THE WITCH HUNT

      A barely noticed willy-willy began spinning in the sleepy Australian town of Moangallo during a late flaring of March heat. It was a Sunday morning. Within days, it was a whirlwind slamming every part of the country.  It had begun innocently enough. Professor Kenneth O’Reilly, an eminent academic from a solid sandstone University, foremost authority on Australian history and prolific author had been invited to the town by the local Fellowship of Samaritans Club to give a talk on aspects of the region’s history. He graciously acquiesced and in his usual manner of quiet charm cast a spell over the packed audience eager for a sample of his erudition. It was extraordinary, thought one and all, how this man, extremely unprepossessing, could carry so much knowledge in his head. It was as though original copies of every one of his books were contained there.

      Making their happiness complete was that the academic writer looked exactly as the audience expected in one of his ilk. They could excuse him for not wearing his habitual, beaten up tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches – it was much too hot. But in every other respect he filled the bill. He wore a tie that had been fashionable twenty five years ago and a grey long-sleeve shirt trying to escape from his baggy brown corduroy trousers. Long ago, he had taken a shine to the comfortable Hush Puppy brand of suede shoes. They had long since disappeared from the market along with the rest of the Australian foot-ware industry so he'd taken to wearing the closest facsimile which was presently imported from China and would live approximately a quarter of the life of the real thing. He was not only badly in need of a haircut but appeared to not even be bothered to comb his mop of grey hair. It was possible he didn’t even own a comb and considered his raking fingers as a viable substitute. Intermittently through the talk he would use them to smooth long unruly strands back to approximately their rightful place, only for them to begin sneaking away again.  

     On completion of his one and a half hour talk, the usually staid and conservative townspeople collected in the hall broke into the sort of applause usually reserved for god-like overseas celebrities visiting the big coastal cities. The question and answer session, originally allotted ten minutes, blew out to twenty five. Every question was answered thoughtfully and comprehensively. Finally the MC and president of the club jogged up the steps to the stage to bring the event to a close. He took the mike to give an official expression of gratitude and presented the guest with a crimson cellophane and pink ribbon wrapped gift, the shape of which strongly suggested a large book. It was in fact a specially produced, limited edition copy of a photographic history of the local area. The crowd broke once again into enthusiastic applause. An impossible number of them were already plotting their own interviews with the visiting historian over tea, fresh scones and biscuits, the fragrance of which was already reaching out from the tables set up at one  side of the of the room.

     The entire audience off almost seventy had enjoyed the presentation. However, a single individual had liked what he’d heard for an entirely different reason. This was Andy Miller, intrepid reporter for the Moangallo Mail. Like the overwhelming majority of members of his profession, Miller was an unquestioning member of the New Left. Like many of his kind, though he wasn't really aware of this being his ideological star. He simply saw himself as being on the only side of history a man could decently stand. Besides, all his friends and acquaintance thought the same way. Social ostracism was a condition he'd rather avoid.

     Mainly because of Miller’s singular lack of interest in local history, he had begrudged being assigned to cover the event. He was about to call it a day when question time was called. But he was hungry and being held in his place by the smell of the nearby fresh scones. Reflecting on wisdom he'd acquired early in his drinking career, we was pondering the question of whether to get at least a little something solid in his stomach before heading to the Grand Hotel, his preferred watering hole. While having this debate with himself a middle aged woman across the aisle from him rose to ask the first question. Looking suitably bookish in thick-framed glasses, she referred to her favourite book by the author with whom she was thrilled to be standing in the same room. It was entitled The Great Gold Rush and dealt with the veritable transformation of the country by the explosion of gold mania in the 1850s.

     "What I found of particular interest was the way you dealt with the anti-Chinese riots on the gold fields, particularly the nasty business at Lambing Flat. We hear so much about how terribly racist the white miners were to the Chinese but I think you managed provide  a slightly different perspective to these troubles by explaining how incensed the white miners were at the practice of the Chinese of picking over the fields left behind after the miners heard of bigger strikes elsewhere. I for one can understand their anger. They would have felt that others were exploiting the work they themselves had done. Of course what we now call racism was at play but in those times it would have been considered perfectly natural to feel antipathy toward the Other, if you will, to people who were so radically different in every way."

     Reporter Miller had by now completely forgotten the scones as his inbuilt radar, tuned to detect the slightest threat to "social justice", lit up.

     "My question is,’ the woman continued, ‘if as what many experts tell us about human nature being unchangeable, do you think that we might expect a renewal of the kind of strife on the goldfields that you wrote about happening in the present given such a large influx of Asians. In other words, do you think that we might be seeing a similar clash of cultures?"

     Milller’s senses were sharpened to an almost a fight-or-flight degree and his pen was poised as tightly as a knife in expectation of an imminent kill. The hush that had settled over the audience indicated he wasn’t the only one riveted on what the answer to this question would be. The tension increased in the moments of thoughtful silence the Professor let pass before answering. Choosing his words carefully, he said, ‘as history has shown, different people, different tribes, if you will, sharing the same living space can often lead to problems. Therefore, immigration into any country should be handled delicately and sensitively with this in mind. It shouldn’t be rushed. It is my humble opinion that the mood and attitude of the host population in regard to immigration should always be kept in mind". And then he added almost in an after-thought, "especially if the source of immigration diverges from what we’ve come to accept as traditional."

