This morning I observed two different interactions in the foyer while waiting for the doors to open here at 10am. The first was an American mother, waiting for a preschoolers public music workshop session to begin. Once a year the Queensland State Library has a free public programme of events for children aged between three and eight. There is a high quality of educational material available, within a fun social context, and many mothers who meet weekly as a playgroup, will be attending with their friends and children.

The state library is also a facility at which other public events are frequently happening, either on a commercial basis when the large public hall and theatre are hired, or government funded Arts events. For example the Brisbane Writer's Festival happens here once a year, in the meeting rooms and on the lawns of the State Library. The library is newly renovated and in between the old State Art Gallery building and the new Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, which is at present enjoying a once in a lifetime travelling exhibition from Picasso's own private collection. Just across the road is a set of theatres, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, and then also one of the Universities School of Music is also co-located here.

The whole precinct, which includes beautiful public gardens, always being well utilised, and well upkept out of taxpayer's dollars, with gas heated hotplates for anybody to use at any time, and a shallow public open air swimming pool, with a small false beach, on the river bank, is all known as the Cultural Centre. It includes also the State Museum, and within the Museum, is one of the National exhibitions called Questacon, which is a hands on science and technology museum, that teaches basic physics and maths to younger children, through the experiences of touch, to engage younger children's learning mind.

I love these facilities. I love it that the Australian government, the Australian taxpayers, and the entire country, all work together to ensure these facilities are upkept. Even the homeless people will advise one another not to try to use these spaces to take shelter in of an evening, since their own access to these places is more affable when they enjoy the facilities like any other member of the public during the normal opening times. These are well policed places to the best of my knowledge, and nearby, under a bridge is one of the locations where the homeless are given free meals by charity. We are fortunate here in Australia that there is no great crisis of housing. However I believe that our fortunes here in Australia, have another way of explaning the face of the situation also. We all make a public face of sharing our best worth. What is not worth our very Soul, is regarded as shameful, and to be hidden from the public, yet when worth the essence of being human, that we have about our character, is regarded as needing to be how we open our face to public scrutiny.

I like this aspect of our culture most of all because it prevents us from ever mistakenly believing, that any aspect of our personal character which we might value and cherish, but which may not truly be so worthy at its heart, really is that worthy of being held onto. We learn through the hardship of public trials, from very young in school playgrounds, not to admire one another, and especially not to admire our own character, until there is nothing and nobody able to diminish us by observance of a fault. The indigenous culture does this in the mainstream, and within indigenous contexts, whatever is held aloft for public admiration must be consistently already proving to have been originally made perfect.

The American mainstream, influenced as it is, by Native American culture, as well as many other cultures, is a bit of a different kettle of fish. The American mother who was introducing her child to the concept of these free public events, explained it to her child in a way that made it sound as though it was all being put on as a personal compliment to his own self. She said "look what they have here for YOU", as though none of the worth in these public events and forums could exist without her son, who may need of this public worth. In the Australian way, the mother was truly behaving shamefully, and setting her child up to be the subject of being teased and bulllied at school. Australians tend, ourselves, to be very shy indeed about our participation in these public contexts. Yet all will always want to continue to pay for these things to exist.

There was another conversation I overheard also though. Now between a library patron, here to use the free internet services, and a staff member. They discussed how the internet speed is variable depending on how many library patrons are logged on. The library building has free internet mobile coverage for laptops also, as does the City library just across the river. The desktop computers require only that a person has a local residential address, for access. The library patron was a man influenced by the American type modern evangelical style churches which exist more so here in Brisbane, than in any other part of Australia. He suggested that the library might start to charge money for internet access, so as that all the many international students who use these computers, will not be slowing down his own internet access. I had to voice my own disagreement.

This library has many Indian students, and in particular many Sikh are frequently here using our library computers. Obviously they attend a specific private international English language college, and so the library has asked that college not to promote any wanton use of these public facilities. The Sikh and other Indian students are no problem. In the City library over the river, the many Japanese students are neither the problem. Both libraries have effective computer booking systems, and no Australian has been prevented from access by our public resources being shared like this. It is a way that we have to be if we want these international students to learn our Australian ways.

I had to speak up and insist in the conversation that these spaces be free, because I am a pensioner, and would have no other access to the internet if I were being charged. The internet is very expensive here in Australia, and most use of it is through workplaces, and in particular by government employees. Without these public facilities, and computers in schools, we are not a computer literate nation as yet.

The American mother and her son will learn the hard way, that very Australian 'hard way' we have of teaching, by giving semblence to allowing mistakes, but normally only until the mistaken person recognises that they are not fitting in culturally, at which point, when once embarrassed, we will all laugh at the situation and then include that person more fully. Nobody is Australian who is not self depreciating in humour.

It is not only this one American mother, who I overheard being the best mother she knows how to be with her own American son, in the best way her own land and people and culture, have already taught her, it is not only her and her son who will be learning of our real way. One day all Americans, and everybody who knows of our places and people, may well wake up to the fact that our best was not being fed out into the international domain, just so as that "YOU" may take of our way unto your own nature; but rather so as that every one existing, all those of you who are equitably affable with our own status, will be learning the way of the noble dignity of our humility, in our gentle acceptance that the best of what we are collectively worth, belongs to the domains of the child's mind, and can never be claimed as any one individual's own stable countenance.

If any one man could claim the countenance of the best of our public face here in Australia, it could only be Jesus, for it is his day today, here in this library and in every place, and his way is the way our people already knew well enough that when we were invaded, we accepted the gift of the religious teaching of our invaders in grace. In this place, I feel able to be proud of being Australia, as I silently watch the American mother who is admiring also in her own countenance, how well we provide in public for children, and as I meet full agreement from the library staff member, that the services of these public facilities belong in the realm in which no money is necessary.

I do hope you will find it in your own way to agree.