Smoke

I’ll start by saying that in terms of the devastation wrought by these bushfires, I’m a very lucky man. I have my home. I have my family. Yet as days become weeks and weeks become months, I can’t help but notice how the fires are beginning to shape so many aspects of life that before now I’d paid no attention at all.

Canberra is my home and always has been. For all the grief that people lay upon the city (some of which is certainly justified), I’ve always loved it dearly. Canberra’s lack of density and spread out population leads to one of its more popular criticisms that the city somewhat soulless. It is less vibrant than larger cities with a thrumming metropolis. Fewer cafes and restaurants. Not as many night spots.

And yet, to me, this is Canberra’s strength. The lack of density is compensated by an abundance of nature. From the vantage point of Canberra’s more urban peaks (Mt Ainslie or Black Mountain, take your pick), the built environment forms small patches among the greenery. You aren’t living in a city that has crushed the nature upon which it was found. You are living in nature that happens to also house a city.

Until the bushfires began, there would’ve been few cities across the globe with population of 400,000+ and air as clean or skies as clear as Canberra. Yet the endless vista is now masked by the unending haze. Most mornings you smell it before you see it. The clear skies and clean air are becoming more a memory than a feature.

But more than the just being a blight on the landscape, the smoke is seeping into every aspect of our lives. Weather is the easiest go to for small talk in an office setting. It’s the thing you talk about when there’s nothing to talk about. The smoke is all we ever talk about now. It’s the first thing mentioned each morning (“bit smoky on the drive in today”) and the last thing mentioned each evening (“oof. Looks a bit smoky out there”). The only easier office small talk is turning to a colleague after lunch on Friday and asking “doing anything interesting this weekend?” But even that rhetorical refuge is tainted. Responses are more often framed by what people won’t be doing because of the smoke.

The best hour of my week during summer is spent playing in a social soccer competition on Sunday mornings. My team isn’t very good (currently sitting second last out of 16 teams), but that doesn’t matter. It is fun and it is freeing and I get to catch up with dear friends that I don’t see as often as I should. My job is relatively demanding (particularly at this time of year), so it’s one of the few opportunities I get to just not worry about anything. Three of the last five rounds have been cancelled due to air quality. The slapdash very 90s looking website that houses the competition’s draw and ladder now has a button that turns green an hour before your game to let you know if it’s safe to play.

There must a silver lining though, right? There must be something we’ve gained from all of this? I suppose there has. I know more about particulates than I ever thought I would. I know that there are air quality stations in Florey, Civic and Monash and am constantly aware of their readings. My mental arithmetic has improved from having to quickly calculate in my head just how many times the air quality rating is above the level government health agencies deem hazardous.

I’ve learned more about the people around me too. More about my running mad friends who can’t remember the last time they went for a run and how that makes them feel. More about the relentless anxiety of my friends with kids who worry about the long-term impacts on their health. More about myself when on those scarce smoke free moments I look upwards at night and remember just how crisp and clear the Canberra night sky can be.

I’ve learned just how much I care for my nephew. He’s three years old, he calls me “Uncle Day” and his face lights up whenever he sees me. I think a lot about how the stunning green landscapes and peerless bright stars that have been a feature of the first 30 years of my life may cease to be an aspect of his. That the childhood of playing and watching sports that I enjoyed may be something I won’t be able to instill in him because it simply isn’t an option.

   

These bushfires have changed the lives of millions of people to various degrees. And there is no end in sight. I don’t know what can be done about it. I’m not smart enough to divine the solution. I’m not qualified to understand it. But I do have some hope.

I have hope that the next generation will battle against a concept that scientists refer to as Shifting Baselines Syndrome. It means that each generation will accept the depleted version of the world they are born into. The new normal, right? It’s a term we’ve heard a million times this summer. My hope, and I do feel it truly, is that the kids will look at what is paralysing us and say that enough is enough. That a world that doesn’t look like the photos your parents took isn’t good enough. That a world in which your eyes sting and your lungs burn isn’t a world worth living in. 

