Photo, on the job, interviewing the legendary Gough Whitlam, 2006.

Redfern

We could have been followed, walking blind into circumstance. You're being punished for not listening to the ABC, he said. I had missed a story on some great liner coming in from a lap of the Pacific with hundreds, or was it dozens, of sick passengers. There were muffled secrets. They all stank as they squatted on holiday toilets. He could see them without being there. The gift was strong some days, his clairvoyance, moving beyond mere empathy. He could reach across the city and actually see them, clutching their stomachs as doctors arrived, the ambulances lined up along the dock, the freaked out pretending to be efficient management from the liner; the presence of the media making everything worse.

What do you mean punished? he asked. I've written beautifully about dead people for weeks. They all laughed. It had been true. That morning he had organised a freelancer to do a job in Whistler, in Canada, the most popular ski resort in North America, two million plus visitors each winter. There had been something like 700 Australians working at the resort, as always prized for their sunny disposition, good looks and hard work. Twenty three and twenty four. As if time itself had been descended, hushed, the brilliance of the snow, there with two lives snuffed out. For him, remote, working with a machine brilliance, a professional empath, he misted up in sequence as he spoke to the shocked relatives; this time ringing so close to the time they had themselves discovered from the news that, in shock, they actually answered his questions.

While the furore, and the sequence of the things they spoke about, the length of private occupations, the time passed, and amazingly, he didn't care about that either, appealing, through their emotional distress, to the parent's desire to get things right. I'm sorry to ring you at a time like this. He was a lovely bloke, the father sobs as he slams down the phone. Fuck off, vultures, is the more common response, the cries disappearing flat into the suburban night.

The Crosses We Create

There wasn't anything but reclamation, the streets quiet now; the day gone under flourescent tubes, whsipered conversations. Just stay out of their way, goes the motto. Your life will be better if your paths do not cross. Redfern, too, is quieter, if not stripped of conflict then absent many of the difficult bits of chaos that used to characterise the place, people passed out on the streets, arguments outside the front door. Some of it lingers, in a black humour way. The other day there were three aboriginal women, drunk as skunks, standing at the top of Eveleigh Street, mouthing off at the cops in front of the station opposite. Then Doris, the middle one, just passes out completely. They slap her around, shout in her face, nothing works. Finally they drag her across the street, dump her in front of the cops and shout: "You look after her you white cunts".

But mostly it's quiet now, a stream of clean cut, earnest, sometimes handsome university students stream past the door, ten thousand a day; and people wait to pick up friends in cars. But they're not waiting for what the cars used to wait for. Sophie Delezio got out of hospital today. Yesterday it was two young men who died on the Whistler ski fields in Canada. Tomorrow it could be anything, anything at all. Dead people.

Two years ago I wrote the story which began: "Two fifties, how much is that, 200?" "Four fifties, 200? No it's not." They're about 13. They're dealing heroin but they can't count. They should be in school. But that whole Redfern seems to have washed away now, along with other parts of the city. The kids are going up to Moree tomorrow with their mother and will be back on Monday. Everythinng seems vague and out of phase. One more day and the week is over.

Our Times

I just couldn't be held to account any longer. The days were intermidable. He spat out story after story and the tragedies merged together, the dead person roundsman. The pink and blue coffins of the kids and the parents, the mother who killed them. The crowded Catholic cathedral suddenly silent with the shocking tragedy of it. Not a dry eye. The Catholics do death well. My half brother, 17, my father had a very long breeding cycle, shot himself a year ago; took a rifle out into the orchard at 2am and pulled the trigger.

There wasn't too much mess, the man who owned the property said. I thought your old man was going to have a heart attack. There amongst the macadamia nut trees. Once avacados; and before that passionfruit; way back in the sixties when he bought the 80 acres for $10,000. The old man sold it after he had a heart attack, and it's since doubled in value to more than two million while he lives on their, where their youngest son killed himself. The grieving mother, wrung out with grief, acting in pecular ways; clasping a framed picture of him; flashing it at me over the coffin; see, he even looked like you.

But I hadn't been successful. I had walked along the beach and waited to die from 24 aspirin; but ending up with nothing but a bad stomach. The utter forlorn melancholy of the waves. But it didn't happen, he happened, in the orchard in the early morning, after being on the internet to his friends; who didn't bother to tell their parents. That would be an invasion of privacy. They lived every moment and the gut wrenching tragedy of it all; they would never be the same. Many of the people he dealt with would never be the same again.

Sunset Over Redfern

It's been pouring, more rain in the last 48 hours than in the last five months; dust washed away. Former leader of the Labor Party Mark Latham was in Campbelltown Court today. I am fascinated by him. He was described as a house husband. He went apeshit at a Telie photographer back in January. The figure he cut in court today, grim, gaunt, nobody but paid lawyers for company; going through the process in a tortured way. He had been the great white hope, so to speak, of the Labor Party, after its last Prime Minister, Paul Keating, with his outlandishly aristocratic leanings, led the party up its worst garden path in history. Excuse me Mr Keating, Mr Keating, the academics would cry at endless tax funded conferences; I agree with every word you say.

