Quentin Cockburn caught up with one of his mates and they talked of Australia. 

I ‘ran into’ David at the corner of Smith and Johnston Street.  “Got time for a coffee?’

We all have friends like this.  I call it ‘The Narnia Effect’, where the past five year interval is extinguished, and we return to where we’d let off.  Proof in Einsteins theory of relativity.  Time is warped compressed, truncated, and stretched entirely dependent on your subjective viewpoint.

‘Great idea.’  A brief fifteen minutes to indulge in an acquittal of ‘what we’d done, where we’d been and the where we may be headed’.

David, a New Zealander, has a French wife.  Early in the nineties they left Australia to work in France.  They returned a decade or so later with two daughters, and have since been busy working.  In the fifteen minutes of catching up, we reflected upon why we found work hollow, perfunctory and uninspiring.  Had we become cynical, middle aged, dulled? Or was there something else.

‘When I first arrived in the eighties,’ said David, ‘I loved this country, there was this physical pulse about what people and this society could achieve, a carefree disposition, and a sense of boundless optimism.  It was palpable.  When I returned from France all that had changed’.

‘How’? I asked.

David paused to reflect, ‘The atmosphere of enthusiasm, the exchange of ideas, potential and imagination has been stilled.  I get this feeling that this artifice of business management has killed improvisation, risk taking, and the ‘fun of it.’  He sipped his coffee, and paused, the street-life swirling around us.

‘The fun of it?’

‘When I returned, there were two things missing.  The imagination in the body politic, the enthusiasm, and the sense that we could make ourselves better had gone.  The intangible sense of feeling positive, engaged, and spirited, the soul of the people I meet in work, and the nature of the work itself has become empty.

‘Oh,’ I mused,’the spirit flame had dimmed?’

‘Precisely, it is dead now’.

I wryly remarked, “Gone for ever?’

‘Yes, the spirit of this country is defeatist, insular, second rate, shallow, introspective, risk averse, it is crushed by the fear of change, fear of itself and the diminution of its potential by big business, politicians, and paranoia.  I am ashamed of this country, and we don’t plan on coming back’.

I pictured a twenty first century version of William Lane off to find a new Australia in Paraguay.  ‘Our profession is dulled and run by developers with the principle of the lowest common denominator.  From Governance no leadership.  Thinkers are spurned as irrelevant, our academic institutions stilled.  The only talking comes from the rich and powerful telling us how it’s done, and politicians chirruping their chorus.  We have lost a sense of ourselves, and somewhere we have also lost our laconic easy going equanimity.

Consequently there are only two things left in this country, real estate, and digging holes. Just a hole where a soul had been and a for sale sign proclaiming, out of the hollowness , Australia, we’re open for business’.

And shopping.