Twenty-Five Years on…

It would be amiss of me not to say something about today’s milestone.

Twenty-five years ago today, I woke up early in my room (or “cabin” as we referred to them) in the now long gone Endeavour House: an accomodation complex for defence force members that was situated on Moverly Road, South Coogee, Sydney. I would continue to live there until the end of that year, finishing off my eight years in the Australian navy; for the majority of my years in the service, Endeavour House was my home.

On this particular morning I was still recovering from major surgery that had occurred on Tuesday, the 28th of August. I’d mentioned in passing this surgery in an earlier post, and this operation was a follow-up to one that had occurred three years earlier, in 1998. My face was in a lot of pain, as I had just had the remains of a very large cyst removed from my right sinus, and I was coming towards the end of two weeks of convalescent leave; I was too unwell to go back to Brisbane, but not ill enough to be in hospital for more than the two nights I spent directly after the surgery out at Westmead.

I remember the two nights in hospital: my father coming down from Brisbane to be there for the surgery, and the feelings of ambivalence that I experienced on the second night in hospital, the 29th of August, 2001, when from my hospital bed I watched members of the Australian defence force, of which I was a serving member, board the MV Tampa, which was attempting to land on Christmas Island with refugees on board. The refugees’ ship had become stranded in the Indian Ocean, and the Tampa had rescued them, hoping to offload them on the island. I’ll leave it for others to comment on the legality of those events at Christmas Island (which would eventually result in Australia’s policy of processing refugees away from the Australian mainland), but I was concerned by what I was watching, while experiencing a lot of post-surgical pain.

…and so two weeks later, still feeling particularly sore and sorry for myself – whilst feeling a little bit lonely as my father had already left to return to Brisbane – I got out of bed to have some breakfast in my room, turning the tv on out of habit as I passed it to turn the kettle on. What unfolded on tv – darkened images of buildings in ruins, shortly followed by reruns of planes doing unheard of things and buildings collapsing – brought feelings of disbelief and numbness through me; instead of the images and sounds from the tv being the background noise to my morning meal, they soon became the focus of it. It eventually became apparent what had happened, and I also recall watching members of the US Congress singing “God Bless America”, as they stood on the steps of the Capitol Building. Even though I was in Sydney, some 16,000 odd kilometres away from all of this, it was hard to not be moved – and disturbed – by all of this, and the sense of numbness began to be accompanied by growing apprehension at the thought of what might happen next. Several generations before mine will recall where they were when man landed on the moon; those who were around in September, 2001, will always recall where they were when they first became aware what had happened in the US on that day. 

We know what happened next: the rolling into Afghanistan, the rolling back out of there more recently, the war on terror, the hunt for those responsible etc.; it’s just hard to take in that it is now twenty-five years later. 

It’s also apparent that a lot of subsequent things occurred that, with the benefit of hindsight, should have been better dealt with, or that were dealt with in a way that took advantage of the situation for personal gain, or at the expense of personal liberties, fueled by the panic that was widespread at the time. It begs questions about whether we’ve really learnt much as a society over that time (the Soviets had gone in and out of Afghanistan two decades before). I could soften the edge of that questioning by saying that perhaps we’re still too close to those events to get perspective….but are we? 

Things would never be the same, and lives were tragically changed or lost as a result. The impact on me from so far away was more speculative; for others it was close up and profoundly personal. Their stories provide – or should provide – the narrative from which we should learn from. 

Twenty-five years later, and we still have so much to learn…or relearn; this is the true tragedy of humanity.

For those who were lost, and for those who still are – alive or otherwise