Doonside, Rooty Hill, Next Stop Penrith

Four days ago, last I was sitting in a train in Wales watching snow covered fields flash past. Fast forward to the 12:27 from Parramatta to Lithgow in New South Wales Australia and the other side of the world.

Train travel remains the best way to travel, you can think on a train unlike a plane. Where you waste energy worrying about the fat person in front of you suddenly putting his seat back when you are halfway through your meal or that the person sitting next to the window will develop incontinence and have to climb over you every 30 minutes.

Here in Oz the trains are simple and basic the seats are green plastic that must have been bought as a job lot in the seventies. People smile as they pass you getting on and off, and they do say g’day if you give the nod.

The names of suburbs you pass are worth the trip to hear the tannoy come on with this very classical broad aussie accent saying next stop “Emu Plains” which actually used to be a prison back in the early colonial days. The car park at the station is not filled with trendy SUV’s and 4wd’s that never leave the road, Jacaranda trees flow over the platform and the only industry you see from the train is a concrete pipe factory.

We have left the sprawl of suburbia and home of the Westies, this is a part of the world where people wear Ugg boots and here that is not trendy by any fashion statement. (The saga of Ugg Boots will be the subject of another entry)

Perhaps the images that have most ingrained on me sitting on my plastic covered green seat are the kid behind me asleep with his Mp3 so loud that I can hear the beat of his heavy metal music and across the aisle is a grey haired old lady with her hair up and also with ear plugs.



I looked down expecting to see an Mp3, but to make me smile and realize that life in Australia maybe does not move that fast, she has clutched in her hands an old portable tape deck, held together with a rubber band to keep the door shut. I just wondered what she is listening too.

It is nice to be back down under the world is a lot different when you look up on the globe, just looked up and a young man looked across and gave the g’day smile

Dying for CNN

Just finished the Hostile Environment Training Course in the Snow of Wales, all went well but I did die and for of all people trying to rescue a CNN crew.

The reality is naturally that I am not dead as if I was how the hell could I get an internet connection from the other side, we all know that broadband wireless is good but I doubt it goes that far, up or down.

As part of our examination evaluations we got to play scenarios for the afternoon yesterday in the snow. Yes real snow, now for those of you used to snow excuse me but I do not get to see it very often and the novelty of it.

Anyway we split into groups and go from scenario to scenario, the first scenario we approach a building and are told that collegues from CNN are waiting on the other side to meet us in the car park (covered in snow) the compound is safe. Well we approach and as we did an explosion goes off, I was in the rear of the column of 5 and the others stopped not having a clue as to what to do to be honest, it was the first time that they had probably heard an is that ything louder than a firecracker.

So they just stand there doing nothing after about a minute of scouting the hills and trees they have still not moved and our “friends” from CNN are moaning by the car complaining they have been hit. I jump to my feet and make a beeline for them only to have another bang go off next to me ten feet away I keep going diving into the snow next the victims from CNN only to be yelled at that I am dead.



Such is life, apparently we were being mortared, Now having been under mortar attack in the real world I was annoyed because the bangs and flashes were not mortars, but I was dead for the game, such is life.

On the other scenarios I top marked so hopefully I redeemed myself in the scenario exams. Luckily they were just a road accident in a remote area and a hostile gunmen at an illegal checkpoint were they waved Ak47’s in your face, hell I do that everyday so I past those with flying colors.

Many people asked what was the value of me doing such a course and all I can say at the end of it is I learnt so much that I want to do the Advanced training course with more intense First Aid.

Bit all in all a great afternoon in the snow, but the last time I will take one for CNN.

Bloody Sock

Thursday Feb 8 2007

On a Hostile Environment Course in Wales, you would expect men with guns abducting you and putting sacks on your heads and yelling that you have been taken hostage. Well that is what the training promotion videos may portray. But to date the only injury and discomfort I have felt has been from a nail in the heel of my boot coming through during our map reading exercise in the mountains and causing extreme pain and a sock full of blood.

It always surprises me how much information I can get out of courses, to be honest the sections of dealing with media and hostile environments has nothing to do with the real world, but then again it would be illegal to actually tell people the difference between the real and the academic world.

The First Aid section of the course has been incredible and if anything this has been worth doing the course more than anything. The course is structured for very real hostile scenarios and how to deal with major battlefield injuries.

By the way have learnt a great way to combine legal painkillers bought off the shelf to make a super “your in deep shit” mega painkiller. So if you want to know how to concoct a mega painkiller that is fast acting I will pass it on, but you can never say who told you the mixture.

Woke up this morning to snow

Allt Yr Ynys Country Hotel

Welcome to the country of Wales, Now first up can you please try and pronounce the above hotel name.

