PART III: A TALE OF TWO ENCOUNTERS

No one evening struck me with such a juxtaposition of modern Australia than that of one Friday, five weeks after I first arrived in Adelaide. Twice in as many hours I was accosted by Australian strangers, and yet the two meetings could not have been more different.
The first encounter occurred as I walked back along broad, well-lit North Terrace with my girlfriend, chatting as we strolled. A homeless Aboriginal man, of about fifty or sixty, with a long white beard, wearing a warm jacket and rough boots, approached us suddenly from a bench at the side of the path. He called out a request from afar which I did not catch, and I smiled apologetically and went to walk past him. However, he stopped immediately in front of us and repeated himself loudly, waving towards a small pile of possessions near the bench, “Open my sleeping bag.” I blinked, and he repeated himself loudly.
“No, sorry, my friend.” I eventually said, and went to continue past him, but he blocked our way. I stepped immediately in front of him, so that my companion was to one side, and stated calmly,
“We’ll be going now.”
He squinted at me suspiciously, and I could see a flash of anger wrinkle his nose.
“You’re English, aren’t you?” He said.
“I am, yes.” I replied, knowing the implication, and feeling the brutal inevitability of the conversation to come.
“I am Aborigine.” He said, pointing at his face.
“I can see that.” I said, without intonation.
“You…” he spat with undisguised loathing. “You fucking… You took my land from me.”
“I was born in 1993.” I said, and though I felt the adrenaline of confrontation in my head and legs, I was surprised by how calmly I was able to speak and how clearly I could think.
“You did!” He insisted. His eyes were still fixed on mine, wrinkled with hatred. “Well, the Queen did.” Then he muttered, “I’ll fucking kill you.”
“I don’t know.” I lied, pretending not to have heard the threat. This was no time for a debate on the ethics of colonisation, especially as part of me felt that it would be one which I would lose. I kept a wary eye on his hands, one of which was in his pocket. I was concerned that he might have a knife, but otherwise felt unafraid; he was slightly shorter than me, old, and judging by his walk, stiff.
“Captain Cook came.” He said, still glaring at me.
“I don’t know anything about that.” I said, again only in half-truth.
“He came and…” he trailed off. There was a long pause.
“Let us pass now.” I said. My left hand was still by my side, and my right still holding my partner’s, but I loosened my grip in case I needed it. I deeply did not want to push or punch an elderly man, but his tone, and his hidden hand, made me nervous.
“Do you want to die? Do you and your wife want to die?” He asked me, without the feeling of a man about to kill someone.
“No. Let us past.” I said, choosing not to correct him.
“You fucking English. Just because I am Aborigine – ”
“Don’t be racist. I am not racist. I don’t judge you.”
For several seconds we stood there, staring at each other. He opened his mouth again as if to speak, but did not know what to say. Then a man’s voice called out from our left, towards the road.
“Hey! Leave them alone!”
The three of us turned to see a young man, about my age, standing some metres away and looking at us. He had not shouted, but his tone was firm, and the homeless man stepped to look at him. They stared at each other for a few seconds, and my partner and I took our opportunity to slip past him and walk away. We walked quickly, not looking back, and heard the old man grumbling and calling unintelligibly afterwards.
We were silent for a minute, and then Anne Samia asked me quietly,
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I said, and realised that I was; I felt totally calm, and was not chattering through adrenaline, as I might have expected. “Are you?”
“Yeah.”
We walked home, and I reflected quietly on what the old man had said. I knew what he was; a man whose life was in a terrible place, drinking quietly on street corners while rich, privileged, white people socialised around him, on land that he had been raised to consider his own. He was bitter, racist and blaming those around him for his lot. But I felt guilty: guilty because I knew that he had suffered difficulty and a toughness of situation that I could not comprehend; guilty because although I had been equipped with the tools to live in a Western country, he, perhaps, had not; guilty because I knew all too well my own prejudices, prejudices that made me too mean even to help an old man with his sleeping bag when he asked me. Was he innocently asking my help because he could not open it? I shall never know, and thereby, perhaps, my own prejudice shall be engrained further. Who was I to judge how he had dealt with what he had been given, I, who had been given it all, I, who had never had to struggle against prejudice, I, who knew nothing of this man’s life, or history?
Later that same evening, I walked to the train station with Anne Samia. As we waited at the crossing, I heard an Australian voice behind me,
“Vice Captain Pete.” It stated, and I turned, knowing that that was printed on the back of my Southampton Ultimate Frisbee club polo shirt. Two tall, middle-aged men with goatee beards, cheerful guts and broad smiles stood there, swaying slightly with jolly intoxication. Doubtless they had been for celebratory drinks after the local AFL team, Port Adelaide, smashed Carlton by 95 points earlier that evening at the stadium across the river. I smiled back at them.
“That’s me!” I said.
“What are you Vice Captain of, Pete?” the first man asked.
“It’s from a sports team back in – ”
“Ah, look, it says.” Interrupted the second, grabbing at the badge on my chest and leaning in to read it. “Southampton! What is that, like, rugby?”
“Er, no, actually.” I said, wishing, not for the first time, that my sport of choice was less ridiculously named. “I play ultimate Frisbee.”
“Ultimate Frisbee?!” said the first man. “Is that like – oh shit, we’d better cross or we’ll get run over – is that with dogs?”
I laughed as we started crossing the road, and started the spiel that is familiar to most ultimate players.
“No, it’s actually a seven-a-side team sport. You – ”
“Oh, is it like, um, Frisbee disc? Like Frisbee golf?” I was smiling. He quickly added, “I’m not being offensive, mate, I just don’t know. What is it?”
“Er. No, that’s a solo sport I think, like golf. Ultimate is a team sport.”
We stopped on the other side of the road, and proceeded to have an enthusiastic conversation about the nature of ultimate frisbee. Rarely have I had such a happy and well-meaning conversation with a pair of total strangers. Eventually, however, we had to leave, and told them that we had a train to catch.
“Ahh, no worries, mate!” They both said. We shook hands.
“You already know I’m Pete,” I said, “But I don’t know your names.”
“We’re very mysterious men, Pete,” Grinned the second man. “You won’t know any more about us!”
“Goodnight!” Said the first, and they wandered off happily.
‘You know what?’ I thought to myself as they left, ‘This Australia place is alright.’
We entered the railway station, beaming.