Chasing Tail with Mini Skirt: A Byron Bay Gonzo Rock n’ Roll Odyssey into The Murky Depths of (Mis)Understanding Colonialised (White) Australian Masculine Identity

 By Benjo Kazue

An APWT Publication

It’s 10am. Blue sky, sunny day. I’m walking down Johnson Street, the main drag of Byron Bay in Bundjalung Country. It’s littered with trash choking an overburdened sidewalk dehydrated by tourism, backdoor development and a domestic yuppie invasion. I’m on my way to the Volcom store for an interview with an old friend:  Jesse Pumphrey, bass player in Byron-bred pub punk rock and roll group Mini Skirt -- the raucous, rough, reckless and raw ragtag buncha mongrels propelling the Australiana Renaissance noise of Cold Chisel and Midnight Oil into a contemporary blaze burnin’ bright with angst against the conventions of a Racist White Nation.

I dawdle into a bakery next to a laneway a couple of doors down from Volcom and buy some tucker, choosing the Sheppard’s pie over the snag roll, then leave, walking past three Range Rovers, manoeuvring between a group of affluent socialites hiding behind their masks made of designer sunglasses, cloaked in free-flowing earth-toned linen rags, duckface posing for Instagram. I almost vomit. The only reason I don’t is coz I haven’t had brekky yet.

I photobomb a couple of snaps and shove through the group, then hit my checkpoint, walking under the graffitied roller door of Volcom right as Jesse opens the store.

“G’day Benjo!” Jesse spits outta his gob over the clankin’ n’ clatterin’ of the rusty roller door.

“Jesse! ‘Ow ya garn, mate?” I say fulla Aussie slur.

He’s tall, standing six-foot-something, his coast-worn tan skin is golden caramel, like a velvet camel; his soft stubbled grandpa pencil moustache is lit like a suede lampshade dim under the shadow of a five-panel hat. A deceivingly aloof gaze complements his outfit of a plain t-shirt, no-socks low-cut canvas sneakers, and tight navy jeans with tears across the knee. Cool personified; like the Fonz rooted Russel Coight. He’d be intimidating if he wasn’t such a bloody legend; or a VB guzzlin’ bass-playing punk.

We exchange the introductory pleasantries and post up behind the till. “This’ll do, yeah?” He says, bringing a stool over. “If anyone walks in, I can still put a sale through.”

“This’ll do perfect.”

“Do ya reckon you can hold fort for five minutes? I’m gonna grab a coffee.”

“No drama, mate.”

Draped in cruisy nonchalant ‘tude Jesse saunters outta the store. When he leaves, I grab my bakery grub and, like a child without an education or attention span, stomp through the store, playing around with heapsa clothes on coat hangers, unfolding jeans, looking at t-shirts, creating more cleaning up to do later. Out front of the store, on the sidewalk, I take a bite of my brekky, spill a bunch of filling on myself, and look around: I’m wedged between ultra-hip shops selling $40 socks, a chain Mexican joint handing out capitalist wrapped hangover feeds, and across the street there’s an old guy named Cool with a white beard, bucket hat and tie-dyed t-shirt hula hooping shaking pineapple maracas singing, “Have a Good Day in Byron Bay” while yuppie imports from Sydney and outta state who’ve just bought up all the real estate, forcing locals outta their home, stroll by in active wear and makeup, morning-coffee-in-keep-cups on show like trophies.

I feel inferior scoffing down a Sheppard’s pie for breakfast, dripping sauce on my white t-shirt and wiping the remnants of mashed potato and mince from my beard with the sleeve of my shirt. I should feel inferior, I’m a fucking convict pig who listens to Mini Skirt.

With pie on my face, wiping the puff pastry from my pants, Jesse lurks back in the store, reluctantly cleaning the mess I made, coffee in hand, on the way to the register.

“Whaddaya wanna listen to?” he asks, his Aussie drawl spitting through black coffee breath.

“Let’s listen to Casino.”

“For real?”

