Seeing things

Half my lifetime ago, and a quarter of the world away, I started my first job in a tiny rural town on the edge of the Australian desert. At night I could jog 10 minutes over the crest of a hill and see no artificial lights, only stars. There were no public busses, no parks, no traffic lights, no supermarkets, one policeman, one doctor, one store, two pubs and a school of 100 students where I taught.

Every other weekend I drove 10 hours round-trip to visit the girlfriend I had left still studying in the city. The first hour of the drive was along a single-lane bitumen road that, in line with popular practice, I would travel at 120 kilometres an hour slowing to 100 to put my left wheels in the gravel if I met a car coming the other way. I might pass 4 or 5 cars before I hit the T intersection with the main highway and could relax onto the two-lane road that would carry me down to the city.

Half way along this first stretch of road was a small shop with a section of concreted footpath and a wooden bench. I assume the building was a shop because it sat so close to the road but it no longer served any commercial function. A section of wire fence on one side enclosed the dry weeds of what once was a garden.

As I whizzed by I would see two old men sitting on the bench. All I’d get was a snapshot glimpse of two hat-clad men sitting in the shade looking out across the road. I never stopped. They sat watching and I drove by.

What strikes me most, in retrospect, is the speed of it all. In a place of such stark beauty and timelessness, I passed, regularly, meters from these two men and knew nothing of them. Perhaps they knew that I was the young teacher - one of a regular cycle of young teachers who would stay a few years before moving on. Perhaps they didn’t notice me at all and just waited for the dust to clear and their view of the wheat paddocks to re-emerge.

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In Singapore where cars are so expensive, I ride a bike. In the park each morning I pass dozens of old men and women out for their morning exercise. One man always waves and says “good morning” as I ride by. No dust here. The sky is much closer and regularly washes everything clean. Strange, though, that in such a fast-paced city I find myself travelling so much more slowly.

The younger me never took the time to wonder at what those two old men might be seeing as they looked into their memories.