Andy in Rockhampton’s Mental Heath Unit
I remember driving back in Charlotte, this little four cylinder truck from a camp site in Canberra. We had already been evicted from Epic, and people were camped all over the capital territory. But rather than letting us be, they sent the police in to these camps, in force, to evict us from there too.
Charlette The Little Truck That Could.
On the way back from one of these evictions, I was stopped by a truck driver named Andy, who was heading back to the camp to collect all the food that had been donated to us, mainly by people in Canberra.
Andy’s wife had brain cancer, and he and his wife claimed that they had been offered nine thousand dollars to help towards the funeral costs, providing they allowed the hospital to state that she had Covid. They refused, and despite it all, she survived.
But here, on the side of the road, this man, standing before his truck, was determined to save our food, and to help evacuate any other refugees from Epic, who didn’t have wheels.
I met Andy again while on the Deplorable’s Trip where he helped us out with fuel.
His business was profitable, and his passion for his country, which he felt was descending into some form of totalitarianism, was inexhaustible.
In the times between meeting him again, Andy pursued Common Law results in the court, to no avail, and other similar ventures as he tried legally to usurp the controlling and silent incoming tide.
Andy and his partner in happier times.
But yesterday I found another Andy.
He has a beard now, and was sitting with me at a table in a mental health hospital in Rockhampton.
He had been here ever since he'd been dragged off of the court steps by several police officers.
His first three days had been spent in a room with a mattress on the floor and two piss bottles made of cardboard, and a cardboard bed pan, filled with a handful of toilet paper.
He had also had his pants ripped off and had been forcibly injected with something that made his tongue swell up.
That was twenty-seven days ago, and he had just been informed that he would be staying for at least another week.
With no history of mental illness, Andy had been diagnosed as delusional. A diagnosis he had only recently been informed about. His delusion? Irrational fears about the Covid Vaccine.
Now his wife has left him, his business is in ruins, and there is a threat that even me writing this could see him transferred to a mental health unit in Brisbane.
When we were in Canberra, a young woman, after screaming at some of us Epic People, had driven her car up into a protester’s bonnet. That woman was charged with a minor traffic offence.
After getting out of the car, she used one of the protesters flags to begin hitting protesters with it.
I wonder where she is now, or if she spent any time in a place like this?
I can’t do anything to help Andy. Even posting this, which he has approved, could see his stay extended.
On the wall behind Andy’s head is a poster that states, “We are entitled to our own beliefs; we must respect those of others.”
That must be a remnant from a Golden Age.
“I still remember you at the gates of Epic,” says Andy. “Interviewing everyone who was driving in as we all cheered.”
I remember that day too, and the following. Was I delusional when I truly felt that I was at the birth, in the crowded delivery room itself, of a new, Golden Age?
Yet for all the Golden energy we created in Canberra, all I meet now, are people who were injured at Canberra, by weapons as yet unspecified, then there’s Paul, who was driving the big black truck. He’s still awaiting his court case. He has been charged with trying to run over police and could face twenty-five years in jail, despite the video evidence of protesters showing these accusations are false. And all of these memories, and realities, and even in Andy’s troubled eyes, I can see the ghost of Steven Harrison, standing in his Grandfather’s Light Horseman’s uniform, on the fields of Parliament House as the crowd breaks out into song.
We are one
But we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We'll share a dream
And sing with one voice
I am, you are, we are Australian.
A point we made clear in the referendum, though it appears that those who seem to have forgotten they serve us, are now ignoring the result, our NO, for it’s clear they believe that they know what’s best for us.
Where we see Gold they see Grey.