Birds can be so cruel. Outside on the terrace an appalling demonstration of merciless Nature has unfolded before our horrified eyes. I am on the south coast of New South Wales, and in the strangely ancient Banksia tree overhanging the patio a couple of little wattle birds (about the size of doves) have built their nest. One parent sits as lookout while the other brings titbits to the nest: one chick, sole survivor, though there had been six eggs. Of the other five the fate was a mystery — until now.

An ear-splitting screech. A raid. A red wattle bird (about the size of a wood pigeon) came divebombing in amd tried to pull the chick from its nest.

Its parents fought back. They drove it off, but not before the chick had tumbled in a flurry of fledgling feathers to the terrace floor. It raised its little beak to the sky, cheeping as mother and father watched helpless from a bush.

We rushed out. Scooping up the little creature in a towel, I climbed on to a bench and gently restored him to his nest. “Wattle birds are very territorial,” said my host, Emily, “and the reds are in ferocious competition with the littles.” Should we have interfered? The fledgling seemed uninjured, and, as we kept anxious watch, a parent returned with another snack. A beak opened to receive it. Fingers crossed! I’ll report progress at the end of this diary.

From the perspective of this hemisphere, Gordon Brown seems to getting rough treatment from the media. Admittedly he’s a teeth-grinding obsessive and a stranger to common sense, but this year’s Budget (or, more accurately, next year’s) looks sane. It’s no small thing to have reduced the standard rate of income tax to 20 per cent, however funded.

But people seem to have seized on the fact that the Budget is not a giveaway overall. Were it so, I fancy they would have seized on the fact that Mr Brown could not afford it. And people have made an almighty song and dance about the fact that a retired civil servant thinks Brown is a Stalinist. If Lord Turnbull has remarked that Mr Brown was no Stalinist, I fancy they would be interpreting this as alleging a wimpish failure of command and vision. Mr Brown must feel he can’t win. When the media get into this sort of mood about you, it is bad news.

Here in Australia, just like in England, men seem to be growing breasts. Or that is the impression; we do not remember male torsos looking like this when we were children. But are we right? Where is the record against which to check? No systematic study of men’s torsos is made, or ever was.

In an age when it may seem everything is being recorded, and even the hard drive of Alastair Campbell’s laptop can be mined for evidence, it’s worth reflecting on how much that everyone knows today, will be impossible to substantiate tomorrow. Only since recording have we been able to recover voices and accents. Tomorrow our voices may be recoverable, but not smells, not hand gestures in unselfconscious conversation, not private vices, not the way most men shave; the way girls talk in private, or the extent to which people still blow their noses, or smile, or laugh; or any sense of the lines one does not overstep. Colloquial speech will be ill-represented in broadcast archives, and the growing force of official norms in published attitudes will make the real opinions of people harder to retrieve.

Look around you. All so evident, so indisputable today. But soon this will be only one person’s recollection against another’s. And faster than you think.

I’ve inspected my host’s voting ballot for the New South Wales elections last week. Australia is infested with legislatures, voting is compulsory, and for state governments there is a range of preferential voting systems. My host’s ballot paper was a metre wide, a foot deep, and deeply incomprehensible. An educated woman, she was unclear how her preferred party and candidates wanted it filled in. This is the kind of system being proposed for an elected House of Lords in Britain. We must be prepared to die in the last ditch to resist it.

Oh no! Three days pass, and by day and night we’ve guarded our fledgling little wattle bird against attacks by the red. I’m nearly ready to fly to England, and he’s nearly ready to fly. And now, from Emily, comes the bombshell. Littles are on the advance. Reds are more threatened. Those raiders were trying to defend the species. I’ve backed the wrong side.

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