31 December 2005

My town and global fear

By Melaki McHardie

2005 Winner
I don't live in a big city, I live in a town.

I don't live in a tourist destination, I live in a tourist stopover.

My home is not the cultural capital, political capital, arts capital, or historical capital.

It is the beef capital; the capital of cows.

People pass through on their way to more exciting, adventurous, beautiful places.

Only the cows stay.

It's only the old people who say what a wonderful place we live in.

The younger people, the kids my age, say Rocky's a hellhole.

I've said it myself.

I feel like we're north of everything: north of the news, the events, the country, the world.

Nothing that happens north of Brisbane counts.

The only time Rocky is on the news is when there's a murder, or when a girl appears after four years of hiding in a closet.

Rocky's unique in that.

She wasn't hiding from the Nazi soldiers like Anne Frank. She was hiding from what? Her life.

That's what happens when you live in Rocky; the prospect of four years in a closet doesn't seem so bad. Or all that different.

But then big things happen in the world, and you feel grateful for Rocky's smallness, for your own smallness, your position north of everything, inconspicuous in the expanse of similar towns of no consequence, north of the real, important Australia.

A bus explodes in London, then three trains.

A truck explodes outside the Australian embassy in Indonesia.

Things explode in Madrid, New York, Baghdad, Pakistan. People explode.

The dots on the atlas don't represent big cities anymore. They represent targets.

And all of a sudden you're very happy to be living in the small, inconsequential home of cows.

But then the army arrives: the American marines: the shaved heads and bulging wallets, and money, money, money for the town.

And they bring their guns and grenades and war to Rockhampton.

They do 'exercises' at Shoalwater bay.

That means they are practising for war, death, and hate.

They bring a little part of the world's chaos to my home, to a place the world didn't know existed.

I hear on the radio that terrorists are targeting army bases, and I think about the enemy looking our way from across the world.

I hear on the radio about toxic clouds bringing atoms of depleted uranium into the town, and I think about the enemy that's already here.

And now I know that it doesn't matter if you live in a small town or a big city, a tourist destination or a city that tourists avoid.

You live in the world.

You are part of the global community, whether you want to be or not.

Therefore, what I think about the world and the things that happen in it is just as important as what somebody from Sydney thinks.

What I do about it means just as much.

I don't only live in Rockhampton the beef capital.

I live in Rockhampton, a town of the world.
Heywire, rural youth, youth, rural, my life, my town, 2005winners, winner-feature

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