EMAILS TO FRIENDS OVERSEAS DESCRIBING LIFE IN AUSTRALIA
No good deed shall go unpunished (May 2010)
Life isn’t like the movies. It’s not even like TV, least of all reality TV. If life was like the movies I’d have had an immediate reward for going to McDonalds on Friday morning. Not that anyone in Australia ever calls it McDonalds. It’s Macca’s mate and don’t you forget it.
The branch of Macca’s I walk past on the way to work takes up a corner of the Sydney Entertainment Centre and it’s hardly a well-kempt flagship. I don’t know why anyone would want to wipe a burger on a window, but surely someone could wipe it off again? Anyway, this corner of the Entertainment Centre – across from Paddy’s Markets and just outside Chinatown – is a favourite haunt of several homeless guys of the beard-and-checked-shirt variety. I don’t normally take much notice of these guys, but on Friday our never-ending summer ended, the sky turned grey and it was suddenly freeeezing. OK, not freezing, not even cold by US/UK winter standards but chillier than you’d want to sleep-out in. Friday morning, as I pass, the homeless guys are just getting up, lighting the remains of cigarettes and drinking urine-yellow liquid out of old water bottles. Whereas me, I’m well-fed, well-slept and on the way to a warm office. So I go into Macca’s and buy four large cups of tea.
Now, you probably know that in each country McDonalds is a little different. In Germany they sell beer, in Sweden the staff don’t have acne and in Australia they are really, really slow. On the rare occasion I go to a Macca’s I swear next time I will film the people who work there and send the footage to an anthropologist or a sociologist or someone who can tell me how and why otherwise normal people morph into sloths on morphine as soon as McDonalds Australia employees them. I asked for four large teas and it took three and a half minutes to get the order into the till. And yes, I know the joy of middle-age is that you learn to slow down but there are limits. I wanted to scream at the girl ‘Come on! I’m being charitable here, but only if it takes less than five minutes!’
Anyway, half an hour later the teas are ready so I carry them out to the homeless guys. One of them is banging something into his knee with his forehead while another gives him directions. A third is staring at the queue of fat teenagers which has materialised outside the door to the Entertainment Centre. There are at least two dozen of them, sitting slouched or cross-legged in an untidy line across the concrete, playing with their hair and looking at their phones. I stand there, four supersized teas steaming on a plastic tray, staring at them until the fourth homeless guy coughs and I say ‘Oh yeah. How you going?’. He squints at me, nods and coughs again. ‘Thought you guys might want a hot drink’ I say. At this point, in the movie, an elderly man is just passing in his limo and says ‘Gosh, what a thoughtful young man. At last, someone worthy to inherit my endless fortune.’ In reality the homeless guy says ‘Alright’ and I put the tea down on the plastic table between us. There’s nothing else to look at, so most of the queue of fat teenagers look up and stare at me and the homeless guys, in the way only fat teenagers can.
‘Alright?’ I say to the nearest girl, cross-legged about three metres away. She has pigtails, an unfortunate chin and no-one to tell her she’s too big for lycra. ‘What are you guys queuing up for?’
‘A gig’ she says.
I resist sarcasm (I’m a nice charitable guy, remember?) and ask who’s on.
‘Ocean’ she says shyly. By now the rest of the queue is transfixed. Who’s this old man and what does he want? So, sensibly, I say ‘’Nice one’ and carry on to work. Don’t I. Don’t I?
‘Ocean?’ I say in my best English accent. ‘Did you say “Ocean”?’
‘Asian’ she says, a little louder this time but still half-swallowing her answer.
‘Asian?’
Whereupon the homeless guy who had been headbanging into his knee stands upright and shouts with such fury that the speckle of his saliva sparkles silver in the morning sun.
‘ED. SHEERAN!!’
And the entire fat queue dissolves into helpless laughter. I turn, a paragraph too late, and continue on my way to work.
Jack Mundey (February 2010)
The real story of Sydney this week is the torrential rain, but I talked about the weather last time, so this week you’re getting corruption, murder and three-letter acronyms.
They say you never see Venice for the first time. There are so many images of it in magazines, films and ice-cream ads that by the time you actually get there you’re already familiar with it. The same is true of Sydney you might think. Those helicoptered shots panning the bridge and the opera house, the huge beaches stretching up the coast, the boats littering the harbour, cut to a koala in the zoo. Well, unfortunately you’re wrong. My friend Karen calls the harbour the lipstick on the pig of Sydney, and I have to agree. You see, aside from the bridge and the opera house and a handful of other buildings, Sydney really has one of the ugliest architectures on earth. If it wasn’t for the beaches and the weather you might as well be in Coventry.
Some areas are better than others of course and over the years activists have managed some great victories. Bondi beach, for example, is still sunny in the afternoon. Not so the Gold Coast, where unchecked development has led to huge tower blocks with beautiful views along much of the seafront, their thick shadows darkening the beach from lunch-time on. But even Bondi is a dog, a scraggy ragtag of ice-cream parlours and carparks overlooking the famous sand. Maroubra, a few exclusive beaches to the south, looks like a favella.
This is what happens when you build your city with dirty money. Stories of corrupt councils still abound and there’s not one good property-developer who doesn’t lobby (or sit in) his local authority. When signing the forms for Copa’s renovation last month, we had to declare any political contributions we’d ever made. ‘Damn’ said Oliver ‘Wish we’d thought of that’.
But there a few beautiful (i.e. old) buildings left dotted around the city, and for most of those we have to be grateful to one man. My hero, Jack Mundey.
In the early seventies Jack Mundey was the leader of the New South Wales (NSW) branch of the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation (BLF) and it was from this position that he led, between 1971 and 1974, forty-two ‘green bans’. Basically, the union refused to pull down beautiful old buildings to replace them with orange-brick monstrosities. Looking today at what they saved it is horrible to think about what they lost, so let’s be grateful for what little we have: The Queen Victoria Building (QVB), a three-level arcade of twirling, carved victoriana now housing the City Business District (CBD)’s chichiest stores; The Rocks, 18th and 19th century terraces whose pubs contain smugglers’ tunnels down to the harbour; the Royal Botanic Gardens, rolling parkland skirting the harbour and presenting the city’s best views (once earmarked to become the carpark for the opera house). None of these would be here but for the BLF. Or rather the NSW BLF.
It was too good to last of course. Jack Mundey was incorruptible, so the developers went a little higher and in 1975 Jack and his NSW team were sacked from the BLF by its national leader, Norm Gallagher. I picture Norm Gallagher as looking like the greasy dad in Muriel’s Wedding. He’d already had the whiff of corruption around him a few times before he got rid of Jack Mundey, and he was subsequently convicted of having had corrupt dealings with developers. Unfortunately, to get this conviction jurors were locked in a room for ten days and told they couldn’t come out until they’d reached a decision. Their later claims of imprisonment and coercion got the original conviction declared ‘unsafe’ (fair enough!) and after four months Norm walked out of jail.
But wait, it gets worse. One of the most famous green bans concerned Victoria Street in Kings Cross, a stretch of huge sandstone terraces. Frank Theeman, a lingerie millionaire, bought the lot in the early seventies and planned to demolish them to build a $40m apartment complex. No thanks, said the residents, who worked with the NSW BLF to resist the developers. Arthur King, the head of the residents group, was persuaded to think otherwise after being bundled into a car boot and kidnapped for three days. Local journalist, Juanita King, was not so easily dissuaded and she publicised the campaign in her magazine, Wow, despite repeated threats.
On 4th July 1973 Juanita was invited to a local nightclub to discuss the possibility of its advertising in her magazine. Most clubs in the Cross, then and now, are owned by shady figures. But this one just happened to be owned by Abe Saffron, who just happened to owe $20,000 to Frank Theeman, the developer. Juanita Nielsen was never seen again.
