Seasonal work isn't just temporal: it's often exploitative. Usually our reporting focuses on workers' conditions on the job, but today we're exploring the other side of the coin. We're looking at the lives of employees beyond their 'season' of usefulness.
Shopping centre Santas are seasonal workers we all see every year. But even as our kids sit on their laps, we can't see past the beard and red suit to the person who has a life for the 11 other months of the year. Almost as if, once all the photos are taken and the Christmas tree comes down, we think all the shopping centre Santas just disappear. And so, as the year drew to a close, I reached out to a few Santas to ask them about their other, non-festive life.
"The beards don't come off" says Claude, an experienced Santa who's been working at Westfield Belconnen longer than the centre's management can remember. "Each year the hair grows deeper into your skin."
I assume that Claude is talking about the fun of being a shopping centre Santa growing year on year, but before I can ask a follow up we're interrupted by a young family wanting a photo. I get Claude's number and tell him I'll ring him back after Christmas.
It's Boxing Day, and Claude hasn't responded to my text. I give him a call, but it goes to voicemail. I spend the day ringing and emailing my other Santa contacts I'd organised interviews with, but none pick up. I can't get a hold of any Santa in the ACT.
In desperation, I call the manager of Westfield Belconnen.
"I'm trying to find Claude," I say.
"Go north," they cryptically respond, and hang up.
I'm a freelance journalist, of sorts. My editor tells me what to write, and when, but I get paid per article rather than having a salary. I get a fixed $50 fee per article, which means that I can't really afford to spend more than 3 hours on anything. But I couldn't just leave Claude's story here. Where did all the Santas go? Why did the Westfield manager tell me to head north? I had to know.
I pitch it to my editor, but they reassert that $50 is the maximum fee. If I want to find the Santas, I'll have to do it off my own bat.
I make up my mind.
I text my fiance and head north.
I aimlessly drive north, crossing into NSW against health advice. I've no real idea what I'm doing. A few hours in, despondent, I pull over at the Cowra McDonald's for a drink.
"Is that everything?" the teenager behind the counter asks me.
"This is going to sound weird," I say, "but have you seen anyone called Claude come through here? Or anyone who said they work as a shopping centre Santa..."
"Oh the Santas?" the teen responds. "They came through a couple of hours ago."
I perk up. "Really? Do you know where they were heading?"
They chuckle. "I could hardly stop them to ask. Just north, I guess."
"How can I find them?"
"You can just follow the Santa tracks..."
The teen notices their manager loitering behind them. They stiffen, force a smile, and ask, "Will that be all, sir?"
Five minutes out of Cowra I spot something. A line of flattened grass snaking along the road. Is this what the McDonald's cashier was telling me about? Were these Santa tracks?
I drive alongside them for a while and the line gets thicker. Then suddenly I notice the trees along the roadside have been decorated. Gaudy lights and baubles festoon the gum trees by the road. I have to switch my air-con to recycle to stop myself from being overpowered by the stench of overcooked ham.
I'm ecstatic. The Santas must be close.
As the sun goes down the Santa tracks start to deviate from the road and I can't follow them. I keep driving in the dark for a while, hoping the tracks will come back, but the Christmas lights in the trees grow dimmer until I can no longer see them.
Eventually, exhausted, I pull over. I respond to my fiance's furious texts, then get out of the car. On my $50 budget I won't be able to afford a motel, so instead I lie under a tree. I close my eyes and tell myself that I'm sleeping under the stars rather than passing out by the side of the road.
At dawn I awake to find the ground shaking. I rub my eyes and look up and down the road, looking for a combine or something. The roads completely clear, but the ground still rumbles.
I look behind me and suddenly see.
Running towards me is a herd of Santas. They're thundering through the bush, at least 50 abreast.
Watching the Santas run wild and free is a beautiful sight. I shed a tear. I finally found them.
As they draw closer, I wave.
"Hey guys!" I yell.
They don't show any signs of slowing down.
"Hey! Do you have time for an interview?!"
They all look straight through me. They don't even notice that I'm standing in front of them. The ground continues to shake violently. And that's when I realise.
This is a Santa stampede, and it's heading straight for me.
I dive into my car and lock the door. Within seconds, the Santas are on top of me. They steam past me at full pelt, some bashing into the car. They must be going at at least 30km/h.
The car shakes. The back window smashes. I huddle in the passenger footwell, praying for my life.
