{"id":19169,"date":"2014-06-12T13:24:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T03:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=19169"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:58:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:58:00","slug":"country-of-difference-if-you-like-wind-turbines-burgewords-creatingwaves-on-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/country-of-difference-if-you-like-wind-turbines-burgewords-creatingwaves-on-france\/","title":{"rendered":"France, a country driven by diff\u00e9rence: @burgewords #CreatingWaves"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Locally-grown<\/a>

Locally-grown white asparagus at Cahors market.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to assume\u00a0our Treasurer Joe Hockey would not have enjoyed a trip to France with Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier this month.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just too many wind turbines across the French landscape. Hockey would have been offended every few kilometres.<\/p>\n

I should know, I spent hours admiring the French commitment to clean wind-generated energy as endless, slender, spinning white needles slid past on my high-speed rail journey into the heartland of the country\u2019s southwest.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt in the Lot they know that they\u2019ve got, culturally and environmentally, and they are busy protecting it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the region known as the Lot (with its capital Cahors), massive forests reach wide green arms into built-up areas and quickly swallow visitors into an ancient rural landscape which still sustains its\u00a0farming industries.<\/p>\n

\"Cows<\/a>

Cows roaming through forests near Prayssac.<\/p><\/div>\n

These abundant forests are not national parks, but a regularly\u00a0harvested source of timber and firewood, large and well managed enough that supply is not threatened and wildlife has a permanent refuge alongside livestock.<\/p>\n

Supporting the regional agricultural economy, serious fresh food markets take place in most towns a few days every week, a vibrant and profitable exchange of local produce and other goods for the benefit of residents. Compare that to token farmers’ markets once a month, begrudgingly permitted by local chambers of commerce in Australia.<\/p>\n

Every day, street sweepers (teams of people with brooms employed by the local council) clean the towns. Not just a cursory brush here and there, but every cigarette butt and scrap of paper.<\/p>\n

Far from major cities, reliable service connects people to the internet without the same dropout I regularly encounter at home, a mere 35 kilometres from the central business district of Brisbane.<\/p>\n

But the greatest surprise, for me, came with\u00a0the palpable sensation of creativity happening all around me.<\/p>\n

Millennia-old heritage architecture abounds. Wherever recent building work has been undertaken, it complements townscapes instead of fighting against them. Modern repairs are completed with ancient building techniques. New properties are built in the same manner as homes that are hundreds of years old. Satellite dishes and solar panels are positioned to blend in. From their homes, to their public spaces and their everyday items, the locals are not afraid of heritage or design.<\/p>\n

Local theatres, cinemas, galleries and ateliers (artist \u2018workshops\u2019) are\u00a0in high saturation. Their output is not tourist fodder, but art for art’s sake.<\/p>\n

In a region whose food export relies heavily on dubious animal welfare principles (foie gras, anyone?), and where hunting is commonplace, I spotted the word \u2018vegetarian\u2019 more often\u00a0in advertising than I have ever encountered it in Queensland, where I\u2019ve had a worse time as a veggo\u00a0than a homosexual.<\/p>\n

Travelling with my husband, we didn\u2019t sense a hint\u00a0of homophobia. Same-sex marriage has been legal\u00a0in France for a year.<\/p>\n

About now, you might be thinking: \u201cIf it\u2019s so great, why don\u2019t you move there?\u201d, along the lines of the \u2018Australia: love it or leave it\u2019 principle.<\/p>\n

Well, we did go into a real estate agent in the Medieval town of Gourdon, only to find that our dream home (a flat above a 15th century shop) was on the market for 55,000 euro (just under AU$80,000). Tempting enough to admit that I really don\u2019t love Australia to the point that I would never leave it.<\/p>\n

As we left the region, I got the sense that I was returning to a world\u00a0that is busy destroying itself. There is no doubt in the Lot they know that they\u2019ve got, culturally and environmentally, and they are busy protecting it.<\/p>\n

I felt bereft as this special place disappeared in the wake of the high-speed rail journey back to Paris, where the sight of cars plugged into electrical recharging points, which have become part of the very infrastructure of the streets, was a sign that even French cities are connected to an alternative present, not just dreams of a different future.<\/p>\n

No one demographic dominates the Paris population. Mass immigration has resulted in the kind of\u00a0melting pot of cultures which goes well beyond tolerance of unfamiliar cuisine. Both days we were\u00a0in the city, loud, peaceful political protests for Sri Lankan and other refugees occurred. Australia\u2019s base fears about racial and cultural differences, and our government\u2019s cry that we are being overrun by asylum seekers, simply fade\u00a0into the multicultural Parisienne haze.<\/p>\n

\"Western<\/a>

Western masterpieces are just the tip of the iceberg at the Louvre Museum.<\/p><\/div>\n

At The Louvre, all the great Western masterpieces are on show, but included in this \u2018greatness\u2019 were acres of decorative arts from the Muslim world in\u00a0the museum\u2019s permanent collection.<\/p>\n

Yes, I could be accused of seeing the grass as greener through my rose coloured glasses, but before leaving the Lot I asked a couple of local British expats about the region.<\/p>\n

Wages are low. The economy is seasonal and almost shuts down over the deep winter. To counter this, most residents live well within their means. Perhaps that is what people did before economies relied so heavily on debt, deficit and the need for everyone to spend, spend, spend?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why France and Australia are the way they\u00a0are. Penal colonies, bloody revolutions and wars feature in the histories of both countries. Both have elected conservative governments for most of the years since the turn of the millennium. Something is at work in France which is beyond political ideology.<\/p>\n

I left\u00a0with far\u00a0more questions than answers: What lies about the environment, immigration, culture, heritage and development have we believed, that such vast differences have become the reality in two Western economies?<\/p>\n

What makes it possible for Australia\u2019s Treasurer to be so vehemently offended by something which is already deeply embedded in France\u2019s way of life? Are France’s wind turbines more or less offensive to Joe Hockey than Australia’s tradition of exporting\u00a0uranium to France for their nuclear electricity generation program, which is Europe’s largest?<\/p>\n

The French have a term for it – vive la diff\u00e9rence (\u2018long live the difference\u2019) – and perhaps they have learnt to say it about themselves more than others?<\/p>\n

A much younger nation with an ancient first\u00a0population, Australia doesn\u2019t yet have words to express the same sentiment, and that is a telling difference indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It\u2019s safe to assume\u00a0our Treasurer Joe Hockey would not have enjoyed a trip to France with Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier this month. There\u2019s just too many wind turbines across the French landscape. Hockey would have been offended every few kilometres. I should know, I spent hours admiring the French commitment to clean wind-generated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":19173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,1624,118,675,651,1542,585,73,855,854,1510],"tags":[1874,667,1876,1875,470,1877],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/FRANCE-3.jpg?fit=800%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-4Zb","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}