I’ve been trying to make sense of the events in Sydney all day, and figure out how it interpellates me, affectively. I think this is how.

On the Archive, A. talks about camping at Lakes Entrance last year. On the first day of the trip, she punctured her foot on a fence buried in the sand. It was really intense, a lot of blood, a lot of pain, and a stupidly long walk back to the campsite and phone. This was when we didn’t have a car, hence the long walk through the dunes, the beach carpark, down the road and back to the camping-ground.

Of all the tourists, beach-goers, local fisherpeople and surfers that passed us, no-one stopped to help. Thre were individuals, families and carloads. To a person, they all looked, looked away, and walked on by. I remember thinking that maybe we looked particularly ‘weird’ or ‘out of it’, or maybe that other visual differences were preventing aid. (Two ambiguously gendered bodies with their arms around each other, one obviously close to fainintg, are are more confronting and difficult than one.) But I don’t think that’s what was happening. Those people looked at our shabby clothes, and the colour of A’s skin, and decided we were up to no good. They made a decision based, maybe, on the high population of Kooris around Lakes, given the presence of the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust (an ex-mission), and their purported tendency to walk around town sniffing petrol and passing out. They may also have made a decision based on the fact that many Greek, Italian and Arabic families go to Lakes Entrance for beach holidays, and there’s a general local disapproval of such even as the locals reap the benefits of ‘diversity’, ie a cafe with good coffee.
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