Thoughts on being a jury member with the New Democracy Forum

 I got on the New Democracy Jury panel by accident .  My partner Grant who likes that sort of thing had sent back the invite with my name on it as well as his and was well pleased to find he had been selected only it turned out it wasn’t him but me and was non negotiable.

I should have said no, I thought, as I built a fire in the stove.  It’s not my sort of thing at all.  Apart from the odd demonstration I avoid groups and parties and stick to one on one human contact or better still solitude.  But that First World War poster with a finger pointing came to mind and I thought, yes Julia the time has come to do your duty.  Eurobodalla needs you.  And retired as you are, what other justification do you have for consuming your daily bread?

I sat back with a glass of red and thought about death as one sometimes does at my age (70).  Would I have the courage to do it nicely when my turn came?  My mother had courage when she died at age 98 but had not been specially nice.  She’d laughed wickedly and said “Crocodiles are my favourite animals.  They are fierce and they bite”  Those were her last words and were oddly comforting to me at that point.  The New Democracy Forum was by no means as fearsome as facing death and I’d got to stop being such a sook about it.

I began to realise at this point that perhaps I was not alone in my little house.  There were the usual noises the fire makes – the bang of the iron chimney as it heats up and the whisper of the kindling as it tumbles to ash under the logs. But there was a new sound – an arhythmic  tapping and dragging.  I saw something dark on the edge of my vision – there and gone.  Perhaps madness and the beginning of blindness would be good enough reasons to abandon my jury role I thought hopefully’.

Then it came out, confident and investigative – a big black rat.  It nosed its way towards me as I sat still and fascinated by my visitor.  It looked at my patchwork and sauntered off to under to potato and onion rack.

I was a bit indignant.  This was my house, not terra nullius.  And it was clean too.

At that point my son Eddy rang unexpectedly from Japan and I told him about the rat.  He’s lived in all sorts of strange places.  “You’re not going to like this mum,  but if it’s a clever one like they are in Vietnam there’s only one way….He went on to describe a method involving a deadly sticky paper trap and waiting for the squealing and then using a brick.  I had no idea that my gentle son had it in him.  “They nibble the wires and cause fires in Vietnam” he added apologetically.

I might have to face the forum tomorrow and no doubt death will come in its own time but as for killing a rat with a brick I definitely don’t have it in me to do that.

I slept fitfully waking to rat noises and dreaming of being in a group of scornful knowledgeable people and not being able to hear a word they said.

I got to Tuross Heads and suddenly am glad I’ve come.  It is spring and the country is so beautiful.  I’m glad I’m on my own and have to drive myself for once and I’ve finally sussed which gear is which and the running is smooth.

We are registered and sort ourselves into tables.  Of the older ones like me, men tend to stick with men and women with women in an old fashioned way. I wonder why.

Our facilitators tell us what a good experience this will be and the old elephant and the blind men story is told.  “Everyone sees things differently” we are advised. Looking around it seems unnecessary to warn us of this.  We are all so different. Old, young, grey haired, fat and thin.  One long beard and a nice flamboyant woman with piercings, one in her tongue too.

My thoughts stray to the elephant scenario.  What does the elephant think about all these impertinent blind people prodding it in perhaps private places.  I wonder if the elephantine council is going to be impatient with us blind citizens pontificating on things we know nothing of.  At least it can’t tread on us if it doesn’t like it.

Then we get down to business and it is explained that this session and the next will be informative and not for cogitation at all and I begin to be impressed at the way things are managed.

Three people come in the morning and talk to us about really interesting things.  A farmer talks about potential for recycling amongst other things, a remarkable young man talks eloquently about youth issues.  After lunch we have more people – a hotel manager who wants a think tank on innovations that will reinvigorate our three big towns, a man who really makes the issue of paths interesting.  Gradually the complexity of the council’s job becomes apparent and we get lots of statistics – the balance of young and old, the extraordinary tide of people that swells the population in the holiday season, the need for tourism and work for the young, the need to cherish what we have. 

We learn that Eurobodalla has an over four percent indigenous population – more than most places, and a woman called Ros comes to talk to us.

It seems to me we are lucky to have so many aboriginal people in the shire and surely their culture could be a huge asset for attracting visitors. So many people, especially overseas visitors, want to know about the aboriginal world and its spiritual take on life. 

 But it’s not easy.  Already, Ros says the new signage has not taken the opportunity to acknowledge the original owners of the shire and asks why there isn’t an aboriginal member of the jury.  Someone asks if one would come if invited and she says probably not as her people don’t feel comfortable in such settings.  There are obviously deep issues not easily addressed.

When I visited Ceduna on a trip across the Nullarbor there was a wonderful  gallery and book shop run by kind and proud women who cheerfully dealt with the huge problems that their people faced in the town as well as running the gallery with its resident artists.  I wonder why it’s different here.  There is so much I don’t know.

Our skilled facilitators make us mix ourselves up and talk in circles to the visitors and note our questions.  What more do we need to know to have useful discussions?  I suddenly realise how much I’ve learnt in just one day and I begin to see that this process can turn a mixed bunch of informed and uninformed into a potentially useful body.  A lot of people know lots about things already and tell us, who don’t, all about them.  Our naivety alerts them to the need to share what they know.

Driving home I realise I am looking at the shire in quite a different way.  I stop for a toilet in one of the slightly dark and sinister seeming rest spots beside the highway.  Before I would have assumed it had sprung up, a bit like a mushroom by itself.  Now I gratefully think how good it was that it was proposed and discussed and funded by our lovely council.  And I see everything else in the same way – the signs, the barriers that stop us veering across the road.  All the little facilities and protections that I used to take for granted.  I think how rarely one is grateful and not grumbling about council doings

Home again by my stove I slurp up a packet of noodles and my rat comes out.  I wish there was a way we could solve our cohabitation problem without violence and murder.  I can perfectly see it from the rat’s point of view. No blind men and elephant issues here.  But are there not some conflicts of interest that no amount of sweet reasonableness can resolve?

The proof will, as they say, be in the pudding as the next five meetings of our jury come and go.  May the force be with us.