the last post

This is the last post of this blog, the one-thousandth post (yes: and there’s more, but not for long).  When I saw it was coming up a few months ago, I decided it would be the final one.  I was hoping to post it in April, six years after I started blogging, but other things like life got in the way.

It's important for me to sign off on this blog, because it's marked an significant chapter of my life. I'm a bit wary of repeating some of the material from recent posts (another reason to stop blogging), though I feel in need of closure.  I set out originally write an aide-memoire, of living in Alice Springs, and that's what provided the narrative trajectory for the View, as much as it's possible for a blog to have one. As far as I know, this is the longest running blog about life in the Territory and possibly the first blog about Alice Springs.

Many unexpected things came out of my time in the Territory, and also from blogging.  It’s often the things that you don’t predict in life that turn out to be the best.  One aspect of blogging I’m loathe to leave behind is its unexpected serendipity (much and all as I hate that word, along with ‘synergy’)…almost everything I’ve had published that originated in a blogpost, I didn’t set out to write as a piece for publication.  It just took on its own life.  I may find I miss this unexpected freefall into creative recesses too much to stop blogging altogether, and start a new blog...who knows?  I’ll post a link here or propagate it through facebook, if I do.

I'm now ‘unexpectedly’ back here in Melbourne, comfortable as a pig-in-muck in the golden triangle of Northcote-Clifton Hill-North Fitzroy, eating far too much food, buying too many cold-weather clothes (tho the Kmart long-sleeved numbers I’d been wearing for three years were never going to cut it in the Melbourne winter).  I feel that ultimately I’ll make my base here, tho I’ll continue to dip in and out of the Territory.  I’ve noticed that although people often return to Alice the first couple of years after leaving the place, gradually they move on.  Amongst the expats I know, there seem to be two types, often represented in a couple: one who yearns to be back in central Australia, the other who might look back fondly, but sees the urban life as their true modus operandi.  I suspect I’m more the latter type, although Alice made me more of a convert to the regional life than I ever expected to be.  I’d try the regional life again, though maybe on the coast or somewhere wet and misty, like Tasmania.

One of the deal-breakers for me was realizing how quickly the turn-over people — i.e. expats — occurred.  Long-term Alice residents would comment on how they saw whole groups of people go, and I stayed there long enough to see ten of my friends leave within eighteen months…virtually a whole social network.  Up until that point, I was relishing the regional life…until I realized how unstable it could be in Alice.

I saw that I would have to go through the whole death and rebirth cycle with people, over and over again in Alice, and more quickly…and that the new people in town were getting younger and younger, as I got older and older.  After about three years, you also start to become distant from your circles of friends elsewhere, and to miss out on some of the important events in their lives and vice-versa, those things that often make for long-term bonding experiences.  So I thought I’d see what it was like to return.

   Alice is a place of extremes — of climate, of distance, of personalities, of social privilege, of racial divides.  The sense of being confronted regularly by some basic issues of human need, survival and even hatred, as well as constantly being made aware of the cycle of life — how tenuous things could be — was ultimately wearing for me.  You’re also less cushioned from harsh realities: shopping at Kmart and Target, arthouse cinema once a week and two cafes that make decent coffee are pretty much the mainstay fleshpots on offer in Alice.

Having said that, I don’t at all regret having thrown up the cards to go to Alice six years ago.  It’s surely been one of the signature experiences of my life. But I don’t regret having thrown up the cards yet again to return to Melbourne.

 The other night I found these lists, preparatory notes towards some final blogpost written while I was still in Alice.

What I won’t miss about central Australia:

 

1.The obsession with early-rising.

2. Evening news reports filled with stabbings, rapes, assaults, etc.

3. Obsessiveness, full stop (tho who am I to speak?).

4. The entrenched binge-drinking reflex.

5. Scary acceptance of blatant racism.*

6. Close-knit community.

7. Distance and expense involved in traversing distance to major cities. 

       What I will miss about the central Australia:

 

11  1.  Roo tails in the freezer at the local shops.

22  2. The mountain-biking tracks.