Even if we do nothing, it will be a long, long time before the climate actually destroys us. But life isn’t life if it isn’t worth living. I hope the kids reject that and their rejection is so overwhelming and so inspiring that myself and the people I know are rocked out of our time filling conversations about the weather in the office and we all resolve to do something about it. 

Almost there

They say you can’t choose your family and that’s true for the most part. For many you can’t choose your football team either. I was born in Canberra and my Dad is a Raiders fan. He took me to my first game in 1996. I didn’t choose to be a Raiders fan but that’s my lot in life. It’s just the way things are.

It hasn’t been easy. There hasn’t been a lot to hang my hat on over the years. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching the Raiders play. I have adored so many great and not so great players over the years. But seeing your team fight valiantly to finish 7^th and then lose handsomely isn’t the same as winning it all.

Imagine that: winning it all. That thing that other teams do. That thing 12 other teams have done since the Raiders last won in 1994. I sit there every year and watch other teams do it. I try to imagine what it must feel like. To win it for the first time in forever like the Bunnies in 2014 or the first time ever like the Sharks in 2016. I imagine what it must feel like to be a Storm fan and greet another grand final win like an old friend you haven’t seen in a couple of years. A joy to see but still so familiar. So comfortable. But I can’t. Because I’ve never been there.

I have experienced them losing. I’ve watched the Raiders finish 9^th, 10^th, 14^th. I’ve watched them lose 0-40 at home in the driving rain. I’ve listened on the radio as they lost 44-2. I’ve sat through heartbreaking close game after heartbreaking close game. Watched club legends come and go without a trophy to their name. Seen talented juniors escape for the brighter lights of bigger cities. Leave for the chance of glory they knew they couldn’t get if they stayed.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought I might die without ever seeing them win it. I may have said it aloud once or twice too. I want it so bad. Not just for me but for all the other fans and the city. The people who’ve given this team so much. Have been there in the icy cold, the rain, and the literal snow. The people who’ve willed them to do what they haven’t done before.

And that brings us to Friday night. 26,500 people packing out the stadium and going completely troppo for 80 minutes. Plenty has been said about the performances on the field by people far better equipped to write about it than me. Not enough has been said about what was happening in the stands. It was bedlam. Passion like you’ve never felt. Noise like you’ve never heard. People hugging strangers. People crying. Many just standing there in stunned disbelief. Because they did it. We did it. All of us willing each other on. We made the grand final.

Are they going to win? I don’t know. Can they? You bet. This team is special. More than any Raiders side since the glory days, and perhaps even more so. This team plays for each other. They don’t have the brilliance of other sides. They don’t have the superstars. But they never give up and they never give in. 

Opposition fans can joke and taunt and put them down. It only makes them bolder. The refs can send off as many players as they want. It only makes them stronger. The media can discount them as making up the numbers. It only makes them wonder.

I didn’t choose to be a Raiders fan, but I chose to persist with being one. And in the madness of the final minutes on Friday night I can’t think of any better choice I’ve made. There was a moment this season that says it all. After a particularly tough night, battered and bruised, our fullback, Charnze Nicoll-Kolkstad was asked if there was any part of his body that wasn’t hurting. His answer was simple: my heart.

Stars So Bright and Shorts So Big

Whenever I walk outside at night I like to take the time to stare at the sky. I am lucky where I live to be afforded with a clear sky that is abundant with stars. A lack of light pollution presents a wonder above that is easy to dismiss yet hard to comprehend. The lights we see above us are impossibly far away and yet can be so bright to our eyes. Without wanting to go full Neil DeGrasse Tyson, from our simple vantage we can look millions of years into the past.

This strange angle of reality has hit home for me recently as I have seen a weird personal story morph into minor online notoriety. Many if not all of the people reading this will know, I saw Mark Latham wearing a dirty polo and oversized shorts at the PM’s XI in Canberra three years ago. This statement, on its own, means almost nothing. It is a happenstance in a single person’s life. Yet sharing this personal moment brought a certain level of joy to some people. And repeating this moment through increasingly different or politically relevant lenses brought the moment to a greater audience.