A coronial inquest found Juanita was likely to have been murdered but only convictions for kidnapping and harassment were ever brought. Not against the big money of course, jus the thugs who did their work. And Victoria Street, like most other streets in central Sydney, is now a traffic jam between high rise blocks.
Jack Mundey is still alive though. He’s 91 and the head of the Historic Houses Trust (HHT) where my friend Karen works. I’m trying to get to meet him. I’d love to ask him about the old days, get him to sign the grainy black-and-white photo I have of him being arrested, and above all, to thank him for what few old buildings we have left in this beautiful ugly city.
Funnel Web Spiders (January 2010)
Years ago, when Oliver and I were in London and sorta kinda deciding to move to Australia, I booked myself onto an arachnophobia course at London Zoo. Contrary to its name, this is not a course which teaches you how to be scared of spiders. Quite the opposite in fact. It was a one-day event which you passed by being able to trap a large house-spider under a glass, slide a piece of card underneath and carry it across the room. If you think this sounds like not much of a big deal, well woopy-doo, you don’t need to go on the course.
I did. Most people who knew me back then will attest to a Ged Is Scared of Spiders story, my favourite being about the small vietnamese house I nearly knocked down trying to escape a large, green specimen in the bathroom. Apparently they hadn’t heard a white man scream like that since the sixties.
The course at London Zoo was very effective and just the other day I was sharing a shower with a big black beast thinking ‘I couldn’t have done this ten years ago’ (clearly, this is only true about spiders). The course was based, largely, on teaching its audience about our eight-legged friends, explaining what amazing creatures they are and, above all, how vulnerable they are. The poor wee things only move quickly because they’re trying to avoid being eaten. They will not run towards you because, no matter how scared you are of them, they are far more terrified of you. There is nothing a spider could do to ever harm you. And so on and so forth, then a bit of deep-hypnosis and Bob’s your uncle, look at the cute little spidey-widey with all his funny legs. Definitely worth the money.
The weird thing is the course still works, all these years later. Sure I may scream like a banshee, pull my elbows in and dance around on my tip-toes singing Kate Bush whenever I see a spider, but push-come-to-shove I can actually put a glass over one (as long as Oliver does that bit with the card). Trust me, this is a vast improvement on my pre-zoo days. The reason I say it’s weird is because all that stuff they tell you at London Zoo simply isn’t true out here. Spiders move fast in Australia so they can catch you quicker. They will only run away from you in a mock retreat, hoping you will follow and fall into their man-trap. They can do you harm.
I know all of this you see because I’ve been researching funnel web spiders. The CSIRO (Commonwealth Something about Science and Research into Overlong acronyms) has a fascinating fact-sheet on them. It contains advice such as ‘bites have resulted in death’, ‘if bitten, only move if necessary’ and ‘fang bases extend horizontally from the front of the head (do not check this on a live spider).’ I’m fascinated by the fact that someone felt the need to add that last parenthesis.
The reason I’ve been researching funnel webs is that I’ve found, in our garden at Copacabana, several examples of what the CSIRO call ‘burrows lined with a sock of opaque white silk and several strong strands of silk radiating from the entrance’. Basically it’s a ten-pence-piece sized hole with a huge pair of eyes at the other end. Karen, my hippy friend, has suggested that if you pour cold water down the hole often enough the fellow-inhabitant-of-the-universe will get annoyed and walk off to live somewhere out of your way. Kurt, whose normally wiser in such situations, proposes that the water should be boiling. Ignoring Karen’s disapproval, she goes on to warn this approach takes some time to kill the spider, which will exit its burrow furious with the world and looking for someone to bite before it dies. ‘You might want to stand well back’ she says.
Last time we were up at Copa, I asked my mate Zen if he wanted to try it. ‘Let’s pour boiling water down the funnel-web holes and watch the spiders come out!’ I said. Unfortunately he saw straight through my ‘Wouldn’t that be fun?!’ façade to the ‘And I can hide behind you’ beneath it. He went pale (not easy for an over-tanned, chinese surfer) and told me he’d read that funnel web spiders can jump. A metre at least, he reckoned. There’s not a lot fazes your average Aussie male but snakes, spiders and multisyllabic words will do it. I let him get out of it and moved the conversation on, the two us gingerly stepping up to the house before darkness fell. ‘Male funnel-webs wander at night’ says the CSIRO. ‘Females are sedentary, only venturing out momentarily to grab passing prey.’
So I haven’t done anything about it yet. OK, I’ll be honest, I sprayed some napalm-like bug-killer down there, but apparently this just gives them a sore throat. So the holes are there, dozens of them in the garden, on and around the path, all now echoing to the sound of spiders coughing. Karen suggests I make sure I don’t go out barefoot at night.
Go out? At night? I don’t think so.
Cat Wars Update (January 2010)
Sorry about the extended delay in transmission but I’ve been a bit pushed busy-wise. No excuse really, other than getting ready to do up the weekender, avoiding Christmas and New Year, and attending lots of weddings. On that note, by the way, I know you’re not supposed to know about each other (11 weddings in 5 months) but I can’t keep it a secret any longer. Or rather, I’ve realised I don’t need to. You see, when the mantel-piece broke under the weight of the invitations, Oliver and I were worried you might think your wonderful special day was a little less special to us because it was number (fill in your own blank here) out of eleven this summer. But, with what my friend Zen calls ‘the easy wisdom of hindsight’, I can now see that, even if we went to a hundred weddings this year, each of them would remain special.
We are, in fact, on number six this weekend, and so far every one has been beautiful. Uplifting, reassuring, romantic and downright good fun. Thank you, all of you, who have decided to get married at the same time (why?) and thank you especially for not knowing each other so that Oliver and I can get away with the same suit to every single wedding. Oh shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that bit. (Think I might miss Oliver out on this month’s distribution list).
Anyhoo, I wasn’t intending to talk about weddings today. I was going to tell you about funnel web spiders, of which the weekender has, at last count, three nests in the garden. If I had known that the New South Wales central coast was the ‘spider capital of the world’ (everything in Australia is the world-capital of something) I’m not sure we’d have bought a house there. In fact, if I had known there was any such a place as the spider capital of the world, I would probably never have left Halesowen. I wonder what Halesowen is the world-capital of?
But, before I get to the spiders I have to give you an update – by popular demand – on Cat Wars. I think last time I wrote I was surrounded by flashing teeth and torn fur. Well, we tried the cat-calming spray but it didn’t work and I couldn’t bring myself to go to a cat therapist. Karen, our hippy friend, offered to come and do reiki on Nip but…well, frankly I’d rather go the the psycatrist. So, with heavy hearts, we decided we had to give Tuck away. He is, of course, the victim in all of this, but Nip travels up the coast better (although she insists on smoking and won’t wear a seat-belt) and either way it was never going to be an easy decision. It was absolutely heart-breaking letting Tuck go but we found a good home for him with friends of friends, and deposited him there the day before we left for the UK.
‘I just know it’ said Oliver, ‘we’ll never see him again’.
We got back to Australia to a gentle voicemail from Tuck’s new house and then a less gentle, indeed somewhat insistent, series of text messages. Tuck was ok but not what they had wanted i.e. a cat. You know, something that came out of the cupboard sometimes. They were a bit bored of finding an empty food bowl and a full litter tray and having no other discernible evidence of owning a pet. Typical Tuck, all pussy and no cat, he was too scared to meet his new owners even after three weeks.
Oliver and I pretended to be disappointed and dragged Tuck from beneath a chest-of-drawers to kiss and cuddle him all the way home. Ginger Nips, as you can imagine, isn’t best pleased. She’s calmed down now and only tries to attack him when he moves but Oliver and I are refusing to live behind closed doors or in a segregated household. Tuck is going to have to toughen up, Ginger is going to have to learn to share her territory and Oliver and I are going to have to get used to the hissing, screaming, yowling world of cats.