     3.  Politically incorrect moments/monuments.*

     4. Sense of crazy opportunity-taking/entrepreneurialism.

     5. Close-knit community.

     6. Quality of people who come to work here.

7   7. Proximity to north Australia and the tropics.

(* I see political incorrectness and racism as two separate, if sometimes overlapping categories.) 

 Below this I’ve written: Melbourne is an easy place to cycle round.

Yes, but note to self…it is and it isn’t, because Melbourne has become such a boom town with so much more traffic than I remember and so many more cyclists on its well-constructed network of bike paths.  So scrub that: even tho I commute by bike more often, I’m missing the ease of cycling more generally, of being able to hop on a bike and ride out on a bush track or a highway unimpeded at almost any time.  If there's one thing that still tugs at my heart, it's the thought of a curve of road or twist of a bike track that I rode many times by myself, with friends or with strangers.

Now that I’m back here, in the ‘real world’ of ideology as opposed to the ‘real world’ of ‘whatever works’, it seems that self-determination (on the nose, as a policy regime, after all) and the wave of ‘self’s — self-government, self-management, etc — has been replaced by a wave of ‘culturally’ this and that: culturally proficient, competent, safe, strong, relevant and appropriate…and woe betide you if you confuse any of the subtle distinctions between these terms. 

As I’ve commented in a recent post, it’s better than there being no support for Indigenous issues, but it all seems a tad insipid at times, and how anyone apart from genuine aficionados are going to remember these nuances, I don’t know.  All the same, I’ve come up with a new term myself: ‘culturally nice’, to say and do bland things vaguely rooted in another’s person’s culture to them, in the hope that all the world’s problems will go away, simply by everyone keeping themselves noice.  I guess that’s not so different from the old ‘culturally-appropriate’ or was that ‘culturally relevant’.

 

The experience of travelling beyond my ideological confines to central Australia has left me in a kind of no-man’s land, wondering where I belong, what I believe. Through the Centralian experience I ended up fairly disenchanted with left-wing politics, particularly its current capacity to deliver to Aboriginal people. It’s true the left has been on the backfoot for a while, in the position of reacting rather than rebuilding, but to me it seems top-heavy with critique and advocacy, and light on genuine policy solutions. That's where it's troubling to me, the extent to which the left may now be defined as a reflex or supplement to late twentieth-century neo-liberalism.  I feel there’s sometimes an unattractive tendency to seize on every opportunity for a bit of a whinge about how things haven’t turned out as Gough Whitlam planned in 1972.  Hardly a new insight, but I don’t think the overtones of C18/19th romanticisation of the noble savage, the poor and prelapsarian societies in Marxian thought have done Aboriginal people any big favours, either.  After living in central Australia, I can say there’s nothing romantic about the poor or about living in poverty.  And -- the unquestioning faith of many in their own ideological point of view as some ‘objective’ vantage point, be it left or right wing, never fails to amaze me. 

 I’m at a time in my life where I feel I don’t have any real place.  I seem to have lost some friends yet gained others, plus some new networks.  There’s an excitement, a freshness to all that, but how much is possible?  Especially when 50 isn’t too far away.  I am a high energy person of the slow-burning endurance sort, if that makes sense: I’m definitely fitter and stronger than many people my age, but realistically, I’m probably looking at another twenty-five working years, unpaid or otherwise, max.  How will I find the time and money to implement all my hare-brained schemes and plans?  But as surely as when God closes a cat-door, he refills a litter box….

I’m signing off here, with Lulu, the now-fat tortoiseshell from Diarama Village car park in Alice Springs, beside me on the couch…set to become the cat of my middle-age, in the way of the different coloured dogs in The Tree of Man (though no mandalas here). There's so much more I could say; then again, I might have already said it in a blog post.

 Otherwise, dear readers and lurkers, I leave you world-weary, cat-friendly and still cycling.

(Somewhere on or off the road to Nyrrpi, central Australia, mid-2000, where the journey began, as they say on Idol, if it didn't begin in conversations in Brunswick several years earlier.)

