhound bus ride that brought me south to Sydney.

Above: The Port Macquarie Coach Terminal in Gordon Street at 1:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 12, 2025.

Above: The BP service centre in the New South Wales Mid North Coast town of Bulahdelah, where the Greyhound bus stopped at around 5:00 a.m. for a 40 minutes rest stop.

Above: About to enter Sydney’s Lane Cove Tunnel – Wednesday, March 12, 2025. That’s the arch of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge in the distance, along with the highrise buildings of the city’s central business district (CBD).

Above: The clock tower of Sydney’s Central Station, the largest railway station in Australia.

NEXT:
Goulburn

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Central Station (2023)

For previous Sydney-related Wild Reed posts, see:
• Sydney Sojourn (2010)
• An Afternoon on the Harbour (2012)
• Return to Oz. . . Sydney to Be Exact (2014)
• Sydney and the Blue Mountains (2015)
• Sydney’s Eastern Beach Suburbs (2015)
• A Visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2017)
• A Visit to Sydney’s Taronga Zoo (2017)
• In Coogee, A Very Special Birthday Celebration (2017)
• Return to Sydney (2017)
• Hello Australia Autumn (2024)
• Last Days in Australia (2024)

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

In Birpai Country

Australian Sojourn – February-April 2025 • Part 3

Before I begin tomorrow my traveling around to visit family and friends in another part of New South Wales (Goulburn) as well as in Victoria (Melbourne) and Queensland (Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast), I share this evening a few photos of my time with mum in Port Macquarie.

The New South Wales coastal town of Port Macquarie is for the Birpai, the Indigenous people of the area, known as Guruk.

The area around Port Macquarie and the Hastings (Doongang) River has been home to the Birpai for tens of thousands of years.

Of course, traditional Birpai life changed forever with the mapping and naming of the area by Surveyor-General John Oxley in 1818. Three years later in 1821, Port Macquarie was founded as a penal settlement for convicts sentenced for secondary crimes committed in New South Wales. The region was opened to free settlers nine years later. Today, Port Macquarie is a coastal urban centre of close to 52,000 people.

My parents moved to Port Macquarie from our hometown of Gunnedah in 2002. Dad crossed over into the sweet unknown in 2019. Mum still lives in Port and we’ve been enjoying our time together since I arrived from Minneapolis (via San Francisco) on February 26. I was last in beautiful Birpai Country last May (2024).