Happy Australia Day - Story 08 - "AUSSIE FLASH STORIES" Book by Daniel Gutierrez Hijar

 

I opened my restaurant on a January twenty-sixth five years ago and today, also January twenty-sixth, Australia Day, I will close it. There is nothing more I can do to save it.

This business has given me several headaches, each one overcome thanks to the naive hope that, at some point, I would achieve the economic prosperity so often desired. However, this latest pain, today's, is soothed only because I know it is the last. Today, everything ends.

I arrive at the premises and Janice, Erika and Sandra, my staff, are already there, working as usual. They haven't been with me from the start, of course. I've seen many young people come and go; some eager to learn the trade, others only interested in a wage that would keep them from starving in a country as far away as this one. Janice, Erika and Sandra are the employees who have lasted the longest.

Happy Australia Day, I greet them, and they wish me a Happy Day too. They weren't born here, but I sense they feel a little bit Australian, as I know they've been living in this country for a good while.

Despite how much I like and value them, it's the wages I must pay them that will make this day, financially speaking, even more in the red than the previous ones.

I know the number of customers who come today will not compensate for the gigantic losses in fixed costs. Australia Day is more a day of fear than of celebration. That's why people prefer to stay at home and enjoy a quiet holiday, without any scares.

Yes, the date chosen for Australia Day is when Captain Phillip arrived on the shores of Sydney with a shipment of convicts who, it must be acknowledged, were also torn from their land and sent to an unknown and very distant place.

We have all lost something or suffered greatly to get here and find opportunities that allow us to help our own. And to stay alive; perhaps, forcing a smile each morning. And that is what we should celebrate on this Day.

But the economy shows no mercy. Everything that comes in today will go towards paying my staff's wages. And, from what I can see, few people are coming to my restaurant. Most are keeping a prudent distance from the possible demonstrations of those who consider this twenty-sixth a day of mourning for the Aboriginal Australian population, who were decimated by the newly arrived Europeans in Phillip's time. I see, with great anguish, that the little money that comes into my till will not be enough to pay my staff the double hourly rate stipulated by law.

The hours pass and I pray for this day to end quickly; as each minute that passes is a little more red ink on my restaurant's finances.

The day ends, I tally the till, and I realise, with relief, that, at least, I will be able to pay my staff the high wages. I lock everything up and leave, but not for home, because I've already lost it, but to the street corner, that corner I turned so many times and where I never (except for these recent days) thought I would establish my dwelling.

I carry with me a small sign: Happy Australia Day. Please help a fellow countryman with a donation.