Coming Home

Cafe Locked Out, Michael

The above song is called The Lucky Country.

COMING HOME

It was late, and I was working in a nursing home. We had just finished our rounds, which means we went bed to bed, seeing if people needed to go to the toilet, or cleaning them up if they had been, and turning the most fragile over. Most of those here had dementia, and once we were finished, I remember looking down the sub-lit hall, with its open doors, and all I could hear was old people calling out to return to their warmest home, and the word they used for this home was "mother." The hall was populated with the voices of the dying calling for the person who welcomed the majority of them into the world; their mum.

Once, the majority of us took it for granted that our mother would always be known as home. Even if the person you had grown into, the one who didn’t match the blueprint she had for you, had seen her distance herself, somewhat, from you, still, if she was alive, she was base camp one... home.

Then Covid came. For those who took the juice, and weren’t that affected, little changed, maybe. For those who were injured, lots changed. But for those who chose not to take it, an odyssey was waiting for them. This included being tossed out of families, being told they could visit their mother, or mothers being told they were not allowed to visit their grandchildren.

Covid was so terrifying it saw us betray what we once believed was sanctified. I know of mothers now who are still ostracized from their children. But then this was a remarkable time, full of firsts.

I heard of a family who migrated to Russia because, for their children, they were seeking the freedom of their youth. They couldn’t even speak Russian, though their plan was to be English teachers.

I interviewed one family of three; the father was a nurse, and they were selling their house to buy a caravan because they knew that, with a job, they would no longer be able to afford the mortgage. The second time I interviewed them, the couple was living in a layby near the Gold Coast. Their caravan was gone—I can’t recall why—but they were now living in their car, alone. Their beloved son had been removed.

Another lady had been an inoculating nurse who had left her job when she was forced to take it. When I met her, she was working on an avocado farm and reading the death notices daily, hoping she would not read the name of anyone she had vaccinated. And her eyes were rimmed when she told me this.

I recall a retired journalist, sitting on a bench overlooking Perth, in tears too, as he wondered what had happened to his profession. He ended up being a prominent speaker at many gatherings and marches.

But it wasn’t all gloom. Other people, who had seen their marriages fall apart, had met new lovers, and to date, these relationships were working. Dr. William Bay had already remarried. Another man had purchased an organic fruit and vegetable store, and it was growing so fast he was already employing people.

The most remarkable fact was that out of all the unvaccinated people I’d interviewed, not one regretted not taking the vaccine. No matter how bad their current situation was, there was no one who regretted abstaining.

I did see one man who was severely injured by the jab, a successful musician, who had set up his own podcast, viciously attacking big pharma, then one day suddenly posted an apology to them. He said he had been taking illicit drugs at the time of being vaccinated, and they must have been the cause. He even congratulated Big Pharma on their work and empathy. Perhaps he believed it, or perhaps he was clear he had done it to try to reestablish his music career. I don’t know if he succeeded at that.

I remember reading his sickly sweet, submissive retraction, and all I could see was Winston Smith in the café, in the last chapter of Nineteen Eighty-Four. He was in a café with other ousted dissidents, and on the screen above him, he was confessing his crimes.

But as the years progressed, other changes started to occur. The various groups around the country began shrinking as many people tried to return to their lives or began focusing on building new ones.

Sometimes at big events, you’d see strangers who were wearing the old protest T-shirts, and it would be joyous to see them. Asking, do you remember this? Do you remember that?

But then there were deeper divisions, the causes of which few knew. Some people blamed egos, and perhaps they were right. Others blamed it on the fact that we were black sheep and black sheep don’t do herds. Others questioned whether the leaderless movement had been infiltrated by people paid to divide us.

Ironically, this quality might have been what had protected us from the propaganda that saw the powers that be, vaccinate the majority of the world.

The more prominent anyone in the movement grew, the more they became like an unvaccinated Geiger counter. Hoodie and Topher are great examples. Take them to any public arena and if there is any unvaccinated there, they will recognize them.

This is a truth. In our dispersed communities, a few of us may be well known, but in the greater community, we are unknown.

In Adelaide, I did a speech before seven hundred and fifty people. I was actually welcomed to the stage with a long-standing ovation, which was overwhelming. But the next day, I travelled to Adelaide airport, then flew to Sydney airport. That day I passed through throngs of people, and nothing. I was just another face lost in a crowd. Which meant that the majority of my fellow countrymen passing by had all taken it. All of them.

There were moments, especially in the major shopping centers, where the crowds race around you like rushing water, that you realize just how successful the initial rollout had been.

There was no escaping it: we, the unvaccinated, were a minority. Just exactly what our numbers were, I’m not sure anyone will ever know, for those with the power and means to find out will never do the research.

Now, of course, the Tribe had also grown in number due to the vaccine injured, who had arguably been shunned worse by the greater mob than we had been.