But Latham was a different story; and for a while struck a chord as a real person in a bullshit game. It's hard to imagine now; history and politics having moved so fast, that Howard had been rattled by Latham, a big man. The room was darkened and he pleaded consent. The previous case was a driving charge. He sat next to a boy with gell in his hair, one of the many troubled young men that frequent the court everyday. Things were crying out for release. Time was clutching him and he knew he had to get by.

They have passed an ordinance or whatever they're called banning drinking in the streets of Redfern, all except for the Block. Which has upset some, saying that just means all the drinkers will go there. But what do you do with a band of street alcoholics, white black or brindle?

Some stories, though humorous, were better not told. We had been warned. We had been marked. They were our merry band, not so merry.

Rain

It's been pouring in Sydney, which is unusual. Sometimes it seemed it would never rain again. What happened to rain soaked summers and winter months when the rain just went on and on and on? Well not lately. Euphoria took over, but before that he couldn't find what he was looking for. Stuck in perpetual traffic, a big city now. And it never rained. St Barnies on Broadway burnt down and finally the heaters were on. Clear skies forever. Well just about.

Things weren't working out exactly.

The house needs organising and I need organising.

From:

http://mlcsmith.blogspot.com/

Sunday, May 28, 2006
Caveat Emptor Lector
I was re-reading an old article on Wired News called Blogs Make the Headlines and am still amazed at what a buffoon one the "experts" in the piece was. Professional media analyst and lecture circuit junkie, Elizabeth Osder had this to say at the end of the article:
"Bloggers are navel-gazers," said Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's School of Journalism. "And they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books." She added, "There's an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting."
She said that some years ago. I wonder if she still has the same, er, opinion? Since she wrote those idiotic words we have seen in the professional media:
News media outlets which endlessly ran sensational news stories like the DC sniper hunt, Lacy Peterson's disappearance, and Michael Jackson's trial.
A journalist who printed a story that endangered a CIA operative and those that she had been in contact with.
Journalists who made up articles.
Journalists who used highly questionable and unverified sources to further personal opinions on matters of national security.
News media outlets which avoided asking the hard questions.
On the other hand, I have read blogs that:
Pulled no punches.
Reported on real & serious issues of interest.
Exposed me to other's thoughts, dreams, and opinions that I wouldn't have encountered anywhere else.
Told what civilian life in Iraq was like in direct and personal terms.
Told what soldiering in Iraq was like, both good and bad.
Reported on other blogs and carefully critiqued claims made in them.
Now blog pressure is leveraging change within media organizations.
No, I don't think journalists everywhere are going to throw down their steno pads, shout "hallelujah," and set fire to their bosses. While the media conglomerates may change a little, I believe the public is going to change even more. That's right, we, the people. My opinion is that the babbling of many blogs is forcing us to grow up, well, grow up a little.
With the blurring of professional with non-professional, accepted source and informal source, research and opinion, we will each have to think a bit harder about choosing whom we will listen to. We will get used to the idea this source is good for this opinion, while that source is better at that. In other words, caveat emptor lector; let the buying reader beware.
Unfortunately, in this rosy future of mine, Elizabeth Osder still can't by a clue from a clue factory on free clue day. I mean, get real, naming your personal website "Untitled Document" is so 1995.

Happy Days

Family photos. Happy days. This is of Sam much younger, at a birthday party with is friend Todd and others out of sight. It's been hanging around on the computer and something told me to put it up; an act of preservation. It was Mardi Gras night the night he was born, and I had to go up from the Women's Hospital to buy chocolate. It was very windy, a lot of rain about. Bedraggled drag queens seemed to gust out of the night, part of the boil and the trouble that was part of profound change. The corridors weren't white. Stories were never linear. You arseholes, someone just shouted outside. They've been quarelling all night up the road. Where are your children, one of them shouted angrily, drunk. I see mine. I know where they are. They're up in Lismore. Yours are in Mount Druit, you f'n blah blah; and on it goes.

Lost moments were for all to recall. There was so much scenery in all the world's dramas. Complex hydration. Refiltering. Gathering strength. Dino has been evicted from Big Brother and some days nothing works at all. He came hallucinating through the back streets. He watched the carp in the park at Elizabeth Bay. He felt the cold in the air and knew nothing could be done about it. The skies boiled and rain swept across the city. In the bars there were a thousand discourses. In house upon house the crunching cold and the damp kept everyone else in side.

In his own melancholic twist of mind it was easy to forget all the good times; as if he missed them before they were gone; as if a doomed destiny had only ever been on hold. Some days were just thought disordered; caffeine induced perhaps. A grinding frustration. It was quiet; boring sometimes; their household routine; but it was comfortable too, cosy even, and at least it had been peaceful for a good while now. Had been.

Useful Futures

This is a picture of my son Sam on a school excursion to Vietnam. Sounds like they had a fantastic time. He reckons lots of kids grow up there knowing how to use guns. My entire generation was affected by the Vietnam War. I got out of being drafted by being at university. Then Gough Whitlam came in and cancelled conscription. I had never wanted to go. Done some stories on Vietnam vets, over time, some disastrous, terminally drunk resolutions; nerves shattered for the rest of life. The only school excursion I remember is going to Long Reef at Collaroy on Sydney's northern beaches. There was infinite life in each of the ponds; the sun glinting beauty as the waves pounded; and even back then, the absolute horror.

