日本語↓On Saturday, we cleaned up for the first time in Macquarie Park. It was a warm, sunny day, and the turnout was great despite the event having been rescheduled. We had quite a lot of young, South Korean volunteers this month, along with some from France, Japan, China, Germany and our regular locals. At the start of the event, some volunteers expressed their doubts that there would be much to do in this area – it looked pretty clean. But as soon as you see it, you can’t unsee it. That’s the beauty and also unfortunate thing about participating in clean ups! Even in the first alleyway we entered, there was an abundant amount of rubbish to pick up. Our volunteers spent every last second of the allocated time collecting as much as they could, and even then, it was clear that we could have spent the entire day without hardly scratching the surface of the rubbish iceberg we are living on . The saddest comment of the day was made by our youngest volunteer (in primary school). He said that he had expected to find a lot of things to pick up because after all, “This is Australia.” How disappointing that this is the image the youngest members of our community have of our country. Clearly we have a long way to go to improve the status quo. Thank you as always to all that came to make a difference this month! I look forward to bringing our activities back to the streets in November.

暖かくて晴れている土曜日に初めてマッコーリー大学周辺に集まってお掃除しました！９月に予定していた活動がメトロの点検で１０月に延期になったにも関わらず、たくさんのボランティアさんが来てくれて、嬉しかったです！今まで韓国人のボランティアさんが一番多かったかもしれません。フランス人も何人かいて、その中に韓国語が話せる人もいたので、日英はもちろん、皆さんは色んな言語でお喋りながらお掃除を楽しんだようでよかったです。拾い始める前は、「この辺りは綺麗そうで今日はあまり仕事ないかも」と話していたボランティアたちがいたのですが、探し始めると、すぐにゴミがたくさん見つかりました。最年少のメンバーの「オーストラリアだからゴミが多いのは当たり前だ」と言う言葉に胸が痛みました。子供たちはこんなふうに思っているんだね…悲しいな、と考えました。だからこそ、最後の瞬間まで頑張って拾ってくれた皆様に感謝しかありません！また１１月にシドニーのゴミの山に登りましょう。