“Bloody Oath, mate!” I say. “Blast it, too. Scare the yuppies away.”

In the almighty shitstorm that was 2020, who’da ever thunk that in the midst of a year that tore the fabric of society apart some small-town small-band would release one the most honest, poignant and authentic garage punk rock records to ever come out? And would ya believe me if I told ya Casino was Mini Skirt’s debut LP?

Full of raw grunt and brutal honesty so arrogant it’d be offensive if it wasn’t true, Casino is an iconic blue collar (and no collar) Aussie record underscored by a modern cultural apathy that’s farken fed-up with the toxicity of ingrained cultural racism and privileged entitlement of White Wealth, exploring the ambiguity of our identity delivered in the same unabrasive and nonchalant attitude Jesse exudes sippin’ coffee sitting behind the register.

The record fires up and the thumping guitars roar relentless over the kick, rattle and snare of ‘Pressure’ and the first track bounces off the walls like wailing alarms runnin’ outta the store and dissolving into a violent mumble on the street. It’s heavy bass tone and simple driving riff brings to mind textbook Aussie influences like X, The Saints and The Go-Betweens, gleaning political attitude from seminal UK punx The Clash. It pulsates with a tremendous energy fulla aggression and angst in a yelp of self-deprecating fury against the absurdity of a life we are destined to never understand but try so maniacally to project some sorta sense to the stupidity. This desire, the redundancy of it, and realisation that the ultimate existential joke is to laugh back into the void, like a confused clown, or a fool-- especially as an Australian, where my privileged white millennial alienation is emblazoned by an existence attributed to justified genocide -- is introduced as a theme when lead singer and songwriter Jacob Boylan’s raspy voice starts spitting chips in the second verse:

I’ve been pissed behind the wheel / slurring my laughter / like what’s the big deal? / I’m always fighting my surroundings / tearing away from me like the ground is / Pressure / pressure / pressure

Few seconds silence, then boom! The record transitions clean into ‘Brigantine St.’, the first single lifted from Casino. The crisp and clear intro is muffled by the creases in checkered flannies, but it doesn’t make it any less intimidating. Lingering on the same kinda colonialised induced alienation and barrel-scrapping existential stylings from ‘Pressure’, Boylan’s dry, wispy and yell-oriented lyrics are delivered with precision and conviction over dirty guitar driven rock and roll produced to an exceptionally high standard. Kinda like the cleanest port-a-potty at the party: filthy and abused but damn resilient and still clean enough to wanna take a shit on.

Clinging to my piece of history / leaning back to wipe like a child / learning by breaking / I wanna believe in the revolution / I wanna believe in my contribution / but the bastards keep winning / I’m stranded / and I feel abandoned

It’s the Gospel According to Punk, at least in the age of a global pandemic where we’re left to see how stranded and abandoned we’ve been left by the institutions who said they’d sell us the cure for our misery; who assured us jobs; futures -- and whadda we left with? An earth and economy dehydrated by debt and saturated with selfies and self-validation with our only desperate desire a total demise of it all. Generations now destitute by a precarious future left clinging onto the loosely splattered skid marks of meaningless social triumph in a culture poisoned rotten with the values of a white man corrupt capitalist democracy; and in the debris of this contemporary crisis we’re left lost in the margins; a write off between profit and loss; the loose change of empty hope in the eternal cosmic class war between light and dark, us and them, rich and poor.

I look outside: an invasion of middle-aged yuppies lurks past and gaze inside, rich outta town colonials who think this is theirs now, validated by a delirious sense of megalomaniac entitlement. Seems familiar, like there’s something uniquely “Australian” about going somewhere you don’t belong, weren’t welcome, then claiming it as yours.

Fark, you think I’m from here? From Byron? Nah, mate... Just another white fella who ended up here by accident and got lost going walkabout, still looking for his way back home.

I snicker under my breath, engulfing the last of my Sheppard’s Pie, and percolate on what will happen to the last of the locals when Byron is eventually runout by a domestic alien invasion. What will become of this place when the people who lived here can’t afford to anymore, and won’t have the privilege to cook and clean or work for the people that pushed them outta their own home?

