Discarding Decency

DISCARDING DECENCY

D. Mackenzie Fuller

First published 2025 by Antipodeon

DISCARDING DECENCY

Copyright © 2025, D. Mackenzie Fuller.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Except for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents, other than those clearly in the public domain, and, except in the case of historical fact, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologise for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

Book design by Pilote Media – pilotemedia.com | Cover design by David Fuller

ISBN - Ebook:       978-1-7638591-0-4

Anitpodeon

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Noun. / skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, /ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈ skjuːoʊ-/)[1][2] is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original.

PROLOGUE

The tip of the arrow-shaped cursor hovered over the icon shaped like a square; the familiar image was designed with a slight bevel to make it appear to be raised from the flat screen like a button on a machine from a time when machines had buttons. Taipan could have just as easily typed the shortcut CTRL and S, but the muscle memory of decades of computer use compelled him to lift his right hand off the keyboard and click the left mouse button to execute the command. Save.

If Taipan had been using a product designed in Palo Alto or Seattle an algorithm built into the code of the program would have automatically saved the work after each keystroke, a feature that was conceived as a convenience, but secretly captured every backspace and ‘on the fly’ edit. Instead, when Taipan clicked the on-screen representation of a 3.5-inch disk, his changes were committed to a small solid state memory device with a USB connection commonly known to some as a ‘stick’.

His frozen shoulder ached as he reached for a half empty bottle of cheap whiskey, violating the ‘Consumption of Liquor Local Law 2022’. Sitting on an old milk crate to use the computer compounded the shoulder injury, but an ergonomically designed office chair was not an option. He stared out the back window of his nondescript white van which came off the production line in Japan around the time when disks in the shape of a save icon were inserted into a drive labelled A.

The movement of the Norfolk pine fronds suggested the wind was blowing from the east. An easterly produced onshore conditions at the front beach, flattening out the waves. On the back beach, the cross-shore wind would have been perfect for Windsurfers. There are no windsurfers anymore. The peak of that trend was around the time the van came off the assembly line and the disks were labelled A. No windsurfers, but the lumpy, messy waves were dotted with black shapes. Even though it was January the waters of Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria were colder than usual and a wetsuit with short arms and short legs called a springsuit helped to keep some of the chill off while waiting for the next set.

Taipan watched out the back window of the van as one of the black shapes changed form, splashing before an oncoming peak, standing, and falling off the back of the board almost in a single motion. A tourist. Perhaps someone who only gets to surf the waves at the height of the summer season between Christmas and New Year, someone with seven days off out of a possible twenty allotted for the year by the corporate policy.

He could still remember the day his allotted holidays ended, but he had to think hard to remember what day it was. Yesterday he had watched the start of the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race which always began on Boxing Day, the 26th of December. It was the same day that tens of thousands of Melbournians went to the MCG for the opening day of the Boxing Day Test. For those who didn’t care for sailing or cricket there was the opportunity to be obedient consumers, flocking to the sales at the behest of the screaming advocates of the oligopolistic Australian retailers flogging big screen TVs and leather sofas.

His whole body froze as still as his shoulder. The whining hum of a Leonardo AW139 helicopter became louder, passing low over the carpark, moving from west to east... It was a distinctive noise. Not as recognisable as the Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin which the Victorian Police Airwing operated during his formative years, but it was ‘definitely’ a police helicopter. His fingers played ALT and Tab, then CTRL and T on the keyboard to open a new tab in his browser, keying the URL for the Fire & Rescue scanner from memory. The CFA were responding to some grass fires, a fishing boat was in distress, nothing out of the ordinary for the day after Boxing Day.

He took another drink from the bottle, closed his eyes, and waited. The helicopter didn’t circle back. The noise faded away until all he could hear was the occasional shrill squawks of seagulls squabbling over discarded fried chips on the near molten tarmac of the carpark.

