My Region, My Conditions: How They've Moulded Me.

The names of several individuals mentioned in this essay have been changed for their privacy.

I often wonder, to this day, just how the hell my parents did it. How, after moving from the south-east corner in 1989, they raised three very challenging children (especially me, the youngest) in Rockhampton, into well-adjusted adults. Or, in my case, as well-adjusted as possible for somebody in my shoes. I mean that in two ways: firstly, with size 13 feet, shoe-shopping is almost always a chore for me. Secondly, and less literally but more consequentially, I have Asperger's syndrome and generalised anxiety disorder. But let me flag this immediately: I don't want your pity. I may not have reached this point single-handedly, but I'm now 30 years old, living independently and I have a Bachelor of Arts with Honours Degree, a reasonably good employment record and a nourishing, stable life with my family (blood or not).

But I digress. Even if we autists are often accused of lacking empathy (and we don't; we're just not as good at expressing it), in order to more clearly understand how I arrived at this point of self-acceptance and pride in having an ASD, you'll have to indulge me as I revisit some of my formative experiences with that in central Queensland.

I was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 12. It's surprisingly hard for me now, perhaps because I've since spent so long trying unsuccessfully to forget what I endured during those years, to place myself back in the mindset of my primary school-age self. I'm sure I considered myself just a regular kid, as I imagine all my peers did. But let's face it: I never was, and many (if not all) of them could tell. I was bullied relentlessly, but I also formed many loyal, longstanding friendships. One, although it was and is no more meaningful to me than the others, was with an Indigenous boy named Alan, and in hindsight just why we instantly clicked makes all the sense in the world to me: with his race and my disability, we were both outsiders. We understood each other automatically. Come to think of it, two other friendships from school (abeit one of them from high school and again, I don't wish to trivialise or ignore any of the others) also retrospectively seem to have been inevitable, and both with guys named Joe: one had many health issues as a child like me (I had numerous physical ailments as well), and the other was also the youngest of three.

On that note, may I say, at least in my experience, being the lastborn is very overrated. You often have to accept hand-me-downs (which I now know are financially better for parents and don't make the older kids jealous but they don't exactly help the youngest forge their own identity either), your elder siblings have set standards for you to meet and they could even become like extra authority for you. Personally, I often had to fight for my sister and brother to include me in their activities and conversations at home, although I was definitely enough of a pain to them frequently to deserve their exclusion. But all my life they've still both had my back when necessary, as I've had theirs, and those are sincerely the moments I'll always remember the most.

The arts, especially cinema and music, have become the main driving passion in my life. That spark was first lit when I saw Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope theatrically aged 9, when it was re-released in 1997. There are simply no words for the profound inspiration and escapism that gave me, and in fact still does whenever I reflect on it or rewatch the film, and suffice it to say my love of Star Wars has today become practically evangelical. But that shouldn't suggest my cinematic taste is restricted to blockbusters; the genres those include do remain my favourites, but I can still frequently enjoy most of the others. Considering music, well, let's just say during long family car trips growing up (usually to Brisbane or the Gold Coast), as I whiled those away with a music player on, the others usually ended up having to yell at me, "Jarred, stop singing!"

I went to two primary schools, Frenchville and Mount Archer, and then North Rockhampton State High School. Overall, I was a decent but inconsistent student academically. There were some subjects I actively hated and struggled with, and others in which I was practically the teacher's pet. For most of my life I've had a hyperactive imagination (maybe because ADHD is comorbid with Asperger's), so despite the prevailing stereotype of autistics being maths prodigies, and being a mathematician's son as well, I was never strong there. I can do basic addition and whatnot but algebra et cetera is like a foreign language to me still, and mathematics is very structured and black and white. (You don't want to know how much worse I was in PE class, mind you.) I flourished in English, however, because by comparison that subject was equally visual but more whimsical and open to self-expression and storytelling, so in it I could become at least as imaginative as the work permitted.