A busker starts to set up outside the store. Jesse and I stare at each other and nod in agreement, then he cranks it, spinnin’ the dial almost completely off the stereo. Strewth, mate! The busker shits himself! Runnin’ off waddlin’ in his thongs looking like he’s desperate for the dunny, spilling shrapnel outta his guitar case skiddin’ ‘cross the street in shock.

Over the stereo Boylan’s voice sings desperate tryna shed some blame and shame that comes with living under the unethical circumstances of an existence we had no say over:

I don’t want to point the finger / But the UK and Europe have a lot to answer for / Yeah, their impact still lingers / their impact still lingers

The track rattles out and settles to silence. Jesse turns the stereo down. It’s still audible, but much more welcoming, and as such the first fleet of customers begin to linger in the store, and I figure I may as well ask Jesse some questions. Shit, do what I’m here to do, y’know.

‘Give it Up’ and ‘With Your Hands’ keeps the punk pace crackin’ as Jesse waffles on about Casino in a mumblin’ rhythm over his own baselines.

“We wrote Casino on a farm with no internet and no reception in three days. It was in Casino, a town near Lismore. That’s why we called the record Casino, cause of where we wrote it,” he rambles. “We don’t really jam, only before gigs, and none of us really sit at home and practise our instruments, so we have to get together and do it.”

Jesse talks about the process of making Casino seem so casual for what was probably a 3-day bender of relentless creative velocity out bush in Woop Woop. It’s like I’m not watching him at work sipping a coffee behind a register, but on a porch somewhere scullin’ VB tinnies rolling darbs hanging out with the rest of his band: his brother Jacob, the drummer, and the closest thing to a manager Mini Skirt have; Cam on guitar who influences and directs a lotta the brash sonic sound of the band’s signature noise; there’s the other Jacob, the vocalist, songwriter, somewhat bogan visionary, part-time screen printer, occasional labourer and Australiana artist at the front of Mini Skirt, designer of record sleeves and band merch; and at the end of the table, there’s Jesse, or Uncle Pumps as they call him, the oldest in Mini Skirt at 35, he’s candid and honest and upfront, just like his band and the music they assault you with.

2016: that’s when Mini Skirt officially blew the whistle for kick off with their demo Mate, a two-song five-minute rough-as-guts piss-up of an introduction to the hardened post-punk punctured riffs that would only become more defined, rigid and prominent on the Taste EP, released later in the same year, showcasing the development of the unique grittiness of their tongue-in-cheek say-what-you-mean lyricism that came into full fruition the following year on their single ‘Dying Majority’. Arguably the most potent piece of weaponry in Mini Skirt’s arsenal, ‘Dying Majority’ marks the point in time when Mini Skirt really landed on the music scene, and farkurnell mate, did they turn up or what?

‘Dying Majority’ is an overt and clever commentary on the paradoxes of Aussie culture and the dissonance of life as a white millennial Australian raised on a mix of casual racism, justified genocide, Cottee’s Cordial and Vegemite on toast. The track is fierce, criticising ugly and old-fashioned Straya’n ideals with a poetic clarity and personal perplexity, and rightly threw Mini Skirt on top of the mosh pile of punk, thrashin’ sweaty amongst Amyl and The Sniffers, C.O.F.F.I.N and Pist Idiots.

