Poster Boy

by Peter Drew

  I checked the other Morris columns and discovered more of my posters had been covered. The glue was fresh. My rage was hot. Suddenly, there he was. He was using a satchel schoolbag for his posters and a $12 tub of synthetic glue from Bunnings. For some reason he was wearing gardening gloves. Such a hopelessly bourgeois attempt at working-class authenticity made me cringe so hard that it hurt my neck. I just stood there and watched him piss all over my territory with his stupid posters, which he’d probably had printed at Officeworks.

  I waited until he’d finished before moving in. I’d seen exactly what he was doing but I still needed to ask.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I said with the serenity of a tornado.

  ‘Your poster doesn’t belong here,’ he said, calmly turning to face me. He didn’t even have the decency to act surprised. Instead, he smiled. ‘The columns are for Union-affiliated groups only, so you’ve got no right to be here,’ he added.

  ‘This is an art project against xenopho—’

  ‘I know exactly who you are and what you’re doing,’ he cut in, ‘but you should know that your poster is problematic. “Australia” is a fascist construct. We don’t need you trying to rehabilitate it. Okay?’

  ‘What about your government-subsidised degree? Is that also a fascist construct?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m so sorry but it’s not my job to help you see the big picture.’ He gestured at my defaced poster. ‘If this upsets you, just remember, this is what dispossession feels like.’ He tore off the remaining corner of my poster and walked away in triumph.

  I was pretty angry before, but now I lost control. The reptilian part of my brain was calling the shots as I followed him across the crowded campus. He was on his phone and I guessed that he was alerting his comrades up ahead. I didn’t care. I was ready to take on all comers.

  Across South Lawn I could see our destination, a trestle table covered in posters and attended by three other pasty revolutionaries, already looking in my direction. I charged towards them, my mind racing. I, the slogan master extraordinaire, was about to deliver the perfect ironic witticism to set straight this gang of pubescent agitators. Every student on the University of Melbourne’s South Lawn would bear witness. I was going to be proud of this moment.

  I marched up to them and shouted ‘Fuck your posters!’ at the top of my lungs. Then I flipped over their table and walked away.

  An hour later I’d calmed down enough to call my wife. Julie’s always ready to laugh at me when I’ve behaved ridiculously, so I gave her all the details and she lapped it up. Her laughter is the best balm when I’m feeling humiliated. We talked about how much I’d changed since we’d met. I used to be just like the kid who covered my posters. I used to see the world in black and white and hide my insecurities in a foxhole of moral righteousness. It had taken me a long time to learn how to climb out of that hole. I needed lots of help. Julie understood when I occasionally slipped back down.

  Still, it’s infuriating when you meet your former self and they refuse to listen. You want to shake them until their head pops out of their arse, but it never goes right. I knew that same confrontation was bound to keep happening on this journey. I’d only just begun, and the Australian political landscape is dotted with strange cul-de-sacs where toxic ideas fester. The more attention I attracted, the more confrontation would come with it. But there was a bigger problem: I hadn’t really changed as much as I thought. The poster project was dragging me back into my old ways and it would take more than a little table-flipping incident for me to acknowledge it. There was something inherently aggressive about what I was doing, but I thought I had it under control.

  I should have been wondering whether all this attention was actually the redemption I was hoping for. I should have been keeping my ego in check. Instead, all I was thinking about was putting up more posters.

  The Real Australia

  Sydney was done. Melbourne was done. I’d activated the two cities where most of Australia’s media was produced. Now journalists could follow the story as I stuck up the remaining 550 posters across the country. For the story to keep growing I knew I’d have to keep generating conflict, suspense, insight, triumph and maybe even redemption and rebirth. To use the argot of our time, I had to keep generating ‘content’. How such an empty word as ‘content’, meaning the literal absence of emptiness, became our default label for the entire spectrum of human drama, I do not know. I’m not content with content. I guess it just sounds smarter than ‘stuff’.