Anyway, I wrote all of that about a week ago, the day before we finally spat the dummy. ‘Ignore them’ said Oliver and I was angry enough to do so. Let Tuck fend for himself, or let Ginger kill him, either way there would be a solution. And where are we now, seven days later? Living with two cats who eat their dinner next to each other, sleep in the same room as each other and neither of whom have a word to say about what happened last month. FFS.
Red Dawn (September 2009)
I was wondering on Tuesday night why it’s so long since I’ve written one of these emails. It occurred to me that maybe I’ve been in Australia too long. That nothing is really new anymore, my ability to see this land as a foreigner has waned. There have been other signs that this is the case. I’m able to watch the news now without guffawing at how perochial it is; I understand the rules of rugby league; this winter seemed long and cold.
I went to bed on Tuesday wondering if I’d ever write another letter. Maybe nothing remarkable would ever happen again.
That night gale force winds picked up some dust from the Lake Eyre basin seven hundred miles west of here in northern South Australia. (There is no state called Central Australia so the country’s dead red heart is made up of north South Australia, south Northern Territory, east West Australia and west New South Wales. Most people call it the Red Centre.) Anyway, the dust picked up by the wind was then sucked two miles into the sky by an intense low-pressure system. The phenomenon continued over the next twenty-four hours until millions of tonnes (think about that, millions of tonnes) of dust and dirt had been pulled up into the air.
Dust storms are fairly frequent in the Red Centre and many of them blow into the country towns of western New South Wales. In places like Mildura and Broken Hill it’s not that unusual to bring in your laundry dirtier than it went out (and trust me, that laundry doesn’t always go out too clean). But even by Australian standards, Tuesday night’s dust storm was a big one, the biggest in seventy years in fact. At its peak it was picking up 140,000 tonnes of dirt an hour, was 250 miles wide and a thousand miles long. That’s a big red Great Britain floating towards Sydney. And me with the windows just done.
Funnily enough, there was a strange smell in the air when I woke up on Wednesday morning. More like plaster-dust than anything and I wondered if next door were having some work done.
‘Jesus’ said Oliver, who rarely says anything before 11am. ‘Look at the sky’.
‘It’s a bushfire’ I said after a glance and rolled back over to wait for my alarm. But if that was a bushfire it was bloody close so I opened my eyes again. The sky was corner-to-corner orange. Not quite the red you may have seen in the papers (every photo I saw had had a red filter applied), more a burnt sienna, a glowering and dangerous colour on a scale I’d not seen before.
Looking closer, awake and somewhat nervy now, I could see it wasn’t the sky that was red. It was the air. As if nitrogen were suddenly visible and not quite how you’d imagined it. The radio calmed me down, 24-hour news already hyperbolic and asking people to ring in with their dust storm stories. (‘Hi, this is Brenda from the northern rivers. I was scared. I turned on the radio. Now it’s fine.’) I turned off the lights and wondered around the apartment, looking at what orange light does to the world. Now it was just dust it was strangely comforting, like being in a cocoon on Mars.
It didn’t last of course. The orange light came not from the red of the dust but from how it defracted the dawn light (the same reason sunrise is often red, just normally on the horizon). By the time I left for the airport the world was just a little frosted, as if I faintly pink fog had settled. I was on my way to Perth for work and felt assured my flight would be on time.
Wrong.
Maybe Surry Hills got off likely, maybe the three inches of dirt on my taxi should have been a sign. I sat at the airport for six hours reading about what was going on outside. A normal day in Sydney sees 20 micrograms of air pollution per cubic metre. A bad bushfire might generate 500 micrograms. On Wednesday concentration levels reached 15,400 micrograms. Visibility at the airport was 400 metres and even when flights could leave, they had to wait for the planes and crew which had been turned away for the previous six hours.
I heard some people complaining about it. Isn’t it awful, how annoying (see, I can hear whingeing now) and I just wanted to say: no, it’s wonderful! What an incredible, remarkable country. Where else would I ever have seen that?
It’s great living abroad.
Cat Wars (September 2009)
I’d been planning on writing about something else, but you can’t beat correspondence from the battlefront so you’re getting this instead.
We have two cats. Nip is a ginger streetfighter with saggy bellies from long ago. The vet thinks it was a botched abortion but Ginger (as she prefers to be known) doesn’t like to talk about it so we tell everyone she’s got short legs. Tuck is black and was born in captivity. He’s a timid pussyboy who never grew up and thinks his balls are living happily on a farm in the countryside somewhere.
Tuck and Ginge arrived at our place in the city within a week of each other, both rescued from death row at the local dog’s home. Seriously, charity is hardcore over here and the website is clear that Unless This Cat Finds A Home It Will Die. Tuck’s too stupid to grasp the concept (his best friend is that little black cat in the mirror) but Ginge is pretty grateful. She knows how tough it is out on the streets and, whilst she misses the fags and booze, she’s more than happy to stay indoors.
Until now.
Oliver and I have just bought a place up the coast and in our naivety (oh happy, distant days) we thought we’d just take the cats up at the weekends. Let them explore slowly and get used to the one-hour journey. And at first everything went much as we thought: Ginge strode out the front and bullied next door’s dog into giving her his lunch money. Tuck hid in the linen cupboard and kept repeating ‘there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home’. Then, after a few weekends, Tuck too started to explore.
He really is too much of a pussy to go anywhere by himself but Ginger gently led him outdoors and showed him the grass and the pavers and the sky. And then, we don’t know what, but something happened.
The best way to describe it is to imagine a feline Hannibal Lecter. The noises coming out of Ginger’s mouth were bizarre, a deep, long growl akin to caterwauling but much more evil than that. I managed to grab Tuck before she did and threw her into the house and closed the patio door behind her. Have you ever seen a cat throw itself against glass so it can do you harm? It’s almost as much fun as holding a cat that thinks its life is in danger. And by the way, those long red scratches aren’t the ones to worry about. It’s the little red dots where the claw has gone cleanly into your flesh that you really want to avoid.
She attacked him four more times that day (scratches, red dots etc) until timid little Tuck was a quivering and somewhat patchy ball of fluff. Our Paul, my lovely vet brother-in-law, took a drunken midnight call to offer his advice. Mine would have been “Don’t call me at midnight when I’m drunk” but he, and subsequent vets, have shed some light on our situation.
It’s about domination, territory-marking, rules changing as environments change. Your average marriage, basically, with regular fights-to-the-death thrown in. And, just as with trying to save a marriage, there are a number of things we have to try before we give up and give away.
So now I’m sitting in our living room with Ginger under an upside-down shopping trolley and Tuck barred from running out of the room. Their mutual cries of fear and imprisonment are breaking my heart, but we need to expose them to each other without allowing Ginger to kill him.
And on that last point, if you’re reading this and thinking ‘For goodness sake, it’s just a cat!’ then I in turn am thinking three things about you. One: you won’t want to hear when we give up on this option and move onto cat family-counselling (three hours, both owners, both cats) or – wait for it -cat prozac. Two: you don’t have cats. Or three: you have not yet learnt that the onset of middle-age is beset by pouring your love into ungrateful, heartbreaking and endlessly-expensive little animals.
It’s a wonderful world.
Sydney 1 Melbourne 0 (May 2009)
I can’t do it. I’ve tried and I’ve tried but I’m sorry, I just can’t. I know I must be in the wrong because everybody – everybody! – keeps telling me so. But, despite everything, I can’t bring myself to like Melbourne.
I can hear some of you gasping. Has Ged become so shallow that he’s fallen for the fake and easy charms of Sydney? Is he such a fan of boardshorts, beer and barbies that he prefers the bottle-blond of the nation’s largest city to the sophisticated allure of it’s cultural capital? Well, yes.
