Sorry (word of the week) if it's been a bit quiet around here but I've come a long way since my last post. Driven about 4000km, for a start. In the last two weeks I've signed a book contract, stayed at the Hilton and on the street, and started catching up with loved ones I seem perversely determined to live a long way away from.
Living a long way from Sydney is so non-perverse on so many other levels that it comes out perfectly reasonable to stick myself in the dusty red middle of this ridiculously oversized continent, three days' drive from everywhere else.
I'm a little homesick for solitude and sunshine but it feels good to be back in my hometown for a visit, running into people, revisiting foundational story places in the bush and in the inner west. But it also feels good (as always) to be travelling and challenging myself. Particularly at this juncture of Australia's history, when reckoning seems to be the order of the day.
I was in Canberra for yesterday's apology, doing my pseudo-journo bit, and it was a great day. Finally, after so long, a moment in Australian political history that makes me teary for the right reasons. Last time I went to Parliament House was a protest against the first Howard budget in 1996, the one that so brutally slashed social services and education. A hundred thousand militant unionists pretty much tore the doors off the place. An idealistic eighteen-year old kicked the shins of riot cops under their shields, until she was forcibly removed (so to speak).
Yesterday I stood outside, taking photos of hopeful faces and weird architecture; I played in the fountain with some kids and some friends, and felt a sort of wonder every time i remembered that the new bloke in the top job is not a complete evil ninny. I am hoping it's a sign of national change rather than middle age that I can have such thoughts about politicians. Still got a good heckle or two in over Nelson though. He's not gonna last long is he?
Canberra was a pilgrimage, too. On a personal level I have been thinking a lot about restorative justice for the last five years, and I think forgiveness is one of the big abstract nouns in my life. Odd, really, since I haven't done anything particularly horrible to anyone as far as I recall (broken a few hearts, but that works both ways). But the idea of intergenerational responsibility and the bounds of moral relativism have been giving me lots to chew on in my work. Lots of reading and thinking around this stuff. And I think that living in a country which has refused to acknowledge the dark parts of its past has made us all sick, regardless of our role in the shameful acts in question. I hope this government has the balls to follow through. Hope seems a strange thing to be feeling about governments, but there it is.
Meanwhile my beloved Holden was there to remind me that new starts are all well and good, but sometimes they sputter and die.
Yesterday afternoon, after an emotional morning and some hurried documentation, I figured out how to put a new starter motor in my car. As if it's not amusing enough to sleep in a swag on the lawn of our nation's parliament, I had to turn our nation's public carpark into my personal mechanical workshop. Twenty-four hours earlier I wouldn't have been able to find it under the engine, but after four hours of mucking about and a lot of swearing (individual bolts have been given their very own obscenities), with the help of two friends and a few strangers, I successfully replaced the necessary bits and pieces and drove back to Sydney.
Happy. Tired. Learned a lot. Come a long way. And well and truly reminded that there's many a steep hill ahead of us now.
Living a long way from Sydney is so non-perverse on so many other levels that it comes out perfectly reasonable to stick myself in the dusty red middle of this ridiculously oversized continent, three days' drive from everywhere else.
I'm a little homesick for solitude and sunshine but it feels good to be back in my hometown for a visit, running into people, revisiting foundational story places in the bush and in the inner west. But it also feels good (as always) to be travelling and challenging myself. Particularly at this juncture of Australia's history, when reckoning seems to be the order of the day.
I was in Canberra for yesterday's apology, doing my pseudo-journo bit, and it was a great day. Finally, after so long, a moment in Australian political history that makes me teary for the right reasons. Last time I went to Parliament House was a protest against the first Howard budget in 1996, the one that so brutally slashed social services and education. A hundred thousand militant unionists pretty much tore the doors off the place. An idealistic eighteen-year old kicked the shins of riot cops under their shields, until she was forcibly removed (so to speak).
Yesterday I stood outside, taking photos of hopeful faces and weird architecture; I played in the fountain with some kids and some friends, and felt a sort of wonder every time i remembered that the new bloke in the top job is not a complete evil ninny. I am hoping it's a sign of national change rather than middle age that I can have such thoughts about politicians. Still got a good heckle or two in over Nelson though. He's not gonna last long is he?
Canberra was a pilgrimage, too. On a personal level I have been thinking a lot about restorative justice for the last five years, and I think forgiveness is one of the big abstract nouns in my life. Odd, really, since I haven't done anything particularly horrible to anyone as far as I recall (broken a few hearts, but that works both ways). But the idea of intergenerational responsibility and the bounds of moral relativism have been giving me lots to chew on in my work. Lots of reading and thinking around this stuff. And I think that living in a country which has refused to acknowledge the dark parts of its past has made us all sick, regardless of our role in the shameful acts in question. I hope this government has the balls to follow through. Hope seems a strange thing to be feeling about governments, but there it is.
Meanwhile my beloved Holden was there to remind me that new starts are all well and good, but sometimes they sputter and die.
Yesterday afternoon, after an emotional morning and some hurried documentation, I figured out how to put a new starter motor in my car. As if it's not amusing enough to sleep in a swag on the lawn of our nation's parliament, I had to turn our nation's public carpark into my personal mechanical workshop. Twenty-four hours earlier I wouldn't have been able to find it under the engine, but after four hours of mucking about and a lot of swearing (individual bolts have been given their very own obscenities), with the help of two friends and a few strangers, I successfully replaced the necessary bits and pieces and drove back to Sydney.
Happy. Tired. Learned a lot. Come a long way. And well and truly reminded that there's many a steep hill ahead of us now.
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