Election

Woke late. The fear and doubt that had built in me throughout Friday was gone, replaced by a 'nothing else to do but wait' mood.

Voted - no sausage sizzle, damn it. Went to Richmond, took over from KP handing out how-to-vote Green flyers at a polling booth for two and a half hours. Still no sausage sizzle. Bantered with a Liberal, kinda ignored Family First, chatted happily with Labor volunteers.

Polling booth closed; walked over to KP's house for election night party, ended up staying considerably longer than intended because bloody Howard wouldn't do the honourable thing and admit defeat early. It wasn't until 10:30pm that he appeared to tell us what we'd know for hours; that his government had been swept dramatically from power. Elation, and yet...

Last night it all felt unreal, even with Rudd claiming victory on the TV before us. Thence to Trades Hall, and a huge fuck-off-Howard party; a sweaty, drunken, happy mess of a night packed with friends and strangers and delighted, disbelieving faces.

Today, it feels even stranger. After waiting and hoping so long for a change of government, now there's a sense of - waiting? sameness? A pregnant pause? Time to see what happens next; to see what Rudd will act on in his first 100 days of power. Indigenous reconciliation? Ratifying Kyoto? Dismantling WorkChoices? Will he govern well? Radically? Badly?

The sense of joy which filled me last night has been replaced by a sense of calm anticipation, and something else; something I can't quite put my finger on.

Don't fuck it up, Kevin.

Comments

Anonymous said…
no celebratory root?
25/11/07 18:36
richardwatts said…
alas, no, anon - not even a snog. *sigh* I clearly need a new game plan.
25/11/07 19:36
Anonymous said…
Oh well, there will be another election in three years.
25/11/07 19:40
richardwatts said…
You mean I have to wait that long?! *clasps face in hands and looks horrified*
25/11/07 23:45
susanna said…
definitely an odd feeling now that the huge howard fuck off party is over... i found myself thinking 'what next?' as i nursed my hangover yesterday.

hoping against hope that poor richard di natale gets over the line - else for all rudd's best intentions, we're going to face a hostile senate. barnaby joyce and steve fielding are going to play footy with any legislation they get.

still - what a party it was at trades hall, eh! 11 years in the making. WOOT indeed!!!!
26/11/07 18:33
rickjacobs said…
Congratulations to all of you in Australia. Most people (53% at least) must be breathing a huge sigh of relief.
26/11/07 19:28
FireHorse said…
I must admit that I thought Howard's concession speech seemed* fairly gracious.

* from what I could hear. At the party I attended there were screams of "fuck off" and other unkindly words.

If it makes you feel better. I didn't get a kiss or a root either. <:)-
26/11/07 23:15
Glenn Dunks said…
I'm actually worried that Rudd will fuck it all up and it'll be Howard getting the last laugh. Ugh.

I guess I'm pessimistic like that.
27/11/07 16:27
snorks said…
I've got the same feeling... I also had the same outcomes with snogging et al.,
27/11/07 16:57
Anonymous said…
Rudd seems like he will be already breaking an election promise by today's papers. Rudd has been criticised by many of the hardcore Lefties for being too conservative especially in regards to industrial relations. I fear the next three years will be full of union strikes that will disrupt the public and if they do it too many times, the public will fight back and vote them out next election. So, as Richard keeps harping - RUDD DON'T FUCK IT UP!
28/11/07 09:42
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Recent Call of Cthulhu work for the Miskatonic Repository

Image
The last time I posted on this poor, neglected blog was in August 2023, and a lot has happened since then - I've been meaning to blog about it for ages, but time got away from me. So, consider this post a quick catch-up on some of the creative work I've been doing over the last 12 months or so. I say quick, but given I'm an all or nothing kinda of guy, let's see how long I write for this evening and how much detail I go into, shall we? Last year, starting on Friday June 8th and continuing on over the weekend, I was a Guest of Honour at the innaugural Chaosium Con Australia ; a celebration of the games published by Chaosium Inc , a company whose work I've long admired and was once a regular contributor to, especially their game of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, Call of Cthulhu , which I first encountered in 1984; I also contributed significantly to Chaosium's Stormbringer and Elric! game lines, roleplaying games based on the work of enormously influential Englis...
Read more

Doing the Beats: Kerouac, sexuality and On the Road

Image
The long-awaited film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s ground-breaking novel presents the perfect opportunity to re-examine the lives of the Beat Generation, writes Richard Watts. It’s not hyperbole to say that the Beat Generation – a small coterie of writers who met up in New York City in the spring of 1944 – changed the world. Without their individual quests for personal freedoms – a quest for sex and drugs before there was rock and roll; a quest which spawned the western world’s first counter-culture, the beatniks – the hippy movement of the Sixties would never have happened, and punk would have been a quiet snarl rather than a global reaction. Of all the Beat Generation writers, Jack Kerouac, author of the autobiographical beatnik bible, On the Road , is unequivocally the most famous. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922, to working class French-Canadian parents, Kerouac aspired to be a writer from a young age, though he was also a keen football player. Indeed, it ...
Read more

The streets of old Fitzroy

Image
I've lived in Fitzroy for 14 years, and long before I moved here spent some formative moment in its pubs and terrace houses. I have an unpublished novel that set's in Fitzroy in the 1940s (originally it was set in the 1950s but I've realised it was the wrong period). I love this suburb, even as it changes before my eyes, which is why I love articles and photographs and stories of its past.   From the Herald-Sun , here's a series of images of the old inner city slums that once characterised much of Fitzroy. And from The Age just yesterday, here's an article about a photographer who was documenting the vanishing post-war Fitzroy culture in 1973-74.  Happy reading. And maybe allow Dan Sultan to provide you with a soundtrack?
Read more