You see, I think Melbourne looks like Birmingham. And not even Birmingham now, but Birmingham in the 80’s. It’s dirty and grey and every so often smells of urine. I know it’s got the laneways and the funky shops and an endless list of seriously-cool bars. But I have a theory about that. As Zen once pointed out, only countries with really bad climates are good at interior-design. “If you have to create your own environment you tend to do a good job of it”. Zen’s always right, it’s very annoying.
It’s certainly true Melbourne has a bad climate. It swelters in the summer for weeks on end, with forty-degree heat nothing unusual (those awful bushfires earlier this year were only an hour or so away). Then, in the winter, it freezes (only three hours to the ski fields). Taxi drivers keep telling me Melbourne is in a drought but every time I’ve ever been there it’s been raining under a concrete sky. Which reminds me of my favourite Birmingham quote. “Even if you cleared up the dog shit, it’d still be Birmingham”. That’s how I feel about Melbourne.
Admittedly, the last few times I’ve been there it has been for work and a long-distance commute does few cities any favours. The only thing worse than airport-taxi-office-taxi-airport is airport-taxi-novotel-office-taxi-airport. But this last time I spent an extra day there, hung out with my cousin Millie who took me to best tapas bar I’ve seen outside of Spain and to an exhibition by an amazing artist I’d never heard of.
So I’ll give you the bars and the galleries. And the cafes. And the funky little boutiques, the seriously cool graffiti and the different little restaurant every time you go. It costs $10,000 to open a bar in Victoria, $250,000 in New South Wales and that, until recently, explained the different experience of visiting the two cities. They get off-the-wall holes-in-the-wall, we get mega-sportsbars. But didn’t legislation change that last year? Everyone seems to think so but no one’s quite sure. Certainly there’s nowhere yet serving alcohol in Sydney that could be described as funky or cool.
But so what?
Even if we’d got Wicked! instead of Priscilla, art instead of Andre Rieu, skiing less than six hours away, the Australian Open, the Grand Prix, Kath & Kim and a half-decent casino, I’d still prefer Sydney. Walk with me for ten minutes by the great rolling ocean, swim out with me in crystalline water, sail on our harbour and tell me there’s any city, anywhere in the world* that has anything to compare.
See. You can’t.
*South Africa doesn’t count, Brazil’s too violent and Marseille lost its allure years ago.
Just another league sex scandal (May 2009)
In a group-sex session between nine huge men and one “immature 19-year-old woman” is each of the men individually responsible for checking he’s not taking part in gang-rape? This is the question which currently divides Australia
Or to be precise: when a woman agrees to have a threesome with two rugby players, and six other players turn up and decide they want to take part, at what point does it become rape? If the woman at first “brags” about the act the next morning, but then later comes to regret it, does that mean it couldn’t have been rape?
Australia is currently having a mass debate about this issue because the men were all rugby players. Or rather, because one in particular – one of the original two – is a huge rugby star. His name is Matthew Johns and he and his brother Joey are NRL royalty.
The L stands for League, and to get your head around this whole issue you have to understand how big Rugby League is out here. It’s bigger than football in England, bigger than “football” in the States. It’s huge.
As are the men who play it. League is a big violent game where necks and brains are unwelcome diversions from the ferocity of running into, and through, the only men around as big as you. The physicality of the game has been used by some academics here to explain the peculiar nature of League sex scandals. You see, no one is surprised when these unintelligent young men spend the money that is thrown at them on fast cars and alcohol, nor that they attract a certain type of attention.
But what is surprising is that when these men copulate drunkenly in hotel bedrooms, they tend to do it in each other’s company. “Personally,” my mate Kurt tells me, “the sight of my best mate’s bum banging up and down would be the biggest turn off in the world”. Not so for League players.
When Matthew Johns and a “fellow, unnamed player” accompanied a 19-year-old New Zealand woman to her hotel room during a 2002 tour, neither of them thought it strange when their team-mates came barging in for a piece of the action. Or so they say. The girl (operating under a pseudonym which confounds those claiming she just wants attention) says John’s took her to a taxi later and said “he hoped things hadn’t got too out-of-hand in there”. Now why would he think that?
What I find most shocking about this debate is the views of those around me. Women above all keep telling me “she obviously wanted it”. Even Kurt, who’s played a bit of rugby in his time, confirms that it’s a difficult issue because there are so many predatory women who’ll follow a tour. But my favourite quote of the debate is from a player from another team who said “The best way to avoid these scandals is to treat the girl right afterwards, make sure she gets a taxi for example”.
It’s not clear why this story has emerged only now, seven years after the event. What is clear is that the girl involved blames the events of that night for the collapse of her life. “If I had a gun I’d kill them all” she says. “I hate them.”
It is doubtful whether she will get an opportunity with a shotgun but she may well have done for the club. Electronics group LG have withdrawn their sponsorship of the Cronulla Sharks and the club is suddenly facing bankruptcy. In the current climate no other sponsor is likely to step in and few expect the club to survive.
In fact, with Telstra (our telecom) threatening to withdraw its league-wide sponsorship, the entire sport is looking shaky right now. Peter Fitzsimmons, everybody’s favourite sports-writer, wrote before this scandal broke that “unless NRL can drag itself into the 21st century its fan-base will desert it and it will die”.
Few expected his words to come true so soon.
David Iredale (May 2009)
In December last year 17-year old David Iredale decided to hike across Mount Solitary in the Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney. These mountains, which get scatters of snow through the winter but never enough for skiing, are deceptively pretty, their rocky faces smoothed by the eucalypts which give them their name.
David and two school friends had thought the treck across Mount Solitary might contribute to their Duke of Edinburgh award. When they told this to the teacher at their school who administered the award program, he was about as interested as any teacher is when a pupil tells him what they’re doing over the weekend. This didn’t surprise them. This was the teacher, after all, who had been promising for weeks to bring them a GPS but kept forgetting to put it in his bag.
Mount Solitary is a three-day hike along a well-marked track. It’s heavy going, especially the second day when a walker needs to climb 810 metres to the top of the mountain. It might not sound much, but remember December is mid-summer in Australia and it gets bloody hot that far from the coast. Walking anywhere can be tough.
My mate Kurt, who’s quite the outdoor-expert, told me recently than when you are walking in the mountains you should carry three litres of water per person per day. Plus a litre or two for cooking at night, plus extra if you want to wash. David Iredale was carrying two litres for the entire trip and, unsuprisingly, ran out on the first afternoon of his hike. Undeterred, he and his friends pushed on to the next day’s climb. The maps they’d taken with them showed fine blue lines trailing down each side of Mount Solitary and they assumed these were creeks where they could fill up their bottles. Big mistake.
Blue on an Australian map is mostly a suggestion of what might occur. Open an atlas and you’d be forgiven for thinking lakes dot the centre and south of this country. But one of those lakes, Lake Eyre, has water in it now and tour companies are selling “once in a lifetime flights” to view it. Sheep regularly graze in Lake George. Creeks in the Blue Mountains are not quite so rare and most winters can guarantee a trickle somewhere close to the fine blue line on the map. But you should never rely on them, especially not in mid-Summer.
At the top of the mountain David left a hand-written note which read “Got to the top! Haven’t had H2O for a whole day but river coming up! Enjoy the view”.
At some point in the following hours David “cracked the shits” with his two mates and walked ahead down the path. What happened next is on the one hand unclear, but on the other recorded in painful detail.
The unclear part is why or how David left the path and ended up 200 metres to the north on a rocky incline. If he was looking for water why did he leave the path which appeared to be heading towards it? Dehydration probably, delirium perhaps.
