PLANET OZ

Thank you for lobbing onto Planet Oz media, your one-stop destination for all matters dedicated entirely to Australia and Australians, both here and abroad.

We salute indigenous and non-indigenous Australians alike and acknowledge the collective endeavour of past and contemporary settlers who landed here, shackled by force or circumstance on the shores of this Great Southern Land.

We further acknowledge the sometimes uncommon migrant ancestries that today makes Australians as complex and curious as our unique marsupials and the cultural and geophysical landscape that we share and in some instances, for which we compete.

Our collective songline is sometimes brutal and raw; other times it has a lyricism so beautiful that it lacerates the very lining of the soul.

On this day, we remain a Continent dying of thirst.  Rain falls too gently upon our parched land; her crack'd lips ringed with salt; the powdered mucus of drought.  A million earthern mouths gape open in silent scream, begging for a moistened sponge from an unforgiving artist or an angel's single tear.  Not even the Heavens dare cry for pity.

For some the iconoclastic symbols of Terra Australis remain the Sea, the Surf, the Sun, the Sky, the Beach, the Coastline, all ribboned with a gauzy bandage of fine white sands.

But for others, the latitude and the platitudes differ.  It is The Bush and its choristers drawn from nature in all her forms that beguile us; our dribbling rivers and mountain ranges robed in the purple, blue and green regalia of majestic eucalypts; gum leaves shimmering fingers on nature's perfumed hands.

Despite the Big Dry we have the Big Lie to it - our tropical rainforests: a land within a land, whose flora and fauna have plundered  primary and primal colours from The Dreamtime's ancient palette.

Then there are the Desert swooners.  For some our desert is a vast and lonely nothingness whose absconding horizons taunt our inner demons.  Others will profess no such thing; instead the Desert provides both home and sanctuary, a cornucopia of plant and animal life and the freedom of a mind unfenced.

But for many of us, our affection for Australia is seeded in the Land itself, who speaks to us in encrypted language known only to those who offer love and respect.

 It's likely we love most or all of the above facets of our Island Continent. Australia is a work in progress; as is the World surely and all that dwells atop, below and above it.   Consider the myriad attempts to define what it means to 'be Australian.' Consider the implications of being 'accused' of being
 'un-Australian.'

For some our Paradise is already lost.  For others it will be Regained or is simply misplaced. One thing is clear.  We are a seething mass of contradiction, capable of courageous innovation, breathtaking modernism and a muscular intellect that is contemptuous of acolytes.  And yet these capabilities are often sacrificed on the altar of Mediocrity, that unjealous master so beloved of lazy and malevolent bystanders.

Planet Oz media is also a work in progress and although we have done much preliminary work, we have much yet to do in building this site.

Your participation and support is essential to Planet Oz media and we will work hard to encourage both.

We are building a multi-tiered Ozepedia.  We believe in community participation and the community voice - in all its dialects.  We believe in media access and individual endeavour.  We believe in business and corporate endeavour and our right to have a say on this day and the next - and to reflect and debate the past without being a servant to revisionists or cowering to our contemporaries.

The ' new media ' has shattered the conventions of what once constituted 
 'mainstream media.' It was once deemed that 'the medium is the message'.

We say that now, ' the message is the medium. '

This is your site.

We have initiated a number of sections and urge you to contribute to these as they come alive.  Please cooee us if you've got any suggestions and ideas.

Wherever appropriate, we are using Australian lingo.  For example, instead of    ' Bloggers' we're using the term ' Squatters.'  We're not doing this out of feint contrivance but because we've got a beaut idiom. Many of these words are good working words.

Please join us on this great walkabout.  Dip a thumb-nail in tar and log on          ( oops ) lob in!