Fort Lismore's Besieged

Cafe Locked Out, stories from The Road

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

On the crest of a hill in Lismore, in a fort that resembles a unit in a retirement village, she has a war room set up in her living room.

Brian met us up in Lismore.

Three TVs. Only one can access Sky News, for some reason, and on the other two, she watches her favorite podcasters.

In the corner, an antique button maker that makes large buttons waits to work. She brought us a small container full of these buttons, wrapped in the latest edition of The Light Newspaper.

And she gave them to us like she was reloading our weapons.

Pam in the Bus and the bus in disarray after three days of rain

There are corflute boards plastered with dozens of memes she has printed out, leaning against the walls, like banners for an army.

“We’re at war,” she says.

And there’s an energy to her that belongs in a twenty-year-old’s body, one with ADHD.

“I’m hoping to squeeze five more years out of my body. I want to see what happens,” she says.

On the bus, after she’s left her plastic tub of badges on the stovetop, she sits on our camp fridge—a powered esky—and tells us how the local groups have been shrinking in numbers.

“I used to go to this one group, just to socialize with like-minded people, you know? But now I just do my own thing.”

I feel that she wants us to take the badges to the front lines of whatever is happening. But the front line has engulfed us.

The marches are long gone. The petitions appear now and again, but rarely. And the few court cases that are active are either being thrown out or drawn out so far that most of us have forgotten about them.

On the weekend, you can see the front line when the planters plant the Forest of the Fallen, but otherwise, the front line now reaches inside her unit and, as she watches her TVs, it tries to pry her stubborn fingers from the ideals she’s clutching onto.

Disillusionment is like lubricant of belief systems.

And every time one of us gives in to the pressure of those inner demons, asking, existentially, “Why are we still bothering? No one cares,” and then heads back to try and hide in the world that threw them out, another light goes out.

But her light is strong.

“They all think I’m an idiot,” she says, referring to the other old people living in the retirement village and there’s a deep, defiant smile in her bright eyes as she tells me this.

And while I can’t see the source, I can feel that deep inside her, a furnace is powering this smile.

---

It’s gently raining in central Lismore when, sitting in the park Kelli and I met in, we are joined by a nurse who has just been to Mass, in one of these new churches that celebrate together in halls.

She tells us that most of the flock aren’t on our side, before thanking us for helping her remain sane.

Then she says, “I know this is a spiritual war.”

There is no doubt when most people tell us this. It’s a knowing.

She then lets us know that she took two—to keep her job.

“After the second one, my arm’s always hurt. Even now. To be honest, I think all these aches and pains I’ve been experiencing are caused by the jab.”

After taking the second jab, she felt like someone was standing on her chest.

“I spent four days trying to sleep sitting up because I couldn’t lie down. It hurt too much. I told my doctor, but he told me I was just suffering from anxiety. I’m a nurse. I know what anxiety is.”

She took it because she’s a single, mature woman who didn’t want to be a financial burden to her grown children and their families.

“But I’m not taking anymore. I told them that. Sack me if you want, but I’m not.”

Luckily, they kept extending the mandate for the third booster by sixty days.

Three times, she faced down the deadline before they finally dropped it.

“I’m safe now,” she says.

And I realize the two jabs inside her, are now her negotiating cards. And she plays them well.

But there is a quietness to her. Something she can’t fix or remove unless, I feel, she uses the weapon so many of us have sheathed.

Anger.

This woman has brought three new Australians into the world. She has cared for us when we needed her too, paid her taxes, and in return, we violated her—held a gun to the temple of her job, which gave her purpose, which gave her identity, her independence.

Then, as the time ran down to the deadline, we cocked the trigger and, in ScoMo’s voice, told her, “It’s a choice. No one’s being forced.”

Then, to make sure she knew she was powerless, her doctor—the one person in society whose job it was to tell us the truth—dismissed her reaction pains, as anxiety.

Or, in other words, grow a pair, you silly old woman.

The tragic part?

When she was first taking it, because she was a nurse, they let her read the documentation that came with the jabs.

“It was all there,” she said. “The list of possible side effects. Myocarditis, pericarditis, and the rest.”

And then she sighed.

Was it the same sigh she released when after reading the list, she put the sheet down, rolled up her sleeve, and prayed to God to protect her?

God, who she was just paying homage to.

---

Before leaving Lismore, Kelli found a place selling food, and another woman came up to the bus.

She was a quantum healer, she told me.

She didn’t know how she did it or even how to properly explain it.

“I can sense the person I’m trying to heal. It’s like their souls are up there, somewhere, and I can feel their blockages and their damage. And then I try to heal them.”

“There is so much damage here,” she says, shaking her head and glaring off at the cars passing.

She’s in the bus now, in the passenger seat, because it’s raining again.

“I’ve been working on this storm too,” she says. “Trying to lessen its power. But it’s hard. It’s very hard. But I’m not alone. Around the planet, there are thousands like me. My husband doesn’t get it. He took it. And he thinks I’m nuts. That’s because he doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. What is actually here. And it’s here. It’s everywhere. And it’s evil.”

“We’re a minority,” I say.

“We are,” she nods, as the water drips down our windscreen.

“They sacked me,” she says.

“Because you wouldn’t take it?”

“Yep.”

“What did you do?”

“I was a disability carer. Been one for years. But I’m working again now. They had no choice. Desperate, see.” And she smiles.

Sign on the side of the Highway near Port Macquarie.

---

Further down the road, we are flagged down by a car.

He’s an accountant who used to work for the banks.

“I worked from home. I never went into the office. But they still sacked me,” he laughs.

Now he works for some other company. Less money. But work.

He has a good-sized dog with him, full of life. And he adores it.

“We’re in so much trouble,” he says. “The hedge funds—they’re reaching a point where they won’t have the money to pay us. To many old people. Same with the NDIS. They’re going to run out of money too. Probably why they’ve been trying to thin the herd.”

“You see they voted Labor back in WA?” I ask. “Basically, by doing so, they’re exonerating them for what they’ve done, and given them the OK to do more. Like Germans voting for the Nazi Party.”

“They’re like my mum,” he says. “She just watches TV. And that’s all she knows. She knows nothing about what Trump is doing. I tried to set X up on her phone, just so she can have some balance. But she’d didn’t want it. She trusts them.”

“It’s interesting,” I say. “I hear so many claiming that Trump and his team will liberate us, but he can’t, because our freedoms where never taken, we handed them over. It would be like sulking kids asking Trump to tell our Government to give us the Christmas presents, that we gave then, back. No, we need to do this. We need to liberate ourselves, if for no other reason than for our own dignity.”

For a moment, we are quiet. I think we are both turning this over in our heads and hearts as the sky gently weeps.

“So,” I say. “You had a good job, and yet you chose to walk away.”

“Yeah.”

“So, you valued something greater than money?”

He nods again. But there is no glorious victory in his tone or expression.

“Do you think that’s what they are really after?” I ask. “That one thing that you are still refusing to give up?”

He nods. But he isn’t laughing anymore.

“I notice you have a crucifix on your wrist band.”

“Yep,’ he says, without having to look at it.

It’s a wooden cross, polished and sat upon a black leather wrist band that is well cared for.

“I’m a Christian,” he says, and looks directly at me as he tells me this, like he was drawing a line in the sand.