Jesse’s baseline keeps time and Boylan’s footy influenced story-telling and Aussie anguish takes centre stage in the foreground of a first verse seething with patriotic isolation:

I accept defeat as I stand at a urinal /next to a racist who follows the same team as I do / and sadly I'm the minority / It's easier to pretend that I blend in / which is piss weak / and fucking embarrassing

Then convulsing into an unapologetic onslaught against the dying majority of outdated Australian apathy in the second verse:

I don't care if they grew up in a different time / they still manage to learn the names of every new player in the NRL / so old dogs can learn new tricks / But they can't seem to grasp the idea that perhaps we don't own this country

And Boylan’s raspy voice reels one last whiplash against our oppressors cracking over the low and vibrating hum of the song’s forlorn energy in the final verse:

Sadly it’s the same old bastards who make up most the votes / so we live with their mistakes / Their massive houses haunting us from their graves / A reminder of what we will never have /because of the jobs we will never get from the degrees we were told we needed

Earning their stripes with a ferocious live show and three self-released records, combined with the triple j radio play ‘Dying Majority’ received, Mini Skirt were rapt to take the top honours in the VB Hard Yards Battle of the Bands competition, where Boylan’s no-bullshit straight-as-a-gun-barrel barrage impressed guest judges Cosmic Psychos.

“That was sick,” Jesse says, sprucing up when the conversation comes around to the VB Hard Yards Comp. “It was Cosmic Psychos who picked the winner, so as the winners, we just got to spend the day with them drinking VB... I dunno if they picked us because we were handling our alcohol and they wanted drinking buddies, or coz they actually liked our band... I dunno,” he says. 

“But nothing is ever done with the idea of pushing the band forward -- it’s got to sit in line with everyone’s values. We didn’t think winning Hard Yards would do anything for us in terms of propelling us anywhere, but we thought, if we do win, we’ll get to record a song.”

Well, the win gave Mini Skirt a little bitta financial freedom and the opportunity to record ‘Fun Police’, a song that doubles down on the resentment testament of ‘Dying Majority’. Released on a split 7” with Cosmic Psychos and on Mini Skirt’s 2018 EP Hello Possums (feat. a Dame Edna / Barry Humphries appropriated cover), Boylan’s signature lyrics lament a fractured and fragile depth to Australian identity:

No pride in the flag / no depth in our culture / no knowledge of our people cause the schools never told us about the invasion / I feel so frustrated

“It was the most mainstream thing we have all agreed to,” Jesse affirms about the Hard Yards experience. “Even though it helped us out a lot, it taught us to be very mindful of what we’ve done since then. We don’t have anywhere we wanna take the band, which is why it’s good everything is happening for us now, because if we were 21, we would have jumped at so many things that have come our way without having thought about what that would make the band look like. But because we’re a bit older now, we have the maturity and hindsight to recognise what we want. If we had done it all when we were a lot younger the band’s identity would have taken a totally different direction,” Jesse says, raising his eyebrows fingering his moustache. “...But, like, what does that even mean?”

“Pfft, what does anything mean, man? What’s life supposed to be about, anyway?”

“Dude, I’ve figured it out now I’m 35.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s obviously to be happy with what you have, and not ever succumb to the projection that getting something is gunna make you happy. It’s being happy with where and how you are and what ya got.”

Jesse’s words linger in the air and drift through my mind like a whiff of Nag Champa incense smokin’ from chanting Hare Krishna’s marching by the store. Seems legit: if you’re happy where you are then there’s no need to be anywhere else. Shit, that means there’d be no need to assimilate with others; invade and colonise a sacred nation; or town; or conquer the world looking for a lost and displaced identity.

Some sheila with makeup, fake nails, fake nose, fake tits in a skimp Australian flag bikini, spinning keys to a Range Rover round her finger asks to use a changing room and Jesse points her down the hall. When she walks off, I turn the stereo up. ‘Face of The Future’ blasts through the store. It reminds me of a tune called ‘The Bath of Rangoon Island’ by The Rangoons, a strange and short-lived Sydney rock n’ roll band from a few years ago, though only in the sense it has this driving, prose style spoken word beat that pushes the entire track forward, interrupted only by powerful and purposeful bouts of instrumentation and the chant of the chorus -- nothing in the same style of brutal and upfront storytelling backed by sharp and jagged riffs Mini Skirt use to pierce the political truth of this sunburnt nation.

I turn to Jesse and ask him, “How long you been working here?”

“Not much longer. I’m doing an electrical apprenticeship, and I just bought a house in Lismore.

