I was sitting on a lawn in Sydney’s botanical gardens, trying to fit the whole of the Queen Mary 2 in my camera lens, when the woman in front of me started to take her clothes off.
I first noticed her when I chose my spot on the slopes opposite the wharf where the world’s largest cruise ship was berthed. She was playing her Walkman loudly and calling out to nobody in particular, then leering conspiratorially at fresh air. Not entirely sane, I concluded.
Woolloomooloo, the area of the harbour we overlooked, is known for three things: the naval base at Garden Island; homeless people, drug addicts and sundry down-at-outs that congregate in the streets beyond; and Russell Crowe, who lives in one of the stupendously expensive apartments ton the wharf that extends into the cove. (It was also the site, two weeks ago, of Sydney’s first shark attack in many years: a navy diver has subsequently lost both his right hand and right leg after coming off second best in an encounter with a bull shark.)
The ship, too big to dock at the overseas passenger terminal at Circular Quay, had gathered an audience. When it arrived at 5.30 that morning, many people were already there; by midday the crowds had dissipated somewhat. The Australians were prepared, as always, with crowd control fences in place, orange-jacketed officials directing traffic and special ferry trips. Around me, people sat placidly, eating packed sandwiches and enjoying the view.
After a while boats, even very big boats, get a bit boring. So the extraordinary scene that began to play out right in front of me was not entirely unwelcome.
The woman didn’t take her clothes off right away. Instead, she hitched up her T-shirt and bra top, exposing the drooping triangles of flesh that were her boobs and started flapping them at what — I assume — she imagined was an audience on board the QM2. (She was mistaken; most of the passengers had been carted off in buses into the city, where authorities they’d inject some cash into the local economy.)
At first, I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. I tried not to watch, but she was right in my line of sight to the ship, perched on a nice flat rock that offered a perfect stage. And she seemed to want an audience. So for a while there I sat, torn between not wanting to be complicit in what, according to acceptable standards of behaviour, was her humiliation, and wanting to watch somebody who really and truly did not give a shit about what anybody thought of her.
That was the strange thing though: none of the onlookers said anything. Nobody. There was the odd slack jaw, the occasional smile, but no titters, no pointing. Not even when she suddenly yanked off her top and bra, then her leggings, and her onnerbroek, so that she stood there completely naked.
“Oym aboriginal!” she yelled in a thick Aussie accent. Her voice was deep and rasping, frayed by hard living. She was, I guessed, in her late forties or early fifties. She had an enormous duffel bag with her, which suggested that she carried her life in it, but at the same time she looked clean and well-fed; she didn’t have that grey, haunted look of people who live on the streets.
Her body was fascinating, the folds of flesh reminiscent of wax that had melted over time into strange curved mounds and crevices. A delicate tattoo curled across her back; bands of ink circled the loose flesh on her upper arms, what Barry Humphries described in his memoirs as “bye-byes”.
They jiggled when she waved at the ship.
She sat down to admire the view, while an old man intent on taking a good photo of the boat walked around her, apparently managing to ignore her completely. A tourist — he might have been Spanish — smiled at her antics. But there was a distinctly English air of politeness about. Not what I expected from Australians at all. Granted, there was a stifled gasp, an “Oh no!” when she stood up to moon the ship. But nobody said or did anything.
For fifteen minutes or so the woman sat happily on her rock, looking for all the world as if she had always belonged there, at one with nature and all that. At one point, she did make obscene gestures at a passing ferry crammed to capacity with travelers eager to get a closer look at the ship, grabbing her boobs and flapping them for good measure. God knows what they made of it.
“Fuck you!” she cackled, before mooning the ship again.
Then she put her clothes back on, in the order in which she had removed them: undies, bra, leggings, T-shirt, shoes. All the while she carried on ranting at the Queen Mary 2< ?i>. “Fuck you and your queen. I’m aboriginal! Get off my land!”
A group of Chinese tourists arrived, about eight of them. The rock, with the ship filling the background, was the perfect vantage point on which to stand. So, ignoring the woman, each of them posed in turn. They chatted away in Mandarin while she kept up a monologue of the kind of words that get substituted with sterretjies in the more polite publications. “Fuck you!” she squawked in their general direction. “Fuck you! Get off my fuckin’ land!” I wonder if they understood what she was saying to them; if any word crosses linguistic boundaries, it’s the one she was using loudly and repeatedly.
I happened to look away just then to monitor the progress of an artist who was detailing a painting the ship in oils. When I looked back, the woman was smiling and posing for the Chinese tourists. After they had taken her picture, she yanked down her pants and mooned them. They fled across the grass, laughing.
I sat there, thinking how symbolic this all was, even if it was unintentional. Here was an aboriginal woman ranting at a symbol of the long-dead imperial power that had, for the most part, destroyed the lives of the indigenous inhabitants of Terra Australis.
All the official apologies and interventions in the world can’t change history, can’t change the fact that this is a people that have failed to benefit from life in a country with one of the world’s highest standards of living. A people who would have been better off had Australia never been colonised by the British — or indeed anyone — though who knows how long the depredations of outside world could have been kept at bay. Given the new wave of de facto colonisation we’re seeing in Africa (and, quite possibly in Australia too*), it’s quite poetic that the Chinese tourists appeared, mildly interested, but also indifferent. To them she was part of the scenery, comical at best.
The police showed up eventually. I wondered what took them so long. Two men and a woman, marched up the hill and hauled her to her feet. She went with them quite willingly, her only concern being her bag and her things. I noticed that the female officer who was tasked with carrying them had put on latex gloves when she arrived; perhaps the police often have to deal with substances they’d rather not have to touch.
I don’t know where they took her.
But as I sat there watching all of this, an unemployed immigrant to her land, free to stroll through the gardens to view obscenely extravagant cruise ships and crazy ladies in the middle of the day, I thought I understood something of what she meant. I think, if I were in her position, I’d also be tempted to show the world a middle finger. Perhaps not going naked in public (one of my worst nightmares) but something of the sentiment.
Just because she wasn’t sane doesn’t mean she didn’t have a point.
* A substantial chunk of OzMinerals has just been bought by Chinalco. Some commentators are warning that the buying up of Australian resources by the Chinese state effectively amounts to economic colonisation that will not benefit Australia in the long term.
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