  The spectacle had really just begun, but now I needed to resupply back in Adelaide. Julie and I were living in a tiny, single-bedroom apartment in Norwood that was physically dominated by our work. We each had a desk at opposite ends of the living space. Julie’s fashion label required just as much room as my poster projects, so every available piece of territory was negotiated and fought for. Julie’s area was an explosion of vibrant colour, with photos and sketches of Australian flora and fauna covering the walls. She liked to create mood boards for inspiration but they always spilled over the edges. By comparison, my corner was dark, tidy and cold. All I had on the walls were a few sketches of potential poster designs and an old photo of the art critic Robert Hughes. The apartment was our live-in office, but all the hands-on printing happened in my art studio.

  Tooth & Nail Studio was the sort of place that scares away people with real jobs. Located in a dilapidated warehouse on Coromandel Place, in the heart of Adelaide’s financial district, it clashed with its surroundings. At first glance it looked unremarkable, just an old brick building next to a pub. Inside it was filthy. It stank of weed, graffiti covered every surface, the roof leaked, the toilet was always blocked and a revolving gang of a dozen misfit artists called it home. Occasionally a curious suit on their lunch break would poke their head past the front door and say, ‘What is this place?’ We’d reply, ‘It’s a studio, mate. Can I help you?’

  Tooth was run by Jake and Cassie, two of that rare breed of creatives who actually have their shit together. Jake dealt with front of house, and Cassie handled the back end. I only saw Cassie when rent was due, but Jake was there all the time. Jake loved to screen-print. It was his shared equipment that allowed the whole studio to function, including my projects. If it weren’t for Tooth & Nail, I’d never have gravitated towards screen-printing in the first place.

  My little corner was in the basement. With my dad’s help I’d customised a rig that allowed me to print the extra-large A0 posters. I’d roll out some kraft paper on an old rug and cut off one sheet at a time, using scissors. It was an absurdly inefficient system. There was no drying rack downstairs, so I used a single wire between two columns to dry my posters. The wire soon filled, so my posters quickly covered every available surface of the basement. I generally printed at night to avoid annoying the other artists.

  After a few nights in the studio I was ready to continue. My next target was the Northern Territory, which Hollywood still regards as the real Australia. Most Australians go weeks, months, even years, without contemplating the Australian bush, because most Australians live in cities. When we do confront Australia’s centre with any honesty, we encounter a severity that outstrips the sentiments of popular myth. Those endless straight roads are more often a test of endurance than a theatre of romance. But don’t let that distract you from the promise of spiritual salvation waiting just over the outback horizon. After all, contemporary Australian art is built upon that myth – upon the world’s appetite for believing it and upon our own willingness to dish it up.

  It’s really the promise of a threshold between the ancient and the modern that makes Australia’s centre so enticing. It goes beyond Australian identity towards something universal. It offers an allegory for all people, land, culture and, above all, power. It’s our sandy summa of all being and creation. It’s unbeatable content.

  Imagine all that ancient knowledge wrapped up into an exquisite little canapé. It’s being offered to you on a golden tray. It’s
too beautiful for words. You feel guilty taking it. But what’s this? Holding the tray is an equally beautiful Aboriginal child, directed by Baz Luhrmann. The child says, ‘It’s okay, take it … Take your experience™.’ That’s the Australian tourism industry in a nutshell. That’s the Ghan.

  I booked a seat on the legendary train. It was a red-class ticket, which is as cheap as it gets. They keep a carriage down the back of the otherwise luxury train for the people who just want to get from A to B. That suited me fine. I was on a very tight budget. Also, I couldn’t risk compromising my fair-dinkum, true-blue, she’ll-be-right authenticity.

