Prayer is a quiet country road. It’s early morning, with the sun layering its golden rays on dew-drenched trees. The steady rhythm of tires finding new heights and depths on the road keeps you awake at these unholy hours. Imagine Fangirls the musical by Eve Blake, is playing. Not through the radio, God no, the machinery is cooked. Same story with the aircon. The two thousand and seven Golf you’ve affectionately called Irene didn’t get the memo. This is a serene moment. Imagine a grey UE boom in the passenger seat playing ‘Don’t exist,’ your gaze burning the road, deseperate not to fall asleep. Your co-worker was in a car crash on this exact road a few months ago when a four-by-four decided to cross lanes and say hi. At least in a car crash, you wouldn’t have to go to work today. These thoughts aren’t healthy; you turn up the music and drown them out.
Use my guts as your spaghetti
Put your fork in and twist
Use my blood for your sauce
It’ll hurt much less
Than you never knowing
I Exist.
Childers is a ‘town’ that lives for the morning, which you hate. Childers is a street, a small section of the Bruce highway, that anything of import is built around. You can find all three pubs, two grocery stores, three Servos, a butcher’s, a barber, a doctor’s, and a dentist’s. If you need anything that isn’t on that street, you don’t need it. If you can’t park on the street, even if you have to walk around the corner. The day is over. Time to clock in.
The floor plan of the hostel-turned-memorial-art-gallery is simple. On the ground floor, three rooms are prominent to the viewer on the street. In the main entrance of the previous hostel (now the entry towards the gallery and information centre) stands a double door layered in auburn oak red and pale cream paint. Stained glass panelling crests the door, and its framing reminds you of the hotel’s original purpose. ‘Redmonds Palace Hotel’ reads in golden letters on the same auburn oak red of the door. To the right is a Subway. The third room of the restored hotel. Yes, it sticks out as much as you think it would, an ugly artifice of capitalism. Yet after being around it for a year now you’ve got used to it. Another characteristic of Childers, everything fits when logic dictates it shouldn’t. Telling the story of how fifteen people got burnt alive in this building just isn’t the same without the smell of baked Italian herbs and cheese bread fresh out of the oven.
After unlocking the double doors at an inhuman hour (eight thirty am Ish) and smacking in your four-digit security code, what was it again? That’s right ‘Twenty Gay Teen,’ you queer rebel. You ascend red carpet wooden stairs. On each step, a faded gold rod secures the carpet to minimise tripping, but that hasn’t stopped you in the past. On the first floor is the gallery-memorial proper. A pristine long, white-walled hall, three fourths covered by the exhibition ‘Myth and Legends of the Australian Bush,’ hung precisely on a one-thousand-five-hundred-millimetre midline. As you place your bag down at the front desk and begin the morning rites of awakening the sleepy gallery, you stand in front of your favourite artwork.
The Phoenix is a large oil work depicting a blue and red fiery Lyre bird ascending for the cracked bark of an Ember ridden tree. An homage to the cyclical nature of bushfires and their awesome power to create and destroy. A modern re-enactment of the Naturalism movement. You did wonder a while ago why there aren’t any first nation artists in exhibition about Myth and Legends of the Australian Bush, not even a white person attempting a dot painting. But those thoughts are not for the likes of gallery attendants, you stopped thinking those thoughts. You go set up the till.
Finally, before you open you have to say hello. To whom? To the backpackers of course. There are no ghosts at the Palace Memorial officially. Your co-worker had to call the police on ghost hunters who were scoping the building for paranormal activity. You wish something exciting would happen on your shift. But they are there, all fifteen of them. You can feel them, can’t you? Not feel them per se but feel them. disturbing a balance inside you that you had never been aware of. At first, that was terrifying, you hated being here alone. But everything weirdly fits. You go say good morning and tell them a tidbit of gossip or an obscure fact. It important to talk to them, checking on each memory box that’s cut from a floor to ceiling, wall to wall cloudy sheet of glass. You check the flowers, and they need changing. Pick up some Australian natives when you do the bank run.
The opening is always uneventful. Open the auburn oak red doors, Place the A-frame CHilders ART Space (CH.ART.S.) sign on the street, and greet your volunteer for the day at the door. A feeble-wiry woman who has rouged her cheeks with the ash from her Rural Fire Brigade morning training. As you learned at your first shift here, the gallery is run by the volunteers, despite what the corporate generated hierarchy chart states. After coming back up the stairs she will check you did your job correctly this morning. Every light and door are in its correct state of on or unlocked. The till is recounted.
‘We need to get fresh flowers. I saw some lovely Aussie natives down the street.’ she says. ‘I’ll pop out for a sec, you can handle the crowds, can’t you?’
The delivery man with new gift shop stock was the only crowd you saw. It’s not just her; they all keep you on your toes. The CHARTS Tarts, they call themselves. They’re the shadowy secret volunteer society that runs the gallery from their Thursday afternoon luncheons. They tell you they’d invite you one day but you always work Thursdays. You don’t always work Thursdays. She asks if you’d like a cuppa. White with two thanks.
Eventually, patrons do wander in to say hi. Protocol of course is that the volunteer does greetings, takes them on the tour and sells them a book at the end. So, say the CHARTS Tarts. But this time she’s on her lunch break. It’s your turn, you do remember how to do this, right?
The important thing to remember when conducting a tour is that even though people want to know everything, they don’t want to know everything. For example, when Mrs Agatha and Mr Herbert McKenzie, the sweetest yet most solvent grey nomads that you will ever meet, ask about the portrait. Yes, the portrait by Josonia Palaitis, the one with all fifteen arranged as if they’re all having smoko after a morning of picking the fields. Well, as they enjoy the beautiful composition of the work, the details on the Esky, or the refreshing smiles on each of their faces after a fictitious hard day’s work. Please refrain from sharing that ten of those smiling faces died from smoke inhalation where the Mckenzies stand. Denied any chance of an early escape because a fire alarm system that had been turned off. Do you know why our fire standards are so strict? They were stuck in a dorm room with barred windows and a door that would not open. Safety laws are written in blood. Don’t tell them that though. Tell them about the survivors who leapt off the balcony onto the neighbouring building. Just like in a movie, Agatha would enjoy that. Stop thinking about the bread.
Four thirty is clock-off time. You and the volunteer go through the minutiae of putting the yawning gallery to bed. Of course, you said your goodbyes to them. You always say goodbye to them. You wish them a pleasant evening. It’s rude not to. Lights off, tills counted, doors locked, and the final dash from arming the alarm to the front door. In larger towns or even cities, the knock-off rush is a menagerie of humans to navigate. But in Childers, you’d be lucky to see ten people on the street. Most places have closed shop by two. Four thirty is midnight here with an annoying afternoon glare.
Driving back home takes an hour. At least the sun won’t be on your eyes, you drive toward the coast. Your mind always wanders on these long country roads. You don’t have to concentrate as much when you’re the only car in sight. You think of the life you lead, of a gallery, its fires, and its culturally exclusionary art. About its secret society and its tippable stairs.
Your friend moved years ago to the big city and every time you chat, they ask why you haven’t? You’re young, your gay, you’re barely a man. What’s keeping you? You don’t know why haven’t left and you won’t for a while. But everything weirdly fits here, even you.
