There I was, sitting in the bright sunshine by the blazing fire outside "Melbourne", when a man clad in a hi-vis vest came walking all the way from the gate hundreds of metres away. "Are you the resident of this property?" he asked. I was, and he handed me a twenty-six-page Census Form.
Census Night is on Tuesday, the 13th of August, but I took my chances, assuming that I will still be around, and began filling in the pages. "What was the person's sex recorded at birth?" Tick MALE, FEMALE, or ANOTHER TERM. "What is the person's gender?" Tick MAN, WOMAN, NON-BINARY, USE ANOTHER TERM (SPECIFY) - leaving space for 18 characters - or PREFER NOT TO ANSWER. As they say, "We live in interesting times."
The preprinted boxes to question 17 "In which country was the person born?" showed what Australia will look like in a generation or two from now, because the preprinted boxes, other than Australia and England, were India, New Zealand, Philippines, Vietnam, and South Africa. Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, the countries that had contributed most of the migrants in the post-war period, no longer got a mention.
The two resident kookaburras swooped on me as soon as I had started filling out the form, but unsure of their gender, I didn't include them.
