May the Fourth be with you*

Each fourth of May I post a ‘May the fourth be with you’ meme on Facebook because I can’t resist a pun and enjoy the pop culture reference; however my disdain for the Star Wars movies as basically Star Trek meets the western remains. And while we’re talking US genres, it is ironic, isn’t it that the US probably can’t enjoy the joke this date provides our part of the English speaking world because they say ‘May fourth’, not ‘May the fourth’?

This year the fourth of May was general election day in Australia (see footnote) and the Albanese-led Labor government was returned in a surprise landslide. That sparked immediate joy, but just as delightful has been witnessing the disarray and idiocy in the coalition partners in the aftermath. While these events don’t offset the nightmares of Gaza and Trump they do at least provide a little homegrown reassurance that sometimes sense and kindness prevail.

This May the fourth, I went to a life writing workshop in Tarcutta, about an hour outside Wagga, that these days has something of a ghost town feel serving mainly as a stopover location for long haul trucks. On the drive out, morning sunlight made the mustard hued paddocks and mottled gum trunks shine, generating serotonin. The turn off to Mates Gully Road seemed a long time coming and then the road itself meandered for several kilometres. I momentarily panicked that I would be late but arrived for a 9 am start with a few minutes in hand. A free event arranged by the Wagga Library in conjunction with the Tarcutta Country Women’s Association, there was no sense of urgency inside the folksy weatherboard building where about twenty of us gathered over the obligatory homemade slices arrayed on a tea trolley. Every surface in the immaculate room was beige, cream or white; even the ceiling fans were straw rattan and cream. Although still early autumn, the temperature was very cool and, surrounded by rural folk in fleecy lined garments, I regretted my cotton shirt and light jacket. The hum of the reverse cycle air con soon filled the air but it took over an hour to counter the chill.

Trestle tables were arranged in a horseshoe formation. I sat next to Frith, newly arrived in the Riverina, whom I had met at another writers’ function the previous month. Then she had challenged the visiting Irish writer about the thoroughness of his research making for an uncomfortable moment which the author handled with aplomb. She admitted to me this morning that she is hypercritical of any shortcomings she perceives in others and communicates her perceptions in a plain, bordering on blunt, style. Her credo, she stated, is the opposite of looking for the good in people (I wonder how I am faring). Anticipating some ructions during the workshop I adopted my default approach of gentle teasing.  I am sure people thought we had known each other forever, or were related, because of our seeming double act particularly when Frith punched me on the arm during one retort.

The facilitator, Graeme Gibson, introduced himself as a retired horticulturalist and community activist whose own memoir In Life There Is Luck was published in 2023. Graeme distilled what he had learned into a publication called A Pocket Guide to Memoir Writing which he used as a teaching aid throughout the morning. Naturally I purchased a copy (see photo). We did several useful exercises one of which provided the basis for this post.  I have been compiling a list of clichés and generally cringe worthy expressions enjoying currency and am about to employ one, ‘take away’. Amongst the workshop’s ‘take aways’ for me were two quotes (I hope not misquotes) from Hemingway:

The cure for writer’s block is to write one true sentence

Write in a reckless fever then edit in a cardigan

Three from Graeme:

Writing fuels memories

Writing about little things helps you write about big things  

Let the verbs do the work

And one for the guest speakers at our historical society meetings:

Just because it happened doesn’t make it interesting. Just because it is interesting doesn’t mean it belongs in the story.

Graeme’s workshop was compact and energising. The CWA went above and beyond with the catering. Listening to my fellow participants proved yet again that each of us has (at least) one story to tell and a unique voice. I heard about remembered sylvan glades and their association with a loved grandmother, sibling rifts produced by differing recollections and class identification and a fallen log that used to be the main play equipment at the local primary school until safety regulations had it removed.

Afterwards I cast my vote at the Tarcutta Memorial Hall and met Riverina independent candidate Jenny Rolfe's husband – the only person handing out how to votes at this conservative leaning polling station. I guess I helped skew the demographic a little. The Tarcutta streets were almost empty; a few large rigs peppering the carparks, many shops, including the former Halfway Café (built 1926) were vacant and I was the only customer at the handicraft store.

May the fourth was very much with me this year and writing about it is fuelling more memories.

*My friend Kathryn Halliwell has pointed out that I have ascribed all these events to 4 May 2025 when they in fact took place on 3 May 2025. Obviously I don't let the facts get in the way of a good story/tagline. 

Double Disillusion

 

 Jon Kudelka, The Mercury, 21 August 2010 - Plus ça change 

My formative years occurred during the Whitlam era and my first political act was to demonstrate against its abrupt termination. That means I take my politics pretty seriously. I have empirical proof that a government’s vision and policies can transform the way people feel about their country, their place in the world, their future and one another. I witnessed progressive programs like Medibank, anti- discrimination legislation, Legal Aid and no fault divorce build a fairer, better society in this country. 

