Patton Recognition

Now you see him, now you don't

Here on the Surfcoast it’s been blowing easterlies for a little while. When that happens a build-up of seaweed overtakes the middle part of the beach and makes for harder walking on the soft sand above the high water mark. The winds and tides bring the kelp and driftwood and dead fish, and exhausted birds are blown in too. After that it starts to stink, and alternative dog-walking routes, above the beach along the cliff, are preferred.

Not by the dog, of course. He loves rolling around in rotting seaweed and albatross carcasses. It’s as if he knows he’s mixing with the wrong crowd, knows that the stench is a warning. Indeed it is - snakes in the seaweed are not uncommon. At the same time, he seems somehow alive to the the idea that it will all be washed away soon, as the winds swing northerly. Get in for a glorious roll while you can.

The easterlies stir up a kind of malaise on the coast and its communities. Little things are blown out of proportion, folks get testy. Or maybe that’s just me. I worry about the state of the world, and the easterlies make it worse.

But not this morning. A falling tide, a cloudless sky, and most of the seaweed gone. Hardly a breeze at all. I’m back on the beach, the dog is in heaven, rolling in the remnant seaweed and, yes, dead birds.

We’ve watched and hunkered down against relentless political easterlies for the last 5 years. Every so often the storm abates and we venture out to see the damage, see what dead carcasses have washed up and been exposed, thankful in the knowledge that over one or two tide cycles, the stinking mess will be swept away, never to be seen again.

The latest carcass is that of Victoria Police (or “pleece” in the strange, condescending patois of those ‘in the job’) Commissioner Shane Patton. If you look closely, you can see the last little bits of him bobbing on the waves, drifting on the outgoing tide, before he sinks into oblivion. He joins other notable flotsam to have suffered the same fate - Andrews and Sutton among them.

Spineless is the most polite adjective I can find. This is the man who complained he felt “bruised” by the need to enforce the humiliating ‘Covid’ rules on the community, such as filling skate parks with sand. The same guy who oversaw riot squads shooting rubber bullets at protestors at the Shrine, and whose goons had the gall to stop people on the pretext of looking inside their take-away coffee cups. Bruised. I think what he meant to say was he felt spineless, ashamed and full of self-loathing.

The demise and removal from the public gaze of figures like Patton, while welcome, is seldom causally related to their particular offences against society. Like Al Capone, who was caught on tax evasion charges, rather than extortion and murder, these people ‘resign’ like Andrews or are awarded honours like Sutton, or ‘step down after a vote of no confidence’ like Patton. The vote of no confidence was about police union members wanting higher pay - nothing to do with being a spineless squib. In any case, I don’t care - so long as the stinking mess gets off the beach, making way for a happier, more care-free walk through life.

The easterlies will return, sooner or later. More crap will end up cluttering our daily walk, concealing snakes and stinking. But we’ve learned pattern recognition very well since the world turned upside down. Egg shortages and bird flu news items are processed through our upgraded discernment protocols. We don’t jump when someone says ‘jump’ anymore. We’ll take the high path, on the cliff, steering clear of the festering mess below. And rejoice, like the dog, when we venture back down, to inspect the next carcass.