benjaminteicher.com – freelance writer

/Voiceworks, #61, Winter 2005/

I was in a Fitzroy Opportunity Shop a few weeks back when rage blew in through the doorway. She was a weathered old thing, dressed in a tracksuit. Apart from her there was just the manager, myself and another boy who was trying on a pair of saggy-arsed Levis. We picked our eyes up from the second-hand junk and stared at her silhouette against the autumn glare outside. She glowered back. After a few uneasy moments we returned to the trash piles and began to forget about her.

The tracksuited woman swaggered towards Levis boy. She jabbed a finger into his chest and said:

‘Oi, where’d you get that shirt?’

The shirt was a minor leftist propaganda piece. At the top was an emblem of the pan-Indigenous flag, and beneath that the words ‘White Australia has a black history!’ The old woman was Indigenous and Levis boy, probably anticipating kudos from the woman, said quite proudly:

‘Oh this shirt? My friend brought me this shirt back from Sydney.’

She hissed at him. ‘I’d like to rip that fucking shirt right off ya. In fact, I’d like to punch you in the fucking chest.’ She drew a clenched fist and held it shaking in the air, but before she could unleash her rage, the manager hurried out from behind the counter and grabbed her arm.

‘Sylvia, get out of here,’ he said as he shooed her out. ‘Stop causing trouble. Piss off.’

The manager consoled Levis boy with a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. ‘Oh look, don’t worry about her. She’s just some old metho.’

The boy, though slightly fazed, continued to admire his new pants in the mirror. I moved on to inspect a crate of records. I had my eye on a nasty scratch down the surface of an otherwise desirable Bowie record when I heard the whack. The old lady was back, and true to her word she’d walloped him one – and it must’ve been a good one, because she left him doubled over, winded.

She laughed and laughed, only stopping when the manager chased her out. When the boy had regained some of his composure, he followed after her.

*          *          *

On the surface, it was all rather mysterious. People like me and the boy with the Levis and offending shirt, we’re the good guys, right? We mean well, don’t we? Romping around in leftist crowds, yelling ‘land rights!’ at stunned midday shoppers, it’s easy to imagine yourself as some sort of adjunct to Australia’s colonial history: a new benevolent breed. The Levis boy’s well-intentioned shirt condemned Australia’s past. And it’s true; the European invasion mass-murdered its way across the continent, dispersing whole peoples in its wake.

But what we trendoids try to forget is that the story doesn’t end there. Until the 70s and 80s, the inner-northern belt of Melbourne was where the landless Indigenous communities around Victoria came to regroup, after the internment camps were dismantled. Fitzroy and its surrounds were something of a haven for Indigenous crew – that is, until the 1970s, when the influx of so-called student radicals, artists and progressive young professionals – the parents of self righteous shits like me and Levis boy – arrived with their capital and priced the locals out of the market.

These inadvertent neocolonialists fetishised the ‘culture’ of the area, but couldn’t keep their grubby hands off it. The area was inexorably transformed into the stain of ludicrously expensive terraces, cafes and juice bars that you find today. As for the Indigenous community, it’s more or less moved on, jettisoned once more into diaspora, except for a few fierce remains.

Back in the shop, we had a good natter about the incident, the red-cheeked manager and I. In fact, we had such a nice chat about such things that I left shortly afterwards, not really enjoying being a part of that particular ‘we’. I decided that the old woman was fabulous. And if she wanted to punch anyone else, let it be me; I could do with a good flagellation.

I found the old woman and Levis boy down the street, still sparring. The boy ripped off his shirt, threw it at her feet and told her she could do what she fucking well liked with it. I ran over to mediate. I would explain to the naïve youth how he must realise that we’re nothing more than cosmopolitan dags on the sheep’s arse of colonialism. To suggest that anyone should be grateful for our Indigenous sympathy in light of our actions is, well –

‘What are ya looking at, ya white cunt?’ The old lady asked me. ‘Fuck off!’

That was good enough. I felt suitably chastened, and watched the rest from a safe distance.

After a few minutes, the fight fizzled. The old lady was dragged away by one of her calmer friends, although she continued to catapult abuse from a distance. With no one to talk to, the boy pulled on a jumper and skittered off, scowling. The righteous shirt was left to its own devices.