I know how wanky it is to refer to twitter followers but it is very weird to me that on the back of a single joke, however differently expressed, I have gone in the space of less than a year from around 300 followers to nearly 3,000. Having this larger audience has made me think more about what its value is if your only contribution is a (very) short story about seeing a public figure looking less than publicly acceptable. It’s so dumb, and endlessly surprising to me just how much people have bought into it, but in light of recent events I hope it has a lasting value.

Mark Latham is now a member of the NSW senate. There are so many people that are more qualified than myself to comment on his shortcomings on race or sex or sexuality or religion. I know enough to know that he falls short on each of those things and that I’m not the guy to call it out. Yet with my very minor reach I hope that I have made enough people aware of his strange indiscretions of public fashion that it makes it difficult for him to express himself publicly without someone reminding him of his sartorial choices at a cricket match in Canberra on 20 January 2016. If my posts have any success at all, the man himself will feel apprehension before considering going to any cricket match at all because someone will ask him about the dirty polo. I hope this otherwise inconsequential decision will continually have consequences for him.

Mark Latham has a level of power now that he hasn’t wielded for well over a decade. There are avenues to take on his views that are far more direct than the tactic I’ve taken. Barring some disaster, he will be a NSW Senator for the next eight years. It is impossible to predict what sort of destruction he will cause through his anachronistic views  in that time. What I do hope is that there are enough people that follow me and spread my posts about him that there will always be a level of criticism and cynicism and silliness that follows him everywhere.

As far as I know I am one of the few people he has ever blocked on twitter. It wasn’t because I was overly aggressive or abusive toward him. It was because I got under his skin. More than being abused what he hates most is being humiliated. He will never stop being an awful person, but he can be diminished by enough people continuing to remind him of what a small and awful person he is.

The stars in the sky might appear to be impossibly far away. They may seem completely out of reach. But you never know how big your reach is or how bright those stars are until you test it. Mark Latham wore a dirty polo and oversized shorts to the PM’s XI in Canberra three years ago and don’t ever let him forget it.

Any Given Sunday

The 21^st Birthday party is one of those strange American things that Australia has adopted. It carries no meaning here. All of the fun stuff that adults are allowed to do but kids are denied were granted three years earlier. The only age related milestone as yet conferred is the privilege of hiring a car at 25. However, next year I’ll be celebrating a 21^st anniversary of a different kind. It will be my 21^st year of going to the football with my Dad.

In 1996 my Dad took me to my first game of footy. Rugby league, if we're being pedantic. We were off to see the Canberra Raiders play at Bruce Stadium, as it was then known. I didn’t know anything about the Raiders at that time, or rugby league for that matter, but it didn’t matter. It was a day out with Dad. What could be better?

My recollections of those early games are vague. The stadium was different then. It was yet to be given the makeover it received in preparation for the 2000 Olympics. The thing that I can best picture about it from those days is the concession stand. It was nestled halfway up the grandstand and each patron was forced to walk through it on the way to their seat. Dad would hand me a couple of dollars to buy a packet of chicken flavoured chips. Clever stadium design, if nothing else. We'd get to our seats on the Eastern side of the ground and the team would run out onto the field to the sound of the team song. “We’re the bad and mean, Green Machine. Fierce and bad from the ACT. Don’t try to stop these men in green. Cos they’ll hit ya, hit ya, hit ya, till you see green”. It’s a terribly written song, but I enjoyed singing along. It didn’t matter.

We didn’t go to every game back then. Just those played on Sunday afternoons. I couldn’t say how many of those games the Raiders won. Or by how much. I know that I asked a lot of questions. I didn’t understand a lot about the game but I wanted to understand more. Dad always answered, though I'm sure the incessant questioning was annoying. I didn’t understand that the team that Dad had brought me along to watch featured some of the all-time legends of the game. Laurie Daley, Ricky Stuart, Bradley Clyde, Ken Nagas. Among that team were premiership winners, unstoppable titans, wiry magicians. Holdovers from the irresistible team of the late 80’s and early 90’s that reached five grand finals, winning three of them. I didn’t know who these great men were, but it didn’t matter.