  The truth is, I was super excited. This was no ordinary train. I’d first heard of the Ghan on camping trips in the Flinders Ranges. Formerly known as the Afghan Express, the train’s name honours Afghan camel drivers who arrived in Australia in the late nineteenth century and played a vital role in exploring the country’s interior. Many of the asylum seekers I’d met were from Afghanistan, so I thought this leg of the journey might be a nod to the historic relationship of our two great countries. Originally the name was an insult for the once notoriously unreliable train. Such was the self-assurance that permeated the former British Empire: anything foreign was automatically deemed inferior, and anything local but inferior was automatically deemed foreign.

  Our train lurched into motion just past noon. I was sitting next to an older Arrernte woman, who started chatting my ear off. It was one of those distinctly one-way conversations where I’d add a few words every minute or so just to demonstrate that I was listening. But I was listening, because she was a great storyteller. Let’s call her Dora.

  The sun was setting as we passed the Flinders Ranges and I was having a nostalgic dive into my childhood memories as I stared out the window, but Dora could dive deeper. She started pointing to the shapes in the mountain range that revealed the figure of a sleeping kangaroo. I liked that, so Dora then told me about how she was taken from her mother. That really got my attention. Once she left Alice Springs, she was billeted with families in Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart. Her stories progressed to her marriage to a man who’d turn his glass upside down on the bar when he was in the mood for fighting; her children, who escaped with her to Adelaide; her grandchildren, who share her warm but fierce temperament; and her great-grandchildren, who show her how to win at Candy Crush.

  She spoke for a long time about the importance of Kevin Rudd’s historic ‘sorry’ to the stolen generations, and she also spoke about the importance of forgiveness, but it seemed like a personal forgiveness, too delicate for the words of a politician. She spoke a lot about her granddaughter who drove trucks for the Army. I think she might have been trying to set me up.

  I showed her my poster. She looked at it for a while and said, ‘Yeah, you’re gonna have some trouble with that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s plenty of angry people out there who don’t want to take responsibility for their place in the world. They want to blame everyone but themselves for their problems,’ she said warmly.

  ‘But what do you mean specifically?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, there’s compassion and there’s self-reliance. Sometimes self-reliance is cruel, but so-called compassion can be just as cruel, believe me. One way or another, you’re gonna run into trouble with your placard there.’

  ‘That’s still not really specific,’ I said.

  ‘Neither is your placard,’ she said with a ‘got you’ smile, and I knew she had.

  Dora got off at Alice Springs. I got off too. The train was scheduled to stop for a couple of hours as the first-class passengers sampled some of the local canapés, so I grabbed my posters and wandered into town. You feel nervous sticking up posters in a small town because everyone knows you’re an outsider. Also, this was the Northern Territory. Ever since I’d announced that I was heading north, I’d started receiving messages from concerned followers warning me to be careful. The NT wasn’t Melbourne, I was told, and I should watch my step.

  I wasn’t too concerned. Besides, I had my trusty hi-vis vest to ward off local heroes. I don’t know how effective it was but it definitely made me feel a little safer. I managed to get an hour of careful postering done without interruptions before visiting CAAMA Radio for a quick interview. Afterwards I still had half an hour to kill, so a couple of journos from the radio station offered to drive me around town to put up more posters. I threw my gear in the back of their ute and off we went. Now I had an audience who wanted to see some action. It was time to cut loose. We unleashed a postering blitzkrieg on the sleepy town of Alice Springs, hitting spots I normally wouldn’t even consider. By the time we pulled into the train yard, the town was vanquished and I was covered in glue. Everyone else had already boarded. I waved to my new-found friends and moments later the train was pulling away.

  I repeated the same act in Katherine, just without the help. Considering all the warnings I’d been given, I was a little disappointed to be met with so little resistance on the ground. I wondered why I hadn’t been hassled once. It occurred to me that things simply moved a little slower in the north. It’s also worth pointing out that it was extremely hot. Within minutes of putting up the first poster I was covered in sweat. That kind of heat makes you think twice about causing a fuss. It also might make you assume that anyone working has a legitimate reason to be doing so. Unfortunately, the other effect that heat has on the human brain is that it makes people go fucking crazy.

