If you could go back and witness any historical event,
which one would you pick?
If I could go back and witness any historical event, I think I’d like to be standing in George Street in Sydney on 15 August 1945.
There are bigger moments. More important places. More famous people. But I think I’d rather be in the street.
There is that old piece of newsreel footage of the Dancing Man. A man turns in George Street and throws himself into this little pirouette because the war is over. A reporter notices him and asks him to do it again for the camera. So he does.
People have argued about who he was. Frank McAlary seems to be the strongest candidate. Maybe it was him. Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t think that matters much. What matters is that a man danced.
For six years people had been living with war. People had died. Families had waited for letters. Mothers had waited for sons. Wives had waited for husbands. Everybody had learned to live with bad news. And then, on that day, the news was good. That’s the thing I would want to feel.
Not victory exactly. More the relief of knowing the killing might stop. That soldiers might come home. That people might start making ordinary plans again.
There is something deeply moving about communal joy like that. Strangers cheering together. People embracing people they do not know. One anonymous man dancing because there are moments when words are simply not enough.
Perhaps that’s why I thought of George Street and this iconic footage. Because the world can become so full of war and oppression and bad news that darkness starts to feel permanent.
And then there is this man. Turning in the middle of the street. Arms out. Dancing because, for one day at least, the darkness had lifted.
The Afterword 
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