How long do the wild geese fly?
Rockingham is a quiet beech suburb in southern Perth, Western Australia. Garden Island shields the beach from the surf of the open ocean. There is bulk cargo port a few km to the North, but the shallow water off Rockingham restricts these waters to small craft. And yet, this quiet, ordinary beach was the site of one of Australia’s most outrageous maritime escapades.
In April of 1876, six Fenians- Irish Nationalists imprisoned for resisting the British Empire- escaped the nearby Freemantle Gaol and rowed a longboat from the wharf to the whaling ship Catalpa, which was waiting off-shore in international waters. They and the whalers then sailed to New York City, and freedom. None of the six ever made it back to Ireland, where they were first arrested in the 1860’s. But James Wilson lived to a ripe old age of 85, and missed seeing the establishment of Free State by only a year. He died a free man after living in Rhode Island for almost 50 years.
It’s interesting that a jailbreak against the government has such a large and conspicuous memorial, dedicated by none other than the pandemic era Premier, Mark McGowan. In New Bedford, where the voyage started, there is just a simple plaque. New Bedford is a down-on-its-luck old whaling down in southern Massachusetts. It is about halfway between where I went to university and where I spent most of my childhood summer holidays. It is a very long way from Australia. So in a way, it makes me homesick in 4 dimensions. It is literally on the other side of the globe. But additionally, 1876 seems to be particularly far away in time at present. This was an age when American citizens, using ingenuity and courage, could crowdsource a plan that spanned the global ocean to embarrass the mightiest empire on the planet. And this space, standing on that quiet beach, the country of my birth becomes even more remote than the vast distance across the waves. In a sense, the land I grew up in seems as far removed as the age of brigantines and whalers.
Obviously, it would be easy to be nostalgic for the 1990s, or even 2002, the last time I lived in my homeland. But nostalgia misses the point. And in a sense, nostalgia is unamerican. The whole point of the American Dream is to create a better future. The past is not to be idolized; it is to be surpassed. And yet, all across the English-speaking world, there seems to be a timidity about building a better world.
The Fenians had no such qualms when they agitated for a Free Ireland, against one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. Our American Forefathers did much the same thing. A century earlier, casting off the colonial rule to become the greatest country ever. But recently the imagination required to seek out a better future seems to have eluded us. Where would the wild geese of today fly, and how high would they have to soar to get there?