This trend continued throughout high school, in which I am deeply ashamed to admit I myself became a bully for a time, maybe more so than my own former bullies. And God knows I can still be like that, but education is a lifelong thing. High school had many bright spots, though, like how in Year 12 in 2005 I acquired an OP Score of 15 and won the Principal's Award for the most academically improved senior student, as well as heaps of good old shenanigans with my friends. But what happens at lunchtime stays there.

I went straight from NRSHS to enrolling at Central Queensland University, where I commenced in 2006. My B.A. with Honours was certainly the greatest challenge of my life thus far, but with even more certainty I can say it was the best choice of my life yet. As expected, I learned exponentially more about my chosen study fields (I majored in Cultural and Literary Studies and Film Studies, and did courses in several other disciplines), but where my tertiary education proved surprising was in how much it taught me about life and the world. By finding my first girlfriend there I learned about romantic relationships (that one didn't work out but today we're like spiritual siblings), and little did I know it but Arts is a field that attracts proud oddballs like iridescent lights attract mosquitoes. Slowly, they all helped me to completely accept myself and, later, to fully come out as autistic. Indeed, the first person I came out to was my then-girlfriend, while we were dating.

I finished at CQU in 2012, graduating with a Distinction for my Honours Year thesis, which was on depictions of troubled boyhood in the films of Steven Spielberg. I then did stints as a radio announcer and producer, a receptionist, a tour guide and maintenance worker at Archer Park Rail Museum, and a gardener. Those were all beneficial in some ways, but now since last year I've had my most satisfying professional work yet, at Rockhampton Art Gallery. It is only voluntary, but I'm a Gallery Officer and children's story reader and sincerely, every day there is delightful. However many times I see each item of each exhibit, I'm still transfixed each time and could happily get utterly lost in our collection for hours, as boastful or promotional as that may sound. Then again, it's hardly surprising that I'd love this work as much as I do; during a Year 12 trip to Brisbane, I set an alarm off at the Queensland Art Gallery after I tried to touch one of the artworks there. Lesson learnt.

The work itself there is easy to take, too. My supervisors keep me on my feet consistently but they also spoil the hell out of me, perhaps as a reward for the former, and they overlooked my disability from the start. I've also found my knowledge of art techniques and history has inevitably deepened a lot, I've learned how to read upside down (thanks, kids) and thanks to the work itself I've even come to understand why such widely considered mundane and everyday tasks like cleaning and renovating are so critical in such a facility. Visual art, with its corrosive and fragile sources and bases, demands regular protection to avoid a painstaking restoration, producing them would be pointless if they were never exhibited, and showcasing dirty or worn ones would quickly mean no visitors and thus no revenue. But one small caveat: working at an art gallery may just turn you into a coffee junkie.

I am very excited and optimistic about the upcoming new Gallery in Rockhampton, but naturally I believe CQ can't have enough public arts facilities. That goes for all arts fields. Not just because it's my key passion, but because of where our region sits. Capricornia is like the gateway between rural north-western Queensland and the south-east corner's big smoke, and we're often ignored due to the non-stop traffic. The ones we have currently are certainly helpful, but increased funding for and promotion of art produced in our own backyard will make CQ's collective voice even louder and further broaden our image. Because after all, art can achieve that for any region or group at all.

A second, big aspect of my own artistic exploits in recent times: the acting bug has taken a bite out of me. I have several close friends who are long-term members of Rockhampton and Yeppoon Little Theatre troupes. I'd been attending shows by both companies for years, partly just as solidarity to said friends, and that whole time two of them had encouraged me to try my hand at it, until I finally relented in 2016. I always thought I'd have overwhelming stage fright or forget my lines et cetera, but lo and behold from the moment I walked on stage in my first play, as a theatre auditioner from hell, I was hooked. After that I became something of the go-to guy for unsympathetic characters which, while I wouldn't condone really being like that, I must admit are bloody great fun to play.
My theatre work really has also helped me come even further still out of my shell. A case in point? In my most recent production, for which I was also lucky enough to be able to write one scene individually, I went on stage naked except for my underwear. Five times.

