I KNEW A TURKISH MAN WHO owned a coffee shop around the corner from where I used to live. Ten Anzac Days ago I went to his shop for a morning coffee to be greeted by his wicked smile and twinkling eyes. "Good morning Michael," he said, "Happy Anzac Day. This is the special day," he declared with mock formality, "to remember that all invading armies must be thrown back into the sea."I have to say, it was not such a bad way to start the morning.
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A friend of my childhood who lives in Melbourne's western suburbs, where we both grew up, now works among migrants and refugees who have found a new life in this area around Footscray, where so much hope and pain from across the sea have been absorbed into the community over the decades.
He tells me that a delightful aspect of being among so many Africans, Asians and Muslims is the spirited good humour, lively thinking and sincerity that they generate and offer so readily. "They are what the dinkum, working-class Aussies used to be when we were growing up," says my friend. "They keep the spirit alive, they've got the humour; they remind me of what Australians were like before we became so stupid, boring and up ourselves, like the Americans".
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"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before,
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see his banners go!"
This drab, common little hymn, this melodramatic Anglo jihad song was taught to us in the 1950s, and in Sunday school or religious instruction class we were often heard singing it. The volume and gusto we usually displayed came from the intuitive belief that if we sang loudly and vigorously enough we would somehow have the choral momentum to go the distance and get through it quickly - a bit like running fast over hot coals.
To sing it on the back foot might mean that the song would become so feeble as to break down and groan to a halt, leaving us stranded forever in the dull wasteland of its meaningless words.
The lyrics seemed to be more about a rampaging gang of morons than a wandering prophet who espoused radical love.
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When Anzac Day came, we sang a racist song called Recessional about the glory of battle, boastful Gentiles, "lesser breeds without the law" and our rightful domination of their lands. "Lest we forget, lest we forget" we whimpered bleakly as we sat trapped in our hard wooden desks while the teacher prowled with strap ready to belt us if we showed the least sign of traitorous irreverence.
Rudyard Kipling's anthem lingered like mustard gas in the schoolyard where we played "war" and invented new torture techniques for various imaginary nonwhite and non-English speaking undesirables. Perhaps we were expressing some innocent anger at having been mentally and physically bullied in this farcical militarist manner by the state education system in a time when Aborigines weren't allowed to vote and "coloured" people were banned from migrating to Australia.
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Kurt Vonnegut knew something about aerial bombardment and modern warfare through sad experience. His recent death leaves me with a wistful gratitude for his work and an idea that has been useful in understanding what humans are on about.
In the novel Breakfast of Champions, his protagonist, the obscure writer Kilgour Trout, is invited to speak at a remote provincial arts festival in an American town where the citizens generally have a philistine hostility to art and artists. The townsfolk prefer sporting heroes and are particularly proud of a local swimming champion whose father has dedicated much time and effort in training her to be a winner.
In a dim, dreary bar one night, the lonely writer listens as the locals denounce writers and artists and praise the local role model: the father and trainer of the young female swimming champ. Kilgour Trout ponders, then turns to the group and asks, "What sort of a man would turn his daughter into an outboard motor?" The writer is set upon and beaten black and blue. This tale often helps me to understand Australia.
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What we are trying to turn our children into and what we are trying to turn our culture into are big questions.
There are times when the general aspirational model seems like some flimsy, high-revving, high-maintenance, overheated motor to keep us skimming over the surface - yet unsustainable and forever breaking down.
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And Anzac Day has been turned into what? Somewhere buried underneath the new carpark at Anzac Cove is an ordinary human heart. But all this spiritual inflation and emotional conscription - the modern media event, the manipulation for political advantage - they've put a big thumping hoon outboard motor on the back of a tragedy.
Anzac Day, it seems, must now be done with bluster, hoopla and media hypnotism. Like the landing and the campaign itself, there is something appalling about this in the eyes of many Australians new and old - some disgraceful misuse of humanity by the wielders of political and economic power.
On Anzac Day, coffee and jokes with a Turk might be the most meaningful and fair dinkum dawn service you could possibly have.
(The photos, while reminiscent of the "curly world" of Leunig's cartoons, are mine, both of the same spiky branch of a tall tree we saw at the Botanical Gardens in Benalla.)
