The Tipping Point

The gratifying thing about travelling is you get a chance to see how insignificant our troubles are compared to other countries, or how similar they are depending upon your view. Specifically, I refer to Australia as that is my home country. Of course ,if you are from the USA the whole world is your country, or if you are from China, and by some miracle you missed out on the "all people are equal" concept, you are currently buying up Countries.

6Ps photography - The ocean has no boundaries

We are currently working on a combination of Photography, film and writing about the observations we make as we travel. titled "One street back" we hope to convey the truth behind the tourist facade of many popular places on this earth.

The role of the eyes becomes frustrating when the mention of Bali is included in observations. It seems with little or no understanding, a judgement has been passed, by some, that it is the land of Australian bogans, cheap shit and food that regurgitates itself. Not to mention Bintang and singlets.

EST,  at great expense, has been on a quest to discover every inch of Bali, including it's rich culture and history. We have also visited Lombok and immersed ourselves in their world.

At this point we should give a sincere thanks to Phil Jarrett who has recently published a book "Bali heaven and hell". This book details a rich history and understanding of the Balinese mind.It includes the Dutch involvement in Bali and the influence surfing has had on Indonesia in general.

Of course it would be a very narrow view of the world if we only observed Indonesia and for that reason we are travelling to Spain and Portugal to see what happened to their world. Now a basket case economically, but what about their culture?

The one thing we are discovering is the influence that money seems to have over most things. Maybe it always has, of course we all like to be comfortable with our lot. But with this comes an enormous imbalance between happiness, the earth and long term understanding of "what has been". If we take Bali for instance we have the following scenario:

1. Farmer (grows rice) hacks out a living to provide for his family, but in general very poor.

2. Tourism becomes a huge part of the economic engine room.

3. Speculation grows by those willing to invest and who also have the capital that villas are required to accommodate the growing tourism.

4. As a huge number of rice fields surround the tourist centres, farmers are approached to purchase their land.

5. Farmer sells and has a one off "lottery win". 

6. Rice field levelled villas built.

Only those that have the money can afford to buy and only those poor enough are willing to sell. Nothing unusual about that scenario, except the land becomes unbalanced, the production of rice creates moisture and space. This space is now a villa (s) producing nothing for the land, but takes away a lot.

As for the Farmer, he now can afford to buy a car to transport tourists around. this of course adds to the already thick air and congestion.

According to Phil Jarret, there is now an oversupply of vehicles (taxis) and accommodation, and to top it off an imbalance in Bali between all Hindu principles.

EST will be making many more observations about the countries it travels to and also Australia in comparison. To conclude todays report, we do make the observation that Australia is not far removed from the Bali scenario.

Australia has condensed living areas in it's cities and property prices are all on millionaires row......  Agriculture is becoming "owned" by foreign investors. We have no balance, particularly if you live in county towns or regional centres, where basic resources are expensive or not in reach at all.

This is not a doomsday article, it is observation. Somehow, this world seems to keep going around and crisis comes and goes.

But one word that best describes the imbalance is:

Greed.