Taipan removed the thumb drive from the laptop and closed the lid. He looked at the innocuous device he’d bought for cash at the only remaining local independent newsagent where Tattslotto tickets were the only thing that still sold in any volume. There was no loyalty card or membership discount, no cloud-based wallet that could be tracked. There was a raised eyebrow when he held out a tomato coloured twenty dollar note instead of bringing his phone close enough to the reader to activate the NFT chip. Covid had accelerated to adoption of contactless payment. Only tax-dodgers or spouses hiding transactions from their bank statements would use cash.

He rummaged through a shoebox that held everything from old paper boarding passes, pens, rubber bands, batteries of all sizes, charging cables, +1 glasses, single use coffee sachets from dozens of hotels and envelopes. The kind of envelopes that were designed in the 1820s and still the inspiration for the email icon on your phone. His hands shook as he placed the USB stick inside the envelope.

-#-

Tara Kwong stepped down and out of her pickup and pulled her down gilet around her shoulders to take some of the chill out of the wind. She looked down over the small surfside car park, full of tradie utes, luxury 4WDs and Chinese EVs. Tourists.

Her Chinese-born ancestors had arrived in Victoria in 1855 along with more than eleven thousand others seeking fortune in the goldfields in the northwest of the state. Her own fortune was made off the back of a different kind of goldrush, the volatile world of cryptocurrency and virtual assets.

Tara looked to the east. About 500 kms across the sea, the Sydney Hobart fleet would be enjoying beam reach conditions. At this time the year before she had been skippering a Jeanneau Sunfast 3300 yacht, optimised for shorthanded sailing. She slipped her phone out of her pocket and opened the race tracker. It wouldn’t be a record year, but if the wind stayed like this, it would be great sailing conditions and a fast race.

She sighed loudly, taking a deep breath of coastal air and wished she could be at the helm of the boat then her field of view shifted closer inshore where the surfers were trying to make the most of a messy beach break. Then she refocussed on the carpark where her gaze came to rest on an old white van, the kind used by backpackers or ‘grey nomads’ to travel around the Australian coast. Perhaps the inside was converted to carry a quiver of surf, paddle, and kite boards, but the out-of-state plates suggested otherwise. There was something else that caught Tara’s eye. A 5G or Starlink antenna mounted on the roof. She watched as a local law enforcement officer approached the van.

-#-

The side door of the van rumbled as someone pounded with a fist on the outside.

You can’t camp here. said an officious voice as Taipan opened the door and squinted at the onslaught of sunlight.

Just here for a surf, said Taipan, recognising the bylaws officer as Andrew ‘Memphis’ Smith.

Tommo? The by-laws officer was a bit taken aback by the van occupant’s identity, that and the overpowering smell of alcohol. I thought you were in London, or Athens, or Dubai. I can’t keep up.

Back for Christmas. Hopefully get some waves. They both looked out at the ocean. Pretty scrappy out there today, and the sun’s pretty low. Feeding time for the men in the grey suits.

The parking cop was having a rare moment of insight. Someone would have to be suicidal to go surfing while drunk at dusk. I might need to leave the van here overnight, but I won’t be sleeping in it. Tommo adopted the tone of a scolded child. No camping officer.

Memphis looked around the interior of the van, making a mental note of the opened suitcase, sleeping bag and Coles carry bag full of crumpled hard cider cans. It was too late in the day, and he wasn’t paid enough to deal with writing up a local he’d have to see at the pub quiz later. Yeah, whatever mate. See you round. Memphis rolled his eyes and rolled the van door shut.

Tommo rifled through the shoebox again. It was amazing how much stuff was accumulated when you didn’t choose to throw it away. Champagne corks, fridge magnets, bespoke charging cables made by companies who didn’t know what the U in USB stood for, and pens, acquired from hotels around the world, from trade shows and hotels and ‘bricks and mortar’ banks that hadn’t replaced the flimsy chain where people signed deposit slips with ink. He picked a pen at random from the ‘Grand Excelsior Hotel, Dubai’, it didn’t work anymore, maybe it never did. He chose another and chuckled – the URL Antipodeon.com was printed along one side, something he’d created as marketing merchandise in a past life. He tested the pen on the lid of the shoebox to make sure it did the job it was intended to do, then addressed the envelope to himself at a post-office box and placed the stick inside. It contained a single file.