After what seems like an eternity, the thud of black Bunnings boots on earth grows softer. I open my eyes and look out the windscreen. The wave of red and white had washed over me and was now heading back into the bush. There must have been at least a thousand Santas in it.
I'd now seen the power of the Santas up close. I'd survived, bruised but still breathing. I doubted I'd ever experience anything more thrilling in my life.
Just past Nyngan I stop for petrol. The footsteps of distant Santas rumbled away like an over-calibrated sub-woofer.
"Fuckin' Santas," says the lady at the counter.
"How do they move so quickly?"
"They do something with their hats. Join 'em all together to make a sail or something. Little bastards."
"It's odd how nature works, isn't it?" I offer.
"Nothing natural about Santas," she snaps. "They're an invasive species. They trample all the native wild grasses and bugger all the possums."
"Even so," I say sheepishly, "you've got to admit there's something wondrous about seeing them sweep across the plains."
"Look," she says, "I had a farm before this. Been in my family for six generations. Then one year the Santas came through. They trampled the crops. They dropped tinsel like they were salting the earth. Nothing ever grew after that."
She grabs a sausage roll and squeezes it like a stress ball.
"I had no option but to sell it all for a pittance," she continues. "Six generations! And now I pick up shifts here."
I shake my head. "I'm sorry. That's awful."
"I guess that's just the way the world is," she says stoically, stuffing the sausage roll back into its wrapper and placing it back on the shelf. "Nothing you and me can do about it."
"But I don't understand why? Why are the Santas going north?"
She shrugs. "Why do I stay here?"
I pay for my petrol. The article will now net me -$4.17.
I follow the Santas at a respectful distance, partially so as not to spook them, but also to avoid being deafened by their footsteps. As we go further, more and more Santas seem to join the herd. Maybe they're coming from other towns, other shopping centres? How many Santas can the land sustain? And yet even with all the new Santas, the herd keeps its steady pace.
I drive for hours and never see the Santas flag. They don't stop for breaks. They ford creeks without slowing. They just keep on marching north faster than any human can run.
I still didn't understand. Where were they going? Is north where they are home? And what is it about the nature of seasonal work which makes people act this way?
I'm in Wyandra. I'm using using the one bar of reception I have to call my fiance.
"I don't know it it's the North Pole or something," I gush, "but they just have this unstoppable urge to travel north..."
"So you're in NSW."
"Not anymore: I've crossed into Queensland now."
"But the border's closed."
"Yeah, well, I sort of snuck through..." I hesitate, then add, "Worst case is I have to pay a fine and isolate when I get back."
Crackled silence.
"Sorry," I say, "my signal's bad, I didn't catch that."
"I didn't say anything."
"Right."
"Right."
My call drops.
Hours turn into days. Kilometres of bushland vanish behind me. Still the Santas continue their inexorable trek north.
We're just outside Tambo now. The Santas have stopped in a small valley to rest, graze, and exchange gifts.
This is the first time since I started following them that I've seen them stop. The past three days have been a blur of small country towns, sleeping rough, Santas, amazement, and disappointment. I'm exhausted. I can't go any further. But I know the Santas will keep pulling me.
There must be over 10,000 Santas down in the valley at the moment. Santas from other towns - perhaps other states - must be joining the herd in their migration. It's a breathtaking sight, but I'm not looking. I'm using my scant mobile signal to look at the photos my fiance just put on Instagram. They show them having a night on the town with Dean Winton, an oily playwright who never seems to struggle to get commissioned. They seem like they're having a really good time. I flick through the photos under the remote bush sun. I should be there.
Suddenly, commotion in the valley. The Santas are getting frisky. Scuffles are breaking out.
Closest to me are two enormous bull Santas facing off against each other. A younger male seems to be challenging the older Santa over mating rights.
The two enormous St Nicholases circle each other for a while, sizing each other up. The younger one bursts into an intimidatory carol, bellowing 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' at the top of their lungs. The older Santa is unphased. He's seen all this before.
I've seen him before...
"Claude?!"
The older Santa's starts to turn towards me...
Calamity.
The young bull Santa uses this moment of distraction to strike. He pounces on the veteran, yanking his beard and rubbing tinsel in his eyes. Claude yelps. He flails and manages to land a blow to the youth on the top of their pom-pom, but it's too late. The young bull tears at Claude's jolly red jacket and violently scuffs his big black boots.
