When I was little, I tried to be a python. Dad told me that growing up farming chickens, their eggs were often eaten by sneaky pythons. Dad also told me that pythons swallowed their food whole. I wondered what that was like. So one morning, unsupervised at breakfast time, I stuffed the hard boiled egg (peeled) in front of me into my mouth whole. It was quite a feat. Little me had a little jaw that was now jammed open in a particularly unnatural position. I sat there stupidly, with an egg bulging out of my mouth, not knowing what to do.

These days, curiosity still leads me to make many unwise decisions in the name of experiential learning. This year, I signed up for a casual shift working at a divisional office of the Australian Electoral Commission on the night of our federal (national) election. I was one of the oldest people there, surrounded by university students who actually needed the extra income. I thought I’d be counting votes. Instead, the boss there assigned me the task of being on the receiving end of the official handover of ballot boxes from peripheral polling centres back to the division, making sure that all the seals and labels were in the right place and untampered. It was quite a physical job. The Senate paper boxes were the heaviest, and cumbersome in their shape. And so I experienced the literal weight of democracy. By 2am, I was exhausted and went home, without really having a chance to follow along with the vote tally like I normally would have on election night.

But now that the whole election circus is over for another 3 years, let’s talk about something else. I’ve been ranting about the fact that the media are still continuing with some of their dissections of the outcome when everyone else has already tuned out, so let me not be a hypocrite. As promised last month, I’ll talk to you about a special place I visited during the election lead-up period. It was the real reason why I passed through Cronulla.

I first visited the pebbly and thoroughly uninspiring Silver Beach (with a view of the shipping containers of the main Sydney cargo terminal across the bay) in Kurnell (Gweagal land), about 5 years ago. Obviously, you don’t come here for the scenery. This is where James Cook made his first landing on present-day Australian soil, in 1770. And so began the colonial invasion. The last time I was here, there was a huge obelisk on land, and a small plaque among the half-submerged rocks at the shore that commemorated this occasion. And also, engraved onto one of the paving rocks, the words “Warra warra wai [go away]”, believed to be the first words ever spoken between the two groups. Except they probably didn’t mean “go away”. It was just an assumption based on body language, given that they looked somewhat angry, with spears raised and all. In recent years, some of the local Aboriginal leaders have come forward to give their interpretation of those words, based on actual linguistic knowledge. Their theory is that the words either mean, “You’re all dead”, more as a warning to their own people, or “They’re all dead”, based on their initial belief that the strangers from the ship were actually the ghosts of the dead. Musket shots were fired. The Gweagal Shield, used by the Aboriginal people during this encounter, was taken back to England, and remains in the British Museum to this day, despite many requests to have it returned.

This time around, there’s a new addition in the water. The Eyes of the Land and the Sea statue is a magnificent sight rising from the shallows. To some, it looks like the ribs of a whale, to others, the ribs of a ship. And that was precisely the intention of Indigenous artist Alison Page and her collaborator, Nik Lachacjzak. Hopefully, the sculpture invites us to view the same event in history through different perspectives, and to see that different perspectives can coexist. The statue was installed in 2020, to mark the 250th anniversary of the landing. I admire the magnanimous willingness to consider all kinds of narratives and meanings. I would have been a little more angry. That’s probably why I’m not allowed any important public-facing jobs.

When you step out of the Kamay Botany Bay National Park, where all these symbolic structures are located, you can’t help but feel that the wider world is a little bit less inclusive. Well at least for me, as a non-white person. One of the first things that you notice is that several of the houses on the neighbouring streets have large Australian flags flying in their front yards. To those who are not familiar with the subtleties of nonverbal communication in Australia, flying the flag on private property has become more of an act of nationalist ideology than just simple patriotism. The streets themselves have names such as Cook Street and Solander (one of the naturalists on board the HMS Endeavour, Cook’s ship) Street (and amusingly, Prince Charles Parade). The cafes are also called Cook and Endeavour Sure, if you are establishing a residential area or a business near Silver Beach, you want to give a nod to the historical events that happened here. But this one-sided view gave me an uncomfortable feeling that I was surrounded by socially acceptable hostility. I hope that if I do return in another 5 years’ time, there will be a new museum here to house the repatriated Gweagal Shield.