Monaghan.pdf

1

The Royal Oak Hotel was restored at great cost last year. The intricate wrought iron decorating the balconies had been painted a shade of white called Cornish Clay from the heritage colour collection making it look like lace from a distance. The interior and the staging materials were modernised. Starched white cloths, silver cutlery and upside-down wine glasses were added on the restaurant tables. The old menu was thrown out. Pub classics like fish and chips and, sausages and mash had been discarded by an Executive Chef who had replaced old favourites with gourmet wagyu burgers and Moreton Bay bugs. Otherwise known as The Royal or the Oak, the pub is frequented by an older crowd, retirees who voted against the republic in the 1999 referendum and against The Voice in the referendum of 2023.

Ray ‘Mace’ Mason grumbled and muttered under his breath as he looked around the pub for a seat, preferably something with a line of sight to the big screen, made more difficult by his short stature. He wanted to be inside with the benefit of the AC, not out the back under the sprawling tree that gave the venue part of its name. Ray didn’t usually have to stand at the bar. This was his pub, his local, his town. He took a freshly poured pot of domestic draught beer off the branded rubber mat on the bar. He didn't thank the kid. There was tension between the ex-federal member and The Royal’s casual barman.

Looks like we will finish off the Pakis before tea, whatcha reckon? Ray chuckled as a polite cheer echoed around the pub from those watching the cricket on the big screens.

Steve ‘Fish’ Fisher nodded with a thin smile. He didn't usually work Wednesdays, but the last week in December was a good chance to make some extra money. Fish hadn't seen Ray since the crypto winter, since the value of a chunk of the older man’s retirement savings had been wiped out as the price of Bitcoin went from an all-time high to almost half in the space of weeks.

Fish hadn’t exactly encouraged Ray to invest his retirement money into crypto, but Ray had watched the university student flashing money around and he wasn’t getting it from pulling pints. A good local kid from a middle-class family, Fish didn’t seem to Ray like the kind of guy to be selling drugs or stealing jet-skis and flogging the parts. So, one day, Ray had enquired where the money was coming from. Most of what Steve said went over his head but there was something in it. The kids have a term for it. FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out, and Ray sensed he was being left behind.

That was around the time Ray retired. Or as the Liberal party pundit commentating on election night put it, had his ass handed to him, because he was a corrupt, climate denying dinosaur who couldn’t see the meteor of public opinion coming straight at him. That was one of the more positive assessments of his campaign. His post-real-estate career as a federal politician was ended by a ‘Teal’ candidate in the May 22 election.

Fish hadn’t been the only one talking about crypto. ‘Ed’, his barber of 23 years, talked about it. The Indian bloke who took over driving one of the town’s four taxis was talking about it. His YouTube feed was full of dickheads in Dubai driving gold Lambos and that, juxtapositioned against the sort of lifestyle he was looking at in his retirement, funded by investments made by faceless fund managers ate away at him. Fish had warned not to stray far from the main coins and that advice, only to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum was probably the only reason the two men could even look at each other. That and the fact that Ray still owned one of the largest properties in Victoria.

That mob of curry munchers who bought the taxi company would do a better job than these clowns, said Ray, lapping up the laughs from a few of his remaining gang of acolytes. The barman, who had been given compulsory diversity training, had given up trying to soften the racist language from guys like Mace. Most of the time he couldn’t help laughing, though he would say that he was laughing at Ray not with him. He just stacked up clean pint glasses and let it go.

Hey, speaking of bloody foreigners buying shit, I’m thinking of putting Monaghan up for sale, see if I can flog it to a Russian or a raghead, get a tax break and buy a few more Airbnbs. Ray wanted everyone to know he was the beneficiary of the perks of white privilege and his generation, but he didn’t want them to know he was basically broke.

