There is such a thing as a free lunch.
I’ve been looking around and I really don’t know why there’s so much fuss about the high cost of living.
Water falls from the sky, free. Some of it gets collected, swum in or drunk (hopefully not both), and used to clean things or to make other things grow.
The sun shines, and the rays can be bottled up on the roof to be transformed for free into that mysterious invisible substance known as electricity, which means you can get moving, talking pictures on the box in the corner of the lounge room, nice cold beer when you want it, a pre-warmed bed on a winter’s night, or a hot shower anytime.
The wind blows, windmills spin merrily, and similar minor domestic miracles can be made to happen. Free!
How about a walk in the park? The town library? Conversation? Sleep? Flirting? Freebies, all of them.
Consider the bushman’s (or is it a dingo’s?) breakfast - a yawn, a scratch, a leak, a fart, and a good look around. (I’ve added a couple of ingredients to the original). Not much financial outlay there.
You’d reckon the air we breathe would be on the list too, but there’s a market for it. In China, you can buy bottled air from the Blue Mountains, Bondi Beach, the Yarra Valley, New Zealand and Tasmania. Apparently the two blokes exporting it are looking to harvest some atmosphere from other clean spots. Perhaps people in places such as Canada or Siberia would be willing to pay for the abundant hot, but not very clean, air that’s generated in Canberra.
Unfortunately, there are costs with all those freebies. You need stuff like water tanks and pumps, plumbing, solar panels, invertors, and electrical wiring.
Not to mention the high potential cost of flirting.
Still, there’s no harm in looking on the bright side.
The sun is shining, there are three honey-eaters in the birdbath and our visiting wallaby just tried his first hand fed mandarin,
That’s a fair swag of low-cost pleasures for one morning.
By the way…
Your columnist has just been visiting some unique country towns up north. They are out-of-the-way places where there’s not much money, but kids have big smiles, and an election is a good excuse for a party.
The food is plain, but people look healthy, with very few of them sporting big guts.
Dogs take themselves for a walk and aren’t locked up.
Visitors struggling to take it all in, get emotional about events that took place 75 years ago, and keep coming back for more.
The villages along Papua New Guinea’s Kokoda Track are part of a must-do experience.
