Apart from an enervating but thankfully short stint working for a bank I seem to have dedicated my life to lost causes. In fact, I rather like lost causes - maybe it’s an Irish thing?

I went to Papua New Guinea in the cause of adventure and exotica but this quickly changed into the less selfish cause of helping to bring a people to successful nationhood.

When I left PNG it looked like this success was on the horizon but as the years passed it became apparent that it wouldn’t happen.

After PNG I worked for 20 years trying to protect and sustain the culture of Australia’s indigenous people. We made great headway at first but slowly and inevitably the tide began to turn and we fell victim to the greater powers of commercial greed.

When I left, wearied by the effort, we had effectively come full circle. In 1994 we were back to where we started in 1974.

After that I took on the lost cause of trying to convince resource developers in both Australia and Papua New Guinea to rethink the irreparable damage they were doing to people’s cultures and the environment in which those people lived. Another lost cause.

Teetering towards old age I took on the cause of literature in Papua New Guinea. Again there were early and encouraging successes.

Of late, however, and despite some significant achievements, it is starting to look like another lost cause.

As I sit on my verandah on the Queensland coast at the end of the day sipping a cold beer and staring at the myriad stars in the night sky and the infinity of the Universe I contemplate my history of lost causes.

Occasionally I see the bright tail of a shooting star burning up in the atmosphere. There goes another promising beginning, I think.

But like my failed causes, at least for a short while, it burned with a bright light.