41. Sounds of Then (This is Australia) - GANGgajang

I’ve just come back in from taking the bins out.

The front of our house faces west, and it’s the final edge of dusk out there. Our house sits slightly up a hill, with a front door that looks out over our front deck, over the tired camellia and straggly elderflower bushes, over our quiet suburban street and over, across the tiled rooftops, to the other hill a few kilometres away.

It’s not much, but it’s a view nonetheless. 

I stopped and stood on our front verandah, the unsealed slate cold on my bare feet, and looked up into the sky.

The night’s going to be clear, some wispy clouds staining the violet sky, but none of the dark threatening clouds we can expect later in the season.

It’s a slight moon tonight, the slimmest of crescent’s starting to make itself visible, just above the orange line between day and night.

The fruit bats are heading out for their night’s harvest, criss-crossing the clear sky with their beady little eyes and beating wings.

The insects have gone quiet.

It’s a good few degrees cooler out there – these west-facing double brick walls keep the house warm in these longer seasons – and there’s a very slight breeze, but occasionally, the wind drops and the air is still and a forgiving quiet takes over.

I have things to do, so I start down the stairs, past the car in the driveway and walk up to the bin. Gripping the plastic handle, I trundle down to the front kerb.

The wind picks up a little down by the roadside, tickling the other camellia – well recovered after a dangerously enthusiastic pruning earlier this year – and rustling the many, many weeds in the wild beds.

I roll the bin out on to the nature strip and manage to pick up some prickles from the imperfect lawn. I rub my feet on the light grey footpath, using the grip to exfoliate the spikes from the sole of my feet.

I always stop here and turn towards the house.

I fret, quietly and quickly, about the two huge white gum trees hanging over our backyard. Knowing what I know about falling branches, quick death and random destruction, I find them vaguely menacing and wish – for the thousandth time – that there was an easy way to get them removed.

The house is quiet, my family asleep early tonight. The old canvas blinds were pulled down a few weeks ago, during the first and most serious of November’s heatwaves swept through.

Some light frames the blind on the kitchen window, probably from the lamp in the loungeroom.

It’s a quiet street, with good neighbours and not a lot of traffic. In the distance, somebody’s showing off their new muffler, no doubt reveling in the amplified sound coming out of their dated vehicle.

I head up the driveway, one of those split concrete ones with the strip of grass up the middle. Past the box hedge, shaking my head at the indefatigable couch grass climbing up through the hedge. Back up the stairs to the slate deck, I run my hands along the canvas blind and over the still-warm bricks.

Back to the wire door and inside. 

* * *

I was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1984.

I’ve lived here my whole life, from a suburb in the middle ring, out to a small town in the Dandenong’s, to the suburban south-east, back to the middle ring.

Then back to the suburbs, in to the leafy inner east and now, again, in the south-east of Melbourne. 

My family are here, my friends are here, this is home.

There are many, many wonderful things about living in Australia.

And the longer I live here, the closer I come to accepting that we do, indeed, live in the greatest possible place.

Blurgh.

That idea, of Australia’s inherent greatness and wonder, irritates me. It’s a tired cliché, trotted out by people lacking in imagination and, normally, from the ones are comfortable on the right side of the bed of privilege.

Because whilst it’s a wonderful place to live, it’s far, far from perfect.

And this concept, generating as it does an uncomfortable level of cognitive dissonance, is not an easy one for many people to grasp.

How, the question goes, can you criticise this country?

“Love it or then leave it”, or says the bumper sticker.

After all, to criticise something is to prove that you don’t love it – right?

This national insecurity might be the root of the issue. (Well that, or the egalitarian embrace of ignorance).

Because, for every wonderful element of living here – like being entirely confident I won’t be shot tomorrow, or hot running water, or free commerce, or an educated population, or speed limits, or sewerage, or Bunning’s sausages, or the MCG, or the view from Darling Harbour train station, or the ‘cool change’.

Like kangaroo’s, kinder kids lined up in their legionnaires hats, or Melbourne’s laneways, or that perfectly dry sense of humour, or our justice system, or great coffee, whiskey, gin, beer, water and food, or summer’s so hot the road melts, or winter’s so cold the grass freeze’s, or the many, many nationalities (and their food, thankfully).

Elements like cricket on the radio, or superannuation, or callistemons, or country shows, or the CWA, or the CFA, or humid nights, or Esky’s, or long afternoon’s on the patio, or Clive James, Leigh Sales, Waleed Aly, Lee Lin Chin, Peter Hitchener, Janice Petersen, Penny Wong, or fresh eggs, or the zero chance of being bombed, or our health system, education system, financial, justice, political system, or towering mountain ash trees, or koala’s, or the welfare safety net, or a million other things.

There are many wonderful things that we get to enjoy each and every day.

* * *

But for every wonderful element like these, there are also some pretty gnarly issues:

-          How is it that, as a population, we still accept homelessness as a reality for so many of our citizens?

-          How do we allow the coal industry – a minnow in terms of employment – to use ‘jobs’ as coverage for the pillaging of our environment?

-          How the hell do we keep putting a microphone in front of Pauline Hanson? Is there a shortage of public stupidity I’m not aware of?

-          When – honestly, when – will Australia actually confront and process the deep, abiding and endemic racism gnawing away at its core?

-          When will our public perspective extend beyond a truncated electoral cycle?

-          When will we stop persecuting the poor for, you know, being poor?

-          How many more goddamn ‘inquiries’ into domestic violence do we need to charade our way through before confronting the unacceptable rate at which women are dying as the result of violence?

(If 1 woman dying a week isn’t ‘enough’ to get things to change, then how many? What’s the weekly rate of violent death those in charge require before they actually do something?)

I bring these issues up not to belittle or demean what it means to be Australian.

But if you’re going to love something, I believe, you need to love the whole, not pick and choose the bits that make you comfortable.  

To do otherwise is, well, childish.

Which brings me, finally, to the song that soundtracks these ruminations - The Sounds of Then (This is Australia) by GANGgajang.

* * *

I imagine it’s a song we’ve all heard – on the radio, in the background, over the loudspeaker in soon-to-be-defunct department stores.

It’s the sounds of hot, sticky nights, of steaming footpaths, dripping Esky’s, short shorts and burnt skin.

It distills an Australian summer into a rolling melody, squirrely notes and thumping beat backing casually delivered lyrics.

But it also makes me think of the whole picture that comes with being Australian.

The good, like seeing lightning crack over cane fields – and the bad – here, represented by the insufferably humidity of an Australian summer.  

It supports the idea that you can love the place you’re from – and this is, to me, an ode to that memory of an Australian summer – whilst acknowledging the less enjoyable bits.

I mean, it’s far from a full reckoning of the entire picture, but the way it finds music in the bits of life I’ve generally not enjoyed (seriously, lying on sweaty sheets ain’t fun) parallels how I feel about being Australian.  

Grateful, but aware might be a good way to describe it.

* * *

And it’s the song I think of as I walk up those steps, towards the still-hot bricks, and on into the unbearably hot front part of the house.

It’s the imagery that crosses my mind when peel myself off the timber floor to indulge in the base luxury of getting an icy pole from the fridge.

It’s the song that comes to mind when we’re travelling through country Victoria, in the middle of summer, riding through that certain texture.

That certain smell.

Towards that block, that faces west.