I Covered the 2016 Australian Election to Forget My Failed Marriage

For eight weeks in mid 2016, VICE writer Lee Zachariah followed the Australian Election around the country. His book Double Dissolution: Heartbreak and Chaos on the Campaign Trail, charts that journey as well as its emotional impetus. This is an excerpt from Lee's book.

I'm sitting in Heathrow Airport, waiting to fly away from my future. I hate the waiting. I'm not particularly looking forward to the 25 hours of cramped, sleepless travel that awaits me, but at least it will be movement. I twist the wedding band around, over and over to see how long it will take before my finger drops off like a gangrenous limb. Nearby, children run around the boarding gate area, oblivious to the fact that our flight has been delayed. I try to surmise who among us is heading home and who is taking off on holiday. Who is moving to a different country to start a new life. Who is running away because their new life failed.

In the corner, televisions stream the 24-hour BBC news channel. They have nothing on the Australian election, of course. The UK is slouching towards a vote on the exit from the European Union—"Brexit" is the term that even the most reluctant users of voguish terminology have been pressured into adopting—and the USA is on the verge of nominating a demagogic madman as a major Presidential candidate. Australia's situation barely rates a mention. And yet, it's why I'm getting on a plane.

Well, no. It's not.

The television plays the same endless B-roll of Boris Johnson getting off his Brexit bus to eat some ice cream, then getting off his Brexit bus again to have a sausage roll. Without sound, you could be fooled into thinking you were watching the least appealing food tour documentary ever made. I cast an eye over the windows of the Brexit bus. If all goes to plan, I'll soon be aboard my own branded bus, the one that will ferry the Prime Minister's press pool around on the campaign trail. I haven't even begun the process of seeking accreditation, yet I am about to fly halfway around the world to cover the election. This is, by any measure, a poorly thought-out plan.

The revelation of the new traveller is that every place seems identical. Every airport feels the same. Heathrow feels like Sydney feels like Dubai feels like Berlin. A few weeks earlier I'd flown to Berlin because I'd realised that even with flight and hotel costs, it would be cheaper than trying to find a week's accommodation in London. Besides, I had some serious thinking to do, and I couldn't do it here. I'd spent my life dreaming of London from afar, and now, two months after I'd moved here, it was a place of heartbreak. I could no longer think clearly. I knew I was probably going to end up running back to Australia with my tail between my legs, and if that was my fate then I couldn't very well leave without trying mainland Europe at least once.

I spent a week walking the streets of Berlin, staring in wonder at the palaces of Potsdam and pointing desperately at menus. Flicking through the channels on the hotel TV trying to find some English-language news. Sitting in the one corner of the room where I could get internet, and reading about the double dissolution election that was looming back home. In a moment of inspiration, I realised what it was I had to do.

Two weeks later, I was collecting my things from my wife's apartment, telling her all about why I was going home. I tried to make it sound like I'd been called away on assignment, like the pool of journalistic talent back in Australia was so thin that they had to shine a signal into the clouds to summon me back from a whole other hemisphere. She didn't need to know about the way I begged my editor at VICE to let me go to Canberra so I could witness and write about the breakdown of the government, nor did she need the details of the comical negotiation in which I agreed to cover all my own expenses and travel accommodation, just for the love of God give me a project to focus on and an excuse to go home.

I sit at that boarding gate in fierce concentration, my memory of that meeting continually shifting. I am trying to pin it down. There was a hint of reconciliation, but then there was clarification. I'd simply misunderstood her. But my original inference had taken root, and I had to keep reminding myself that there had been no hint at all.

I sift through those moments of our last encounter, searching for clues and trying to make sense of my selective memories. We'd met up so I could collect the rest of my clothes before I left the country. For over two months I'd been living out of a small bag, frantically laundering and re-laundering a week's worth of clothes and hoping no one would notice that I only had seven changes of clothing instead of my trademark nine. We sat in a Tufnell Park café and caught up about our recent lives, and I clumsily explained what the double dissolution actually meant.

"If the Senate fails to pass the ACCC bill," (actually, it's the ABCC bill) "then the Prime Minister dissolves parliament," (technically it's the Governor-General who dissolves parliament) "and everybody's seat is up for grabs: the upper house and the lower house, including senators who still have another three years left on their term." (This one I get right.) "My flight's this Saturday, on the 30th of April," I told her. "I land in Melbourne on the 1st. The budget is handed down on the 3rd. I drive to Canberra on the 5th."

I skim over the middle date. I don't want to dwell on the fact that watching the Budget was how I would be celebrating my 35th birthday. But then, I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to mark the day this year. I definitely didn't want to be sleeping on a friend's couch in London, obsessing over what had gone wrong. But nor did I want to be back home in my old room at my parents' place, an entire planet away from my wife. And I sure as hell wasn't going back to Berlin. The wifi there is rubbish.

Watching Treasurer Scott Morrison hand down the Budget on the day I turn 35 is decidedly not my idea of a good time either, but it would at least signal the beginning of a new project. And a project was exactly what I needed to distract my brain from 24/7 of: "Where did it go wrong?" The infinite loop of questioning and bargaining was driving me mad, and had been testing the patience of even my most tolerant friends. If I couldn't have answers, I needed a distraction. This was the exact type of project I needed to throw myself into, even if I felt dangerously unqualified to do so. The moment I booked my flight, the doubt set in. "I'm a little worried," I told a friend. "I'm going to have to write about policy."

"You've been writing about policy for years," they said.

"Yeah, but it's all just commentary and jokes," I said. "I'm actually going to be in Canberra. Shadowing the Prime Minister, hopefully. It's a lot different to sniping from the sidelines. There's a lot to learn in not very much time. I may have bitten off more than I can chew."

"You know what you're talking about," they assured me.

"I'm just good at faking it," I said. "It's like playing the piano or being Jewish. So long as I'm doing it in front of anyone who doesn't know any better, I seem plausible."

It hardly mattered. I had thrown my hat over the wall, committing to an intense, two-month project. I had turned going home into something functional, productive, hopefully achievable.

The flight eventually boards, and I spend the next 25 hours sleeplessly watching movies and almost missing connecting flights and feeling every single kilometre put behind me and the city that was supposed to be my new home.

This is an excerpt from Double Dissolution: Heartbreak and Chaos on the Campaign Trail by Lee Zachariah, out now from Echo Publishing.