The face staring back at me in the mirror was the face of a man who had not slept properly for months. I splashed water on that desolate visage, prayed to a God I didn’t believe in and left the bathroom.
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I was in a small hall, located in suburban Melbourne, to listen to a young, rising star of the Australian Workers’ Union, Bill Shorten. The air that summer night, in 1996, was thick, and old ceiling fans strained.
With a tape-recorder in hand, and my media credentials stuck to my chest, I sat on a chair as the incessant chatter of about 300 trade unionists filled the room like the bush at night.
They took their seats, and cheered when Shorten emerged on stage, fist-pumping. His gait and smile were easy. He looked at home in that environment.
A future PM? I thought, then returned to my long-standing preoccupation: dreaming of a deep sleep that seemed as unattainable as world peace.
Holding a microphone, Shorten began speaking. And the next thing I remembered was opening my eyes to find a hulking, rough-looking bloke, his beard long and scraggly, shaking my shoulder and saying: “Maaate, you’re not a very professional journo, fallin’ asleep on the job. What are ya, pissed or somethin’?”
Shorten had left the stage and people were filing out of the hall. I yawned like a lion and rubbed my eyes hard. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what happened.”
The hulking bloke dismissed me with a hand and a sneer and left.
I turned off the tape-recorder. What the hell, I thought. What just happened? I had a good sleep! That’s what happened. But how?
The answer to that burning question, the one that occupied my thoughts on the drive to my absurdly small CBD studio apartment (all that a 20-something, low-rung journo could afford), was about to be revealed when, sitting at a pathetically small dining table, I started to transcribe the recording of Shorten’s speech, and the next thing I remembered was being woken by a garbage truck.
I yawned and shambled to the window and pulled back gaudy curtains, the day’s first responders buzzing about under a blue canvas smudged with cirrus clouds.
Bloody hell. What’s going on? Think. Think. Think, stupid! Surely not. No way. It couldn’t be that. But … But what if it is?!
After another day’s slog of trying to become a name in an increasingly loathed industry, I extended my 191-centimetre frame on a pathetically small bed, feet dangling, pressed the tape-recorder and the monotone voice of the future Labor Party leader washed over me like an Ambien wave, and I fell into a deep sleep.
The following morning I felt a kinship with the greats of history who changed mankind through their discoveries: Albert Einstein (gravity); Benjamin Franklin (electricity); Mark Bode (insomnia cure) …
I knew how the person who discovered fire must have felt, and I couldn’t wait to impart that knowledge on the fellow members of my insomnia support group, and then the world.
As I expected, the effect Shorten’s voice had on me was replicated among all the members of my support group. Not only had I stumbled upon a cure for insomnia, I had discovered a way to make money – lots of it!
I used the last of my savings to take out an ad in a community newspaper, spruiking my “miracle insomnia cure” – and, hey presto, the money poured in.
And why wouldn’t it? I was, after all, providing a product that, on the surface, reeked of snake oil. But, for possibly the first time in history, actually worked! And it was cheap!
The day I moved into a spacious apartment in a new complex was a special moment: I was finally climbing the capitalist ladder, at speed.
The euphoric ascent didn’t last long: the heavy knock on my front door signalling the demise of my dream run. Standing outside the door was Shorten, his lips pursed with displeasure. Next to him was the same hulk from that night at the hall.
Hulk said: “Maaate, time to pull down the shingle for this little enterprise, all right. Tell me you understand what I’m saying.”
“I, um … I understand.”
“Good,” Shorten said. “A person’s intellectual property is …”
That’s all I remembered about that.
I was woken by my next-door neighbour’s cocker spaniel licking my face. I then rose and closed the door on that wonderful chapter of my life.
But I bet even now, almost 23 years later, people go to bed every night listening to William Richard Shorten’s miraculous voice.
