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My mate’s lad just finished drawing a map of Australia in his paddock with his tractor. Crazy good, hey! It’s out near Freeling. Well done to the Schuster family for being so clever!

Harry did the job. He’s a 27 year old; an 8370R John Deere to get it done — took a few hours on the computer figuring out how to convert a photo to a GPS map, then two hours tilling it.

Basically wanted to see if the process of image-to-GPS was possible, and what better test than a flag of the best country?

While we are talking about how awesome this country is, read what happened to me in Cambodia:

I Sat Next to a Murderer

Something happened to me in Cambodia that I am really struggling to get my head around. We had decided to put on a feast for a village about 70 km from where our charity was located in the homeland of Jet, our Cows for Cambodia charity manager.

Jet is a kind man; he was a monk for nine years and is one of ten children born into a very poor family. He, like so many Cambodians in the late 1970s, had their lives turned upside-down during the Khmer Rouge’s reign.

Pol Pot was the head of the Khmer Rouge, himself a Cambodian, and his reign of terror killed an estimated 1.5 – 2 million people, his own people. The torture they committed is too horrific for me to even write here.

But by the time his evil was done, about 30% of the Cambodian population were murdered or starved to death. The Khmer Rouge soldiers who so violently served him also were Cambodians. Can you imagine a group of Australians suddenly declaring war on the rest of Australians and killing 30% of us?

We were welcomed at the local village in Jet’s homeland with the normal line-ups of smiles and high-fives as we unloaded meat and rice. About 200 villagers with their children were fed dinner, and as night fell, they started to go home. I was left sitting on logs around a campfire, having a couple of beers with around 20 Cambodian men. Everyone was so happy, bellies full of food.

On my right was Jet. Jet and I were the only two people that could speak English that I met that night. On my left was another Cambodian man whom I had been sharing smiles and beers with, using the very limited Cambodian I know to try to chat with him. The scene was no different to many campfires I have sat around in Australia, along the River Murray or in the remote Outback.

Jet turned to me halfway through the night and said a sentence that I’ll never forget.

“Cosi, the man next to you. He was a Khmer Rouge soldier.”

Well, I spat my beer so much the campfire nearly got extinguished! I said, “What?! Are you serious?!”

He said, “Yes, and he openly talks about it, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask him.”

What took place in the following fifteen minutes blew my mind. I started talking to the soldier using Jet to translate between us, first asking why he joined Pol Pot’s army to fight against his own people. He told me that he was a young boy, only 16, and he was told if he didn’t fight, his family would be slaughtered, and he was so scared.

He told me that he could never forgive himself for all the horrible things he had done. He was involved in murders, mass killings, burying people in huge pits known as killing fields and more…

As I was talking to the man, Jet reached across in front of me and passed him a beer, spoke to him in Cambodian and gently smiled at him.

I turned to Jet, still in shock that this man who helped murder or starve nearly 30% of his countrymen was sitting at our campfire, eating our free food and drinking a beer with us, that we had paid for. Jet invited this guy to the dinner!

During the Khmer Rouge era, Jet was only a kid himself. He has recalled to me many times the story of the night the Khmer Rouge army burnt his house and many others to the ground. Each time he tells the story, he cries… and so do I. He recounts hiding in the rice fields with his family, watching as their house burned, his mother weeping and crying uncontrollably. Could it have been the man sitting next to me who started that fire? Who knows?

I said, “Jet, this is your homeland, you organised this free dinner for the village. Why would you invite this man who caused so much pain to this area less than 50 years ago?”

Jet said, “Cosi, that was a long time ago. At the time, the man was doing what he thought he had to do. He now lives with that regret, but we must move on because if we don’t, we will never move forward. It’s OK, Cosi; we all make mistakes in life, and this man is no different. He is always welcome to join me.”

I cannot begin to understand that level of forgiveness.

Here’s what’s super crazy. Eventually, when the Khmer Rouge reign was over, many of the thousands of soldiers like the fella sitting next to me just travelled back to their homelands and started life over. They just rejoined what was left of the community.

And the community that they had murdered or tortured allowed them to return. That’s what I can’t get my head around. Where is the anger towards these people? The hate? How can Jet possibly forgive this man AND let him join us as a friend?

Obviously, every Cambodian carries heavy scars from that time and always will, but their ability to “move on” as a country and be grateful for what they have is something that I admire about the Cambodians.

My other friend Sela was three, sitting in his village house during war times, when a Khmer Rouge APG rocket was shot into their home. Shrapnel hit Sela very badly and he saw two family members killed in front of him. Sela today is possibly the happiest man I know. How?

What Cambodians lack in the bullsh*t materialistic possessions we value as being so important, they make up for in the crazy ability to get on with life and make the most of it and, most importantly, love each other and be happy. We may have more money than them here in Australia, but I honestly don’t think our lives are any richer.

Cambodians have taught me so much over the past decade of visiting there. They have an amazing way of just getting on with life despite the atrocities or the poverty.

Cambodia has changed me a lot, but what it’s done more than anything is made me realise just how lucky I am to be able to call myself an Australian. An Aussie.

We really have won the lottery of life either by being born here or by becoming a citizen here. You or I could have been born in a village in Cambodia, having our house burnt down during war.

As I write this, I’m looking at a beach south of Adelaide, crystal-clean waters the Cambodians will never see. Yet at the same time, millions around the world are opening their eyes in places far less peaceful: Ukraine, Gaza, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East… Sadly, the list is long.

I urge all Aussies to look at a map of the world and ask yourself, is there really anywhere else in the world you’d rather be living right now? If the answer’s no, then you need to do everything you possibly can to show how proud you are to call this place home.

The man in the shack next to me has just walked out in board shorts with no shirt; I was alerted to his presence by him tapping some tongs loudly as he cleans his BBQ.

Australia. Thank you for being my home. I will always love you and be so grateful to be able to call myself an Australian.

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Republished with permission from Andrew “Cosi” Costello’s Facebook page.