Frothing white had always been his vision of absolute terror; never making sense till the story was told of his own father holding him out in the surf to get him used to it as he screamed and screamed and screamed. Thus the myth of the desert arab in his background, why he had never liked the water. Back from the excursion they had to give a speach at school about it. Was it worth it? was the question. Yes, came the mono-syllabic answer, as the school looked on. Silence that wasn't meant to be there. After all that had happened, the train trips, the medieval towns, the night on Howloon Bay. Yes.

Sydney's cold and wet now. There are no other solutions.

The world's biggest story rolls on:

By Michael Georgy
BAGHDAD, June 3 (Reuters) - A military probe that cleared U.S. troops of killing civilians in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi could not have come at a worse time for the new prime minister, who has promised justice for those killed at Haditha.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is battling a widespread public perception that U.S. troops can shoot and kill with impunity and Iraqi leaders are too weak to do anything about it.
Allegations that U.S. Marines massacred some 24 civilians in the town of Haditha and the finding that troops did no wrong in Ishaqi do not help Maliki allay Iraqi suspicions.

Edges

The story came in the first instance from the radio room. There had been a shooting in the main street of Wollongong. None of us knew the main street of Wollongong even though it was the industrial city a hundred kilometes to the south. There was no reason to go there unless you had to. It sounded like there had been a massacre, someone gone crazy, half a dozen dead. Tragedy strikes our noble, working heart, that sort of thing, as innocent people go about their shopping. The quickest way was by helicopter. Sitting near the chief of staff can mean you get caught with every idea that crosses their bewildered minds, or suddenly you can get caught up in things that take your own life in sharp jags across time and space, enveloped in other people's tragedies.

I found myself disengaging from a cab at the airport, the massively expensive helicopter already waiting. Boys and their toys, it was a wonderful world. The tarmac, the plane in the background. Being guided by young men in uniform. Taking off. Last time I had been in a helicopter it had been with the Premier Bob Carr, heading west across the city at enormous speed to a property in the Blue Mountains; power, luxury, intrigue and importance, they were heady combinations for a man predisposed to arrogance. This time there was just the helicopter pilot for company, as we flew down hugging the coast line. I organised the taxi to pick us up; to get us to the scene of tragedy in the quickest possible time. I looked into the secret coves, the sharp cliffs, the massive spreads of vegetation arking down into the sea.

And when we got there. The mall was returning to normality. Only one man had been shot; it wasn't a massacre. The reporters that had also travelled down by road were completely excess to requirement. If it had happened in the western suburbs we wouldn't have paid any attention at all. But because the paper had thrown so many resources at it, the splashing headlines the next day of death in main street covered the front page. We stayed in hotels nearby. We followed every possible angle. There just wasn't that much to it. Someone went beserk, an argument, money and drugs, it was almost always that; and he thought of other times, when he had done the working girls at Port Kembla, with the steel works and Wollongong in the background; a completely forlorn place with the old girls as outraged for fear of the competition as the general public was over the media whipped story of the Labor MP who owned a brothel and had employed an under-age girl.

To here in Shellharbour, still further down the coast, where the money kept coming all the time; new restaurants, new developments, some with inbuilt by the sea side charm. He wished he had the money to invest. We gathered to mark the passing of another day, holy times.

Limpid Days

Even here in Redfern, you can smell the salt air some nights; drifting in from the sea, the string of golden beaches that thread down the coast; the cliffs, the shallows, the rock pools, the fishermen; and little villages along the coast. Except Sydney has spread everywhere now, and what was isolated only 30 years ago are now opening into suburbs, the prices of land and houses spiralling, and old generation made rich, late in life. The absolute beauty of the coastline; strung out not just in dreams but in haunted moments, in long walks, in lonely toilet blocks and surfers shacks, eoncompassed by the ever creeping walls of brick houses; the metallic glint of cars, the squal of kids.

They went up the mountain and barely came down. Looking at the high altitude treks on Project Himalaya. Thirty days. $US2000. In the long days, in the long ways, in the mystery caverns, when a chronological order to cascades of experience, all these things would help. All is not cosy in Stephen's household. Long awkward silences. I need a bolt hole, between work and home; just to take a minute to himself. Is that such a bad thing? So he went and walked out and thought: you could cut the air with a knife.

Location, location; there in the heart of poofterville; as they called it themselves. I always imagined I would live here, he said, swishing a hand; and I watched on. The world was so straight now. He saw them pasty faced in the morning waiting to score, Thursday payday, pension day; white faced and puffy, furtive, moving fast, skinny, frantic. And he walked past in an ironed shirt and new pants, a tie and a new jumper. You looking at something mate? One of them snarled. You're not Sox, are you? I asked. No, he said. Sorry, you look like someone I used to know, I said. Those long lost furtive days in the back of Newtown. Those nights when their fragile despair descended into intoxicating patterns. Not all was lost; but much had drifted away.