Over the past few years I have seen Australia’s two major political parties embrace economic rationalism and neo liberalism to varying degrees. I have seen weasel words, reactionary spin and three word slogans replace genuine vision and a plan to realise it.  Manipulative, hollow rhetoric has become the norm and if the polls dip one iota the ‘stop the boats’ and ‘jobs and growth’ mantras reach crescendo.

Like many I am sickened by the contempt for human rights that our immigration detention centres represent and the casual callousness most politicians show towards the suffering and deaths of those held there. John Howard normalised Hansonist xenophobia and the ‘we’re full’ mindset and, amongst the major parties, only the Greens have had the guts to openly oppose our policies towards refugees.

I always found the National (formerly Country) Party a bit of a cypher but now that I live in a rural electorate I realise that parochialism is somewhat understandable given the vicissitudes of being ‘on the land’.  Regional dwellers also perceive  their access to jobs and services compares unfavourably with that of their capital city cousins, and as far as broadband speed goes they are right! However Wagga seems to benefit from a number of well-funded regional programs that mean we are quite well resourced. I have never been to so many free, catered community events, and, in our experience, waiting times to see health specialists are short. Another Whitlam legacy, the Australia Council, means that Wagga Regional Gallery houses the largest art glass collection in the southern hemisphere. Our unemployment rate is 5.8% which isn’t good but is the same as the national rate and, importantly, we are amongst the first towns to get the new ‘countdown’ traffic lights. It’s very reassuring to have Molly tell me ‘do yourself a favour and cross now’!

When I mentioned at my aqua class recently that I usually vote Greens such was the contempt of my fellow bathers that I felt lucky not to be summarily drowned. I’ve looked at National Party voters from both sides now – from up quite close and from afar – but really don’t know them at all.  I would have thought, given the massive desalination programs conducted in the Riverina over the past few decades and the rehabilitation of wetlands now underway, that environmental issues would have some traction here.  Perhaps Waggan Nationals just want to believe that they, not some atheist hippies, twigged to the problems and developed remedies.

Any way, back to my, and most of the nation’s, state of double disillusionment in the wake of last weekend’s election. What now seems like eons ago, Malcolm Turnbull, thinking, utterly erroneously, that the timing was good and that a long campaign would benefit the Coalition, put it to the GG that the Senate thwarting his building industry watchdog legislation was a national emergency and that a general election must be called. Watching the newly anointed Malcolm Turnbull resile from his former stances on a republic, climate change and the rights of same sex couples, the disillusion expressed in the only poll that matters, the postings of my Facebook cohort, was overwhelming. His readiness to compromise proved that whether they be faceless Labor men or fundamentalist Liberal nutters (I’m looking at you, Corey and ScoMo) a party leader is expected (by his/her machine) to bend to a degree that would defeat most contortionists and to rationalise their inconsistencies and outright reversals without betraying a flicker of the shame and self-loathing you would hope they are feeling.

I stress that this is what the party machines demand, we, the public, are pretty sick of it… We apparently feel more at ease with the unbridled emotiveness of Derryn ‘Human Headline’ Hinch and Pauline ‘Ploise Explain’ Hanson than the carefully managed personae of our recent leaders. In the aftermath of the election people are talking about never glimpsing the ‘real’ Malcolm Turnbull just as they complained that the ‘real’ Julia Gillard was masked by her minders. One major difference is that the ‘real’ Julia is quite nice and I suspect the real Malcolm, unconstrained by having to pretend to like ordinary people, is an arrogant prick.

A bit of image management isn’t altogether bad. Since his coaching blitz restored Bill Shorten’s ability to smile and make eye contact and drastically reduced his zinger count (much to Shaun Micallef’s dismay) he does seem a more viable PM. Labor also benefitted from the fact that their ‘killing season’ is now more distant history than the Liberals’. Tony Abbott’s chagrin at their campaign launch was palpable while Labor (finally) presented a united front.

Much has been said and written decrying Labor’s ‘Mediscare’ tactics but the conservative side of politics has never hesitated to paint Labor as too cosy with the union movement and this is just the equivalent, drawing attention to your opponent’s driving ideology. Why not call out a party on its particular embedded values? The Liberals would never have introduced socialised medicine / a national health care system and are on the record as opposing it and intending to dismantle it.

I started writing this before Monday night’s Q&A, already sensing a parallel between David Cameron’s ill-fated Brexit referendum and Malcolm Turnbull’s double dissolution election gamble. Then I listened to Holly Ransom, Paul Kelly and Sarah Hanson-Young and became convinced that disaffection with the political establishment and the desire to attribute blame for diminished opportunity has led voters in the US and the UK, and now here, to reject conventional political leaders and lend their support to larger than life xenophobes and bigots who never let the facts get in the way of a good pitch.  They are disillusioned. Those of us who grew up believing there were politicians who would actually work for a better world are doubly so.