Leaf 35 “The toughest audience of all”
Queenstown Footy Club Rooms February 2008
We
stood outside the Queenstown Footy Club rooms at the world famous gravel oval.
In the background was Mt Owen, which always seemed to me to be like a resting
lion overlooking the town. All the men around me were members of the Mt Lyell
Mining and Railway Company 25 Year Club.
Members needed to have had 25 years of service with the company before
its closure in 1993. Therefore I was the youngest person there by almost 20
years. Each year they gathered for a weekend to recall old times, renew
friendships, play cards and drink heavily. The Footy Club’s women’s auxiliary
were on hand to supply the catering. The only presence or role for women at the
event was in the kitchen and serving.
I had
been invited along to give a talk. It did not look promising as one of my
uncles came to me and, tapping his watch ominously, said, “sonny we are here to
drink not listen to you! So you have 2 minutes!” I was preceded by some mine
engineers talking about drill shafts, copper bearing lodes and mine
profitability clearly topics that enthralled this audience of old miners. By
the time I was introduced, the audience had another hour of drinking under
their belts. My uncle tapped his watch and put two fingers up in the air.
I had
spoken around the world but this was my hardest crowd ever.
My
talk was entitled, “Mining the Imagination.” The previous year a group of young
people had produced a CD of their experiences living in Queenstown and used
this title. The theme of my talk was how miners had great stories to tell but as
they passed away, so did their stories and their legends. In an information
age, their tales, insights and passion added a layer of uniqueness to the town.
About 5 minutes into my talk, two old timers at the front started talking; to a
man, the other fifty or so shushed them and I heard my uncle say “shut up and
let the boy talk.” At the end of my 20 minutes, I received a standing ovation
and found it hard to hold back the tears.
At a
previous talk in Queenstown about King O’Malley, an old woman had complained to
the University that I had been billed as “a returning Queenstown boy.” Her
complaint “everyone knew I hadn’t been born there so was not really a
Queenstowner.” The King O’Malley talk was the first time my parents, relatives
and other old timers of Queenstown had seem me demonstrate my professional
skills outside of brief media interviews.
It was a very strange feeling, with both the O’Malley and Mining the
Imagination talks, to be back in Queenstown displaying my academic craft and
presentation skills. I was among people who had first hand knowledge of my
foibles, had struggled to understand my words as a youngster, who had seen me
drunk or misfielding in cricket and who probably knew more of my background
than I did.
Leaf 36 “Foucault would be proud of me –
invented or real narrative?” Queenstown mid 1970s?
I
don’t know whether I have created this story or whether it actually happened.
Every recounting seems to give it a greater life. With each retelling it gains
certainty, assertiveness and a clearer authentication. It is the early 1970s, possibly mid winter. I
arrived at the small library in the High School after walking in the rain on a
dark night. A very small audience is gathered, maybe two or three students, a
couple of old ladies and I think one teacher but I was never sure who. Thinking
back, it might have been Mr Tom McGee who was always interested in local
history. Not sure why I had come but curiosity or an invite from Mr McGee may
have been enough. Into the library swept a magnificent figure wearing a black
felt hat dripping with rain, a large black cape or flowing coat and longish
silver hair; his face had a sharp profile, small slivery beard and a
captivating stare. Manning Clark had rampaged into my life. This description
matches one of Manning Clark’s most well known pictures and therefore may be
the true source of my vivid recall.
For
what seemed like hours, Manning Clark held me spell bound as he expounded upon
the subject of King O’Malley, a larger than life figure who Clark animated and
elevated into almost mythic status. Manning Clark spoke of O’Malley’s oratory
from the balcony of Hunter’s Hotel, his role in the Transcontinental Railroad,
creating the aged pension and the founding of both the Commonwealth Bank and
Canberra. What inspired me was not only the way a speaker could grab an
audience but that my town, in the middle of nowhere, could have provided the
platform for this key player in Australian history. Later, before learning of
O’Malley’s many foibles, I transplanted onto O’Malley many of those things I
thought were quintessentially West Coast – straight talking, a wicked and cutting sense of humour (that
still gets me in trouble in polite circles or when talking to Vice Chancellors),
a concern for the average person, and a source of great ideas if people only
could experience the place. Whether real or not, that talk or its imagining led
me to eventually study Australian
history at College and at University and to a great love of Tasmanian history.
Leaf 37 “Our man in Jakarta?” Jakarta,
Indonesia March 2003
On a
steamy night in a Jakarta restaurant – thatched roof, open sides -- the main
speakers from a large FOI conference and key Indonesian activists were gathered
together. Behind the flickering light of the candle sits the key organiser of
the conference, a long time environmental activist whose contact with me dated
back to 1998. In late 1998, I was asked by his organisation to write a
briefing/policy paper about developing an FOI type regime for the environmental
area in Indonesia. The paper was for a
key conference to be held in Jakarta which would then be translated into Basara.