The next year sparked the super league wars. The competition split in two and the Raiders sided with the rebel Super League. It didn’t mean much to me as a seven year old. All I thought at the time was how cool the Super League symbol looked on the jersey. The first game that I can fully remember happened during this season. Midway through the year the teams from the Australian and English super leagues played off in a World Club Championship. The Raiders’ first game of that championship was played against the Halifax Blue Sox, a team I neither heard of nor could possibly imagine where they were from. The Raiders thrashed them: 70-6. An absolute pasting. I can remember the disbelief in the crowd as the Raiders ran in try after try. Kenny Nagas scored six by himself that day. A feat almost unheard of in rugby league at that level. I didn’t know this. It didn’t matter.

In the next couple of years we started to attend more and more. Dad had decided that I was old enough now to go to night games. My sisters started coming to games too. By 2000 we were going to enough games that Dad decided to buy season tickets for the four of us. At this point I knew every player's name and everything about them. On our walk from our car along the bike path to the stadium (we parked away from the stadium to avoid paying for parking) I would annoy Dad with questions about who would win, along with facts and statistics. The talk on the walk back depended on the result. If the Raiders won I would annoy Dad with my favourite moments from the game. If they lost we would walk back in silence. What else was there to talk about?

Now i cared. I cared about the footy more than anything. Each win would sustain me for the week. Each loss I would think about and mull over in my brain everything that went wrong until the next win helped me to forget. I often cried when they lost. Far more than I’d like to admit. I cried because it mattered. My sisters would tell me to stop being a baby and Dad would tell me to cheer up. There's always next week.

The early years of the 21^st century were rougher times for the Raiders. Those heroes of the early 90s retired. The players who came in to replace them would forever be in their shadow. Unfairly maligned for not being as good as their forebears, though how could they be? The wins became less frequent, but we still went. Me, my Dad, and my two sisters. Through every type of weather we watched our team play. Sitting in the driving rain and freezing cold. We even attended the only game in professional rugby league’s history in Australia where it has snowed. We’d come home wet and cold. Mum wasn’t a fan of rugby league, but she’d always be by the door to ask us who had won.

My sisters were starting to get really into rugby league by now. The fun of watching the game was made all the better by the laughs we would have together, making fun of the awful cheerleaders and the colourful characters in the crowd. The Raiders made the finals series here and there in the 2000s. Though they were always making up the numbers. Never true title contenders. It was easier to take the losses in those semi-finals knowing that they barely had a chance in the first place. The crying at losses became less frequent.

I had other interests by now. Still mostly sports related. Dad had by then engendered in me a love for rugby union, soccer, and cricket. By not having a singularly focused mind I was able to shrug off the losses more easily. Not care about the wins as much. Going to the footy was still as fun as ever. The familiar drive there. The walk along the bike path from the car to the ground. Waiting just long enough for Dad to put on his gloves to ask him for money to get hot chips so that he had to take them off again. 

These days the gameday experience is different. I no longer live at home, so me and Dad no longer drive to the game together. The usual walk up the bike path from the car to the ground is taken separately. But when I get to our seats, the same seats we have sat in for the last 15 years, I know that he'll be there, wearing a beanie over a cap in his incredibly dorky way. And we'll sit there and chat for a while until my sisters show up and the laughter begins. We still make fun of the cheerleaders who have never gotten any better and the colourful characters in the crowd.

I hope that someday if I ever have a child, I'll take them to see the Raiders and they will have a million questions to ask about how football works. That they will wait until I've put on my gloves to ask me for money and they'll laugh at the daggy clothes I wear. Should they have siblings, I hope they'll laugh together at the cheerleaders who still can't dance. And if my beloved Raiders ever raise that Premiership trophy again, something not seen since 1994, I hope that my Dad will still be there by my side, answering the questions I have and giving me money to give to my kids who wants money. Because it matters. It really, really does.