The all-too-clear part of those dry and desperate hours was played to a packed court-house at an inquiry last week. Five calls to the Emergency Services in 16 minutes. Five different operators refusing to help David because, although he said he was on the Mount Solitary walking track, he was unable to name a cross-street. His calls were audio-recorded but not entered onto the computer system as the operators didn’t think they were worth it. The last person he spoke to said “OK, so you’ve just wandered into the middle of nowhere. Is that what you’re saying?”.
David’s body was found nine days later. That delay shows more than anything how easily you can get lost in the thick undergrowth of the mountains. But no one in Australia is blaming the mountains just now. They are just wondering why until this week, five months after David died, the emergency services had still not reveiwed their operating procedures.
Victoria Bush Fires (February 2009)
Radio 3AW presenter: We have on the line Rhiannon from Kinglake. So what’s your situation Rhiannon?
Rhiannon: (very young but calm) Er..well.the property we’ve moved to is completely surrounded by fire and we’re just waiting for it to hit. Um..er..we’ve seen no emergency people and we really need help right now.
P: How many of you are there Rhiannon?
R: Well, there’s eight kids, all under the age of ten. Two elderly ladies. Four adults.there’s quite a lot of us. And.
P: And how far is the front of the fire from you do you think?
R: Half a kilometre. Not even.
P: And it’s burning towards you at the moment?
R: That’s correct yes.
P: And is there any capacity at that property in terms of water and pumps and.
R: We have pumps and sprinklers going but.uh.I don’t know if that’s enough. We really.we heard that there’s a strikeforce or something, some fire engines being sent up Chum Creek Road, Heath Road. And if they are there now we really need help.
P: We’ll see what we can do. We’ll see if we can get some action. Unfortunately there.
R: It’s only minutes away.
P: We’ll do what we can. What you guys need to do is..er.if possible try and find somewhere in the house.
R: We’re in a house. And the idea that we’re, we’re putting into place is going to the centre of the house where there’s a bathroom and just covering ourselves with wet towels and to stop the smoke or anything like that.
P: Absolutely. And make sure you’ve got no synthetic clothing on. It needs to be woollen. If you have synthetic clothing then get rid of it. Endeavour to fill the bath so that you have water there as much as you can.
R: Yep (shouting in the background)
P: How far are the flames away now Rhiannon?
R: I can’t see, there’s too much smoke now.
P: Rhiannon, we’ll see what we can do.
R: (crying) Please send help.
P: You’re ok.
R: What?
P: You’re ok.
R: Well, yes for now.
P: What can you see?
R: Not a lot. There’s so much smoke (dog starts barking). The house we were in is now engulfed in flames and..oh.there are still people in that house.
P: There are people still in the house that’s on fire?
R: (upset) Yes, we’re going to back for them. Maybe cut through the paddock.
P: Rhiannon, Mary’s on the line who’s in Heath Road and her husband’s trying to come up with a tank of water on a trailer. Can you speak to Mary? She’s on the line now. Are you there Mary?
Mary: Yes I am.
P: Can you hear Mary, Rhiannon?
R: Yes I can.
Line goes dead.
P: We’ve lost them.
Woman interviewed outside community centre:
We managed to save..um.the horses and neighbouring sheep and, I think, the cattle. Um…but Pete lost his house and all his tools and everything. While we were in a safe spot because the grass fire had gone through the open paddock and we’d parked everything down there…um…a man came down with his daughter and they were really badly burnt…um..and he’d lost his wife and other children. And we got separated because they came into town in the ambulance.with his daughter. I.er..(upset) She was only about two or three years old.
Man interviewed on the radio:
(North English accent). We moved here because we wanted to live in paradise. We lived in a caravan while we built our house. Then we leant that caravan to new neighbours when they came and built their houses. We were off the mountain because we went to pick up my daughter from the airport. My house is gone. It’s only treasure, it’s only junk. But my neighbours, they’re all in their houses. They’re all dead. They’re all dead.
Radio 3AW presenter a few hours later:
P: We have on the line Mark, Rhiannon’s dad.
Mark: (crying) Oh man, yes I am.
P: What’s the situation Mark?
M: Rhiannon’s safe. Her brother saved her.
P: Oh fantastic.
M: (very upset) Oh mate, you’ve no idea. You’ve got no idea how happy I am.
P: Oh Mark. That’s great, we’re so happy to hear from you.
M: You ain’t go no idea. (crying). Her brother, he’s an absolute legend. He’s gone down through the burning paddock, cut his way through to the other house and got ’em all out on a little tractor with a little pump on the back of it. And he’s got ’em out of the house. And I think the house is burnt. He’s got ’em all out, they’re all safe.
P: And he did that single-handedly.
M: (crying) He’s a legend. With his brother, or his cousin, I’m not sure who it was. It’s a tiny little tractor and he’s dragged them all out and put ’em all on it and got them back to safety.
P: How old is he Mark?
M: He’s 18.
P: And how old is Rhiannon?
M: It’s her 21st next Sunday.
P: Well, Mark, you give her our love and say (crying) we’re very relieved here because.
M: You’ve no idea how happy I am.
P: (crying) It was so distressing.
M: Can I just say too please, I spoke to a woman at the fire brigade at Hillsow and she’s a legend that woman. She’s done everything she possibly could and I.the CFA goes much further than firefighters. This woman in the office, mate, she had everything under control and she organised it and I really take my hat off to those guys. And also those guys working in the CFA office. I just thank them so much.
(The CFA is the Country Fire Association. It’s entirely voluntary. There have been many reports of CFA firefighters protecting neighbours’ home whilst watching their own burn.
So far, 171 dead bodies have been discovered.)
Death of a Dream (February 2009)
Grief is the most tenacious of emotions. It only feigns defeat so it can reappear, fresh-armed and stronger than before. It waits for when you are least expecting it. I was waiting for the bus this morning, watching crazies stumble through the sunshine of Crown Street, when suddenly I felt immensely sad. Weak and tired under the weight of the emotion I thought I’d buried last month. I’d forgotten that grief, like any emotion, only intensifies when you bury it. Deny it, ignore it, look the other way and that elephant will just grow and grow. I see now that yesterday afternoon it was squeezing me hard against the wall on the beach, pressing me harder with every smile I forced and every ball I served.
So I’m trying to un-deny it today, to admit to my grief and my broken heart. But it’s difficult you see because if I’m honest I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed that my grief is for a dream that has died, not a person. Embarrassed I ever really had the dream. On the bus it occurred to me that perhaps I need a funeral. That’s what we do with people isn’t it? Acknowledge the loss, vaunt our sadness. It’s one of the few times in our lives when being unhappy is socially acceptable, and we embrace it with black-garb and weeping. Which is why I’m writing this really. This letter is my refusal to be ashamed. My confession of a silly ambition, but one which I really believed in and which I mourn now it is gone.
I’ve always loved volleyball. When I was 19 and living in Germany one of the few sporty things I ever did was join a volleyball club for a week or two. Years later I played in a gay volleyball team (The Volley Partons) in London, attended tournaments in Prague, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona. It wasn’t a very high standard and we only ever won the Miss Congeniality prize but it was fun. It was volleyball.
When I got to Australia five years ago I discovered the combination of volleyball and the beach and immediately fell in love. I found myself thinking that the utter pleasure I experienced when playing beach-volleyball was more intense than any I’d ever known outside of love and making-love. It was so concentrated and complete, such a technical team-sport (name any other where two players pass a ball back and forth), so…whatever. It doesn’t matter really does it? I just loved it immediately.
I soon realised I wanted to be really good at this game. I was fed up of losing the court to better players (King of the Court is the rule on beaches around the world). And then that ambition, combined with (take your pick here) looming middle-age; a never-very-far need for validation; a refusal to live life locked in an office; a desire to be recognised as a fully-signed-up member of the male tribe; competitivity; trying to escape from the meaninglessness of life; wondering if now – at last – I could achieve something in life, bla bla bla….anyway, it combined with a bundle of emotions and I decided to Go For It.
