Staff writer Don Gordon-Brown (pictured below right, recently) reflects on the penultimate year of the second millennium.

TEARS ALL ROUND

What an emotional roller coaster of a year 1998 turned out to be for your humble Bug correspondent.
My female side must have been even stronger than normal for the tears flowed freely on not less than 14 - yes, fourteen! - separate occasions during the year.
For this particular essay, though, I want to concentrate on the two that did not involve opening my monthly Diner's Club bill.
Anzac Day, 1998. I'm in the Bug's Sydney office, working overtime to try to get out the August, 1997, hard copy issue of Australia's leading satire and review magazine, when I decide to wander up Bathurst Street and take in a bit of the annual parade. The pipes, the pipes are calling. The brass bands too. Love a military band.
I'm soon standing outside Town Hall Station, watching the veterans march past.
I've always thought how neat it would be if the Anzac Day diggers who actually saw action could be identified in some way. Say, for example, when the 2nd Fifth Pacific Mounted Engineers march past, those who fired a weapon in anger had to wear funny party hats, or something. You could clap a bit harder for those. It would neatly separate then from all the others; those malingerers in a Q store way behind the front line, those who stayed behind, those who joined up in early 1946, those wearing their dad's medals who came seriously close to joining the CMF in the 50s; those after a free beer afterwards.
It turns out that Bathurst Street close to Town Hall station is a bad choice. I've got no idea where the parade started, but Bathurst Street close to Town Hall station seems to be right where some of the older diggers are finally pegging out. Proud men on the wrong side of 80, with thinning grey hair and ulcers on their cheek bones. Stumbling into the crowd and being grabbed by ambulance staff who must know the spot well. Diggers pushing the ambos away and trying to march on. Then buckling at the knees. Victors over the Huns and the Japs; beaten by old age.
It's really hot in George Street, City, and I've got a Daily Telegraph held over the eyes. The eyes are streaming and I hope people nearby think it's sweat.

Some months later. It's a cold, rainy night at the Port Botany picket line on Sydney's Patrick's Wharf. Hundreds of sacked wharfies are huddled by their union's HQ, waiting to hear whether the Federal Court full bench is going to uphold a fellow judge's ruling in their favour.
Buses come and go, ferrying Patrick's scabs to and from the docks under police guard. Yes, I said scabs. You're either on side or you're not in these landmark industrial battles. I'm on side. A life spent listening to jokes about wharfies and their enormous pay packets for doing fuck all won't alter my belief that it's wrong, wrong, wrong that Australian workers undertaking lawful industrial action can be sacked by a company with the overt approval of the Australian Government hell-bent on an anti-union agenda.
After a number of false crosses by ABC radio, the decision begins. Wharfies, family members and friends, other unionists, ALP hacks and supporters press forward to hear the verdict on a pathetic little portable radio. The chief justice is explaining that his colleague's decision is free from appellant error. It takes a while for this to sink in, then the roar goes up. The chest is heaving and the tears flow freely. It's the best moment of the year and there' s no need at all to hide your emotions.

A TALE OF TWO TAXI DRIVERS

It's mid year and I'm travelling into Sydney city from the airport with your average taxi driver.
He doesn't agree with everything Pauline Hanson says but she's spot on when it comes to the coons. Worked as a sales rep throughout country NSW and Queensland for years; saw how the blacks could demolish a flagon behind the fancy old pubs he stayed at. Travelled throughout the Kimberley region of West Australia for years too. The blacks there are all riddled with AIDs, you know. Buggered how this could be the case because they're all too lazy to get off their backsides to catch AIDs in the first place!

Several nights later and a woman driver is taking me back from the city to my inner-west Earlwood digs. "Do you think I've got slanty eyes?" she asks. Turns out that three young women got into her car a few nights back. Not very pleasant young women, it seems, and one hit the driver with the 'slanty eyes' line. I tell her it's wasn't a nice description under the circumstances and she would have been well in her rights to order them out of the cab. "Doesn't bother me," she bubbles on, looking at herself in the rear vision mirror. "I've got sexy eyes, don't you think?" I'd like to agree but I'm rather keen for those sexy eyes to spend a little bit more time on the road.
I don't know what this woman is on - life, maybe - but she prattles away for the next 20 minutes. Turns out she's been out from the Philippines for close on 19 years, loves Sydney and three nasty women aren't going to bother her too much. They paid their fare so they can call her what they like. "I know I've got sexy eyes," she repeats.
In my slight alcohol haze, I ponder what would happen if there was only room in Pauline Hanson's Australia for one of these two taxi drivers. I wouldn't fancy Sexy Eyes' chances, would you?

TO BE CONTINUED