Tree felling

Tree felling the Melanesian Way. I've just seen this bloke 30 metres up a tree and ten metres out on a branch about a metre thick swinging away with a tommy hawk - not an axe or a chain saw but a tommy hawk - at a branch about as big as my tummy. He was lying along the support branch with his legs, as much as they could with its being so big itself, trying to hold him on. With no safety harness or anything like that. A matter of persistence and cutting a little bit at a time.
Australians once upon a time were persistent - not like this but in their own way. Now the advertisers, image makers, and louts who are no more endearing than a used condom have hijacked the endearing Australian of Lawson, Patterson and CJ Dennis and attribute to themselves the qualities of the fighting soldiers in the trenches and jungles, the swaggie looking after his dog and the folkloric tradition of carrying your heart in your swag. As endearing as a used condom, you'd pick up the modern "aussie" only with a stick. No loyalty, no persistence, joy for the moment, big-noting, brash, ugly. As different from the tree feller in PNG as he is different from the image of the myth he would like to be.