The Welsh people decided a few years back that they were to become traditional and return to their roots. Aka Kunta Kinte but with Leeks. I mean Welsh, lets face it Esperanto has a bigger chance of being understood.

Now the most pronounced way they could achieve this back to basics and were proud to be Welsh campaign was to decide that the Welsh Language is to be resurrected and become mainstream, thus every street sign has to be bilingual announcements need to be in both English and Welsh.

If you have ever had to listen to a train station announcement they all tend to come out like the person is speaking Swahili, then you add the fact that it is Welsh and you might as well give up.

Coming down last night to Allt Yr Ynys, come on can you pronounce it yet?.

The train was full of rugby supporters, now they also had the funny aspect of that more than one beer had been consumed and the fact that they had lost to the Irish was to be factored in. The good news is that the average drunk rugby supporter is very funny and is more enthused about trying to get a singalong going on the train rather than your average drunken football fan (most likely either Man Utd or Chelsea) who after a defeat of their team seems to want to pick a fight to prove they still superior.

The good news was that the drunk Welsh rugby fan was also incapable of speaking Welsh, but he could sing and moon.

Now how do you pronounce this hotel – Allt Yr Ynys.

Halt (without the H) so “Alt”

Yr naturally becomes Your

Ynys – win ‘ ees , sort of win ease

Thus Halt your win ease Country Hotel

Reflections from 30’000ft

POST NOTE - FINALLY SOMEWHERE STABLE WHERE I CAN ACTUALLY WORK ON INTERNET - SORRY MAL

As the plane took off this morning from Tel Aviv, I raised my glass of champagne to the window and looked down the coastline to the South and Gaza.

Smiled and looked away from the window to a day old English Newspaper, which did not have one mention of anything at all about Gaza troubles. Polar Bears on melting icebergs and Women turning 50 and being happy with themselves filled the pages. Liking coming out of decompression it is refreshing to start my trip.

Gaza has descended into Civil War and the world does not care, to be honest neither do I much more. It has been a horrific week in the most unholy of the Unholyland, fighting between Fatah and Hamas reaches new lows with each breaking of a pathetic ceasefire.

The ceasefires that they arrange have about as much credence as your check is in the mail and I am from the Government and I am here to help you.

As I write this I am smiling for the next two months I am holidays, Gaza will be there when I return, we may even go down there again one day to film then again does anyone really care anymore and should we risk our lives.

Hang on I am off to do my Hostile Environment Media Orientation Course so I will be able to answer that question in a few days. I am waiting to the magic moment when we all sit down in the classroom for the first time and the Course Instructor says, “ Has anyone ever been in a Hostile Environment? “

Promise I will try to keep a straight face

Actually Nothing much has happened lately

In the world of TV news if nothing much is happening then nothing much is happening, lots of small domestic stories like the President being charges with rape and sexual harrasment, the Prime Minister is about as popular as a pork chop at an Orthodox bar mitzpa and a local 19 year old tennis player is the talk of the town for getting to the quarter finals of the Australian Tennis Open.
One of the things about working in an International bureau like Jeruslem is that when we are busy it is chaotic and dangerous, when it is quiet enjoy the time and catch up on events like planning my two month vacation that starts next week.
I had reached the stage that I was owed so much time off that the only thing to do was to take a block of two months of and thus I will be heading to Australia, Fiji and Vanuatu. I do not think I can get any further away from the Middle East.
Be prepared for dispatches downunder.
I do have to go and do a training course in Wales UK on how to work in a hostile environment, the joke amongst everyone is that am I teaching or attending
Cheers
mal

Black Eyes

“The eyes are the mirror of the soul”

For the first time in a long time I held the shot of the old lady, her face full frame in my viewfinder and for a moment it felt like our eyes locked as she turned and stared down the lens. I could not button off, and stop recording.

The eyes almost hollow and black had seen hell.

Every now and then you meet people who touch you, sometimes it is not physical, sometimes you cannot understand why, we did not share a language or even speak a word.

I was filming in a centre where Holocaust Survivors live.

What these people have seen nobody knows, but through their eyes they have seen the worst of man. The have captured images in their souls that can never be replayed to anyone, like my images.

Filming anything to do with the Holocaust, is hard. espicially here in Israel. There are events in this world that should never be forgotten and as the survivors grow older and pass away, the photographs and films of the Holocaust will be left for history.

But the eyes that witnessed the death camps will be gone, perhaps that is what held me yesterday. In my own way I witness scenes and events of horror, images that can never be filmed, but they are burnt into my soul.

Maybe when our eyes met yesterday it was our souls that communicated.

Around the room, more eyes searched for mine.