Survival

Sitting up in the members at the WACA and watching the test match, a willy wagtail flew down and danced its cheeky dance on the metal rail in front of me. Hoping I had food, it just waggled its tail and looked at me. “C’mon mate give us a crumb or two!”

It was a bizarre shift of focus: from this wide view of a match that meant so much to so many, and was being transmitted across Australia and the world; Englishmen sitting at home and in pubs, barmy army revellers at the WACA singing along to the trumpeter, mates in Perth texting each other as the Mitchell Johnson saved the day with his bat – and there, inches from my face, was a brave and tiny being hustling for its life. “C’mon fella. I know you’ve got food!”

I reached down into my lunch bag and gave it some crumbs, then shooed it off knowing for sure it’d stick around for more.

Then I spent the next few hours thinking about survival. The previous night I’d seen images of people failing the survival test as their boat smashed on rocks at Christmas Island. I switched TV channels quickly, but not quick enough to hold it together. Tears flowed. And tears are fine, good in fact; but I’ve been in a mood lately where I feel that if I start crying I’m not sure I’ll stop.

My own survival is in question. Bills are piling up like never before, work is scarce (and shouldn’t be at this time of year) my house is a crumbling mess and my fridge and pantry are close to empty. And worse, I can’t think of anything I’d like to do that might assist my survival.

But there’s simply no comparison is there? Between me and those drowning families I mean. They’d gone so far, put so much on the line, most likely because what they left was unbearable: torture, rape, loss of income, loss of everything they owned. And bang, one bit of bad weather plus a faulty engine. Hard to describe that horror.

But they were trying so hard to survive, to keep their families alive, happy, safe from harm. And that’s why I simply can’t understand why we might despise them or wish them anything but the best of luck. As I write, the local hero Mike Hussey has just scored his long awaited century. He’s a survivor and we love him for it. Times have been very tough for Huss, and for the whole team. And to see a bloke doggedly push through it all despite all the critics, despite the likelihood of being relegated to a lower grade of cricket, is wonderful. It’s what so many Australians like to celebrate: the battler who’s down but fights back and survives. And when they don’t survive but they tried against impossible odds, we turn it into an iconic moment, march in the streets and write songs about it.

So, why can’t we apply the same values to those fleeing families? There’s a strange schism there, a kind of social pathology, a disconnection of such massive proportions that if it weren’t so tragic it might be hilarious. A year or two ago the American social commentator and political Conservative, PJ O’Rourke, expressed similar dismay at they way we tend to treat asylum seekers. On the TV programme – Q and A – he turned upon a Conservative Australian, Julie Bishop, and told her we should welcome those people as heroes because they have such a strong commitment to freedom and equality. We should treat them as a new kind of royalty he suggested.

And while a few of us punched the air in celebration after seeing the mean-spirited Julie Bishop get a dressing down, it was a joy that was short-lived because we knew that as this happened on the ABC, the people who want to stop asylum seekers, the haters and despisers, would have been watching some dribble misnamed ‘reality TV’ on another channel. And certainly no Australian newspaper would have reported it.

I think back to that willy wagtail, with its plucky attitude and ruffled feathers, and yeah, it has qualities that Huss shares: it’s not the grooviest of beasts, not a glamour guy like some in the Australian team; it’s almost ugly, and you won’t find it in too many magazines about what Australia means to the world, just as you don’t often see Huss in the gossip pages or on the TV with Oprah and the like. But I imagine that in some corner of the WACA it’s busily feeding it’s young – in between battles with far bigger birds like crows and magpies – and it’s doing what we’re all doing. Surviving.