Here’s the reasoning: No one in Britain can play beach-volleyball. In 2012 London will host the Olympics. Host-nations like to be represented in every sport. Host-nation teams by-pass normal qualification procedures. If I worked really hard for six years I could represent Britain in beach-volleyball at the London Olympics. Don’t laugh. OK, laugh, see if I care.
Bizarrely my coach thought this was just about feasible too. He thought it would take two years to get me to AA level, another to go interstate and then another to go international. No other Brits are on the international tour. Why shouldn’t this work?
Well, here’s why not. The less you know about something the less aware you are of how little you know. Just because a sport is not popular doesn’t mean its athletes are any less able. After three tired, disciplined, emotionally draining years I only now realise I’m not a natural athlete. This is not self-pity, it’s level-headed fact. I don’t have any natural sporting talent. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be thick and now, at last, I know. Also I’m not 19 (although that’s less of a factor) and I’m not six-foot-four. But above all, I’m sick of doing nothing but beach-volleyball every day. In October of last year I actually realised I’d come to hate the game.
All different ways of saying I’m Just Not Good Enough and – gulp – never will be. I play against tourists who played a lot in high school and see they are better than I’ll ever be. Admitting that is tough but denying it has been a lot tougher. Watching them makes even admitting my ambition embarrassing. I, who had the temerity to think I could represent my nation, will never be good as a good tourist.
So I’m burying my ambition. This letter is its funeral. But I’m not burying the emotion that goes around it. I am sad, I’ve lost a dream which I really believed in, and I’m embarrassed that I ever had it.
The farewell has its advantages of course. I’m learning to surf, I’m mountain-biking when it’s not too hot. I could go home and read the paper all afternoon if I chose. And I’m learning to love the game again. Maybe I’m even improving faster now that the pressure is off. But it’s not all rosy in my heart just now. Which is fine. It’s OK to be sad.
OK to be normal and not over-achieve.
Canyoning (February 2009)
I was sitting in a meeting room on the thirty-fifth floor the other day when suddenly my heart began to hurt. A British Airways jet had risen from the airport and I watched it circle lazily and disappear over the hazy blue horizon.
I’ve been missing people a lot recently. Maybe because so many friends and family have big-0 birthdays this year. Lots of gatherings of people who it saddens me not to see. Or maybe because we’ve just celebrated our fifth anniversary of living in Australia and that feels like a long time. Or maybe no reason. Anyway, I’m missing everyone and wish so much…well, not that I was there with you but rather that you were here with me. Blue skies, clear ocean, crashing waves. You get the picture. Anyway, back to that hazy blue horizon. Hazy because of pollution or heat inversion depending on who you talk to. Blue because of the mountains.
The Blue Mountains start 50km west of Sydney and shoot up from the Cumberland Plain in a solid wall of sandstone. The first white settlers considered the mountains “insurmountable” which says more about their arrogance than anything else. It was only after 20 years of failed expeditions that someone thought to ask the aborigines how they did it. Easy. Don’t walk up the valleys as in Europe or America, that way only leads to treachorous cliffs and deceptive dead-ends. Instead, walk up the ridge lines, the song lines where generations-old lyrics will guide you the way.
Still today, asphalt and tarmac smoothing the journey, you can see what an incredible job it was to cross the Great Dividing Range. The land dips away regularly to reveal infinite eucalypts rolling to the horizon, their leaves reacting with the heat to produce the blue haze which gives the mountains their name. Every so often, the endless forest is cut by a line of nothing as it falls into a canyon upto 760 metres deep. Picture that, it’s deep. Sandstone is soft you see and after ten million years even the tiniest creek can etch deep into the bowels of the earth. Well, OK, maybe not the bowels of the earth but it certainly feels that way when you’re down there.
Did I mention I went canyoning this week?
At first it felt like a normal bush walk, slugging through the wilderness with heavy packs. We gawked at the 300 metre cliffs that appeared through the trees and wondered at the silence of the Australian bush (it’s already hot by 9am and all the birds, insects, marsupials etc are hiding in the shade and trying not to move). Unlike most walks though, this one didn’t end when the path disappeared over a ledge.
“Ever abseiled before?” asked my mate James, pulling ropes off his back. I sort of knew he was an outdoorsy person so was sure it would be fine. Ten minutes later, walking backwards over a cliff, I wondered if I should have asked about his qualifications.
At the bottom of the first 20 metre abseil, once I’d stopped kissing the ground, I followed James and his mate Zen down the creek until we hit one of those famous dead ends. Except, what’s that tiny hole under that rock? That black abyss full of water? We climbed down into it, the 14 degree water making me gasp. As instructed I had two layers of thermals on underneath my wetsuit and, as predicted, it wasn’t enough. The woolly hat under my helmet helped, as did the woollen socks inside my shoes. But, after watching me shiver, James soon gave me his diving gloves too. Together with the abseiling harness I looked like I’d walked out of an outdoor-equipment store unable to decide what to buy.
It takes a while to get used to swimming in a cave that has never seen the sunlight, but the glow-worms helped, little blue stars littering the ceiling better than an African sky. Lovely, I thought, it’s freezing, let’s go. But on and on we went. The sunlight, when we found it again, had turned green through the filter of ancient ferns. We abseiled again into unknown pools, not combat-style with two wide feet down a flat wall, but crawling and scraping so as not to swing in under the overhang and slam into the jagged rockface underneath.
Then we walked the floor of wrinkles two-foot wide and a hundred-foot high, huge rocks split in two by the gently flowing water. We found a red-bellied black snake (one of the most poisonous in the world), several spiders, a marsupial that looked like a mouse. And then more green pools, black swimming caves which probably, hopefully, led further down.
I’d never felt like this before, a visitor to a world made neither by nor for humans. We were alone and far from home down there, freezing in the gloom and looking up at the baking sky. But oh it was beautiful. Trees which three hundred years ago had started their journey up to the light buttressed out of the rock above us. Fish which didn’t know to fear us swam around our feet. Bright red yabbies, somewhere between a prawn and a lobster, were gnarly and happy to attack intruders. Our bodies and breath steamed in the green and golden sunlight.
After six hours we splashed out of the canyon and into the main river, its waters joyfully warm after the black creek of the caves. We swam still deep between red cliffs for an hour or so until at last we found our path. Then we slogged up the harsh hill, wetsuits wet and clothes damp, back packs heavier than ever. I am sore all over today and all the happier for it.
Have I ever forgotten to mention before? Australia is a land of endless beauty. So, yes I miss you all, but I miss you here, not there.
Names Have Been Changed (December 2008)
Agh! My mother is driving me crazy!!! Last night she insisted on helping with supper but refused to peel the beetroots “on principal”. This morning she interrupted my clearly late-for-work rush to insist, insist I pay attention and remember who Oedipus’s daughter was. Oliver is grinning through it all but I can see him counting the hours under his breath. Only 47½ before she returns to New Zealand and peace descends again.
Mum and Mike are in town for the funeral of Mum’s sister, Agnes (names have been changed in this post to protect the not-so innocent). “There’s a sister?!” my stepmother gasped when she heard of Agnes’ existence. Like the rest of us, she struggled to believe the world had produced anything close to my mother. But it had.
Agnes was just as insane, just as talkative, just as loveable-slash-offensive as my mother is. They were the spitting image of each other. My cousin Theresa once said to me “Your mother and mine were separated at birth and your mother got the heart”. Harsh, you might think, but more forgiving than Agnes’ other daughter who refused to even contact her for the last twelve years of her life. It’s all very Running with Scissors and slightly amusing one step removed, each of them as bad as the other, aware of all faults but their own. “I don’t leak” Agnes said over and over again to me and my sister Becky one evening. “You can say anything to me and your secret is safe. Remember this: I Don’t Leak”. Well, she does now.
