Behold the Keeper of the Mat

I spent my first weekend back in Australia doing some nice walks up Mt. Majura and Mt. Ainslie to get the jet lag out of the system. On Saturday I also concluded my car buying task and ended up ordering a brand new Jeep Wrangler Overland Unlimited. There is a bit of surprise still to come because I haven't actually seen the colour, which is called Anvil. Looking for it on the Internet it comes up with results ranging from powder blue to olive green. The other choice of colour that I had was "baby poo brown", which made me think that Anvil can only be better. Other colours are of course available, but would have meant a long waiting period.

On Monday I set out to deal with Australian bureaucracy. The first thing I did was to go to the Department of Immigration to request a certified movement record so that I could prove to my health insurance that I was out of the country for the past seven years. This was a very pleasant experience with very helpful staff and put me in a positive frame of mind to get on with my other chores, the next of which was to go to the Medicare office a couple of buildings up the road and get a Medicare card (I lost the old one somewhere in the many moves in the UK).

I imagined that I would just walk up to a teller, identify myself using my passport and get a new card issued, but it turned out to be quite an experience:

I entered the combined Medicare/Centerlink office in Londsdale Street only to find that there are no tellers. It is a large open plan office with lots of public servants sitting in their cubicles and a couple of blocks of chairs for the waiting public. I was one of the first people in and I walked over to the waiting area and sat there for a while - and nothing happened. Then I thought maybe it is a system like at the deli counter, where you pick up a number and you get called when your number is up. So I started to walk around looking for the place to get a number, without success. At some point I must have looked so lost that another citizen took pity on me and asked what I was looking for. When I said that I wanted to make my presence known, she pointed me to a lonely doormat in the middle of a large empty floor space. There were coloured footprints stuck on the carpet, leading away from it. I walked across the room and stood on the mat. After a little while I got approached by a person with a tablet computer in their hand and was asked why I was there. This was my first meeting with the Keeper of the Mat.

I said that I came back from a long stay overseas and that I needed a new Medicare card. The Keeper of the Mat simply said "Medicare; New Card" and pointed me to the now quite busy waiting area. I put on a baseball cap, pulled the hood of my sweater over it, slumped my shoulders, set my facial expression to "I would kill you if I only could be fagged" and blended in with the rest of the waiting crowd.

After a little while one of public servants peeled himself away from his desk, crossed the empty floor, stood in front of the crowd and shouted "Yours!". Nothing happened, so he shouted "Yours!" "Medicare!", when I realised that he probably meant me. I joined him and we went to his cubicle, where he explained to me that after more than five years overseas I needed to prove that I was serious about returning to Australia by providing two documents that proved that I left the UK for good and by making a statutory declaration, and of course fill in a form. Because I didn't have any documents with me to prove that I left the UK for good (sale of house, letter from employee accepting my resignation), all I could do was say "thank you" for the help and set off back to the hotel to collect the papers and fill in the form.

Two hours later I stood on the mat again telling the Keeper "Medicare, New Card", and taking a seat in the waiting area. Soon after a lady stood in front of the crowd shouting "Horse!". This time I was alert enough to recognise this as my name and I promptly followed her to her cubicle, where she told me that I now had the right documents, but that I needed to go off and get the stat dec witnessed. I know that a stat dec can be witnessed by a government employee, so I assumed that I could do it there and then, but apparently I was wrong and as a result had to walk across the road to the Post Office, where the lady at the counter witnessed it for me. The whole process only took about eight minutes until I again stood in front of the Keeper of the Mat. It was quick enough for him to remember me and he gave me a quizzical look. When I said "Medicare, New Card" he said in despair: "Somebody must have called you. Where were you?". I said "I was called. This is my next visit", which he clearly didn't understand. He said again: "You must be here when you're called", convinced that I had probably been outside for a quick blow of crack. Eventually, with a fair bit of tut-tutting, he set up another shout-out of my name. The third lady who received me that day not only pronounced my name correctly, but she also got me a new Medicare card and even witnessed a copy of my passport that I needed for the Department of Immigration application.

I think the whole open plan concept and public shouting out of first names was probably conceived with the idea of creating a friendly, jovial environment. Unfortunately it ended up being quite a humiliating experience.

With regards to my name, I understand that people get it wrong and each variation gives me a lot of pleasure, which is why I won't publish its proper pronunciation here.