Over
several weeks the conference was postponed, reconvened then postponed again, a common
feature of working in countries like Indonesia. Eventually I was given a firm
date and booked my airfares. Shortly thereafter, I received the invitation to teach
in Ireland and had to negotiate a return trip to Australia to speak at a
pre-arranged Sydney conference, appear before a South Australian parliamentary
committee, a quick 3 day trip home (the only time I would see my family in four
months) and then the stopover in Indonesia. In early February, during my time
back in Australia, I was told the Jakarta conference had been postponed, yet
again, this time to later in March. I couldn’t cancel my Indonesian tickets nor
could I return to Jakarta for the next date for the conference. The organisers
arranged for someone else to deliver my paper. Meanwhile I spent my 3 days in
Jakarta mostly in a hotel marking Irish
law student essays with the odd excursion or two into the city and to see some
of the surrounding attractions.
Back to
2003 and the restaurant. The environmental activist leaned over the table. He
confided that my 1999 paper had a critical impact on an emerging movement for
FOI within Indonesia. However given its Australian connections it would be better
for that link to remain unacknowledged.
Leaf 38 Late March 2010, seminar class in
Administrative Law, Hobart
A
magic moment: thirty-five minutes into a
fifty minute seminar with 24 students and apart from the initial instructions,
I had not spoken. There was a discernible energy in the room and within each
group. The task for the students was to discuss the readings they had done in
the first four weeks of the course. The fourth week of the semester and the
students are energised by the topic, a good working knowledge of three to four
critical readings and they were bandying terms like Ombudsman, reasons for
decision, merits review, accountability and citizen participation around like
names of old friends. I was thinking that after years of refining, engaging
with students and reflecting on the learning process, I had started to be where
I needed to be in the student learning process: on the periphery, influential but almost
unnecessary.
Since
that moment, my thoughts have often turned to wondering how and when I should
exit from teaching. Partly, these thoughts are trigged by the powerful impact
of the symbolism in Japanese culture of the cherry blossom: falling away at its
peak. Also in part, these thoughts are driven by not wanting to find myself due
to age, a lack of empathy, energy or passion simply starting to go through the
motions or taking the easy but desolate road of teaching administrative law as,
in Whitehead’s terms, a dead or inert subject.
Leaf 39 An ongoing legacy of failure
Concepts
and ideas have always come quickly to me, whereas manual tasks or those
requiring dexterity, outside of sports, have always caused frustration and
often failure. In a talk, lecture, conversation or when reading I want to skip
the detailed step by step explanations. My thoughts rapidly compare, contrast
and link what I am hearing, reading or seeing with trends or patterns and I am
happy to dissolve old patterns into new patterns. Yet my learning history is
littered with a failure to achieve dexterity or co-ordination skills including
cord cursive writing, neat technical drawing, drawing, touch typing, guitar
playing and many others.
By the
time I entered matriculation college, if not well before, I had abandoned any
attempts at cord cursive writing and had resorted to a free form, or
undisciplined, form of printing which to many resembles hieroglyphics. Lower
case es, even within the same word, can vary from looking like a 3,6,g and a
circle with a dash within it and most annoying for readers is the random
mixture of lower case and upper case letters in the same word.
Leaf 40 “Leaving on a Jet Plane”
Vancouver Airport May 2002
My
family had been left to explore Vancouver while I made a dash to speak at a FOI
conference in Winnipeg. I arrived at the counter to check in my bags only to be
confronted by “oh excuse me sir but the flight is over booked please go to the
Gate counter and see if a seat becomes available.” Despite my seat being booked
6 months previously, I was now at the random mercy of other Canadian
travellers.
At the
gate I was told firmly to sit and wait and I would be called if any seat became
available. Seconds prior to the final closing I was summoned on board and
escorted to the back of the plane to an empty middle seat. A man in the aisle
seat got up to allow me in. As I went to sit on the middle seat a hostile woman
in the window seat pushed me onto the aisle seat and plonked a 3 year old child
into the middle seat that she had paid for. After some confusion, I am led from
the plane and my protests that I was delivering a speech at a major conference
the next day went unheeded. I arrived to a snow covered Winnipeg in the early
hours of the morning after waiting in an extremely long compensation and
rebooking queue at Vancouver. In between I sweet talked my way into the
business lounge to let my hosts and family know about my detour and took a
convoluted flight path to Winnipeg via Calgary and Regina – albeit business
class .
Next
morning at registration, a firm hand grips my shoulder accompanied by the
authoritative statement “Passenger 32B”. The hand belonged to a huge, fellow
conference delegate who had witnessed the eviction from my original
flight. Later that morning, the large
Canadian is introduced on the stage as the Director of White Collar Fraud for
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Force. He started “I am a tall man and
normally like an aisle seat but after yesterday I was just glad to have any old
seat. The guy in front of me, who looked like a wild haired geologist just down
from the Rockies was dragged off the plane arguing he had an important
conference to speak to.”
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