of the deepest of the rocky waterholes. There was a heavy splash,
and three startled kangaroos, who had been drinking, leapt back and sped away,
like three grey ghosts, up the ridge towards the moonlit peak.




Mitchell on the "Sex" and Other "Problems"



"I agree with `T' in last week's `Bulletin'," said Mitchell,
after cogitating some time over the last drop of tea in his pannikin,
held at various angles, "about what they call the `Sex Problem'.
There's no problem, really, except Creation, and that's not our affair;
we can't solve it, and we've no right to make a problem out of it
for ourselves to puzzle over, and waste the little time
that is given us about. It's we that make the problems, not Creation.
We make 'em, and they only smother us; they'll smother the world in the end
if we don't look out. Anything that can be argued, for and against,
from half a dozen different points of view -- and most things
that men argue over can be -- and anything that has been argued about
for thousands of years (as most things have) is worse than profitless;
it wastes the world's time and ours, and often wrecks old mateships.
Seems to me the deeper you read, think, talk, or write about things
that end in ism, the less satisfactory the result; the more likely you are
to get bushed and dissatisfied with the world. And the more you keep
on the surface of plain things, the plainer the sailing --
the more comfortable for you and everybody else. We've always got
to come to the surface to breathe, in the end, in any case;