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It is a day to despair about humanity. The horrors of Queensland can barely be contemplated.
And I'm not going to try to.
But, in contrast, the day started with a revelation about the niceness of people. It made me feel better about humanity.
I had decided to walk for about 40 minutes along a busy road, just to get a bit of exercise in. I'd gone about 200 metres when a big white pickup truck pulled alongside.
The window opened and a monster of a man leaned out, tattoos up his arms and up his neck.
As I waited in trepidation, the bearded stranger opened his mouth - and offered me a lift.
This man in this vehicle was the sort I would have written off in my snobbish way as not my type. In my rear view mirror, the truck would have seemed aggressive. The macho driver behind the wheel would have seemed threatening - but face-to-face his kindness was overwhelming.
In I got and the monster had become a pussy cat.
It made realise - again - that we pigeon-hole people too easily.
Of course, those who live in country Australia may be better at not stereotyping people. Country people live in wider communities than city people who, in my experience, live in narrow circles.
When I lived in a tiny town in northern New South Wales, I came to realise that labels often didn't fit.
One of the least racist people there, in terms of the way in which she actually treated people, was a pillar of the Nationals. Others, to her political left, made all the right noises, but the right winger was the one who actually had friends who had different coloured skin or shaped eyes.
In country Australia, people of different varieties bump into each other more easily. They meet at the pie shop or outside the school. Type-casting is harder when you get to know someone. People surprise.
In cities, we stick to our own circles - and we demonise those in other circles. In small towns, people know people in their much fuller, rounded ways.
One December 31, I was tasked as a reporter with interviewing the mother of the baby born first in the new year. I was ushered into her room at the hospital. I asked this working class woman what the name of her baby was, and she said, "Dante".
"Oh yeh," the snob in me thought. Why? What could she know about the great Italian poet, Dante.
She explained that she had once by chance picked up a volume in The Divine Comedy. She had started reading it in a doctor's waiting room and had loved it ever since. The name stuck in the shape of her son.
People are more complicated than they might look. They are often nicer than they might look.
Truck man wasn't a monster after all. He was a very nice, kindly person with tattoos up his arms and neck.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Tell me how you've been surprised by people. Email your thoughts to echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- You will need no reminding of the fatal shooting of two young police constables in an ambush at a remote Queensland property. Their alleged killers - a former school teacher, his brother and sister-in-law - were later shot dead in a firefight with heavily armed officers.
- A former Tasmanian Liberal minister has been accused of illegally importing a specially designed belt featuring a hidden knife. Adam Brooks served in state parliament from 2010 to 2019. He resigned from parliament in 2019 after an Integrity Commission report was critical of his use of a business email while mining minister. He ran at the 2021 poll but stepped down shortly after being elected following allegations he used a false dating profile, something he denied.
THEY SAID IT: "Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you" - Princess Diana (apparently).
"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fibre of a free people." - Franklin D. Roosevelt.
YOU SAID IT: I mentioned the Harry & Meghan drama and that was enough to get you going.
"Harry and Meghan deserve a private life free of all that muckraking. End of story," Graham said.
But it wasn't the end of the story. Samantha wrote: "I have no time for the drama of Harry and Meghan. I have no interest in their life. Royalty doesn't rate much in my day-to-day life however I did shed a tear on the Queen's passing."
Susan warned against hypocrisy: "How many men and women who are adulterers can fairly criticise the King for his past? Diana behaved badly too!"
Bradley said: "I haven't watched, nor will I be watching the Harry & Meghan shows. Your points are well made, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been sucked in and horribly chewed up. However, I hold to the view that Prince H has never been guided and supported well outside of the British Army where I think he should have stayed."
On rain, Juda wrote: "I used to love rain. That stopped in late 2010, culminating in 2011, on the day the massive flood hit Toowoomba. Seeing cars embedded nose-down into footpaths, the piles of gravel and sand around roundabouts, two hours to get past a landslide at Mt Kynoch, flooding roads, I haven't been the same since."