“Ripper, mate! Good on ya.”

“Cheers, mate. I need to leave Byron. Get away from all the yuppies. There’s too many Range Rovers to handle.”

The broad flaunts outta the changing room leaving a pile of clothes and dirty knickers on the floor, death staring Jesse on her way past.

“Thanks,” Jesse says with a smile. “Have a nice day.”

“Yeah nah, you too ya fuckin’ yuppie,” she spits back viciously, waving her hair walking out the door, adjusting her pair of plastic tits cradled in their pilfered façade: Southern Cross on the left, Union Jack on the right. Man, this capitalist colonisation rape mentality ingrained in Australian culture and consumption ruins everything. Nothing is sacred here; not the land; the people; not even a nice set of tits.

Jesse cranks the stereo, and Boylan yells through the speaker, encapsulating the incertitude of Australia and the redundant white power at the helm of the future and at fault for the past.

It’s hard to know how to act / when my existence is the cause of so much pain / Does it get you hard / spitting in the face of the future? / And does it make you wet / spitting in the face of the future?

A delivery bloke barges in through the backdoor with a durrie barely clinging to his bottom lip. “G’day cobber,” he grunts to Jesse, unloading a buncha unwanted stock that’s now his responsibility to deal with.

“Sick music,” the delivery man shouts over the outro of the track on his way out. “Farken deadset, aye.”

Jesse just smiles and I ask him about ‘Face of the Future’, more specifically the political observations (one would even go so far as to say personal attacks) splattered like skid marks through Casino.

“We were never out to be a political band, and we’re not out to be social justice warriors. Far from it. Never ever do we want that. It’s just observations, y’know?

What shits me is when people are in your face about their beliefs, because how can you ever really know,” he laments. “Be yourself and take everything at face value... Yeah, people can’t meet you halfway, but sometimes it’s because no one has ever told them or taught them otherwise. Y’know, some people will never know they’re arseholes until someone tells them they’re arseholes...

 Anyway man, I betta do some hard yakka and sort these new arrivals out. Reckon you could hold fort for a sec?”

“No worries,” I say watching Jesse head out back, thinking about when I first met him: about a year before the conception of Mini Skirt. I was starting out as a writer hustlin’ stories working for peanuts. Jesse was a blues guitarist and songwriter solo gigging between Byron and Brisbane. We were both in precarious arts industries with no assured future or financial entitlement so found ourselves working retail slingin’ canvas sneakers to skateboarders to pay the rent and keep food in our bellies while the pursuit of our art haemorrhaged whatever we had left. On days like today, it feels like nothing’s changed.

‘Pretty’ is the next song to play. A jarring, short tune with guitar riffs that stab your eyes like knitting needles ‘til beer flows outta your ears and drowns discernment of reality.

Outside is flat out chockers but the store is baron ‘cept for a sheila in her thirties a few feet away from me whose been lingering for a while now. She’s kinda cute. Tall in a striped t-shirt, mini skirt and well-worn Dunlop Volleys. Soft face, freckles speckled like flicks of Milo. Electric eyes like Lighting Ridge opals. She tries to ask me something, but I can’t hear her. The music is too loud. I turn the stereo down and the chorus mutes. It must look like I’ve cracked the shits, coz she looks at me funny. That happens a lot with women. I’m not cranky, just a perpetually pensive, socially inept, occasionally overwhelmed introvert who’s borderline autistic and mercilessly honest.

Jesse’s head pokes outta the store room when he notices the music is lower, and I catch him watching me tryna interact with the opposite sex. Fuck, no pressure. I feel like my mum’s watching me masturbate (“...Oh Ben, you’re doing it WRONG!!”). I got Buckley’s, but I’ll give it a crack.

Now conversation can be at an audible level she says to me, “I love this music. Who is it?”

I get nervous and stutter, though manage to feign enough confidence to spit out an answer, but say something silly tryna make a joke referencing her article of clothing.

“Ohhhh, Mini Skirt! I geddit,” she snorts out, laughing way too much. “I’ll remember that. Actually, I’m gunna write it down. Do you have a paper and biro?”

