Stick-Up

 Biker Kath last night at the Willy café telling of her plot for Monday. A girl from Trentham an hour out of town, where she had settled with her husband. The pair had married in their teens and remained together ever since. Pete was stout and heavily tattooed, a daunting figure on the street; some kind of eye condition that needed sunglasses even at night made Pete more daunting still. Out at Shepparton in teen years Pete had been a footballer who had rebuffed the attentions of League scouts; the big league in Melbourne had never held any attraction for Pete. Bikes and then Kath were stronger lures – Pete had introduced the former to the latter. Always zipped in her weatherproofs, Kath kept any bodily artwork out of sight; she was far more outward and forceful in opinion. The strong antipathy against the Muslims had almost certainly started with Kath and Pete following. Pete did not follow Kath in her enthusiasm for Collingwood; when Kath went to watch games on the Willy screens Pete let her go alone and waited for her return at the end of the match. For the Monday plot at Trentham Pete would have no option but to support his wife. What exactly set Kath so strongly against the Muslims was not difficult to fathom. Kath had a lot of time for the mentally disturbed street people in Willy; for the Koorie people too. Little Paul on his tricycle won Kath’s compassion and support; beggars, drunks and even users might have been tolerated; gays perhaps. Migrants might be different and Muslims certainly were another category entirely. The way the last set themselves apart riled Kath. There might have been a mosque in Trentham, or at least one on the way out there. There was one makeshift one in Newport where Kath had spent her youth and been schooled; a second large one was almost finished nearby, designed by some hot-shot architect who had somehow become palsy with the Muslims. Pauline Hanson had recently worn a burqa in federal parliament, a form of dress that was every bit as offensive in Kath’s eyes. The burqa set the Muslims apart and was a slap in the face to Australian culture. The Muslims thought they were special; there was the spate of terrorist attacks, then the earlier horrendous beheadings. At Trentham Kath knew women in the bank who were forced to serve intimidating burqa-clad women who would not remove their cover. How were the tellers supposed to know what was hidden beneath that drapery? It was an appalling state of affairs condoned by the authorities. Monday seven of the bikers would enter the Trentham bank with their helmets and demand to receive equal treatment; nothing less would be acceptable. (Because Kath was brought up right she herself would raise her visor at the bank; if she was wearing sunglasses and had an encounter Kath would also remove the shades out of politeness.) It was easy to understand Kath and Pauline Hanson, the politicians in the US, the UK, France and elsewhere. The set of circumstances were straightforward; the politics of power blocks, the process of history and empire, was a complex and challenging study understood better by victims and the dispossessed. Good onya Kath many here would think, good show.