Respect

I was in Melbourne town a while back, the big smoke, in Smith St Collingwood, checking out a new alimentari and updating my hipster reference points. Under the lulling influence of summertime, clothes with more colours than black were in evidence, and there seemed to be fewer beards on the street. Could it be that the tsunami of hair is finally beginning to recede?

Anyway, I'd lingered over a coffee and was strolling on when I found myself caught short. My inbuilt "Nearest Toilet" app informed me that yes, a little further down Smith St I'd find a public facility, and I hurried on (never get between a man over 50 with a look of urgency on his face, and a toilet). Thankfully, the door button blinked green - with a pneumatic hiss, I was ushered in. The blessed bowl gleamed in welcome; someone's idea of relaxing music piped up; I relaxed.

Then, what is that, that ripe, fetid aroma? I sniffed, my brow furrowed. I looked around, I looked down, and there, nestled beside the bowl, was a rather fine specimen of toilet art, dark and bulbous. Oh me, oh my, what possesses a person to so deliberately disturb public space? Some hostility born of constant rejection and discouragement, and I'll take it out on the rest of you by laying down one thing I can do pretty well, beside the bowl, not in the bowl. Up yours!

I sighed and finished up, risked the washing and the drying devices, requested exit and was delivered, free again, to the outer world of car fumes and grinding trams.  A Japanese couple was waiting, tourists in their thirties, beautifully dressed. As she headed for the door, a wave of shame swept over me. "No, no," I wanted to say. "Don't go in there!" And then "This is not typical, this is not how Australian people behave, please don't take away this memory of my country!"

Later that week I went walking in Barrm Birrm, in at the track up from my place, and what is this!! Some idiot, some lazy wanker, has gone and dumped his garden waste along the edge of the track, clippings and bamboo grasses and soil with who knows what weeds, smothering the native grasses. Not in the nearby parking spot already disturbed by human activity, but here, where the bush lives on. 

Now you tell me - what possesses a person to dump their waste on plants that have patiently grown, that have possession of the land, that belong and have a right to their existence? Is it simply convenience, that here was the easy place to offload the trailer, and to return with another trailer load? Or the tip fees, a cheap solution to municipal authority? Or is there something more, some unconscious aggression, a fear of the simple existence of the bush, that stays in place through seasons and changes only slowly, doesn't shout or demand, just lives?

On Clean-Up Australia day, a fine day here ar Riddells, Landcare members and Riddells Cubs and Scouts came with 4 Wheel drive and trailer and we removed that garden waste, and much more besides - shopping trolleys, kitchen cabinets and sofas, drink containers, lolly wrappers, cigarette packs, all the detritus of humans, thrown away into the land which tolerates us. It felt good (and I think I speak for the 32 other souls who came) to clean-up this bit of bush, to make recompense, to do our human duty, out of respect for the land and its undemanding living. 

To shift the balance back toward human decency. 

 Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare