Here is where?

Written near Pingelly, WA. 17/07/26 . . . Cafe Locked Out on the Road

Whoever thought that the correct answer to the statement, “People are still dying. It’s everywhere. We are living in a death camp,” would be “yup.”

That is where we are now. For all the years we’ve been dragged along, by who knows who, our podcasting heels deep in their fog, we haven’t been able to stop it. Heads partially down, eyes partial to vaguing out when you dare bring up anything of concern, many we meet seem more concerned with maintaining the public apathy — their new norm — which leaves us feeling like the scenes we are performing in on this inescapable stage are currently, and for a while now, several scenes behind what we believe is reality.

So what is reality?

I knew you were going to ask that.

We don’t know. After all these miles and all these interviews, I, myself — as a Cancelled Covid Era Tourist Guide — reply to the question “What is reality?” with… “Who the fuck knows.”

No one has been arrested.

No one.

Why not? The truth is everywhere, and what facts are missing, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming… Their lies rolled over all that we loved like a blitzkrieg, but six years on their stories are in tatters, yet still their mud doesn’t stick. Not one perpetrator has been arrested.

Still time moves on. Like Covid was just another Monday. It stops you here and there with its “You are here” moments — like those endless posts from MSN that the doctors can’t explain the explosion of cancer, especially in young people.

But where is here?

Most of us no longer believe that we went to the moon. So if suddenly we did go, the reply to the astronaut’s first Moon based words would be eight billion people posting… Bullshit!

NASA lost the files of how to get there. That’s what they said. We lost the files.

This is Pingelly. A tiny town in the Western Australian wheatbelt. It owns a struggling pub, an IGA, a few dying or up-for-lease stores, and a mature white male who looks like he’s fallen off the wagon. He sits in his filthy clothes on the small wall that leads to the shrine where the names of other men — who once left here to fight for the promise of him — are displayed.

And there are security cameras. We saw one, but no doubt there were more. This white pole had several cameras covering all it could see of the town, and it makes you wonder if there’s a data centre somewhere with hard drives full of this homeless Australian drinking coffee from a recycled cup.

We’re in the Op Shop. It’s old-style, cluttered and cheap, manned by old ladies chatting about people we’ll never meet. It’s like the last six years shat somewhere else and never reached here.

Kel loves the opshops. She says, they alter her mind state; like looking for shells on a cluttered beach.

I’m tired. Kelli’s tired too. This is why we’ve had a few days off trying to reconfigure.

Was or is there any point to our work?

A woman approaches me. She’s in her early forties and trying to hold her tears in.

“I saw your bus,” she said. She told her daughter, who stands behind her — awkward, but still slightly interested.

“I didn’t want to take it,” the woman whispers as an older lady passes behind her with new clothes to hang.

“But my mother had to go into hospital, and if we weren’t jabbed we couldn’t go see her. So I took two. The first one was fine, but the second…”

There are tears now. They’ve reached her lower eyelids but they’re not falling. Her twisting mouth is keeping them in.

“It’s fucked me neurologically. I was visiting Mum and the doctor asked me if I was okay, because I was walking as though I’d had a minor stroke. Now they tell me it’s all in my head. Of course it is. You said it yourself — it’s neurological.”

And she has communicated all of this without the old ladies hearing a word.

“And my cousin is dying,” she adds, again twisting that mouth. “Cancer. It’s all through her. And she’s only 34.”

“Why don’t you let me capture your story?” I ask in a whisper. “That’s what I do. We have to record this stuff.”

But I could see, as she nodded, that she wouldn’t.

So she gave me a hug between the second-hand dresses and the jackets as the old ladies cleared their throats to let everyone in the store know it was almost closing time.

Back in our bus, ready to go, a man comes up, also with his daughter. I’d interviewed him before. His name is Robert and he used to be a Medical Imaging Specialist, but he wouldn’t play Jab ball. Now he’s on the local council.

“It’s only a small council,” he says. “But it’s a start.”

Another fighter, Monique, is on the council in York. A nearby town.

Is this victory?

The first shoots of common sense taking root in the bowels of these towns, as these fighters — these concerned parents, grandparents — keep moving forward, small step by small step, in search of a better new reality than the one whoever is running the West is offering.

People donating their lives to heralding in a future that chances are they will never see, as around them, here and there, the non-player characters stop on a post as their stupor starts filling with questions, like: What’s going on? Who’s behind it? and the ever popular,

How did we get here?

M

Michael is the Author of Goodbye Road Australia’s Broken Heart Lands

Goodbye Road is now in The National Library.

Signed copies available here