Countdown

'Tis pendantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time" ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Today is Census Day in Australia; the day when the population is counted, when the number of bedrooms in each home is recorded, numbers living in each residence, their occupation, and a myriad of other questions that are designed to help the nation decide where money needs spending in the future.

All this is information is statistical ... and of small importance to those filling in the 18 page questionaire.  The final question asks if each person present in the household on this day is willing to have their information kept in the National Archives of Australia and made available after 99 years; this is for tracing ancestors.

As like most our form will be filled in this evening. 

This five-yearly count of the population etc is interesting to the individial if they take a few moments to consider how their lives have altered over the past five years.  Where were we five years ago?  Where have we been in the intervening time?

Today many move from place to place, unlike many in days of yore who were born, lived and died in the one town or area.  We are more mobile today than in the past, and each place where we have resided leaves a different footprint on our minds. 

The last census occured days after I arrived in Australia to begin a new phase of life.  Soon after I moved north to a job in a town I had never heard off; in a climate much warmer than experienced before.  I adjusted and settled into a lifestyle so remote from that ever experienced before.  Life is a series of experiences that make a person whom they are. 

Now retired I live to the south of that Outback town, but still enjoy the simpler lifestyle of the country.  All those little things I had put off 'for when I am older' are now important parts of my daily existence.  Apart from the heat of summer, the flies, the endless procession of flies, the ants that abound in summer, this new life suits me fine.

I wonder where I will be for the next Census?  What adventures will I undertake in the next five years?