The Cuckoo’s Nest Blues

Cafe Locked Out

Mildura to Deniliquin

She finally got her job back in the school after using up all her long-service leave that she’d been saving for the holiday of a lifetime. Instead, she lived like she was on rations, waiting for the mandates to drop so she could go back to work.

Now, in the staff room, she eats alone, under the occasional jibes from other teachers, including her extremely fit, early-fifties principal—who, ironically, had a heart attack.

After another teacher joined us, she told me how they never have full attendance anymore. Either the kids are sick, or the teachers are sick—or both.

But then, this is a very dangerous place to live, with the Murray River ebbing through the town like a brown artery, supporting a spread of endless farms, most of them growing food and wine. The sun nurtures the earth with an abundance of vitamin D, which, apparently, we are all deficient in.

Her own grown children have their issues, and her son-in-law, who has turbo cancer, still refers to her as an idiot.

I feel like I’m Jack Nicholson, in the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Later that day, a farmer arrived at the place where we were staying. He had the same baffled tone so many of us have. One of his lifelong friends—whom he had pleaded with not to take the jabs—succumbed to fear and jabbed himself, along with his entire family.

Recently, this friend reached out to the farmer, pleading with him to look after his children if anything should happen to him or his wife.

When I mentioned this story to others in the town, a few told me they’d been asked to do the same.

Oil floats on water, and this is a metaphor for our country now. The upper echelons are still singing the praises of the jabs, the mRNA factories, and how they’re "helping families" in these harder economic times. Meanwhile, underneath, the currents are stirring, as questions that have haunted the troubled eyes of Australians for years begin to take shape.

One man, who managed a car wash, wanted to hear my thoughts, then shared his.

He’d taken it to keep his job but was now convinced it was just a money grab, with all the politicians in on it.

To him, the country has been needle-raped and pillaged by overseas corporations working in league with the blessing of our government. And the people don’t want to talk about it—like the altar boys who kept their sexual abuse secret, drowning their pain in drugs, rage, and alcohol until they either took their own lives or spoke out.

The last man I met told me his story. A farmer, he’d had a great marriage and a load of kids. While COVID didn’t kill any of them, it destroyed his family all the same. His wife was a believer and didn’t want to lose all her friends, as he had, by refusing to conform.

Now he’s trying to establish a new life while grieving for what he’s lost—his family, and friends who ostracized him but are now falling sick. They struggle with heart issues or are diagnosed with turbo cancers.

And it’s Monday, and we’ve just pulled into another town.

The carnage is being handled as neatly as the churches handled the sex scandals: with the help of loyal parishioners who fill the Sunday pews, then drop to their knees before the man on the cross who died for their sins, and tell him, through combined prayer, we believe.

Michael Gray Griffith

Cafe Locked Out

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