Tim Slee sticks it to the man in Taking Tom Murray Home
A single woman’s protest against greedy banks and supermarkets becomes a national rallying point in Tim Slee’s book Taking Tom Murray Home. The deeper he got into the novel, the more he asked himself, could it really happen?
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A public angry at self-interested politicians. A lone businesswoman who has had enough. A single woman’s protest that became the nationwide Yellow Vests movement in France. It could never happen here, could it? That’s the kind of question that can spark a whole novel.
A simple online petition launched by French businesswoman Priscilla Ludosky in May 2018 became the rallying point for the Yellow Vests movement, bringing ordinary French citizens on to the streets in their millions.
I spoke with a member of the Yellow Vests recently, Gabrielle, 28, who is a freelance computer programmer from Villeneuve-Loubet, in southeastern France. “I have been out three times,” Gabrielle told me. “Most of the people are from around here and know each other. My father does it too, just to be sociable.”
It wasn’t a single issue that brought the people of Villeneuve-Loubet on to the streets. “We want more respect, some money at the end of the month, and to be listened to,” says Gabrielle. “People do not see themselves in political parties anymore, they have lost hope. Then all of a sudden this protest comes along, and hope is reborn.”
So, could it happen here? As a novelist, you don’t have to look hard to find the answer to the question “What would it take to get Australians off the sofa and on to the streets?” We have a rich history of protests and rebellions and the same theme unites them all, just as it unites the Yellow Vests movement in France.
Nothing, and everything. Australians get angry, and we hit the streets. And we’re doing it with increasing frequency, over a broad range of issues, and the ability to organise through social media means we’re doing it in greater and greater numbers.
Our first real uprising, the “Great Rebellion” of 1808, was about grog. The Red Ribbon rebellion of 1853 in Victoria’s Ballarat was about taxes, as was the Eureka rebellion in 1854. Fast forward to 2011, when tens of thousands of protesters in Sydney and Melbourne hit the streets in the Occupy’ protests.
ABC journalist Jeff Waters spent some time at the protests with “Jef with one F”, a medical student from the bush, to find out what that protest was about. “(Occupy) appears to be made up of people who generally want an end to corporate greed and consumerism and carbon gas emissions. But what they really want is simply to have a say,” Waters wrote.
Fast forward again, to the “March in March” in 2012, which it was reported was attended by upwards of a hundred thousand people across the country, to deliver a “message of no confidence” in the then Abbott government. In 2015, pro- and anti-right wing protesters came out in force.
In the election year of 2019, we’ve seen students by the thousands walk out of classrooms across the country to protest about climate inaction, huge crowds at “Invasion Day” marches, rallies against live-music regulations in Sydney, vegans blocking city streets in Melbourne, and anti-coal mining protests across the country.
And who can forget the “Egg boy”, Will Connolly, the internet sensation who cracked an egg on the head of an Australian senator in protest at that politician’s response to the Christchurch shootings, in a time-honoured Aussie tradition that goes back to 1917 when anti-conscription protester Patrick Brosnan hit prime minister Billy Hughes with an egg, knocking off his hat?
In late 2018, I was putting the finishing touches to a novel about a family of Aussie battlers who have had enough and decide to take their grievances to the streets.
In Taking Tom Murray Home, Dawn Murray loses her husband in an accident and her farm to debt, and her subsequent protest against greedy banks and supermarkets becomes a national rallying point. The deeper I got into the novel, the more I asked myself, could it really happen? Could the problems of one woman trigger a wave of national protests?
At exactly that moment, the Yellow Vests’ protests exploded across France. I did a little more research into our own national history of rebellion and decided the answer was most definitely yes.
Politicians of all persuasions beware, for we are a nation of ratbags and rebels! (Now, where did I put that vest?)
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Author Tim Slee is an Australian journalist whose career has took him from Adelaide to Canberra to Sydney, where he worked for the Attorney-General’s department. He is currently working in Denmark for a pharmaceutical company but was inspired to write Taking Tom Murray Home while meeting locals while exploring the Great Ocean Road in 2013.
BOOK OF THE MONTH
From political protests to psychological thriller, July’s Sunday Book Club Book Of The Month is Devil’s Lair by Sarah Barrie. Set in the Tasmanian wilderness it is a tale guaranteed to hook you in, as a recent widow seeking refuge in a sinister mansion after her husband’s violent death finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into its secrets. Sunday Book Clubs readers can get a 30 per cent discount at Utopia by using the code NCBT19. And don’t forget to talk protests, frights and all your favourite books at The Sunday Book Club on Facebook.
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