Agnes was found by her neighbour and best friend Janice on Saturday evening. She’d been making jam when she died, which is a lovely way to go I think. At a certain point she decided to curl up comfortably on the living-room floor and gently leave the world. Janice, when she found her, sat and held her hand until the ambulance came. Then she sealed the still-open jam and took it off to sell at the charity fete as Agnes had intended. There were no flies apparently so we’re not too worried that it had been in a room with a dead body in the Australian summer heat for two or three days.
Given all the disfunctionality and bad blood flying around I must admit I was quite looking forward to the funeral. After all, one of the guests was going to be the daughter of the man Agnes had been sleeping with for 25 years (despite being good friends with his wife). Also, Agnes’ half-brother Jimmy had displayed the family’s propensity for drama by flying in with 80kg of luggage despite having only met her once for half-an-hour several years ago. Agrnes’ son, Tony, couldn’t come as he’s “unwell” with major quotation marks. But the real draw card was to be Tabitha, the estranged daughter. Seven times engaged and reported to have kept the ring each time (treasured family heirloom or not). Very well-hitched in the end and suspected by Agnes to have ditched the family so she could invent a more suitable background for herself. I imagined her in furs and outrageous heels, mysterious and alone at the back of the chapel.
In the event she sat at the front. Cried throughout the ceremony and held the hand of her lovely husband. Theresa, her sister, made a beautiful speech which didn’t pretend things had been better than they were. She was eloquent about the love she felt for the difficult woman we were there to remember. My mum was stoical until the very end of her eulogy, then she broke down in tears and spoke of how she’d miss her sister. The music was wonderful, very fitting for a woman who’d spent most of her life alone. The Ballad of Lucy Jordan etc.
And then the next day I had to pick up some things from Agnes’ flat. Mum and Mike have been helping Therea clear it out (Tabatha only wants the jewellery) so I slogged upstairs expecting boxes and mayhem. But most of the stuff had already gone and the place was empty but for the stain on the carpet where they’d found Agnes lying.
Suddenly, in this sad and empty flat, where my mad aunt had cooked for me and made me laugh, jokes about leaking and crazy relatives felt disrespectful. Here a woman had died alone. She was self-opinionated and talkative and mad as a stick but in the end she was a lonely old lady. And like the rest of us she just wanted to be loved. So I’ve forgiven mum for the beetroots and Oedipus and all the talking. She’s only here for another 47½ hours and I don’t know when I’ll see her again.
Schapelle Corby (August 2008)
Did you hear the news? Schapelle’s got depression. Did you see the frenzy? Journalists found her at a beauty parlour and mobbed the place. Did you see her sister? Mercedes was swinging at the cameras. And that was just last month’s episode. Don’t tell me you don’t get Schapelle over there? It’s my favourite soap opera / new story.
I thought of that opening paragraph on the bus yesterday and had intended to write an amusing account of the Schapelle Corby case and the storm that surrounds her every move. But I went online this morning to check some facts and now I’m not so sure it’s very funny. So here instead are the facts.
First of all you need to know about Bali. This island in Indonesia is best described as Australia’s Ibiza. Like Ibiza it combines stunning landscapes with the best and worst that tourism can offer. You can sample expensive spas set high in the jungle, where infinity pools hang over deep valleys and quiet staff cater to your every whim. Or you can kick through streets littered with loutish Australians stumbling between dance parties and cockroach-infested hostels. It’s San Antonio versus Ibiza town.
On 8th October 2004 Schapelle Corby, a beautician from Queensland, was arrested at Bali’s Denpasar Airport. Police had found 4.2kg of cannabis hidden in her boogie-board bag. From that point on there was little in the Australian papers for a full twelve months but stories about poor Schapelle. She was perfect news-fodder, her huge blue eyes guaranteed to produce tears as her perfect nails pushed her hair from her face. Schapelle’s advisors seemed to think a heavy media involvement would be beneficial to her cause, and she held frequent press-conferences to state her innocence.
Oliver and I were on holiday in the Northern Territory at the time of Schapelle’s sentencing in May 05 and like the rest of Australia we managed to find a television so we could watch the verdict. Schapelle was found guilty and was sentenced to twenty years in jail. I formed a personal connection with her at that moment as the first thing she had to do was to turn around in the courtroom and ask her mother to shut the hell up.
Since then the media frenzy has died down but any new information is immediately front page news. Her brother Clinton led a home-invasion of a known drug dealer. Schapelle was caught with a mobile phone and had her sentence increased. A photo showed her sister Mercedes smoking a big fat spliff. Oh, and everyone knows her dad is a lifetime grower and dealer. It goes on and on.
Since then of course we’ve also had the Bali nine. A group of Australians aged between 19 and 28 arrested for smuggling heroine. The luckier amongst them got life-sentences, the others the death penalty. All caught because the father of one of them, Lee Rush, informed the Australian police of what his son was planning to do and begged them to intervene. The Australian police did so by informing the Indonesian police and now Mr Rush is unlikely to ever see his son free again.
And then there’s Michele Leslie, the model caught with ecstasy in her handbag. The one who got it right, converted to Islam, claimed an addiction, kept a low profile and got away with a three month sentence.
Now, no-one thinks any of these people are innocent, but Australians are sickened by the Indonesian justice system and to fully understand why you have to go back to 2002.
In October of that year a bomb went off in a nightclub in the Bali resort of Kuta. Unsurprisingly the club emptied everyone, injured or otherwise, onto the street. There, fifteen seconds later, a much larger car-bomb exploded. A total of 202 people died and many others were horrifically burnt. 88 of the dead were Australian (14 or so from my old surfclub in Coogee). Most of them were young and the last pictures of them, smiling and having fun, are heart-breaking.
Abu Bakar Bashir was convicted in 2003 of conspiracy over this bombing and others. He is widely believed to be the person who conceived and organised the whole thing. Bashir received a two-and-a-half year sentence. He was released from custody on 14th June 2006. Schapelle should get out in about twelve years.
So you can you see why Australians are angry. And why somehow Schapelle’s story isn’t so funny any more.
The Man in White (July 2008)
Surry Hills – the suburb where we live – is in lockdown. Now when I say “suburb” I don’t mean it in a Margot and Jerry way. It’s very central I’ll have you know and ever so hip. Full of bijou restaurants and shops selling stuff no one needs. But in Australia everyone lives in a suburb. Sydney itself, the narrow strip of skyscrapers between the harbour and Central Station, is called a suburb. Which perhaps says more about this place than any number of letters I could write.
Anyway, Surry Hills is in lockdown. Two of its main thoroughfares, Foveaux Street and Bourke Street, have been shut off entirely. Those foolish enough to drive this weekend have been funnelled into Crown Street and as I type are sitting in their cars, going nowhere. Helicopters hover low in the sky and groups of policeman are hanging around on street corners.
Devonshire Street, which runs from our place to Central Station, is also blocked off, crowded with water-trucks leaking all over the tarmac. This morning, as I smugly strolled past frustrated drivers, I asked one of the council workers if a pipe had burst.
“No pipe” he said “Just pope”.
The water-trucks were there to fill the huge plastic barricades which ran the length of Devonshire. Did you know they are filled with water to keep them solid and emptied again when they need to be moved? Well now you do. And the reason for the barricades? For the lockdown of Surry Hills and half of Sydney this weekend? The council man had it right. The Pope’s here and God it’s getting annoying.
July 17th – 21st inclusive are World Youth Day (so named by somebody who can’t count, I’d guess) and apparently this a big deal in Catholic circles. We were told it would be the “biggest youth event in the world ever” but that didn’t sound such a big deal. After all, what were they comparing it to? And we scoffed at the idea that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims would make the trip to Sydney. I mean, that Pope-fella, he’s not so big any more is he?
