Sat for half an hour watching this bouncer refusing entry to a drunken girl who had evidently no ID. She tried to show him all her tattoos, including one on the base of her ankle, talking earnestly, presumably explaining how could I possibly have so many tatts, and not new tatts, if I was underage? She pulled out a limp, folded ten-dollar note and tried to hand it to him. She leaned on him and cried. The bouncer was an Islander man with beautiful soul in his face. He held her upright and pretended not to see the ten-dollar note she waved at him. Every time she showed him a tattoo or pulled out her purse to try him with her ATM card he attended, patiently, to what she was saying, refusing to let her drag him into an embrace, smiled, seeming amused but not at her expense. A student of humanity. How I loved him. It was a solid half-hour before she gave up and wove off down the street on her patent white heels, and by that time the flaccid ten-dollar note had made several more appearances. Inside the club two rival brides were dancing with their bridal parties, not actual brides but brides-to-be, each wearing a white veil over a stripper dress and one of them dancing with an inflatable, naked, anatomically correct groom who gradually deflated as the night wore on. When we left I saw one of her bridesmaids clutching him, just half a man now, sitting dispiritedly in a corner nursing her umpteenth umbrella drink. I stopped on the way out to thank the bouncer. “Man, you and your colleague, you are really generous, kind, patient people. I saw how you dealt with that little girl who wanted to come in and was crying. You were really good to her. I was watching you.” His eyes were bright and he smiled hugely. He said, “You know, I was just talking today to Lifeline and I realised, my sister died four months ago today.” “Oh!” I said, touching his arm, “I’m so sorry.” “It’s ok,” he said, “she’s in a better place now, she was a heroin addict.” “Oh, god,” I said. “That’s really sad.” He kept smiling, his eyes liquid. He gestured up and down the street. “You love the people, you love the life…”
Tag: Indigenous
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underStorey
Kookaburra under the eaves of the giant Storey Bridge, last night as it grew dusk and we were all gathering to watch Utopia. Laughing and laughing and laughing. The laughter echoed and magnified around the joists and girders and cars passed overhead, one at a time, each one thumping quietly the joints that let that bridge breathe and expand. Maybe bridges don’t breathe. Maybe birds don’t laugh. But I stand here with my human head thrown back and this is about all I see.
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treaty
February 6
On this day in 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in New Zealand to make peace between British invaders and North Island Maori chiefs. To this day no treaty has ever been signed with the Indigenous nations of Australia, so you could say we are still at war. In his film Welcome to Australia John Pilger points out that though we lionize the fallen of the disastrous Gallipoli conflict in World War One, the cenotaph standing in every tiny Australian town is unaccompanied by any monument to the Aboriginal warriors who died fighting to defend their land. Nor to the women and children slain with poisoned flour and poisoned waterholes. Nor to the young men who manage mysteriously to hang themselves on boot laces whilst under police custody.
At the Dreaming festival at Woodford I saw a powerful performance by a Maori singer who introduced the other members of her band. She said to the audience, Don’t you worry ’bout them haka boys, I’m gonna introduce you to the really scary members of my band. The ‘haka boys’ crouched with tongues out, ferocious faces. The really scary band members were her sister and sister-in-law, who sang backing vocals. She told us how when they had landed at Cairns airport a few days before, “your whole bloody Australian army was swarming the place.” Her backing vocalists amused themselves by going up to soldiers in camouflage gear and saying, Eh. Boys. We can still see you.
Recognising the wrongs of the past, righting the wrongs of the present. Rejoicing in the wit and verve and resilience, the sacred seriousness of the displaced cultures, honouring our own settler/invader cultures by humbly asking Indigenous culture to be once again the root, the stem, the foundation of our nations: surely it’s time.
