Sanderson Media

“The choice between an idyllic drive to Rockhampton or a relaxed airplane flight should have been an easy one. What could possibly go wrong…” I never expected to provide fodder for an airline security program but that all changed on the way to a funeral in a regional Australian city. I arrived at Brisbane airport with good cheer and a song in my heart, which is not hard when you have been a musician for 55 years. If that appears irrelevant, then bear with me. We all imagine how we appear to others. I imagined myself as a dapper grey old chap, nudging 63, the complete antithesis of airline security silage.

Smog obscures most photos of laudable Chinese achievements. Compared to the slow-moving, sleepy west, visiting China it is like experiencing another planet. Here they employ engineers to do what our world was thinking of doing. If you ignore the lack of birds singing in trees, you can focus on wide freeways punched through huge mountain ranges, spanning deep valleys with steel bridges that reach the next mountain range. Years of buying Australian iron ore and coal has been put to good use.