-#-

The sprawling Monaghan property with its tower was the kind of local landmark that featured on the front page of glossy local tourism brochures. It’s anachronistic in the way colonial properties often are. Oak trees instead of natives planted on either side of the driveway to create an avenue leading to a partially ruined mansion imagined by a late Victorian architect in the Italianate style. The original lease was over 16,000 acres, but the Grice brothers couldn’t make the property work through the depression of the early 1840s. The owner who built the decaying red brick building, complete with tower purchased 2000 acres from the Crown, paying 10,000 pounds in cash in 1895.

Alfred Mason arrived in Melbourne in 1863, aged 25. He was a savvy businessman who built a varied industrial business. In 1891 he became a member of the Legislative Council and later in 1910, accusations of political corruption coincided with his suspicious disappearance from the property’s beach during a family picnic. Perhaps because of an inherent sense of immortality, he left no will, his sons and daughters could not agree what to do with the property, so they sold it off to divide the money between them.

Since then, the property has been subdivided so that the current area is 888 acres, including a creek, beachfront and a headland that the locals call The Point.

Ray had employed every bit of cunning and malfeasance at his disposal to bring the property back into the family, from bribery and corruption to starting a bushfire in one of the back paddocks. Ordinarily for a property of this size and significance there would be double page colour glossy ads in the property section of The Saturday Age newspaper. Ray had fixed that. Brown envelopes full of ‘jolly green giants’ were exchanged at shady meetings in the early hours at the Embassy Taxi Cafe in Melbourne’s Spencer Street. The large wooden AUCTION sign that had been erected by the roadside outside the Monaghan driveway was destroyed by hoons who were happy to use it for shotgun target practice in exchange for a fistful of ‘pineapples’ and two bottles of Bundy OP. The replacement sign met the same fate and was never replaced. A middle-ranked officer of The Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions signed off on a soil test that showed the groundwater to be contaminated with arsenic and lead which would require significant clean-up investment if the land was to be used for farming or growing crops. Ray made sure that report was distributed widely, especially on overseas property portals that were aimed at foreign property investors.

On the day of the auction, an anonymous benefactor had offered a free breakfast at the Royal Oak Hotel for anyone who wanted to protest the sale. The donor had hired a 36-seat bus that coughed black smoke from the exhausts as it idled outside the public house waiting for the NIMBY types who had been radicalised through a letter writing campaign to the local paper. One of Ray’s agitators handed out placards and signs, designed to play on the ingrained prejudice and casual racism of the mostly Boomer crowd. Ray’s was the only bid.

#

Tara’s deck shoes squeaked on the polished wooden floorboards as she approached the Oak’s bar, looking for a space away from the ranting old white guy who looked vaguely familiar. She paused and looked around, taking in the newly framed portrait of the newly inaugurated king above the daily special written on a chalkboard in Alexandria calligraphy font - $50 for pan-fried sea-bass and a glass of Chardonnay. The crowd was not looking at each other, but rather the test match cricket on the big screen TVs.

Where ya gunna to host your famous Australia Day party if you don’t have it at the big house? Fish asked the cantankerous old git.

Ray looked around the pub, then directly at the woman who had just walked in and shook his head. Not many of us left around here. He made no attempt to lower his voice. You know what I mean. Proper Australians who understand why the Union Jack is in the corner of the flag, why the queen, sorry king, is on the $5 note and why we celebrate Australia Day on the 26th of January.

Fish followed his gaze and addressed Tara. You lost? You need something? The restaurant isn’t open yet. He said it in a way that made Tara feel instantly unwanted. She took another look around the bar and shuddered as the slobbish guy with the beer-gut leered at her as if she was a hooker in Patpong road. She shook her head, turned, and walked back out the front door, wishing she could do it more silently as her non-slip soles announced her retreat. She clenched her fists so her nails dug into her palms, wishing she couldn’t hear them talking about her.