I look around hurriedly -- naïve, oblivious, ambivalent -- and pass the cute girl a biro and some old receipt paper I find lying on the counter. As she’s jotting, Boylan’s yelping gasp exasperates out the line that hits home as I catch a glance of my reflection in the changing room mirror:

I kinda feel like a stranger / in a place that made me who I am / I kinda feel like a stranger / but I was born here just like them

And so, when the cute soft face freckled girl in a mini skirt hands me back the biro, instead of asking about her life, her day, or finding a sly way to give her my phone number, I say, “Do you ever feel like a stranger? Or think you’re a phoney? Like, your whole identity is based on an ignorant lie or some illusionary dream?”

She’s silent, for the first time, completely taken back. I hear Jesse groan from the storeroom. Maybe I offended her. I think she thinks I’m talking about her, but I’m actually talking about me; about us. Not her, specifically.

I don’t say anything and she just stares at me weird for a few moments until Jesse interrupts, yelling from the outback to help him with some stock, extinguishing the awkwardness. The girl vanishes like a ghost.

Out back Jesse murmurs, “Crikey, man. You blew it out there,” shaking his head in his hands.

“Whaddaya talking about, man? I was totally smoove,” I say sarcastically, secretly kinda devo, then murmur, “C’mon, I had Buckley’s chance, anyway.”

“Why do we even say that?” Jesse says laughing it off, doing his best to reconcile and change the subject. “D’ya even know what it means? Hasn’t it got sumthin’ to do with that footy player Nathan Buckley never winning an AFL premiership, despite 3 Grand Finals and 9 Finals campaigns?”

“Ya sure know your Aussie Rules, mate. But nah, it’s actually about a white fella William Buckley, a 23-year-old convict who arrived on “Australian” shores in 1803 for stealing a roll of cloth. But get this: the drongo buncha Poms failed to establish a liveable... I mean “workable” convict settlement in Port Phillip Bay, and when they tried to Sheppard the convicts onward to Tasmania, ol’ Buckley escaped, surviving off shellfish and wild berries before being accepted by the Wathaurang people coz of a spear he’d found, by total chance, that belonged to a past elder of the Wathaurang -- they initially thought he was a reincarnation of tribe leader and so began living with them. Thirty-two years later when a colonising party invaded... I mean, “arrived”, Buckley emerged as a peacekeeper -- and would ya believe he couldn’t remember his white man name and white man language anymore, and was only identifiable by the W.B. brandmark... I mean, “tattoo”, on his arm?

Anyway, the bloke tried his bloody darndest to work as an intermediary between the invaders... I mean, “settlers”, and the indigenous. He was even employed as an interpreter to resolve “disputes”, but as hard as he tried, there was no chance of reconciliation... Least he gave it a good crack though, right?”

Unpacking an entire box of cheap mass-produced rolls of cloth, Jesse laughs, “Well, mate, at least you tried. But after dropping that existential identity bombshell, you had no chance.”

“Hah, so being in Mini Skirt not only gives ya the meaning to life, but ya got the secret to women too?”

“You don’t get any babes being in a band in Byron. Don’t believe the hype,” he snaps, holding up a t-shirt with a graphic of an ouroboros: a snake eating its own tail. Though it’s not a snake, it’s a Rainbow Serpent: God; The Creator; The Start and The End of it All.

“We get a bunch of people calling us posers, that we just do this shit for chicks. But we’ve been playing in punk bands since we were teenagers, and we’re all in actual committed relationships. We know who we are and don’t waste time chasing tail.”

Odd. I feel enlightened all of a sudden.

Since the COVID catastrophe left the destruction of the arts industry in its wake, a lotta artists have felt the belt of creative pursuit wrap one buckle tighter ‘round their neck. Though Mini Skirt have been lucky. Yeah, their first European tour had to be cancelled, but Casino has almost sold out of four pressings internationally, within a year. Heck, they even managed to score a coupla sold out shows at the infamous Lansdowne Hotel in Sydney to launch Casino.

