Cirrus@Austlit

'As I began this essay on J S Harry’s poem ‘Tunnel Vision’ several years ago (2006) the radio drive shows in Sydney were full of opinions, mainly angry, concerning a report that a male teacher, in an English class, encouraging students to find as many words in ‘Australia’ as they could, had led the way by showing them how it contains the word ‘slut’, and then, when asked what that meant – it must have been a young primary-school class – had told them that it was a word used to describe women. An hour later I was having lunch with a visiting academic from Jaipur and we spoke about the recent spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and then of the appalling death of an aboriginal elder in the back of a prisoner transport van in Western Australia. No point in claiming that Australia is not a racist country. I did, sometimes, try to claim that, but gave it up long ago. We mask it, that’s all: here on the East Coast we keep much of it beyond the Great Dividing Range, where a lot of other things are kept, out of sight and mind. We then, this Indian academic and I, spoke about Australia’s much-vaunted multiculturalism, its naivety, its need to mature, the stages it has gone through. There is a gap between Australia’s ideas of itself and its reality. A chasm. (Introduction)