Walking Through Wills

Wednesday, 11 December 2002

I've just been up to Sydney Road to buy a new pair of shoes. The shoe store is one of those factory-direct discount places (actually like a lot discount clothing outlets it's more shipping-container-direct but it's still cheap) in a strip of Sydney Road that also has (in no particular order):

One of those oriental rug shops;

A lebanese supermarket;

A halal butcher;

A vietnamese owned discount cigarette store;

A sandwich bar run by a Filipina called Lily;

A corner milk bar full of strange islamic groceries from Turkey;

A Salvation Army Red Shield store;

A Pakistani pharmacist next door to an Egyptian doctor.

I'm not sure I got all the ethnicities right, but in any case, I think you get the picture. The little corner of the Federal Electorate of Wills where I live isn't exactly John Howard's mainstream Australia. No part of Wills is. Mainstream Australia did come visiting once, shortly after Bob Hawke decided that giving photo opportunities in a white towelling bathrobe was more suited to his dignity as Labor's new elder statesman than sitting on the Keating back bench. That triggered the Wills bye-election, which brought mainstream Australia here for a short term visit in the person of a Pauline Hanson's One Nation candidate who did a lot of door-knocking and leafleting, trying to convince the Greeks, Turks, Vietnamese, Chinese, Lebanese and assorted Anglo race-traitors like myself who infest this neck of the bricks and bluestone cobbles that the basic problem with Australia is too many bloody immigrants. Some might call this political courage; I call it stupidity.

Going the other way down Sydney Road from my street, there's plenty of evidence of the infiltration of that dangerous Islamic fundamentalism stuff into Australian society too, like the Arabic bookstore with The Evolution Myth prominently displayed in the window. I must be desensitised to it: I can't see the difference between a fundamentalist Islam that rejects the theory of evolution and a fundamentalist Christianity that rejects the theory of evolution. And along with it, the other precious cultural heritage of secular humanist society, like Danielle Steele novels, heavy metal music and gay liberation. Despite my best efforts, I still haven't managed to spot the AK-47s and other weapons of small-scale personal destruction hidden under the voluminous chadors you see on some of the women who shop in Sydney Road. It's hard enough working out where they keep the tits.