One Hundred Years of Dirt by Rick Morton

Author:Rick Morton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522873160
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

CHAPTER 7

SINGAPORE SLING

It is rare for a person to become interested in politics until it personally affects them. Which is how, at the age of eleven, I became intensely concerned with the waterfront dispute that had floored the nation. The battle between the stevedoring Patrick Corporation and the Maritime Union of Australia, which ground on for months, was over worker rights and business productivity. But it came to visit me, all the same, because it made the VHS copy of The Lost World: Jurassic Park I’d ordered very late.

Chris Corrigan had formed Patrick Corporation with a mate, and it was his attempt to sack the unionised workforce in April 1998 by sending guards with Alsatians onto the wharves that triggered the war and the delay in my receiving the noted Hollywood sequel. Less than a decade later I would end up living at university with Corrigan’s son, Joe, and realise I was still very mad about the whole ordeal. Soon enough, though, my friendship with Joe would leave me on the precipice of losing my first job as a journalist on account of an international dash to attend a hanging.

Some people go to the tennis, if the mood takes them, while worse people might turn up at the polo, an event for which there is no known purpose. The worst people, however, will pop up at another country’s capital punishment extravaganza and take notes.

Joe Corrigan was weird. When I met him, his father had recently bought Virgin Blue (as it was then called) from Richard Branson and Joe’s long-time fascination with aviation had reached fever pitch. He had rescued two sets of Qantas business-class seats and placed them in our living room. The electronics worked—you could recline fully, pull up the monitor from the armrest and watch television on it. He insisted we eat dinner on our tray tables, using crockery and cutlery he’d taken from various first-class lounges around the world.

Every day was like taking a business-class flight, which might have been OK if we’d actually gone somewhere. We never did, of course. Joe would just watch me and our other flatmate—his girl-friend—intensely while we ate to make sure we were appropriately enthusiastic about the seats. In my more desperate moments I could see him kidnapping some tourists and forcing them to cross-check and arm doors. The whole point of business class, I figured, was to re-create the experience of your living room while flying through the air. Attempting to re-create the re-creation of the experience of your living room while in your actual living room, on the ground, just seemed cruel. It was like going to Las Vegas to see the Eiffel Tower or giving your daughter an otter on stilts when she asked for a pony.

Things escalated when Joe decided to build a replica of a 747 cockpit in our spare room using actual aircraft parts he’d scavenged from mates at airlines. He installed a battery of computer monitors in the room, blackened by dark curtains, and ran his flight simulator on them.

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