You would, wouldn’t you, even though she’s a chink. Me love you long time. The creepy old guy put on a generic Asian accent as he added the trope and got extra laughs from Fish and the regulars who thought they knew where it came from but had never actually seen Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

Memphis nearly knocked Tara over as he barrelled into the Oak. He was still in uniform, still on the clock, but this couldn’t wait. He nodded to Fish who picked up a schooner glass and began to fill it with VB from the tap. Memphis tapped Ray on the shoulder.

Mace, he’s here. I just saw Tommo, you know, Travis Tompson, down at the surf beach carpark. That camper with the internet thing on top and he was inside working on a laptop. Memphis took a break from giving the news to gulp down half his beer.

Slow down, did you actually see him, or did you just see the van? Ray’s mood had changed, his afternoon in the pub watching the cricket ruined by the interruption.

I spoke to him, he was half cut, the van stank of alcohol, reckon he’s sleeping in it. The bylaws officer took out his phone, parking fines were all backed up with time stamped photos these days and Memphis wanted evidence if he had to write Tommo up for camping or drinking alcohol in public or whatever other violations he could find. See, that’s the van.

Ok, ok. The heat in Ray’s face was almost turning to steam in the air-conditioned space. Leave it with me. Don’t write him up, we need to handle this quietly, don’t want to spook him.

-#-

On his printed birth certificate, wherever that is, his name is spelled Travis Thompson, so inevitably, his nickname at the local public high school was Tommo. It never sat well with him. Tommo is a name for the kind of guy who plays centre half forward in the Aussie Rules team and has a dozen close mates who are thick as thieves. Travis Thomson has never been a team player. He always preferred solo pursuits, like surfing and computer hacking.

In Australian society, you can’t choose your own nickname. There is an unwritten, not so secret algorithm that shortens a name and adds ‘o’, hence Tommo. But the o is not compulsory. Steve Fisher, the casual barman at the Royal Oak Hotel is just Fish. Other nicknames can be opaquer, like cockney rhyming slang, with several degrees of meaning and derivation baked in. Andrew ‘Memphis’ Smith, whose life plan didn't turn out the way he wanted and ended up as a Bylaws officer, got his nickname because he mis-sang the words to Toto’s song ‘Africa’ in the Royal Oak Hotel one New Year’s Eve. Until that night, Smithy thought the lyric was ‘As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a memphis above the Serengeti…’ No one really remembers who was the first to call Smithy Memphis. Even fewer know the actual line from the song. But Memphis stuck.

Tommo shuffled along the cliffside track from the surf beach carpark towards the Pier Hotel. The easterly wind helped sober him up a little, but not as much as the encounter with Memphis. He really didn’t want people to know he was back in town, much less a gossiping ticket inspector who thought he was Javert.

The rules for walking on a beach path were displayed on a sign on a pole sunk into the sand and secured with a concrete foundation. Here, somewhere on the 59,000 kilometres of Australian coastline, with not another soul in sight, he was forbidden to drop litter - that one was fair enough. He was banned from walking a dog without a leash or riding a horse. He wasn’t allowed to go fishing without a licence, he couldn’t camp or light a fire, he couldn’t chop down trees or take any vegetation away, and he wasn’t allowed to fly control-line model plane – at least that’s what he thought the symbol represented. Then there were the laws relating to alcohol.

To protect against alcohol-related behaviour and to enhance community health and wellbeing, consumption of alcohol is prohibited, Fines apply. Alcohol may be confiscated by the police.

What is alcohol-related behaviour? He took a sip from the plastic Coke bottle that contained the remainder of his whiskey and cola, a ruse designed to circumvent the nanny-state laws. A month earlier, he had opened a can of Mamos lager on the streets of Athens and reflected on the relative permissiveness of the Greek capital compared with the beach path, where having an open container of alcohol in public was an offence. These laws were supposed to be a show of civility, a way to separate us from the animals - except that the seagulls could shit on the signs and fly away without punishment. The prurient laws mirrored the times the state was named after: Victorian to the core.

