I am an immigrant. A refugee, whose family, when I was kid, accepted the offer of this country—to come and offer your children a future that the social construct of the old country could not.
They called us Ten Pound Poms, and whatever I came to believe Australia was, I lost that belief on the Steps of the Shrine a short time before Victorian police officers, dressed like updated stormtroopers, beat the hell out of me.
Early, on the streets of Melbourne, they’d shot me with rubber bullets, but here, one of the several officers that were onto of me, was smashing my head into the sacred concrete with his plastic shield, while saying, desperately, three times, stop making me do this. I can still hear his pain, despite the years, and despite the fact that he had a black name-tag covering the lower half of his face.
Perhaps we could both see then that this was the end of our belief of who our country was.
I did try to defend it, not with violence, but with a load speaker i was offered, and what I thought was a rational speech, that went something like “Officers, we aren’t your enemies. ‘Look at us—we’re your brothers and sisters, your mothers and fathers, your children. And this Shrine is built on the blood of our ancestors who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. But if you come and attack us now, it will no longer stand for that.’
But it didn’t work, right there and then, as they beat us up and shot at the others, I lost my country under the cruelty of strangers.
Yet this commenced a long journey for me, as I went searching for and defending what I thought my country was, and those journeys are documented here and on Café Locked Out’s various social media platforms.
Then, over a year ago, on the farm of Dr Bruce Paix, another violated defender of a country he loved, I was informed I should do something about these chest pains I was feeling, for they wouldn’t self-rectify.
But since I had witnessed the health system refuse to give the 16-year-old Dazelle a double lung transplant, and since we had heard all these other horror stories about people's time spent in hospital during the heavy COVID era, I instead tried to fix it naturally.
I lost weight, I downed whatever health product, Kel, my new partner, handed me, and I kept myself busy—even as secretly I felt the pain increase.
Sometimes it was so bad I would pretend I could reach those I loved through a soul connection and say goodbye, but then the pain would pass and I would wake and keep working.
No one ever informed me that they received my message.
In the end, it was my dedication to the work, such as it was, that kept me going.
Finally though, inside our bus, which was parked in front of Dr William’s Bay townhouse, I felt the pain come on—as it had for several days. But this time all the old tricks didn’t work, and with Kel asleep, I rested my hands on the edge of our sink and suspected that this was a heart attack.
This knife that was piercing me from front to rear, with pain radiating down both arms.
Silently, I said goodbye to my loved ones again—but after I found myself still alive, though in pain, I woke Kel.
At first, I told her it might have been a major angina attack, and since William was once again a GP, perhaps he’d have some medication I could take. But since he wouldn’t answer his phone, being so late, I told Kel I think we should go to a hospital.
After packing up the bus—which meant putting everything back on the bed—Kel googled the nearest emergency department, and at around five in the morning we headed off.
Heading, as many in our movement still see it, into the lion’s den.
A nurse of South African origin and weary after a long shift finally got to me—a grimacing, wild-haired old man who’d just been wondering if stuck in this line of one was where I was going to die.
Kel was still outside trying to figure out where to park the bus.
The rest was a blur. Though this time several people told mt they woken up at 4:15 with a bad feeling.
The nurse took me seriously. She put me in a wheelchair and after wheeling me in, took my BP—which was 200 over something—and before long I was in a hospital bed having blood tests, angiograms, chats with doctors, you name it.
It was now that I started to notice that so many of these people caring for me were immigrants too—people who’d taken a punt on this country based on the same hopes our posters still sold.
None of these people knew me, or had heard of Café Locked Out. Not one. And I didn’t ask many of them, but I guess they were all vaccinated.
But what really connected them, was that they were all clearly slaves to their compassion. They simply loved helping other people. Even though the talked about weekend rates and the like, it was the work that held them.
Because this hospital didn’t have the facilities to fix what they now knew was a heart attack, I was sent in an ambulance to a second hospital. Out of respect, I don’t want to name them, in case that breaches some confidentiality thing. But it was the same where they took me—kind people, caring for sick people. Whether they were morbidly obese, under arrest, any age, colour or religion, unvaccinated and no-one ever asked—they were respectful and kind to patients even when these sick Australians were rude to them.
In the second hospital, I met Jesús. He immigrated here from Peru. He had a radiant smile and soothing manner, and he would take my order for dinner, and breakfast, and lunch.
And the deeper I travelled into the endless bowel of this infrastructure, with its posters on all its walls informing me of my rights and asking me not to abuse the staff—it was the same people I found.
Even the doctors—and I have interviewed lots of suspended doctors—weren’t just dedicated to their jobs, but deeply committed to seeing if they could help me wrench from death a few more decades of time in this light.
Then, when I was undergoing the angiogram that I thought was going to be a stent, became a cool young doctor informing me that I was going to need a triple bypass, two realisations hit me. The first was as I left to wait in a wheelchair in a room full of very large Australians, realising my entire chest was going to be ripped open.
And the second: This wasn’t nature. This was a trench built by humans to keep the inevitability of death at bay. From the people cleaning the toilets to the surgeon who ripped me open in order to help—they were all soldiers, and they were soldiers painted with every race in the world.
Even the anaesthetist—this man you wanted to stay awake to get to know, for he was such a character—was from one of the Germanic states.
The most beautiful moment, happened now.
This was Good Friday and the operation, we were informed was booked for the following Wednesday, in yet another hospital, and they didn’t have any beds. But I was getting worse, and despite all their reassurances I finally whispered to Kel that I knew I wouldn’t reach Wednesday.
It was now, within moments of saying that, that nurse came in and said, we’ve moving you know and they’re operating on you tomorrow.
On Easter Sunday, dressed in hospital gown that read Queensland Government, I was walking around ICU, with all my hearts plumbing repaired, my harm supported by a young multi-generational Australian physiotherapist who was talking to me about his young children.
Thanks to all of them, I was alive.
Now it is my eleventh day in hospital and my fifth day since the surgery, and this is the first piece I have written since the initial heart attack.
It’s 1:30 in the morning and despite the pain from the healing wounds and the men in the ward snoring, I felt compelled to write this—for I know where I am.
This is more than a hospital bed.
This is a hospital ward in my adopted country—that I finally rediscovered, not through justice for a crime, and there have been crimes, nor the finally victory of an argument about mandated vaccinations, that I will challenge,—no, I rediscovered all that is still good about my country through the kindness of strangers.
Michael Gray Griffith
24/04/2025
Brisbane