THE PLACES FLED XIV

Caniston, NSW, Australia

The places fled included the seaside suburb where he had grown up, where the swish of cars down a long hill led to a flat scattering of shops near the beach, and where, from the seclusion of their home high on the hill, there seemed to be life. Or more likely fear. Where people went about their daily lives, and he watched and barely understood, as if an intelligence had been patched inside his physical self, just to watch. Their extended frames. Their certaintities. A few blocks from the main road was the school which, equally, loomed in his imagination as a place of uncertainty and discontent, of a certain sweeping, gnawing, magnificent malignence. As if the texture of the world had gone bad. And in all the high drama of the end times which they thought they were living through, he clasped a tiny fraility, and did not know. Everyone else seemed solid on the earth. He did not. He devoured science fiction as he devoured every other form of escape, and waited for the wheels to turn. For his time to come.

He had spent several days in what some might call a self indulgent funk, crying over spilt milk, although no amount of crying would bring back what he had lost. He was angry at what had happened, and angry at himself for letting it happen. And dwelled on things which weren't worth dwelling on, which would do no good. These things were gone now. Apparitions would flap back into the streets and villages from whence they came, and everything would move slowly. This was a time of had work and quiet suffering, until the old repetitive strain injuries reignited, and suddenly his shoulders and his arms and his body crunched over in a persistent pain he had almost forgotten.

When he first went to Thailand he barely touched a typewriter for six or more months, because of the pain. Because he was sick of words defining everything. And when he did, everything ignited in a terrible collapse. He wrote and wrote, trying to establish a new self, a new life away from Australia and work. But all those efforts to start up a new life fell over, for one reason or another. Perhaps most, he trusted people he should never have trusted. Believed people he should never have believed. But ultimately, there was no use blaming anyone but himself. And now, everything came home to roost. In quiet days and reignited pain. And moods, of longing and despair.

Feelings aren't facts, he kept telling himself, repeating an old therapeutic line popular 20 years before. Feelings aren't facts, but they might as well have been, the way they bludgeoned into him. And feelings were something he had never dealt with well. Never. "I never wanted to feel anything, because to feel anything was to be hurt," he used to say. But it didn't help, when the melancholy just kept battering in at him, and he mingled, briefly, with people who, in their happy, gossip filled circles, "I'm gunna bash him", would always regard him as an outsider. He was twice or three times their age, for starters, had been out to party before they were born. So there was nothing he could say or do that would ingratiate him as anything but an oddity, someone just passing through. He hadn't wanted to pass through Thailand. He had wanted to stay there, live there, put down roots, find meaningful work, make friends, but it was not to be. And so he came back to places once fled, to quiet houses and settled communities where he did not belong; and continued what had come to seem like an eternal vigil.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/national/laurie-oakes-looks-at-kevin-rudds-2013-campaign-in-remarkable-times/story-fncynjr2-1226747251019

Kevin Rudd called the election on Sunday, August 4, characteristically announcing it by email from his car as he left Government House.

"It's on," said the message.

In the evening he invited three key members of his staff - Bruce Hawker, Jim Murphy and Patrick Gorman - to dinner at the Lodge.

MORE EXTRACTS: THE REMARKABLE RISE OF TONY ABBOTT

Afterwards he produced a bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch whisky he'd bought that afternoon and poured each of them a small glass.

Kevin Rudd wanted to try and do everything “faster and faster’’ during the 2013 election campaign, a Julia Gillard supporter told political journalist Laurie Oakes. Source: News Limited

It was a ritual, Rudd explained, dating back to the 1998 election which brought him into parliament as the MP for the Brisbane seat of Griffith.

Fearing he could lose his voice during the campaign he went to the local liquor store with his campaign manager, Alister Jordan, and bought a bottle of Black Label because "we thought one slug would kill all the wogs in your throat".

He'd never liked Scotch until then, Rudd said.

Kevin Rudd ran a “frantic’’ and “frenzied’’ 2013 election campaign, a Julia Gillard supporter says. Source: News Limited

He and Jordan sipped a glass each evening, and the bottle lasted through to election day.

Since then he'd done the same in every campaign.

A couple of weeks in, as Rudd's poll ratings dropped, stories circulated about tension and disagreements between ALP electioneering HQ in Melbourne and the team on the PM's plane. Critics in the party started making comparisons between the shambolic campaign and the way they claimed Rudd ran the government in his first stint as prime minister, before Gillard replaced him.

A couple of weeks into the 2013 campaign, stories circulated about tension and disagreements between ALP electioneering HQ in Melbourne and the team on Kevin Rudd’s plane. Source: News Limited

"It's the campaign you would expect from Kevin under pressure," a Gillard supporter told me. "His reaction to acute political pressure has always been to get more frantic, more frenzied.

Call for more people, more resources. Try to do everything faster and faster. You can see that's the cycle we're in."

Out now: Laurie Oakes new book. Source: News Limited

Remarkable Times by Laurie Oaks is published on Tuesday 29 October by Hachette Australia

Be one of the first 100 to buyRemarkable Times for $32.99 including delivery and receive a copy signed by Laurie Oakes. Call 1300 306 107 from 10am Monday or post a cheque to Book Offers: P.O Box 14730 Melbourne Vic 8001. Please allow 14 days for delivery.