Four years ago a brigade of brigands known as Somali Pirates, took 29 men hostage off the wild Horn of Africa. And while we’ve all completed four rich and full circles of the sun, those men have concealed these from the world, deprived of their liberty and life. The beastly pirates have fed them next to nothing, forced them to scrounge for survival, to hunt rats and insects for sustenance.

And yesterday, all but three of those men were mercifully released - three of their number died in the ordeal. And pirates, for god’s sake, terrorising and kidnapping and madness on the sea and land, and at least they’re free, and so it goes…

And around the time the stolen fishermen were emancipated, I met, inside a High Street building, a real-life refugee. Met a man whose life was once so impoverished and forlorn that he decided to risk it all on the high seas. I met a man from Afghanistan who took a chance on saving his life, to have a life – and so he boarded a rusting, listing boat bound for Australia…

He was quietly spoken and funny and serious and he was down on High Street teaching me about desperation and misery and happiness. He told me that when you’re in a dark room, a dark place, you see and crave the light beyond.

And he is named Asif, and he’s here living on the floodplain, on this soil, in this light, and he’s a good bloke, one of us now, and good on him - and that’s right…

There’s a magnificent racehorse in Australia named Winx - and she runs so beautifully fast. And they say she stood up within ten minutes of being foaled, stood up so fast, stood up fast so she could feel the world beneath her hooves, and she’s a beauty, like Phar Lap and Gun Synd and Kingston Town, she’s a real beauty is Winx.

And there’s a battle raging for the town of Mosul, in Iraq. They tell us that they’re leaving an exit-corridor to the east, a portal, an escape-hatch out of the diabolical hell that Mosul must surely be.

And while we sleep, and glide across the Harry Boyle Bridge looking out across the splendid farms and fields, Mosul will be burn, and there will be blood…

Reports from the centre of Australia, missives from out beyond the Great Divide say that the record winter rains have made the landscape a riot of colour, made the red-dirt green, made a the dead-heart beat with blazing life…

And let the record show that the Hunter River continues murmuring on down to the sea, and life on the floodplain is calm and free.

And so it goes.

Goodnight.