The Best Australian Essays 2015 by Geordie Williamson Page B

capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.’ But if nothing else, it can help us grasp the enormity of what is happening in a way that allows us to comprehend it, and perhaps, just perhaps, begin to do something about it.
    The Weekend Australian

Havoc: A Life in Accidents
    Tim Winton
    I
    One summer night, after a few hours surfcasting for tailor, my father and I were driving home along a lonely road between the dunes and the bush. I felt snug and a little sleepy in the passenger’s seat, but it was my job to keep the gas lantern from tipping over, so I clamped it tight between my heels and resisted the urge to drift off. We’d gone down at sunset and caught a feed, but at the age of nine I could take or leave the fishing. The chief attraction of an outing like this was the chance to be alone with my father.
    The evening had gotten cool and the windows were up. I remember the ordinary, reassuring smells inside the vehicle: the pilchards we used for bait, the burnt-toast whiff of the gas mantle, and the old man himself. In those days his personal scent was a cocktail of Dencorub and Quick-Eze. He hadn’t always smelt like that.
    For a moment the inside of our car was bleached with light. I saw my own shadow creep across the dash. And then, with a yowl, a motorbike pulled out from behind and overtook us on the long straight towards town. There were no streetlights, no other cars. Either side of us there was just bush. The road had only recently been sealed. All my life it had been a limestone track. But now the city had reached the beach. Things were changing.
    As the rider blew by, the old man gave a low whistle and I straightened a moment in my seat. Dad had complicated views about speed. He adored motorbikes; he’d ridden them all his life and he loved to ride fast. As a traffic cop he did it for a living. But then, half his job was to chase folks and pull them over for speeding. The rest of the time he picked up the pieces when things came unstuck. To me, speed was no thrill, and I was especially leery of motorbikes. My father’s medicinal smell was a constant reminder of both.
    The lantern glass jinked and tinkled between my legs. Out ahead there was nothing to see but the black road and the single red eye of the rider’s tail-light. Then it was gone. The light didn’t shrink into the distance – suddenly it just wasn’t there.
    Within half a second the night was jerked out of shape, and in the few minutes that followed, I felt that my life might warp and capsize along with it. I didn’t see the rider fall but I still think of him and his machine skittering on divergent trajectories across the rough-metalled bitumen. The old man pounded the brakes and we came to a howling halt. Dad got out and, with a startling new authority in his voice, told me to stay exactly where I was. Not that I needed telling.
    I craned forward, stunned; my neck hurt from where the seat-belt had caught me. In the high beams I saw a motionless body on the limestone shoulder of the road. My father strode over and knelt beside the rider. His shadow was enormous; the headlights gave every movement and colour a nightmarish cast. The old man got up again. He dragged the motorbike off the road. When I wound down the window, I could smell petrol and all the salty, minty scents of the coastal scrub. A moment later the old man got back in. I was rattled by what I’d seen and disturbed by how businesslike Dad was. This drama did not seem to impress him. He sighed, buckled his seatbelt and started the car. He said we had to find a phone and call an ambulance. To my horror, we drove away and left the rider out there at the roadside. There was a bus terminal not far up the road, a lonely floodlit yard full of hulking green