Whatever our numbers were—fifteen to twenty percent of the population, who knows—all we knew was that after five years, the light of great EPIC gathering, was dimming.

Even if you collated all the people who watched the shows our community produced, you wouldn’t find the crowds that had populated EPIC.

And this is a tragedy to me, for in my soul’s rearview mirror, EPIC was still glowing. And if I pause, I can hear the voices of children laughing, and people cheering as the newcomers drove into camp, their arms extended out of their car windows, shaking hands and high-fiving. I can still see the flags unfurling, some red, some blue, and many of them upside down, and people on phones walking around capturing everything, or at least everything a phone could immortalize. The actual feeling of relief and wonder and pure joy we all experienced was beyond technology to record.

The fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, claimed they just had to come was what made the event sacred. Often, they looked baffled when they said it, like the sensation was new to them. I know it was new to me.

I thought, at the time, this was the beginning of the end of the government’s overreach. I believed that even though they used weapons on us. And I have documented several cases of people who were injured by some weapon. Burnt under their clothes, or just down one side of their face. People who were suddenly afflicted with such overwhelming fatigue, they had to pull over on the side of the road and wait. Some of these people, when they did make it home, were placed on iodine treatment, as their doctors claimed they were suffering from radiation poisoning.

Then there were the court cases, and the various groups, all over the country, that flourished and faded, and this goes for the podcasts too. And of course, the hardest lesson of all to learn, was that losing a bond with someone you were close to in this new tribe, hurt harder than losing someone from the original herd that had cut us loose.

But now, after all these journeys, when it comes to the Covid years, the war appears to be over.

Recently, all the MSN platforms returned to full-on fear porn mode and did a full-frontal attack on the entire country, pushing the boosters yet again because a new, more virulent strain was here.

But the attack floundered. It buckled at the knees, not because of us, but because of the vaccinated people. Check the comments of any of those posts, and the comments are ninety-nine percent ridicule and spite, as the once-onboard turn against those who arguably betrayed them.

And while we can take credit for some of this, I think our greatest ally, sadly, was the true undisclosed amount of vaccine injuries people suffered or knew someone who had.

A truth too big for a social media platform to conceal.

George Kesic, acting on a suggestion from Rosemary Marshall, managed to get on Chris Smith on Radio 2SM, a popular talk-back radio, and to everyone’s surprise, Chris Smith apologized for initially pushing the vaccine, and to date he hasn’t been sacked for doing so, even though this two-minute section of his show is going viral around the world.

Then remarkably, the Government has come out and stated that people under eighteen shouldn’t take the jab as the risk outweighs the reward.

All of this is why this week, starting Sunday, June 1, 2025, should be seen as Victory.

But if this is victory, I doubt there will be any shrines built to honor those who resisted, or medals, or even an acknowledgement.

I doubt that even if those family and friends, who a few years back, obediently cut you out of their lives, invite you back, that you will ever truly get home. That home is compromised.

Many who have been allowed back tell me how hard it is, because you can’t talk about anything.

But we have a new home. Each other. This organic family of light, which formed when we found each other in the marches, the gatherings, the online groups, and the zooms. This is your home.

Which is why I find these persistent stories of division so troubling.

What’s the point of it, for there is no other tribe out there waiting to adopt our orphans. Each other is all we had then, and questionably all we have now. And if some other questionable event does come along, and I know many of us believe that it will, then all we will have then could be each other, too.

So surely that makes strategic sense to remain in each other’s lives, respectfully.

Out here, now, surrounded by those who have long since disavowed themselves publicly from all that happened in those remarkable Covid years, you can feel like a soldier returning from a war to a community who is unaware that a war was even waged.

They won’t be able to, or more likely, won’t want to see or hear about your war stories or scars. And if you persist in sharing these stories, they’ll probably categorize you as crazy.

No, the only ones who’ll listen are the ones who can or want to hear, and that’s each other. Or should be.

Just think back to the start. To those days when around you nearly everyone believed the narrative, that to you didn’t make any sense.

Can you imagine how hard that time would have been if you hadn’t found each other?

Or taking that a step further, how would all of us have reached here if we hadn’t discovered each other? If we hadn’t created this Tribe?

Perhaps, as the tide of Covid is pulled back out to sea, with all other inconsequential waves, we should spend some time reflecting, searching our soul’s rearview mirrors, for those moments where as one, we glowed.

For to me, somehow finding a way to once again reach that radiance, would be the equivalent of ‘Coming Home’.

Would you be interested in a novel of these collated essays, if so please contact John Stapleton who will soon publish them.

These are his details:

John Stapleton
Commissioning Editor
A Sense of Place Publishing

Emails:

john.stapleton@gmail.com
asenseofplacepublishing@gmail.com
Skype: mr.john.stapleton

Websites:

http://asenseofplacemagazine.com/

https://johnstapletonjournalism.com/

www.asenseofplacepublishing.com