Steps Across Time

As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.
H. Rider Haggard

"These kids will grow up hating Americans, hating Shiites, hating Kurds, hating Sunnis and the first thing they will do when they have a problem is go to the gun before the table. These kids are throughout the book, whether they're carrying real guns or fake rocket-propelled grenades, or dressed up as Islamic militant leader al-Zarqawi pretending to cut off murdered American contracter Nick Berg's head. These are kids who are totally desensitised to violence. That is an entire generation that we have lost in that country. At the end of the day everyone in Iraq - the Shiites, the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Americans - all want exactly the same thing. That is, to sit down and enjoy dinner and enjoy their family and have a peaceful life. I wish I had something good to say about Iraq but I don't. There must be a solution but it's just a disaster. It couldn't have been planned to be worse."
Ashley Gilbertson, on his new book A Photographer's Chronbicle Of The Iraq War.


My old mate, the party boy from the seventies Colin, has had a heart attack. He's lying in the John Hunter Hospital covered in bruises. He's not sure exactly what happened but thinks he had a heart attack crossing the road just near his house; and fell badly. His voice sounds quite strong, which is odd after a heart attack, but they're not letting him out of hospital. He's dying of course, he's been dying for years, HIV, Hep C, actually they can't treat the Hep because of all the HIV treatments. It's a cruelty when you finally have to ask: what is the quality of life? He was always fun, I always enjoyed his company, even in those kaleidoscope days 30 years ago; when we thought our gang was the centre of the universe and we were going to change everything. How could it be? The rooster I kept in the backyard toilet crowed each morning, I picked across snoring bodies in the loungeroom each morning to go to work, the carpet was that cheap straw mat stuff that used to catch all the dust; and our ancient hearts, even then old before our time, our hearts were caught in bewildered embraces.

I was always up before everybody else; always there to watch the dawn pick its way across the terrace houses, coating the streets with colour, the dark lessening enough to see the neighbourhood cats going about their business. The Architect of Dreams I labelled some incomprehensible book, sticking up pages around the house so I could follow the thread of some byzantine story line. Disembodied entities floated across huge black and white chequered floor somewhere in some inter-dimnensional sky; we were caught in the poetry of sterility; it was all about the barrenness of modern life, the lack of soul. I wrote and I wrote, pounding away each morning and then heading off to work. Briefly I was the assistant manager of the Pacific Island Publishing company, a job I hated. This insane queen I worked for would greet me each morning with a cutting camp voice that would cut through concrete and could be heard from one end of the office to the other: You;re laaaate!! He would demand black coffee with three and a half sugars as my first assignment, happy, I always thought, to humiliate someone with a university degree.

If I bravely dared to vary the routine and put in three sugars instead of three and a half he could tell immediately, and would demand his coffee remade. Oh how I grew to hate that man. That was the era when there was plenty of hash in Australia; indeed so much that hash coffee in the morning was perfectly feasible, anything to make the day vague out and go away. I don't know where I thought I was going, but I loved the house, I loved the morning, and the chaotic evenings. Even then, 30 years ago, I was trying not to drink; but no one else was. The whole gang accrued in that house; in from Adelaide or Brisbane or wherever; all together putting on some play, creating music. And as someone who had only ever wanted to be creative, who had only ever dreamed of being a writer, I was caught up with the marvel of them all. Some of them I see still, although less so as the years pass, their faces popping up as actors in various Australian soap operas, comedy shows, bits and pieces. That's why I liked Heath Ledger so much. He was a little bit like we were.

But Ian Farr, who was central to the gang, has gone now. And Russel Keithal, famous at that time for destroying his career by falling off the Opera House stage in the middle of a production stoned on mandrax, I bump him by accident every couple of years. He's still getting acting work; a few of us are still working. But we certainly didn't change the world. We certainly didn't become the greatest artists of our era. We smashed up our lives and stumbled into chaos and dereliction; our friends died from overdoses or AIDS. And the cruelty of time arked over us; letting that bubble of time in a pre-computer era float away, barely remembered, the beauty of the morning rooftops dissolved. Nothing came back to haunt us. Fortune did not fill our coffers. And the focus shifted. A new generation, perhaps a better, certainly wiser, savvier generation, took over; and couldn't have cared less about the naive spirits that went before. We waved goodbye, that was all that could be done, and stepped quietly back on to our solitary path. There wasn't any other way.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/11/2159032.htm

Hundreds of Aboriginal people are making their way to Canberra to hear the Prime Minister officially apologise to the Stolen Generations, as calls are made for compensation from the Federal Government.

The area around Canberra's Aboriginal Tent Embassy is being prepared for the influx of people from around Australia expected to arrive ahead of the apology.

Many of those expected to travel to Canberra will also take part in a rally from the Tent Embassy to the federal Parliament on Tuesday in support of calls for compensation to the Stolen Generations.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ruled out compensation but many Aboriginal leaders who have travelled from across the nation to be in Canberra for the event are still arguing for reparations.

The Tent Embassy's Isabelle Coe says she thinks some form of compensation is inevitable.

"I don't think that this country can get out of paying it because a lot of Aboriginal people were affected by the Stolen Generations," she said.

"The mothers, the fathers, the grandparents, the aunties, the uncles, the cousins, and we had to run and hide when the welfare came to our mission."

Ms Coe says she is pleased the site is still a focus for Aboriginal protest.

"We've had to fight to stay here because we've been fire bombed, we've been petrol bombed," she said.

"They wrapped up our old demountable in black plastic and drove it off to somewhere we don't know, but we have fought to stay here for the last 36 years."

It is long-standing Labor Party policy to say sorry, and it will be the key word Mr Rudd utters on Wednesday.

But the rest of his speech is still being finalised, along with the plans on how many others will speak and whether an Indigenous Australian will respond.

The apology is set to overshadow the other key political event this week - the introduction of a bill to scrap WorkChoices.