Thank You Mr Philip

Captain Arthur Philip named Manly Cove after witnessing the masculine behaviour of the local aboriginals in 1770.
Day two of Make Poverty History Road Trip was filled with an assortment of things all taken in very quickly and rushed through. Thankfully the second stop of the road trip was close enough to home for me to refer to it as my home town. Manly Corso was the destination for us and i felt a small amount of pride when i stepped off the bus and took in an area i had spent many hours of my youth in. This feeling of pride quickly diminished when reports came back from fellow road trippers of verbal abuse and in one case physical abuse towards ambassadors on the road trip who were on a mission to raise awareness about poverty.
I was troubled by these reports as i had only had positive experiences of the place both on the day and in the years past. A high income end of town seemed to lack the compassion for fellow human beings in dire need of help. Fortunately latter in the day some more positive feed back came back to me, yet in hindsight Manly was at the top of everyone's list for the most negative stop on the road trip.

Latter in the afternoon I wondered off to the beach and sat on the cold concrete steps and thought through the days scrambled events. Why was I so proud of this place? Why did it let me down so much to the point that many fellow road trippers now despised the place. The people of Manly had let me down and I felt a little hint of shame creep into my mind. I concluded that I am not responsible for peoples attitude and behavior, I am responsible for myself and my behavior, I represented those people on road trip and weather they liked it or not I feel I did them proud. People can change and my home tribe so to speak needs a lot of work but those with the most need to change are those who need the most attention. People who are self absorbed and selfish are those who most needed to hear our message. So I concluded that whilst Many may have become the most negative stop on the road trip it was possibly the most important.
I still love Manly if for no other reason then it is Beautiful. Give the people time I will change their minds.