But back to the serious, personal stuff now. When you have autism, especially a high-functioning form, you have to combat one persistent preconceived notion: that you don't "look" disabled. After all, it's not a physical condition, at least besides the external, repetitive stimming. On the other hand, a vision-impaired person for example would most likely be socially very obvious, with a guide dog, a white cane or a carer leading them around. I'm certainly not saying people with autism should be prioritised higher than the rest of the disabled; that would be hypocritical of me anyway. I'm only emphasising how because our condition is less immediately noticeable, we often have to personally draw attention to it if necessary. And that's particularly a burden if we're already non-verbal or socially uncomfortable.

Then there's education, where it occurs to me the term "special needs" originally caught on. I've never liked that term, purely because its specific application just makes no sense to me. Hear me out: regarding taste, culture and economics, don't we all have special needs? Anyway, as I've said I never attended a "special" school (and I may just feel this way because my otherwise excellent high school's SEU was quite frankly a joke, and I'm not known for objectivity), but I believe they should all be integrated with mainstream schools. I know that would make kids with disabilities even more susceptible to bullying but it could help them increase the social skills and identity they would need after school. It would also give their non-disabled peers a more direct chance to learn how to helpfully interact with them, and of course to experience just how much they actually can achieve. Another case in point? One of my Mount Archer classmates was a vision-impaired girl who later became the dux of her high school, and not out of pity. Trust me, she was intellectually gifted.

That brings me to my lingering feelings regarding Pauling Hanson's widely condemned remarks on this matter last year. They may no longer be topical, but the issue's prominence hasn't faded one bit. I wasn't even slightly surprised to hear her statement calling for children with disabilities to be excluded from mainstream education given her track record on other social issues, but it enraged me nonetheless. What I remember most about that scandal is calling my mum about it and being proud to hear her use some very strong language about Pauline, and believe it or not I can actually tell you objectively that my mum rarely criticises anybody.

Now it's time I described to you, from my side, a phenomenon, I guess, you might know of among autistic people called sensory overload. It is a sensation we experience when we're exposed to any of a large number of things, but primarily bright lights, loud sounds and some kinds of physical contact. Because it's very subjective and I can and should speak only for myself, I can tell you I experience it from sudden loud noises and being poked or tickled. (Naturally, as a child I was thus like my siblings' very own Tickle-Me Elmo. Fun times for me.) It's a stereotype, but if autists appear to be assaulting a wall with their head it's just them trying to lower the volume of what they're hearing. Anyway, to all you neurotypicals out there, if you're interacting with somebody on the spectrum and they have a meltdown from sensory overload, just be mindful of all this and if they adversely react to you trying to touch them, you should never take that personally. Because just to reiterate, NTs and autistics can aid each other.

I think we all have certain places, geographical or imagined, we love to visit when we need nothing more than solitude and tranquility, and I have several such local spots. There's the Fitzroy Riverbank, the summit of Mount Archer, Byfield (during summer), the Kershaw Gardens and the Causeway, all delightful areas, but then I have my holy trinity. Firstly, Duthie Park, which is just two doors down from where I lived from ages 9 to 17. Need I explain more? Secondly, the Botanic Gardens, which nourish me with the total lack of judgment from the wildlife there, and their strange sense of urban seclusion (being tucked away right at the back of Rockhampton as they are). Thirdly, Kemp Beach National Park, where I've gone bushwalking countless times for the amazing views at the peak of the extinct volcano there, before taking a dip. It also reminds me of high school because we used to have our annual cross-country there.

I cherish all of these places, so much so actually that I could lose track of a whole day at any of them, because of how much they soothe and inspire me every time. I've gone to the Murray Lagoon at the back of the Gardens also to do creative thinking for certain projects and left with many new, good ideas. When I visit any of them to find serenity or calmness, that's not just due to my Asperger's or anxiety disorder, either. It might just be something as common as a family or work conflict. The silence and stillness of such an environment emphasises to me that often support is more successful with what's unsaid, and that aura reminds me of everything that truly matters most in our world.
Yet, I think why nature helps me quite that much is because I've long been pretty free-spirited. I wouldn't call myself a belligerent person (passive-aggressive, possibly), but I am rarely happier or calmer than when I'm outside and with no rules or responsibilies. But I'm no commitment-phobe.

