Chapter 37: Dinkum Mates

Wed 10-Oct 2007

Chris awoke to see Alyssa, still in her underwear, standing over Maria. He dragged himself upright and went and sat at the little table, stiff all over. Alyssa came over holding Maria, and they sat in his lap. She'd obviously gotten used to what she was wearing. He noticed that Hassan was awake, and smiled at him. This was nice.

Not long after that, Shahia woke up. She looked at him and smiled, then hopped out of bed and squeezed into the tiny toilet. Her undies had scrunched in the back during the night, and though he only saw them briefly as she squeezed through the toilet door, he had to stop looking and wait for the darkness to pass. Hoo boy.

For breakfast, they compared the merits of bread with no toppings and toast with no toppings. By unanimous agreement, it was declared a draw, with both options losing equally, and they agreed to buy at least butter sometime during the day.

While they were eating breakfast, Hassan turned the television on. It was just after eight o'clock, and the television showed a reporter in downtown Melbourne, a busy street behind her.

" ... workers today that they should expect disruptions. The police have also warned again that they will not tolerate any violence, either by the protestors, or against them."

In the background, Chris could see some school kids in uniforms he didn't recognise just hanging around. Then he spotted Sue and Geno. They had the biggest grins on them, and they were talking to the students from the other schools. Then, to his surprise, he spotted Mr Hanson walking towards them.

The picture cut back to the morning show, so Hassan turned the sound down. Mr Hanson eh? Chris was impressed.

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. They looked at each other in concern, but when Chris opened the door, it was just Tony. "Good morning." A great rush of freezing air came in through the door, so Chris invited him in and shut the door.

When Tony realised what they were wearing, he was a little embarrassed. Shahia smiled at him. "Well, we really can't wear our uniforms, so this is all we've got. And I'm about to wash our clothes in the laundry — that'll have to be like this, so it's no use us being embarrassed."

Tony smiled at her. "Well, Miss Shahia, I have to go to town, so I was actually going to offer that if you give me a little money and the right sizes, I can buy you some second-hand clothes from the Sally's store."

"Oh, that would be just wonderful. Thank you so much." Chris gave him some money, and Shahia wrote down their sizes.

"What kind of clothes do you want?"

"Something warm, Tony. And we don't care what they look like. Thank you so much."

Somewhat to Chris's relief, there was no one else around while they did the washing. The temperature warmed up quickly, so the kids played outside in their underwear with Maria. He sighed. Was this 'protecting the children'? But there was no one else around, and they really did look kind of cute like that.

Hassan called them over to watch the TV at nine o'clock. There was a live feed from Lonsdale Street in downtown Melbourne, and they were amazed to see that the street was packed with students. They could easily make out the bright teal colour of their school, and the maroon of St Joseph's, but there were lots of other colours too. In fact, Hassan excitedly pointed out a group with his own green primary school uniform.

Chris jaw dropped. There had to be at least a thousand students sitting on the road, blocking all traffic including the trams. He heard the TV reporter put the number at close to two thousand, with more expected.

The camera zoomed in on a group on the side of the road. He could see Lisa, his mum and dad, Mr Cartwright, Mr Hanson, and Andrew standing together in front of that poster about Australian values his class had made. Lisa was holding a megaphone. As he watched, she lifted the megaphone, and suddenly she was filling the screen, being filmed from a different camera.

"Everyone, thanks for coming." It was difficult but possible to understand her. "I'm really thrilled to see you here. Now please remember, this is school. We're even going to keep a role. Make sure you get your name on it.

"We're here to study. Many of us here have VCE exams coming up. How we're going to organise this is that we have all these placards here. We're going to write a subject on each, and we're going to do study groups on the subject around individual placards. You should move around the placards during the day, depending on your own subjects. A number of teachers have come here today and will share the placards between them, thanks so much to them. Any teachers who are here are taking unpaid leave for today, so we're going to take up a collection for them." She waved a little bag around. "If you have a dollar or so to stick in, please do, and I'll give all of it to my headmaster here, Mr Cartwright, and he'll divide it up between the teachers.

"Before we start, a couple of things. If the police start arresting us, we will not resist, but we will not move, either. They will have to arrest every last one of us. If anyone else gives us a hard time, we'll simply look at them as if they're stupid adults. If they get violent, we'll let them hit us. Have mercy on them, they're old, they've forgotten what Australia is about, forgotten what they learnt at school."

She paused to wait for the laughter to die down.

"Also, there's lots people here. Everyone who knows Chris or Shahia, jump up! A huge mass of people in teal all stood up and waved, along with a big group in maroon. "Thanks, sit down now. You too Geno, you're not a prisoner of war anymore." Once again, she had to wait for the laughter to stop.

"Anyone else?" She turned to see the group Hassan had pointed out. "Hey, I know that uniform. You all classmates of Hassan and Alyssa?" They all jumped up, waving and shouting. "Cool. Everyone, they're primary school kids. We're going to take good care of them, and we're all going to take turns helping them with their work." Though, of course, Chris could see that there were a good number of parents watching over the primary school kids.

Someone else, a younger boy, maybe year eight, ran out of the crowd, and Lisa handed him the megaphone. "We don't know any of you. But we're in the middle of a big class project on Australian history, and when we read the papers this morning, Shahia convinced us. So we ran the phones hot, and decided we had to come here. There'll be more yet. Go Chris and Shahia!"

Shahia turned to Chris, clearly overcome. "They're doing this for us. Awesome."

"What does he mean, you convinced him?"

"I have no idea!"

Then the picture went back to Lisa, showing her very deliberately sitting down in the middle of the road and opening a book to study. She looked up at the camera, and the determination and defiance on her face sent shivers down Chris's spine.