  Between Alice Springs and Darwin the landscape completes its transition from Australia’s central desert to the tropical coastline of the north. Red desert turns to Bullwaddy country filled with millions of monolithic termite mounds and pastoral grasses. As the train rolls north, the scrub gets thicker and greener, then suddenly turns into endless rows of mango trees. They’re so plump. The train gradually slows as you pull into Darwin. Stepping out of the air-conditioned bubble, you find yourself in a warm broth filled with insects.

  For a city boy from Adelaide, the Northern Territory is like a foreign country. The first thing you notice is that there are Indigenous people everywhere. That makes whiteys like me uncomfortable. We don’t like being outnumbered, especially when there’s such an obvious divide between white and black. Why is that Aboriginal man unconscious on the pavement? you wonder. It’s complicated, snaps the part of your brain that tries to help you forget about Australia’s picture in the attic. But it’s not that complicated, really. It’s just brutal. I hauled my gear through the sweltering streets. As the sun set, the heat was beginning to penetrate my synapses.

  By the time I’d reached my hostel, I was in a foul mood. The dorms were infested with backpackers whose pursuit of ‘good times’ ran contrary to my righteous crusade. There’s nothing worse than a compulsory party. I tried to ignore them and got stuck into my routine of cooking glue before heading to bed. When I woke at four a.m. they were still going. I left quickly. I hit spot after spot as the sun came up, until suddenly I met that guy everyone had warned me about.

  Yes, he was another old white guy. I remember being surprised because he was shouting at full volume first thing in the morning. I tried to convince him that the posters were approved by the council, but he was loudly sceptical. Aside from that, though, I can barely remember a thing about him. The truth is, he was boring.

  I’d been getting steadily angrier since I got off the train, but running into Mr Shouty sucked all aggro out of me. The confrontation ended with me taking down my poster and moving on, which usually aggravates me even more, but not this time. Instead, I spent the next few days calmly walking the streets of Darwin, at one with the heat, the bugs and the stench of my glue.

  I was in this state of equanimity when, on my last day in Darwin, a journalist from ABC’s Lateline called. They wanted me to fly to Sydney for a profile of the poster project. Suddenly, my Buddha-like tranquillity vanished. The ABC wanted me (and my project) served up on a platter for the whole of Australia! I thought about how t
o tell the story right, how to put people like Dora and Ali front and centre. I thought about how I could turn the story away from the Mr Shouties. But in all honesty, I mostly thought about me and how much fun it would be to be on TV.

  I could still feel my ego inflating. In the next two weeks it would take flight and detach from the semi-sensible parts of my brain. At first it felt great. It felt like the redemptive transformation I had been hoping for. I was floating away from everything, including the old me. But in reality I was about to smash face-first into my father’s history.

  Courage and Sacrifice

  Lateline didn’t need me for a few days, so I flew back to Adelaide. I arrived on 24 April, the centenary eve of the landing at Gallipoli. Since I was on my voyage to discover Australia, I decided I should attend the dawn service at the war memorial on North Terrace. I found the ceremony to be powerfully moving. It’s an eerie experience being among hundreds of strangers, shoulder to shoulder for a minute of total silence. There’s no room for detached, ironic participation. You’re really there. As the seconds slip away you imagine what it must feel like to hurl your life into the meat grinder of history. Something so terrifying must have its rewards? Or perhaps all the pageantry is just compensation for the barbaric bloodletting? I don’t know. Whatever the case, when that bugle finally sounds, you feel alone, and the notes cut right into you.

  My brother was in the Navy, but aside from that there’s been no history of military service in my family. As boys, though, all three of us were obsessed. It was mostly harmless. We’d compare stats about military ordinances when most kids were swapping football cards. But it started to get weird. I’d wear camouflage fatigues to school on casual days. Kids started calling me ‘war boy’. Most disturbing of all, my favourite author was Tom Clancy.