The canteen is a chance to grab some food and talk to friends. Credit:Jesse Marlow I still say, "Next left. Thanks, mate." My husband loves talking to taxi drivers. When he opens the passenger door, he does not see an irritable Sikh at the wheel. He sees Plato in a turban. I, on the other hand, just want to get home, preferably without discussing Tony Abbott. Then I had an epiphany. It involved Julia Gillard at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival. She was asked about whether she had regrets about her time in office. She said, "I regret that on a daily basis, when faced with a choice between the urgent and the important, I opted too often for the former."

The taxi holding area at Melbourne Airport mills with drivers from every country. Credit:Jesse Marlow Every woman in the audience sighed with recognition. Julia had perfectly articulated the malaise of modern life. Woman as list-maker. Woman as task-oriented, diary slave. Servant to email and Google calendar. I have made 13 trips to and from the airport in the past three months. I realise now that the Tullamarine is a highway of lost opportunities, of words left unsaid and roses un-smelled. "We're just trying to make an honest living": Welcome to Taxiland. Credit:Jesse Marlow I decide that the time has come to open my own heart to taxi drivers. My challenge is to find a place where they gather en masse. A place where they have plenty of time to talk.

It is shortly after 8am, and I am in the taxi queue outside Flinders Street Station. A yellow cab sweeps in. I get in the front. "Take me to the airport. But I don't want to go to the terminal. I want to go to where all the taxis go." A slight frown flickers across my taxi driver's face. "You don't want airport?"

"Yes. Airport. I want to go to the big parking place where the taxis wait." "Is this legal?" Cough. (Not sure.) When we arrive at the airport, the taxi pulls in to the Melrose Taxi holding bay. I had imagined the taxis just rolled forward in some slow-moving queue off the freeway, like a long yellow python. But they don't. They wait here, in the vast backblocks of the airport. Welcome to Taxiland. Acres and acres of cars. Except here, every single car is yellow. There are shiny yellow roofs, wearing their white plastic "TAXI" hats, all the way to the horizon. To the edge of the planet.

My driver gets out, to stretch his legs and buy a coffee at the canteen. He has parked in Row 6. He tells me that at this busy hour of the morning, it will be about 30 minutes before his row is allowed to move. In the afternoon, when things are quieter, it could take up to two hours. Before leaving his vehicle, the driver must memorise the number plate of the taxi in front. That's the car he will follow when the time comes to move off. This is Melbourne's own little Constantinople, milling with men from every country on earth. Right in front of the canteen, two men are sitting on boxes at a table where they are playing a game of backgammon. Others are hunched over newspapers. As I get talking, I discover that most drivers like it here. They welcome the opportunity to get out from their cars. Have a chat. Grab some food. Maybe talk to friends. I watch a chubby Indian with a waxed moustache gesturing dramatically, speaking in some language of the subcontinent. Then I see that he has pink ear buds: he's talking on a mobile phone. An old-style Aussie driver next to me says: "Talking to his village. They never leave India." A Maltese driver joins me. He's keen to talk.

He tells me how he has waited two hours to get to the ranks, and when he finally got his fare, the woman directed him to the long-term car park. He suggested she take the shuttle bus which would take precisely three minutes to deliver her to her car. She refused. He earned just $7.50. Now he is back at the end of the queue. Another 40 minutes! We are just warming up when a woman appears from nowhere. She strides towards us and practically orders the Maltese guy to stop talking. In fact, she barks, no one here will talk to me for love or money. Why should they? The media is hell-bent on representing taxi drivers in the worst possible light. "You people make every driver out to be a thief or a thug. We can't win a trick. It's not fair. What is it with you lot? We're just trying to make an honest living. Bloody hell." It's like a squall has blown up. Suddenly everyone is narky. They're all angry about Uber, the app-based driver service (my fault). They're angry about journalists and newspapers (also my fault).

"You make us out to be paedophiles," says a man from eastern Europe. "You say that the cars are dirty!" He points to the massive parking lot where every taxi is gleaming in the morning sun. "You show me a dirty cab." A Greek chimes in, "You make out that we don't even know where the GPO is." I could point out that I had exactly that experience, recently. But I don't want to get decked. Uber is the only subject on the table. Most of the drivers are furious. For them the taxi business is finished. The government is having a bob each way. It's not a level playing field. "What will you do?" I ask one young bloke with his hands thrust in his pockets. "Paint my car black and put a big 'U' on the bonnet."

I decide to get a coffee. Inside the canteen, a gentle Iraqi guy tells me about his escape from his country. A homesick Iranian wonders if the world will ever return to sanity – whether his once-sophisticated country will re-emergefrom the madness. Rows 21, 22, 23 are peeling off. The procession of cars drive in a big arc, like a choreographed dance for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. I sit on the step on the edge of the cafeteria forecourt, next to a man who is rubbing a Scratchie.

"What will you do if you win a million bucks?" I ask him. "A million? I tell you what. I give half-million to Children's Hospital." "The other half?" He counts the units off on his fingers. "$100,000 – pay off my mortgage!

"Give to my four children: $100,000 itch! "And then, Monday morning, come back to work!" "Back to the taxi?" "Of course," he says. "Bess job in the world. Own boss. No worries." "At least take a holiday," I say.

"A holiday!" He is incredulous. "Why Aussies always want holiday? You know what? Twenty year ago, in my home, in Iraq, the government shoot my father. They shoot my brother. Six of my cousins – all shoot dead! I escape to Syria and then come here. "Every day I praise Allah for this Australia. How can I take holiday from this? This is my holiday." He pronounces it "Holy day". As if this oh-so secular country is the most sacred place on earth. The cafe manager is getting agitato. I am a trouble maker. I have to leave. Now. I leap into the next cab, we drive out of the holding area and directly onto the Tullamarine. My driver is an African. A Somali. His name is Anwar. "My name means light," he says.

"What brings you all this way, to Melbourne?" I ask. "Somalia – it is gone," he says. "Just war and killing." We drive in silence. This man who is taking me home in his taxi is not able to go home himself. I turn to Anwar. "Do you like it here?"

He smiles at me, the biggest smile. "I am lucky," he says. "I have a wife. I have two children who grow up to be Aussie." "Does that make you sad? Wouldn't you like your children to grow up Somali?" "No," he says. "Somalia is hell. Here children have the promise of life. I have come to Paradise." As we hurtle towards the skyscrapers of Melbourne, the Eureka Tower never looked so glorious.