The bush fires were a long time ago now, and
there are those words *time* and *now*. Back then I said to a friend that I
felt our national psyche was injured. A summer of anger and hurt and death and culture
wars. When the rains came, relief was palpable but the toxic run off over
scorched country killed aquatic species. Pollinators were rare now and
thousands of people moved into tents and caravans. Others organised food drops
for surviving wild animals whose habitats were destroyed by fire.
That was January. By my 50th
birthday mid-February, I think we had our last gathering of more than two
people. Now I have a list on my fridge of things I have to do every day to
maintain a routine. ‘Please Sarah! Go for a walk, write something, finish your
mentoring job, read, sort out the mullet nets.’ In February, I was still going
up the mountain every day on fire tower duty. I was preparing around then for
the beginning of my uni classes at the Resource Centre. One morning on my way
there, I stopped at the hardware to buy a gas bottle. A fighter jet buzzed the
little town. The man helping me get the gas onto the back of the ute said,
‘that’s the fourth pass he’s done this morning.’ And as I strapped the gas to
the aluminium bars, the jet did another pass. Odd.
At the Resource Centre, the work farm trusties
set up the function room for a meeting. After big hello smiles, they continued
moving about chairs, tables, plugging in the urn and laying out a table full of
cups, teaspoons, sachets of sugar in little bowls. Dressed in their prison
greens, they arranged cakes and slices into dainty piles. Over the clinking of
crockery and quiet murmurs of the trusties, I heard the jet again.
Each day they ride mountain bikes from the work
camp to town. They trim the gardens and water in new plantings at shire council
and state government premises. They clean up sections of the hiking trail that
snakes 500km from Albany to Perth. These guys are minimum security and
approaching parole and theirs is a ‘soft entry’ back into community where once
a week, there is a rush of green-clad shoppers wielding trolleys in the local
supermarket, the guard standing by the ATM and watching them.
After setting up the function room, Marley (not
his real name) sat beside the photocopier. The weekly community newspaper
spewed page by page from the machine and he carefully folded each page in half.
His job is to collate the newspaper and then distribute it around town. Marley
is Iranian Australian. When he first arrived at the camp, he was aloof but
polite and spoke quietly. I remember him talking to one of the other prisoners
about world peace in his odd, nasal tone. Adenoids, I think. As he grew to know
people in town, he warmed to them. These days I’m likely to see him stopping in
for a chat with the mechanics or the librarian on his newspaper round. Other
prisoners come and go as their sentences are served but Marley remains a green clad
fixture. He is wrapping up a ten-year sentence for people smuggling; a one
particular voyage that ended catastrophically.
There was a kind of buzz going on at the
resource centre this day. The place began to fill up with uniforms. Local
police, parks and wildlife, fire and emergency services. I went outside and sat
on the bench under the peppermint tree. A hire car whipped past. I saw the
driver do a double take at the centre, turn around and come back. Then a hire
four wheel drive, then another. People began spilling from cars with cameras,
laptop bags, talking on mobile phones. City clothes and the gait of a mission.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked the young man at the
front desk.
‘Minister for Corrective Services’, he said.
‘Apparently they are making an announcement today.’ So maybe the Air Force jet
was scoping?
Eventually the minister turned up and while I
studied the new lectures and printed out class lists, the room next door
crowded with various apparatus of the law, making media announcements regarding
the justice system, and Marley stayed by the photocopier, collating the
newspaper in his prison greens.
*Time* That scene was from another life. I
haven’t seen the work farm trusties for three weeks and I assume they’re in
lockdown. When I mentioned this to Flame and wonder about sending them books or
postcards, some kind of support, she said, ‘Sarah, we’re all in lockdown now.
It’s just … those guys are used to it.’
Time must operate differently for them, I
think. The need for routine must be paramount. I too have a list on my fridge
now. We all suffered the shock three (?) weeks ago when so many people lost
their jobs and were forced home to contemplate. Time now seems to operate in
graphs of curves and daily new infections. Time now works in blobs and spirals
and pools. Back when the rain put the fires out, I would never have believed
that dinner parties would soon be declared illegal or that citizens would
actually consider installing a government tracking app on their phones. That
having too many cars outside your house could mean a visit from the police. Driving
the river bridge is now a crime where I live, unless you have an exemption. Linearity
of time has been shown for the western furphy it is. Any historian can tell us
that. Time is more like blowing apart a dandelion seed head with your breath,
watching the individual seeds travel off on their own trajectories.
Sometimes I do an exercise with my students to
demonstrate the ‘everywhen’ connectivity in Indigenous life. We stand in a
circle and each person represents an aspect of Noongar culture.
Katitjin/knowledge, Moort/family, Lore/law, Nyitting/Dreaming, Boodja/country,
Gorah/time/long ago. We have a single ball of string and, holding the piece of
string, throw the ball to the person who we feel is connected to what we
represent. For example, I as Moort could throw the ball to Boodja, and so on. No
decision is wrong. When the ball of string is completely unravelled, we are
holding a complex, messy version of a cat’s cradle. Everything is connected.
I read somewhere on social media, an
epidemiologist used to wonder as a science undergraduate why they were forced
to do some humanities units – sociology, anthrop, philosophy etc. And they
said, ‘I get it now. STEM and the humanities are connected, intimately.’
Everywhen:
Now
These days
Sometimes
Remember
Back then
Long time ago
Before
(?)
Weeks ago
Tomorrow
Maybe tomorrow
Next week
Winter
Maybe in Spring
2021