Claude surrenders. He limps away, back into the crowd of Santas. He's no longer the big daddy Christmas. He shall not mate this season.
In a Telstra phone box in in the middle of Barcaldine. I'm talking to my editor.
"I'm telling you, this is an amazing story!"
"Sure. The fee is $50."
"Well maybe we could make this into a series of articles. I could easily turn this into a 5 parter."
"Sure. We'll give you $10 per part."
The phone beeps. I've run out of coins.
I haven't slept in a real bed for almost a week. Deadlines for articles that could help me recoup my petrol money fall away. I've forgotten what it's like to stay in one place for more than a few hours. All I know know is a string of tiny towns, empty roads, and Santas.
I wish I was home watering my magnolia. I wish I was home apologising to my fiance. I wish I was home looking at someone - anyone - who wasn't dressed like a Coca-Cola ad.
I wish I was more like the Santas. They're an unstoppable force and seem completely unmolested by everything around them. Their bright red suits are spotless. My clothes are now just bags of dust. Their beards are long and pure white. Mine is scraggly and coarse. They know where they're going and are determined to get there. I'm just following them. I don't know why, and I don't know how to stop.
And so, once again, I sweat myself awake. I bang my knee on the car horn as I rear up to piss out of the window. I don't have time to get out of the car. While I slept, the Santas kept moving. I need to catch them up.
I hit the road and follow the trail of yuletide detritus. Once upon a time this was a strange and magical experience. Now it's a Sisyphean ordeal that surely will destroy me.
A few kilometres up the road I see a flash of red and white fluff in the scrubland. That isn't right. I pull over to take a look.
I find myself staring down at my only friend this week: Claude. The dingoes must have got him overnight. His face is badly mauled.
He was probably easy prey due to his wound. The wound he got when he lost the fight over mating rights. The fight he lost because of me. Did I kill Claude? I feel responsible, and yet I feel like I've had no power over anything in such a long time. Longer than I can remember.
The rumbling of Santa boots continues in the distance. Only Claude has stopped. The rest keep moving north. I move north.
It's New Year's Eve. I'm in Carpentaria. I feel like I'm the only non-Santa for a hundred kilometres. The town is deserted. Perhaps people fled as the Santas descended. I wouldn't blame them. The whole coast has become a massive temporary grotto. As I stare down from a small sandy ridge, I estimate that 50,000 Santas have packed onto shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, stretching left and right as far as the eye can see. For now they sit and rest, but there is an unease in the herd. They seem confused, agitated. Worried that there's no land in front of them on which to continue their journey north.
For a moment I entertain the delusion that I could perhaps muster the Santas and drive them east, then up towards Cape York. But I am not a Santa drover. Instead it is the wild Santas that have controlled me this whole time, each day dragging me further and further away from my home, my work, my support network, my life. If the Santas are stuck, then I too have nowhere to go.
Then, in the distance, I swear I hear the sound of sleigh bells. All the Santas rise as one and face the sea.
Too tired to realise that I'm too small to change anything, I cry out, "You can't go that way! You've run out of land! It's over!"
The Santas don't listen. They are answering a higher calling. They have a sense of purpose that I desperately wish I had.
They don't look back. They don't flinch. Slowly, in unison, they begin to wade into the sea.
"No!"
I sprint down the sandy ridge and latch onto the nearest Santa. It is a young calf Santa, and its mother immediately responds to its yelps by kicking me with her powerful hind legs. St Nicholas jackboot to the face. I fall to the sand. Woozy, I scramble to my knees and spit blood and sand out of my mouth. By the time I look up the first 10 ranks of Santas have already vanished beneath the foamy surface. The Santas continue to flood into the ocean.
I sit up and scream. "Don't leave me, Santas!" I impotently plead. "I need you, Santas!" None of them even notice me. They continue their steady stream into the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Five minutes later, all Santas are underwater.
I climb back to my sandy ridge and stare out at the water. I desperately scan for a red hat to resurface, or even for some air bubbles. After half an hour, I realise that I am now alone.
Hours pass. The sun begins to set.
I need to make sense of this for my article. If I can't wrap this up neatly I might never sell another article again. But for the life of me I can't make sense of this.
Did I just witness a mass Santa suicide? Will the shopping centres be bare next Christmas? Or is this a natural part of the shopping centre Santa gig? Will they be back next year, working their old, exploitative jobs that stifle their true, majestic potential?
The question for me is: will I?