WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 🇦🇺

By Alan MacGregor – Perth Proclaimer (The Long Pour Edition)


The rain was doing its best impression of a drumline on the old tin roof of the Proclaimer Bar. You could smell wet dust, wood smoke, and the faint tang of spilled beer. The jukebox was halfway through Cold Chisel’s “Khe Sanh,” when someone pulled the plug. The crowd groaned, but they knew what that meant.

I was climbing the soapbox again.

“Alright,” I said, tapping the mic that didn’t work. “Settle in, legends. We’re all in the same bloody boat - and it’s high time we stopped drilling holes in each other’s side.”

The laughter started somewhere near the pool table and rippled out, but even the regular hecklers leaned forward. The room had that weight - the kind that hangs in the air before someone tells the truth you’ve been avoiding.

A Toast to Common Ground 🍻

I came here from Scotland at eight years old, with a mum who could stretch a loaf for a week and a dad who swore every word he knew was for insulation. We arrived with a suitcase and a second-hand dream - Australia, land of the fair go.

Back then, I learned what “mate-ship” really meant. It wasn’t about agreeing. It was about turning up when someone’s ute broke down at 2 a.m. or lending twenty bucks when they were short for rego.

Australia didn’t ask where you came from. It asked, “Can you lend a hand?”

But somewhere along the way, that simple test got replaced by an exam in ideology. The nation of common ground became a battlefield of hashtags.

Once upon a time, you could argue over the footy, the price of beer, or whether the meat pie was invented in Perth or Melbourne - and still buy each other a drink at the end. Now we’re told that disagreeing makes us enemies.

That’s not progress; that’s regression dressed up as virtue.

The Left, the Right, and the Pub in Between 🍺

A bloke at the bar raised his glass. “So which side are you on then, Alan?”

I grinned. “The side that pays for the next round.”

The pub roared.

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? Most of us live somewhere between slogans. We’ve got compassion when it’s needed and caution when it’s earned. We’re all a bit left when someone’s hungry and a bit right when someone’s lazy. That’s not hypocrisy; that’s being human.

Politics tries to pretend we’re binary - heroes or villains, believers or deniers. But no one fits into the neat boxes on a ballot paper. Not really.

The Druid truth is this: every soul holds both sun and shadow. Lean too far into either, and you forget the rhythm of life. Society’s the same. Too much control, and we suffocate. Too little, and we crumble. The wisdom’s in balance - the same way a pint only tastes right when it’s neither flat nor frothy.

The History Nobody Argues With 📜

I looked around the bar. On the wall hung faded photos of soldiers, shearers, miners, and midwives - real faces, not slogans.

“These,” I said, pointing, “are the people who built this place. And not one of them asked for a statue or a hashtag.”

Australia was carved from hardship. Convicts, migrants, Indigenous communities, farmers - everyone had a shovel in the dirt or a blister on their hand. History isn’t supposed to make us comfortable. It’s supposed to remind us we’re survivors.

When I was a kid, our school taught us that the first Europeans settled and the First Nations endured. As I got older, the story changed - suddenly it was guilt and grievance instead of grit and gratitude. Truth matters, but so does unity. If we can’t tell the whole story without tearing ourselves apart, then the story gets lost altogether.

You can’t build a nation on blame. You build it on understanding - and that starts with admitting that every culture here has known both suffering and strength.

Division: The Most Profitable Business in the World 💰

“Why d’you reckon they keep pushing it, Alan?” someone asked from the corner.

“Because division’s good for business,” I said. “Outrage sells.”

The modern world runs on emotion the way the old one ran on coal. The louder you yell, the more clicks they count. Media moguls, tech giants, and politicians - they all know one secret: fear is free marketing.

Every headline is bait. Every debate is designed to make you choose a team. Because once you pick a side, they’ve got your loyalty - and your wallet.

I leaned forward on the soapbox. “The real fight isn’t left versus right. It’s people versus profit - and the battleground is our attention span.”

The crowd murmured. It wasn’t the kind of line you clap; it’s the kind that sticks like grit in the teeth.

The Druid’s Lesson: Circles, Not Lines 🔥

I took a sip, then said softly, “You want to know what the ancients got right? They didn’t see life as a line from good to bad, or left to right. They saw a circle - everything connected, everything returning.”

The bar was quiet now, even the fruit machines had stopped beeping.

“When we draw lines, we pick sides. When we draw circles, we find space. That’s what’s missing from our country - the circle. The conversation that never ends, where everyone gets a seat, and no one gets thrown out for disagreeing.”

Politics has forgotten that we’re supposed to be in orbit together - not in opposition.

We don’t need more policies that label us. We need principles that remind us: without one another, none of us stands a chance.

When the Pub Fell Silent 🤐

You know what scares me more than extremism? The silence that follows it.

I’ve been in rooms lately where good people whisper what they used to shout. Where laughter’s replaced by hesitation. Where everyone’s afraid of saying the wrong thing in case it costs them a friend or a job.

That’s not freedom - that’s fear wearing polite shoes.

Freedom of speech isn’t about yelling; it’s about trusting each other enough to listen. We can’t fix what we won’t talk about. And when ordinary Aussies stop talking, the country goes cold.

The Proclaimer Bar used to echo with arguments - wild, messy, hilarious arguments that ended with hugs. I want that back. I want disagreement without disgust. Debate without dehumanisation.

The Long Road Back to Mate-ship 🚶‍♂️

Someone near the fire asked quietly, “So how do we fix it?”

“You start small,” I said. “You start local.”

Change doesn’t come from Canberra; it comes from conversations like this. You rebuild a country the way you rebuild trust - one honest talk at a time.

Invite the neighbour you never agreed with over for a barbecue. Ask the tradie why he votes the way he does, and actually listen. Stop judging people by headlines written by someone who’s never met them.

When we stop shouting, the country starts healing.

We need to bring back the Pub Table Accord - the idea that nothing’s unsolvable if you’ve got enough chairs and enough patience.

A Round for the Forgotten Ones 🍷

I raised my glass.

“To the battlers,” I said. “The ones who built this place and never asked for applause.”

The room joined in.

“To the farmers who still rise before dawn. To the Indigenous families keeping culture alive in the face of neglect. To the veterans who can’t sleep but still stand tall. To the migrants who swapped everything familiar for a shot at freedom. To the nurses, the truckies, the brickies, the ambos, the kids on night shift stacking shelves so the rest of us can eat.

“To every Aussie who’s tired of being told they’re the problem - when they’ve been the solution all along.”

That toast went down slow. Some eyes shone. The silence that followed was sacred.

From the Druid’s Corner – The Song of the Bar🔥

In the old world, the Bard was the keeper of memory. His job was to remind the tribe who they were when they forgot. Tonight, that’s us.

We are the tribe. And our song isn’t finished.

When fear grows loud, we must sing louder.
When hate grows hot, we must cool it with humour.
When leaders divide, we must unite.

Because we, the ordinary people, are the keepers of Australia’s soul.

A flag is only cloth without spirit behind it. A nation is only lines on a map without its people connected by care. And a democracy is only paperwork if the people stop believing in each other.

So don’t let the cynics win. Don’t let them turn this land of light into a battlefield of blame. Let’s laugh again, build again, and row the same bloody direction.

Alan’s One Liner 🗣️

“The moment we stop arguing about who owns the boat, we can finally row.”

© 2025 Alan MacGregor. All rights reserved.