In spite of the evidence, I still ask Jesse, “D’ya reckon Mini Skirt will survive the pandemic?”

“We’ll survive this if we want to,” he says, assured, making his way outta the storeroom and back onto the store floor. “If we make it another 5 years, we’ll probably be doing a reboot tour. I picture us playing in a pub somewhere.”

Mini Skirt: The True-Blue Aussie Battlers!

Range Rovers beep bumper-to-bumper on the street between high-vis cloaked tradies in utes sucking durries and Southern Cross sleeve tattoos hanging outta Holden Commodore windows, all waiting to embark and invade Main Beach as the guitar twangs of ‘Farkurnell’ echo out over the Outback Om. The arvo approaches and foot traffic increases, though the store is still baron as the land, so Boylan’s thick drawl of Straya’n commentary shoots through and stuns me like cicadas at sunset in the summertime, enlightening me on why I feel so anxious and, ironically, unsettled all the time.

I’m talking to the land / and it’s talking back to me / It’s telling me / that I don’t belong here

Jesse and I end the interview the way we started it: cranking the stereo headbanging behind the till. ‘Animals’, the closing track on Casino, blasts outta the store, and in a paradoxical kinda way, undercutting the veracity of confusion I feel about my forefathers and the angst against my inherited unethical entitlement, I’m sympathetic to the class-marginalised convicts that ended up on these shores as societal dregs for stealing bread, cheese, or a roll of cloth; the forgotten collateral, shivering cold and desperately hungry; the Dying Majority shunned in the economically seduced eternal cosmic class war who just wanted their fair suck of the sav.

I look outside at the invasion of franchises, accelerated development and fresh affluent “locals”, and gotta wonder, is it even a race thing, or is it about class, wealth and power? About which side of the fence you’re from and what kinda fake Australian heritage runs in your blood: guilt, ignorance, invasion or education? Am I another in a line of offset and ostracized convicts discarded cause of their desperation, or do I come from a line of selfish, narcissistic invaders furiously marching onward in the vain and vapid pilferage of ego and greed? And either way, how do I vindicate the unforgivable actions of my heritage, accept ignorance, and go about educating myself and healing my (national) identity? How do I act, who do I be, and who am I to say, or know –- just some bloke? Another disorientated arsehole who ended up here by accident tryna escape and reconcile the past, live with himself and assimilate well with others, but has Buckley’s chance anyway...?

As my thought evaporates into the thick humid Australian air the siren song sings through the store exasperating why we innately bother to do anything at all:

You can find meaning in anything / But we’re all here to make your day / Animals / animals / We’re all animals

The broad with fake tits struts back into the store. Her boyfriend is hanging off her arm in a VB singlet, green and gold footy shorts, grot toenails in double-pluggers; speed dealer sunnies, home-job boxing kangaroo tattoo across his arm, stubbie holder stuck in his hand, grey stubble punctuating the signature Straya’n mullet: the ironic Aussie patriot.

I give Jesse a nudge.

“Dude, I’m gunna go talk to ‘em.”

“Pfft! C’mon man,” he laughs. “You’re either desperate, pathetic or stupid.”

“Nah, mate. Just alienated, confused and a little lonely sometimes. Isn’t everyone -- especially as an “Australian”?”

Benjo Kazue is a no one from the dregs of gonzo rock n' roll. A lousy beatnik lost in the dim lit autobiographical alleyways of creative nonfiction and narrative based new journalism. He writes pop journalism, travel journalism, music criticism and creative nonfiction with a potent combination of sensorial force, vivid language, philosophical meandering and gonzo poetry in an inimitable style. His creative nonfiction, journalism and music criticism and commentary have been published across a number of publications, in Australian and internationally. Benjo is the Editor and Genius at the Helm of Cosmic Phallusy. Everett True once said he could be Lester Bangs incarnate.

The banner image is by Ana Graves and is downloaded from Unspash.com