Our annual Beach Day Out at Emu Park has just happened as you probably already know, and of course I never miss it. As usual it made me proud of my fellow locals with disabilities and optimistic for our individual and shared futures, and that's a start, but I cannot surrender my view that society shouldn't have just one specific day or event to celebrate or promote any minority issue. I can't help but liken that to eating cake on your birthday and then abstaining from that for a full year. Championing any cause on just one set day just doesn't seem logically helpful in the long term to my mind.

Ableism, like all others forms of discrimination and hate, is practically entrenched in our society. Hardly a day went by when I was in school that certain kids wouldn't throw "retard" or "spastic" around like rice at a wedding, even just as a general insult as opposed to a conscious attempt to offend somebody like me. (Mind you, if somebody called me either of those today I'd brush it off because I'd think it would've said more about them than me.) I'd bet on that not having changed much since, too.  I think you could even perceive "special" education units in conventional schools as being segregated deliberately from the rest of their institutions; senior African-Americans would sadly know just what that's like. I was very pleased and proud, however, to see a big number of students from my old high school, North Rocky High, attending the Beach Day Out last week, even if they may have been obligated to do so. But we nonetheless have much work left to do to ensure all the kids of tomorrow inhabit a region devoid of ableism and all its brethren.

I would also dearly like to see CQ's workforce and employment agencies commit themselves more to giving locals with a disability greater visibility and to learning as much as possible about each individual's condition, because the success of support techniques can also be very subjective with the disabled. Don't hire or represent us out of sympathy or for your own image either; that may help initially, but I know I for one would feel patronised and used if somebody threw me a bone for either of those reasons. (In fact, a few months ago one business offered me work for what sounded to me like exactly those two reasons; I politely declined.) Those of us who can perform a regular, social job deserve to be given one because we truly can do it.

I also have ongoing concerns about the trend of shared housing in the disability community, thanks to an episode of Four Corners last year about two support services involved with that in New South Wales. That's not Queensland, I know, but it's Australia nonetheless and right below us. That report, titled Fighting the System, concentrated on the rampant abuse and neglect occuring on those two organisations' watches. It naturally left me with rage I simply could not contain, and having several friends with assorted conditions living in shared accommodation here, it hit home even closer for me. However, I must stress that as I have no experience of that sort of living myself I cannot be certain that kind of treatment is also happening here. History has proven, though, that like in notorious defunct institutions like the Kew Cottages in Melbourne, disabled and non-disabled children were frequently abused in the Neerkol Orphanage, right here in Capricornia. And it's very disturbing and sobering to consider how had I been born just two or three generations earlier, one of those children could've been me.

But on a far lighter note involving a TV show, last year also saw an episode of Australian Story with Tony Attwood, a world-renowned Australian autism researcher whose own son has Asperger's, no less. My dad and I watched that episode separately, and when I saw him that weekend, he sat me down for a chat. He expressed to me then how for many years when I was younger he'd really struggled to understand and connect with me despite our being related, but that now he absolutely did get it. And finally, he even paid me the best compliment of my life: "Thank you for being my son."

I know it may be cheesy or hackneyed, and that I'm not a public figure, but I feel it's only fitting for me to conclude this piece with a clarion call for Central Queensland's future. Wherever my life takes me I will readily admit to being from this region, but we can never grow or change too much. If we all hold a mirror up to CQ and work to improve for every citizen and especially all minorities, I think we will broadcast a message to neighbouring regions that we've noticed our errors and never want to repeat them. But we are all equal, and for damn sure I know if you try to silence or underestimate any of us, collectively or individually, we will reach our breaking point and deafen you. So much so that years later, you'll still be saying "I often wonder, to this day, just how the hell they did that."