Recrudesce

I have been back in Australia for just over three weeks, and back in Canberra for the last three days. I am living, temporarily, in a large hotel room which has two flat screen televisions, two floors, a stove and a balcony overlooking a verdant garden, all paid for on my behalf by the Australian tax-paying public. I arrive in the capital by Greyhound from Sydney, on Australia Day, and drag my suitcase along the pavement from the bus terminal, through the city centre, past the black, red and yellow flags of the ‘Invasion Day’ demonstration in Garema Place, and down the wide, silent, suburban streets which flank the tiny centre of Canberra towards the hotel. At the check out desk the three girls are in the office, blowing up green and gold balloons and inhaling the helium to make their voices squeak. One of them has a flag tattoo on her cheek. A peroxide blonde with dimples and small eyes comes out to serve me, and continues to giggle and snort as she searches for my booking, and the other two staff keep opening the shuttered window into the office, poking their head through, and squeaking at her, which makes her burst with laughter again and again. ‘Your room (giggle) isn’t (snort, giggle) ready yet (guffaw) – it’s still being (giggle) made up… (laugh induced tear)… it should be an hour – you can go wander around the shops and I’ll call you (snort, laughter) when it’s ready.’ I head to the weekly community market and sit in the sun and read Miranda July and eat Salvadorian papusas with beans, cheese and chilli. A shirtless man with scraggly hair selling poetry on crumpled foolscap mutters curses at cricketer Adam Gilchrist and the nation of Australia. I go buy a mapbook for my upcoming househunt challenge. The Jesters pie shop has either shut down or moved, one of the two. Two brown wild rabbits are eating grass in front of the ANU Law building. I go back to the hotel after three hours, and the girl looks embarrassed at having forgotten to call me. One of the wall mounted flat screens is a metre wide. There are some excited Brazilians in the rooms surrounding mine; they spend a lot of time in the hallway, commuting between each other’s rooms and shrieking. That night I meet Stephen and Kate for a monster movie involving the destruction of Manhattan.

The next morning I am navigating myself in the park, using my new map book, when a heavily cleavaged elderly woman approaches on her bicycle. Her aim is to help me, but when she realises that I pretty much know where I’m going she flips the conversation to a virtual game of word association – she asks me a question, then reacts to the answer with whatever comes into her mind, eg: (1) I say “Oslo”, and she responds with stories about: (a) a Norwegian she met on a cruise ship from London to Guyana and subsequently dated, (b) her days in Guyana in the 1960s and an incident with overheard gunshots when she returned in the 90s, (c) the only other time she’s heard gunshots, during a drive-by while she was drifting off to sleep in Johannesburg. My mentioning Perth, on the other hand, triggers discussion of Heath Ledger. She has a theory that he was gay, but hadn’t come to terms with it yet. ‘I was married to my husband for 20 years’ she tells me, ‘and it took another ten years after we divorced for me to realise that he was gay. Wasn’t till I saw him rubbing suncream on the back of our son, who he always said wasn’t his anyway. That triggered it, the suncream. Very Death In Venice.”’ She rides her bike around me in a clockwise direction, mumbling something about ancient pagan rituals (“Probably come in handy with your peace studies!” she says) and goes back the way she came, following the stormwater drains northwards.

In the car, Stephen, Kate and I head to Kambah pool, a swimming hole in a river past the satellite towns of Canberra, where we eat sandwiches and watermelon on towels in the shade of the banks and swim in the sand coloured waters. The gum trees are white and run up the valley edge. It’s gorgeous. Downriver a little there is a section of rapids and rock pools, and we leap across on boulders to the other side. A nearby car park is full to the brim, but there’s almost no one around at all, and we are confused, until we see a path with a stencilled sign on the cement: “NUDE BATHING AREA – 200M”. We follow it down, and on the way pass an ape-faced teenager who points his thumb down the path. ‘Those people are fuckin’ sickos’, he offers. Moments later, a rotund gentleman emerges from the bush with no pants and an open shirt. His cock wiggles. He stops just passed us to dress himself. On a bit further, we reach a clearing – sure enough, the rocks are scattered with nudists, men and women, their skin bright through the fronds and trunks. We do not go further, cautious of appearing like sightseers in our shorts and shirts. We turn around and head back to the car. On the drive home, we pass a BMX park named after Vikings, and one of the world’s three NASA Deep Space Communication Complexes.

Today, after an hour reading and sleeping under the statue of Mohandas Gandhi in Glebe Park, I am walking back to the hotel, when I hear words behind me, children’s words, the words of a four year old. It is a young boy, talking to his mother, who is pushing a pram and walking a few metres in front of the rest of the family. It is just us on the eucalyptus flanked avenue, I am just a little in front of them, and the air smells good and the sky is warm. I hear words from the boy and at first I just register them as the babble of a child, a child fielding probing but directionless queries at his parents, but then I hear them crisp and clear, and right there at my back. The words of the child go: ‘We don’t like them, do we mum, because they aren’t Ausssie?’
‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘If you’re not Aussie, you’re not welcome’.
‘If you’re not Aussie, you’re not welcome’, he repeats after her.
‘Not welcome here at all’
‘If you’re not Aussie, you’re. Not. Welcome.’ His four year old squeak is tasting the words. His four year old mind is absorbing the very idea.
It’s that easy for my recent attempts to embrace the idea of living in suburban Australia to be undermined. That easy for the positive thoughts I’ve concentrated on since returning to Canberra to be sapped instantly. I am paralysed by disgust at this woman, at the whole idea of nationalism, at this country. I feel compelled to turn and hurl abuse. But I keep walking.
They go into a block of units, and push the pram through the gate. ‘I know where you live, you bigoted hatemonger’ I think. As I walk on, I place myself in scenarios involving violent campaigns of re-education, then downsize them to ones involving letters of careful, simple and passionate language, dropped through the mailbox. I dream of kidnapping children of racist parents and Pied Pipering them away to some kind of dynamic and multi-cultural Neverland. But none of these fantasy responses, nor anything else that afternoon, do anything, at all, to unjumble my head and lift, again, the heart.