     Miller was elated. From an unpromising situation he had his story. RESPECTED PROFESSOR ISSUES RACIST WARNING was the headline that ran on the next day’s Mail. With monumental advances in communication allowing every newspaper in the country to know almost instantly what every other newspaper was reporting and because of the word ‘racist’ in the Mail’s headline indicating a ‘hot button’ issue, not twenty four hours had elapsed before the story was echoing from every available instrument of media throughout the country and even on wire services feeding the scandal to other countries where the belief  reigned that racism was an offence only marginally less evil than the sexual abuse of children.

   

  The phone on Professor O’Reilly’s desk in his office at the University began ringing even as the sun was rousing itself for its day’s journey and wouldn't stop until well after it had flashed a brilliant farewell. In a suburb not used to such nonsense, the professor’s wife peered nervously from a window at the pack of newshounds at her front door and the vehicles in the street splashed with TV station logos and mounted with satellite dishes. She heard a helicopter in the sky and who could blame her for suspecting it was also wearing TV livery? She flinched with every new volley of pounding on her door. A sensitive, introverted woman, she was beginning to feel ill. This was an omen of an impending migraine headache transforming every-day noise and light into instruments of torture.

     She had spoken to her husband several times by phone and each had tried, futilely, to make some sense of what was happening to them. He tried to comfort her when in need of comfort himself. He’d long stopped answering his phone. The first calls he’d taken had been from newspaper journalists either righteously demanding clarification of what he’d been reported as saying or magnanimously wanting to allow him to give "his side of the story." Having his phone running hot next were requests from TV journalists for interviews. Being only too aware of the savagery that could be unleashed by these journalists at interviewees of whose views weren’t approved, he wisely declined the "invitations" that were sometimes almost pleading. Worst of all, and the reason for which he’d stopped answering the phone, was the abuse he then began receiving. He would’ve been crushed to know that a portion of these was from his own students.   

     Shaken, he left his office to give his first lecture of the day. Once behind the lectern, all seemed normal again and what he’d been experiencing no more than a bad dream. Still, he couldn’t at times prevent his mind being plagued by wondering if his students were aware of the turn of events and how they were responding. He found himself scanning the youthful faces.

     Not wanting to return to his office, he instead headed for what was the usual comfort of the staffroom where several of his colleagues were relaxing, drinking coffee and, he was alarmed to see (feeling foolish because of it) reading newspapers. He was greeted with nods and smiles. But were the greetings, perhaps just infinitesimally, cooler than usual? He had to get a hold of himself. He was getting paranoid, allowing himself to be rattled by a storm in the tiniest of teacups. After all, he knew how news cycles worked. This would all blow over in a day or so or as soon as the vultures smelt a new death.

     But it didn’t blow over. Weeks passed without relent from the fearful attention. His colleagues were beginning to be cooler and more distant in their interactions with him. It wasn’t paranoia. He was beginning to feel like a monk in a monastery whose secret atheism had been uncovered. Different drilling angles were being used by the media promising even greater insight into the possible dimensions of the issue. Was this one individual case of racism in academia or was it more widespread than had ever been suspected? Was O’Reilly a lone cockroach (of course it wasn’t put in so many words) or had he actually popped out of a seething nest? Stay tuned.

     Fellow academics had taken it upon themselves to sift through the professor’s life’s work in search of further evidence of his racism. Once revered books were being minutely examined with the same kind of certainty attending Darwin’s missing link that something would eventually turn up if the search was diligent enough. What would be done with the books once the incriminating evidence was found was never mentioned, nor was the subject of bonfires ever broached. However, in the fevered imagination of some of the inquisitors, the flames were already being kindled.

     Exactly one month after his ‘infamous’ talk at the Samaritans club, O’Reilly surrended his academic  position, effectively hounded from the university he’d come to love. He was on the brink of a nervous breakdown and his fragile wife had been hospitalized because of continual migraine headaches. Media packs grouping at her front door finding it to be unrewarding had eventually melted away but reporters cruising past in cars now and again were sometime able to see a pale, wan face appearing around a curtain.

     Sadly the media harassing his wife had been replaced by an even more unnerving threat. Avenging social justice vandals and thugs had taken to terrorist tactics at his home address. It began with a terrific boooooom in the middle of the night. Armed with a cricket bat, O’Reilly, on going outside to investigate, found his letterbox buckled, still smoking and the top blown off. It was the result heavy duty fireworks exploding in a confined space. Appropriately enough, they had been obtained in Chinatown, the only area in the city fireworks were sold legally. The police were informed but the incident being viewed by the police almost amusedly as simply an example of youthful hi jinx, the complaint was stillborn.

     To O’Reilly, his wife’s being in hospital was a disguised blessing. She at least was spared the pain of knowing what was happening at  home. The letter box had only just been replaced when black paint graffiti appeared one the adjoining white fence: RASIST PIG. Remedial English had been introduced not a moment too soon, the professor thought wryly but sadly . Two days later a swastika, the symbol marketed as the ultimate mark of the devil, appeared on the weatherboard wall next to the front door.

     The day after a rock wrapped in an obscene message smashed through a bedroom window and took the legf off a bedside table O’Reilly put his house on the market. As soon as his wife was well enough to travel, he was planning to leave the land of his birth - for good.