My goal here is to speak less on my internal workings and more on what I see and how they make me feel. I have a long journey until I can mutate my own conscious thoughts into verbiage neither trite nor irrelevant and instead contorting into a self-indulgent Henry the 8th-style, monstrously delicious banquet of things that make me sound like I think I am better than other people.
So we will just stick to what I have seen and what is moving about it. But potentially, a tidal movement into the latter may be natural and hopefully painless.
Australia is a curious place. I feel that the use of “curious” evokes 19th century literature describing a child that is mentally unwell e.g. “He was a curious child, rambunctious and cantankerous, he heeded no loyalty or care to the ruling of mother and father” but curious feels like an appropriate word for Australia. Like any typical mid-20s laurel canyon wannabe, I find myself trying to capture the “vibe” (unfortunately the best word I can use for this). Vibe encompasses national heritage, geopolitics, social attitudes and idiosyncrasies and a whole lot more, like a mosaic that moves and breathes.
I am itching to use the words denizen and cicerone as I have recently learnt their meaning but that again plunges me into pretention territory, something I skirt around and occasionally divulge. Like a plate of forbidden honey, just more annoying.
Heritage is important to Australians. I often find them puzzled by the lack of something that should be there, like a phantom limb. Recently, I went to the Griffith review in the suburb of West End, a trendy and bruised puddle with shadows of 1970s Brooklyn. I have never attended a literature review and I had no idea that this world of sparkling ideas, both complimentingand refuting, could exist.
*Naivety is a trend here, but what is youth without it?- they are two holding hands!* (Eat your heart out Virginia Woolf).
Here, there were three speakers discussing their essays on brain-rot language and its’ cultural prowess, women in Australian sport and re-identification of Australian heritage. In summary, there is a movement for Australians to want to identify their roots, but they are aware of colonial guilt (a recurring theme) but also debate the weight of said guilt if ancestry is Irish. There were plenty of other things said but this was the important point I took away and I was also two glasses of red wine down.
This is one of many examples of Australians disclosing their heritage with me on first meeting me. I am aware that this is because I am European and a human response to a stranger is finding common ground, but I have never seen this before. There is an obsession with their trips to Europe and the history that sleeps under walls, roads and rocks. Random mentions of Ipswich and North Wales, far astray to normal tourist chatter of red bus tours in London or Christmas time in Edinburgh. It is almost as if the ancestral European ghost lives within an Australian’s bones. Vampiric but with high-grade coffee instead of a virgin’s blood.
It seems that every mention of life goes back to First Nations colonialisation and every sentence is punctuated with apology. I find it quite shocking. Acknowledgement seems to mean a lot to them, but why? What is the function of it? I think that it benefits neither White Australians nor Aboriginal people.
And I am not making the point that social politics is superficial when there are Aboriginals living in tents with no access to welfare or education. I am looking a bit deeper than that, it is almost like Australians walk on scorched earth. It is akin to an Orwellian novel where the jungle shows it’s teethand lumbering roots to those that are unwelcome. It is like all Australians are waiting in an airport lounge, they feel ashamed of history and like any home is temporary.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.
We Are Going (1964) Oodgeroo Noonuccal
On the flip side, after speaking to some astute colleagues about this, they summarised Brisbane as ‘hopeful’, which is an interesting word to use. ‘Hopeful’ is usually reserved for a tsunami-torn island or a country blasted by civil unrest, a place that is recovering from disaster. In my definition, a place where people live comfortably is never ‘Hopeful’. Instead, it is ‘cosy’ or ‘bustling’ or ‘beautiful’. ‘Hopeful’ is an afterbirth of despair, a keloid scar.
This brings me to the idea that Australians are subconsciously and generationally traumatised. A wild statement with garish flair (weirdly Nigella Lawson-esque).
I can see this through the nature, the art and the literature. Something is afoot but not quite uneasy. It is bright and Australians are kind and deeply maternal (a different point I want to expand on). Any place that has a booming literature scene usually has secrets and revolution of the highest decree. A pirate flag symbolising ‘cultural innovation and understanding’, rather than treachery and murder.
But I am enjoying uncovering all of these truths, and I hope they belong to Australia and are not just fashioned from what I want to see in a new place. But I must be less emboldened with my words.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”
(Proverbs 18:21, ESV)
Must Be That 