 

 

Comments

[Will Owen]

Fare well. I will truly miss your commentary and reflections on Centralia. I've followed you for several years--not quite since the beginning--and found your posts thought-provoking, amusing, irritating, delightful, and too infrequent. My feedreader will burn a little less brightly from now on. If you start up again from Melbourne, please keep your common reader in mind. Will

[Mindy]

I guess the one thing I brought back from Alice, apart from a slight yearning for something that I'm not sure actually existed in the first place, was a question that still hasn't been answered "Why don't they listen to Aboriginal people?" - left or right side of politics.

We had friends in Alice who said their neighbours were friendly but had told them explicitly that they wouldn't be making friends with them because they'd had too many friends leave and it was too hard. Lucky for us there were still lots of people who were friendly despite the fact that we were blow-ins. I can see why people go there and never leave, but also I know why we stayed for two and didn't take the optional extra year. We didn't even have Target back then (we left at the end of 2005). I want to go back and visit, but I'm also worried that everyone I knew will be gone. It's that kind of place.

[elsewhere]

Thanks, Will -- I'll post details on this site if I start another blog or relocate this one.

As I said on FB recently, if only someone would pay me to be me. Then I would blog everyday.

Mindy -- yes and yes. I think people go to central Australia and project what they want to see (self-included) -- their own ideologies. I do think you have to immerse yourself rather than fly-in, fly-out to understand some of the nuances of remote contexts. And if you listen to Aboriginal people, they may not say what you want to hear, and they may say a whole lot of different and contradictory things, so it's no easy conversation. (Or they may not say anything at all or appear to agree with everything you say.)

When I first moved to Alice, my friends and I used to comment on the 'aloofness' of the old Alice brigade, but I understand it more now. Most of those people will always be there. You could find the others you knew have moved on. I tried explaining to a friend who left a couple of years before me that 'the life' we knew had largely gone, but she didn't believe it until she came back and found she hardly knew anyone there anymore.

Target in Alice was big news, believe me. Before that, you had to go to Broome for Target.

[M-H]

I've enjoyed reading your blog for the last few years and will miss you popping into my feed reader. As a New Strayan who hasn't visited Centralia yet I've followed your journey with interest and felt I've really gained insights from your writing. Thanks.

[genevieve]

Your Territory tales were a window on a place I only know by its people. Thank you for the thousand posts and welcome back to Melbourne, El, and I do hope you start another blog. You have the digital storytelling knack.

[Margaret]

I was a latecomer to this blog, but have relished every post. I'm sorry to say goodbye to it.

However I must disagree. 50 is still a bloody long way away. Please.

[Ian]

Best wishes and good luck!

[Gillian]

I have loved reading your blog, found it thought-provoking and challenging, amusing and a great insight on a life I'm not likely to live. I'll miss your insights, and also being part of your daily life - it's amazing how much I felt I kept up with you from the posts!

[Molly]

Thanks El - I've really enjoyed your blog, and often been astonished and admiring of your honesty, being of the rather soft-left persuasion. Some of the challenges and discoveries you wrote about really rang true for me, although I went the wet tropical route rather than hot & dry, and feel I had it much easier. I'm still struggling with the decision about moving back to Melbourne - it's always in one's blood, I think. Good luck with the writing - presumably I'll keep track of you via FB.

[elsewhere]

Thanks, peeps. Molly -- it's not for wanting there to be more convincing leftist solutions, and who knows, perhaps we'll see some now that Julia is in power! Have you really moved back to Melbs? I thought the lower tropics might be more stimulating than the desert, in some ways. As for honesty -- probably more unwise tactlessness, at times.

Margaret -- the good news is that there are six years' worth of posts archived here online, so you can keep reading them till you're fifty, as long as I don't delete this blog.

[the L-girl]

great read Eleanor. But I get why it had to end. I miss you in the Alice - rode on my own this morning - me and the ranges and the gaps and the cockatoos.

[Elsewhere]

Where is mad Gav when you need him?

[Pam]

Lurking here has inspired me to plan a trip to Alice Springs and surrounds (late July), and to buy a bike. All the best to you - you'll be missed.

[elsewhere]

Thanks, Pam -- I'm glad to hear that I have encouraged cycling and NT tourism in these ways.

[Pam]

Heh! I'll raise a pint to you in the pub at Toddy's.

[elsewhere]

Thx!