Stopping on the path where the fence had fallen away due to a landslide, he found yet another warning sign. This one less preachy, just a stick figure falling to its death and the words – ‘Unstable Cliffs’. He looked over the edge at the rocks below and wondered if the height was enough to sustain a fatal injury or if he’d end up being airlifted into the waiting arms of his pursuers. A blue heeler nudged against his leg, growling as if to say, Don’t do it. Smart dogs, Blueys. More emotional intelligence and empathy than most people. Tommo ruffled the dog's head as the owner caught up to her four-legged, casual social worker. He tugged his Pilote baseball cap down over his face as he recognised her as one of his mum’s old neighbours. She reached down and clipped a leash onto the dog's collar, so she didn’t fall foul of the laws posted on the signs.

Leave the poor man alone Max, she tugged the dog away as he whined and dug his paws into the sand wanting to wait beside Tommo to make sure he stayed on the land side of the path.

Maybe coming back was a mistake. The dog walker looked back over her shoulder as if she’d just cottoned on to who he was. Fuck Tim Minchin and his fucking Christmas song. Tommo’s lower lip trembled and his eyes watered speaking to a pelican as its large, webbed feet skidded along the flat water of the front beach to land beside the pier.

-#-

Some say that the inspiration for the Mos Eisley Cantina was the Pier Hotel. It’s only Tommo who says that and he's been saying it since he celebrated his VCE results with the high school class of 1995. Whenever he walks through the doors of the public bar, the words spoken by Alec Guiness as Obi Wan Kenobi come into his head… You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Which is a bit unfair to the venue mostly inhabited by surfers, tradies, backpackers and a few digital entrepreneur types who escaped Melbourne during the Covid pandemic. It would be hard to make an argument that this small-town hotel could be the home of intergalactic smuggling and rebellion that Tommo assigns to it in his mind, but then again, it’s about as far-flung from the empire as Tatooine.

‘The Pier’, like many pubs in Australia, is imaginatively named for its location opposite… the pier. The establishment goes through owners and managers like the country goes through modern day Prime Ministers. After failed incarnations as a gastro-hotel, a gay bar and cabaret and an Irish theme pub, the current offer is a return to the basic bar, bistro and beer garden formula that never fails. Like the Star Wars cantina, the Pier features a wide range of characters. It’s probably the only bar in the world where Tommo would rub shoulders with a guy like Archibald ‘Kelpie’ Prince.

Archie sat alone in the beer garden at the back of the hotel facing west. He sank down into the canvas sling of one of the deck chairs that were usually used to watch outdoor screenings and checked the weather app on his phone. It was a specialised app, designed for surfers. As well as the basic weather forecast - the temperature and the probability of rain, it also used readings from offshore buoys and complex models to predict the size and direction of the ocean swell. He scrolled down the screen and a puzzled look came across his face. The weather should be hot and dry, but the forecast was for rain and thunderstorms for the next week. The waves wouldn’t be any good with an easterly, not at the main back-beach. But maybe at Kelpie’s.

Strange weather isn’t it, Tommo said, casting a shadow over Archie’s screen before pulling up a deckchair of his own and slumping into it. Are you thinking Kelpie’s?

Hey Tommo, when did you get back into town? I thought you were hiding on a yacht in the Med or something. The ex-pro surfer looked up and acknowledged Tommo’s arrival before putting his phone away. You had better not let Mace see you. You kicked that bull-ant nest hard, and they are still in a biting mood. He looked up at the sky. As the day had worn on, a pillowy cumulonimbus cloud had formed as it might at a tropical latitude. Kelpies could be a go, but it’s a long paddle if you don’t have a ski and you know it’s technically Mace’s private property. He laughed and shook his head at the irony of what he just said.

The way they tell it in the Pier Hotel, Archie was the one who discovered Kelpie’s, but the truth is, his people had been fishing on that beach for thousands of years. 30,000 give or take. He knew the wave would be there, at least on some days, when the conditions were just right. The aerial photography that had always been prohibitively expensive, was now available to all, democratised through the satellite view tab on Google maps.

Archie only really had two choices in life. AFL would have been the obvious one. But instead of training with a Sherrin on the local oval, he was paddling to the outermost break on