Sneaky Little Revolutions by Charmian Clift

Author:Charmian Clift
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

A few weeks ago I wrote in this column my impressions as a migrant three years settled (or unsettled?) in this my country. I said Australia seemed to me to be an untroubled place. I said there was little anger here. I said that most people appeared to be content to leave decisions to Big Daddy. I said other things too of a critical kind, and thought I might be sticking my neck out too far.

I thought that I might get a spate of letters on the old theme of ‘Well if you don’t like it why don’t you go back to where you came from?’

In fact I did get a spate of letters, but not one of them was on that theme at all. Actually, my mail has been so overwhelming and so positive that it is evident that there are a great many citizens who are both angry and troubled, and this concern is spread through a more varied strata of society than I had ever supposed. There are a lot of people who are finding that a steady diet of lotus becomes sickly and dissatisfying. Even distasteful. There are other people who haven’t managed yet to get more than a nibble at the delectable bud, and would like to know why.

There are people who advocate a return to old spartan simplicities to get ourselves toughened up again. There are people raging to smash what I can only call The Indifference Barrier and push on with creeds, policies and convictions that range from mysticism and meditation to active political participation. There are puzzled people who feel guilty but don’t quite know why. There are poets who accuse. There are Uncle Tobys charging away like knights-errant on their favourite hobbyhorses – Diet, Exercise, Youth, Age, Finance, Women’s Rights, Aboriginal Rights, Pensions, Unmarried Mothers, Delinquent Girls, Education, Marriage, Foreign Capital, Homosexuality, The Brain Drain, Development of the North, Litter, Immigration, Urban Pollution, Defence, Censorship, Retarded Children, Slum Clearance, Noise, Conscription, Housing, Harold Holt, Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairns, and Gordon Barton. And of course The Elizabethan Trust and the Sydney Opera House. Not to mention Her Majesty the Queen.

On my desk at the moment are more tracts, pamphlets, invitations, explanations and exhortations (also more questions) than I have ever had at the one time.

‘There is sweet music here that softer falls than petals from blown roses on the grass …’? Well, there might have been once, but I am delighted, invigorated, and greatly greatly heartened, to hear some discordant notes in the Lotus Eaters’ Song.

I always enjoy my mail, even if I can’t always answer all of it. I suppose all that any writer asks, apart from a labourer’s wage, is the knowledge that he is in communication with responsive people. In the time that I have been writing this column I have been aware that there are a vast number of intelligent, responsive women, with their antennae alert and questing. Concerned women. Women who appear to be more interested in ideas than in gossip.

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