The View from Elsewhere

it passed like a dream

Going about my daily life in Melbourne, there are constant reminders of central Australia. Some of these are presences; others are absences. When I go to the bowser at the petrol station, there's no nozzle labelled 'Opal unleaded'. I look out from my balcony and see palm trees dotted through the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and think of the Afghan traders who left palms through central Australia, outside the town council in Alice and at the Hermannsburg mission to provide sustenance during Ramadan. There's other reminders: I might see an artwork in an office that looks like it comes from a certain area in central Australia. I'm told Liam Jurrah is playing in a big AFL match in a few weeks' time. But otherwise, I look at the faces of people in street sometimes, particularly the ones who seem more on the edge, and think, are they Aboriginal? Middle-eastern, African or what? I'm not sure. 

 Around Melbourne I often see yellow wall plaques like numberplates acknowledging the traditional owners of the place. Yet the traditional owners of major Australian cities seem far less obvious than any other people group, partly because of the sheer bulk in population numbers, no doubt also because of the decimation they experienced, being in the 'front line'. (It wasn't until I was in America and heard a few Native American place-names that I realised 'Manhattan' was an 'Indian' word -- after all that time watching Sex and the City!) My experience of working in Abl affairs is that large family groups from regional centres tend to dominate in urban contexts, quite possibly because the areas they're from were more isolated and thus more shielded from the vicissitudes of colonisation, or because particularly strong missions or other settlements were established there. 

The plaques to me are almost more like memorials. I don't want to be derogatory, but I feel a bit ghosted by the thought of an Abl presence. Unlike central Australia, where you can feel you're surrounded quite literally by the living dead at times. It's as if there's just traces left here. I've cast my mind back to what Germaine Greer says in Whitefella Jump Up about a possible way of giving these traces more pre-eminence by everyone saying that they're Aboriginal and living in an Aboriginal culture. I think much of what she's saying about aspects of Australian society being more shaped by Aboriginal culture than we care to realise is probably very true and that saying we're an Aboriginal country is helpful as a certain sort of gesture. But I'm disturbed by what's potentially lost in making that statement. If Greer's idea is taken to extremes (and I'm not sure she meant it to be), it could lead to a pan-Aboriginality that is unhelpful and suggests a blurring of the specificities of and differences between existing Abl cultures and groups. 

can any good come out of Thornbury*

I felt I would write a blogpost before I became consigned to history as a self-confessed crazy cat woman or was totally overtaken by spammers.

The gloom has suddenly descended here in Melbourne in the way it does, once daylight saving ends. My flat, which is somewhat diminutive, now seems a little dark and dingy at times.  It's about the size of a hatbox, except that it mysteriously has a good old-fashioned, suburban-sized bathroom.  It's about the same size of my first flat in Balmain -- different dimensions, but better bathroom. But after all it's all about location, location, location in the inner city and here, as there, I find myself gravitating to Life on the Street...as in, High Street plays the role of my former lounge room, and I'm even recognised now at a cafe as a regular who always sits in the same place (i.e. near the wall socket) and orders the same thing.

Melbourne has really boomed, tho: there are all sorts of long radial streets leading out to suburbs draped in darkness. Melbourne's almost starting to remind me of LA in this (and only regard): you can be walking along what seems like a fairly suburban street and suddenly you're in another 'neighbourhood'. I mean, not only is Northcote cool these days, but apparently Thornbury and Fairfield are too.  I even drove over to Station St just to make sure, and I saw a glimmer of what people were talking about on my drive. Thornbury (the time I went there) just seemed to stretch on into the night, with the infinite possibility of mysterious bars cropping up.  Someone loftily said that 'Brunswick St is the new Chapel St', but I'm not sure I'd want to spend much time on either of them. Northcote has much more of that organic feel that Brunswick St seems to have lost over the years.

The other thing that's nice about Melbourne is the friendliness factor. Another ex-Sydneysider and I were commenting on this the other night. People aren't affronted if you start a conversation with them.  They often start up conversations with you. It's like Alice Springs, without the Obscure, Extraneous Waffle that accompanies many a random conversation there.

crazy cat woman leaves town