Oh, how out of touch we Atheists (if they get a capital C, I want a capital A) can become. 60,000 people are planning to attend the Friday night mass on the harbour. 250,000 will be at the weekend services at Randwick Race Course. And as far as I can tell the vast majority of them are indeed youths and more surprisingly actually from all over the world. Mexico, Chile, Croatia, Austria, the US, the UK, Germany, France, India, Guam, Senegal, I could go on. Thousands and thousands of young people everywhere you go, all of them singing and dancing and playing the guitar badly.
And you can’t help but like them. Admittedly they’re clogging the transport system and they have terrible skin, but they’re all so happy in their matching rucksacks, so friendly and optimistic. Great hordes of them have been crossing my beach all week like a disorganised but victorious army, calling out and challenging each other to games of volleyball or swims in the icy water.
Some locals have objected to the $150 million the NSW government has put into this jamboree but when you see them all here from all over the planet, smiling and spending money you can’t help but be uplifted.
At least so I thought for a while. But then, on Thursday evening, Popey got in my way.
Every afternoon I train for four or so hours on Manly Beach. By the time I’m on my way home I’m exhausted, covered in sand and – at this time of the year – cold. All I want to do is get the ferry to Circular Quay and jump on my bus down to the Hills. Which is easy enough if some popstar in a white dress isn’t planning to drive past your bus stop.
I got off the ferry to find thousands of people lining both sides of the road screaming at an approaching cavalcade. Deep breath, I’ll get a train. Except, as I queued for my ticket, the station suddenly closed because the platform was too full. Deeper breath, I’ll walk. Oh, except they’ve closed off all the roads because Bride of Chucky is doing his drive past right now.
“You could try and flag down a helicopter” suggested a policeman before retreating from the look I gave him.
The worst moment was when I walked from the place where the pope-mobile was about to drive to where it had just driven. Four thousand Catholics turned as one and ran against me to get a second look. And there’s me carrying ten volleyballs. Did they display their christian values by avoiding me and not pushing me to the ground? They did not. As you can imagine, this was just about efuckingnough. How dare this stupid man get in my way?! We’re trying to run a city here, not a cult. And have none of these people noticed that this stupid man won’t allow condoms in AIDS-ridden Africa? Or that he thinks that my lifestyle if evil and that half my friends should go to hell? Or that the insitution which he leads has caused systematic child abuse and ruined hundreds of thousands of lives? How dare a man whose only redeeming feature is that he actually looks evil tell me how to live my life?
Oliver designed a t-shirt which read “World Youth Day 2008, I was touched by a priest down under” and how I wish I was wearing one just then. “Oh” I shouted “oh, you mindless idiots, did you hear about why the mass is being held at the race course? Because it’s the only place in Sydney where you can legally ride a three year old!”
Except I didn’t of course. I just fought through the crowds and once they opened the barricades somehow caught a miracle taxi home. Maybe God was feeling protestant that day. Anyway, there are still quite a few pilgrims milling about, still singing and carrying crosses. And I don’t mind them, so young and guilt ridden, so malleable and out of tune. But I’ll never, never forgive the Pope.
Football (July 2008)
Football season is here, hooray! Now to follow the Aussie football season it’s best to pick your favourite code. You can pick more than one if you want, but be careful. If you do that it will be tough to remember which of your favourite stars is addicted to which drug or is accused of sleeping with which TV starlet. Here are your choices:
1. Rugby league.
Rugby league is predominately a New South Wales game although it is apparently also played in a place called ‘the North of England’ (sounds hideous). Rugby league players are generally involved in orgy scandals in large hotels, they have very thick necks and their teams, like characters in a Dostoyevsky novel, each have two or three names. Cronulla are the Sharks, the Wests are Canterbury (or The Bulldogs if you prefer) and Illawara are, I kid you not, both St George and The Dragons.
The story to know about Rugby League is that in the 80’s Rupert Murdoch decided he wanted to own the game. He poured a lot of money into setting up a league (sorry, The League) and decided for televiewing pleasure that some teams should merge. The proudest and most successful team, South Sydney (aka The Rabbitohs) said no thanks, who do you think you are? To which he replied ‘I’m Rupert Murdoch’ and refused to let them play in his, sorry, the league for the first few years. They lost out on millions of dollars of television revenues and have rarely since won a game. They’re back now though and were bought last year by Russell Crowe. New money, new players and they even made the final eight. Not that it means my local barber has yet taken down the crucified Murdoch effigy from his window. Again, I kid you not.
2. Rugby Union
Rugby Union is not so much preferred in any one state as by a stratum of society. Posh people watch it and the teams are named after flowers. It has the worst carbon footprint of any code, the Aussie states competing against teams from New Zealand and South Africa in a fast growing league called the Super 8 10 12 14. Union players earn a lot less than League players but they do get a chance to play for the national team the Wallabies (a much greater honour than getting to play for the national League team who 1) are called the Kangaroos and 2) only ever get to compete against the North of England).
The story to know about Rugby Union: it’s greatest proponent of the modern game, Joey Johns, recently confessed that he used to take ecstasy. Personally my world fell apart.
3. Aussie Rules
Aussie Rules, or AFL to use its full name, stems from Victoria. You go to Victoria when there’s a big League game on and all you’ll hear in the pub is the click of dominoes. It’s not that dominoes is really loud down there, they just never watch League. In New South Wales “only poofs watch AFL”.
At least this was the case until a few years ago. To counter a lack of interstate interest both AFL and League decided on a very clever strategy to make their games popular across the nation. This involved placing strict salary caps on their local teams. As a result “foreign” teams got the better players, started winning tournaments and lo and behold became popular in states previously deafened by dominoes. Two years ago the Sydney Swans won the AFL, last year’s League final was between Western Australian and Victorian teams, and all played to sell out crowds.
AFL is played by porn gods in tight shorts. Each runs the equivalent of 26km in the average game and it pays to be tall and muscular. You gain ground by catching a ball thrown by an equally handsome and rugged player and there’s probably something about points but really, who cares? Just sit back and look at those men.
4. Football
No! No! No! I won’t call it soccer!. Of course if I say “football” an Aussie will say “which code?” and I’ll say “soccer” but still I can just can’t bring myself to use the word unprompted. Not the word ‘unprompted’, the word ‘soccer’ unprompted. Anyway, football used to be very ethnic in Australia. Croatian teams would play Greek teams whilst their fans would kill each other in the stands (they just do it at the tennis now). Then Mr Frank Lowy stepped in.
Frank Lowy is to shopping centres (Westfield to be precise) what Rupert Murdoch is to media and, like Murdoch before him, Lowy decided he wanted to set up a league. First of all though he decided to remove any team that was named along ethnic lines or had ethnic criteria for membership. Now each of the big cities has got a main team and they often bring in flagship players from overseas. Two seasons ago Dwight York starred for Sydney FC and last year Juninho played (strangely enough no one wanted Gazza). Then of course Australia qualified for the world cup and now soc..football is hugely popular over here. The Australian national team is called the Socceroos. No comment.
So there you go, take your pick. And remember, it doesn’t matter which code you choose because at the end of the day its all about yelling your head off in the stands with a schooner of beer in one hand and a hot meat-pie in the other. Go the Rabbitohs!!!! Pull ‘is bleedin’ ‘ead off ya flamin gallah!!!
Anzac Day (April 2008)
I’m in a pub full of people screaming. I have a five dollar note in my hand and I’m using it to tap repeatedly at my head. All around me are people doing the same, yelling at the top of their voice, gesticulating with notes, fives, tens, even fifties, desperate to find someone to do a deal.
At last I spot a big guy at the back of the crowd. He’s pointing at me and waving, nodding his head yes he’ll do a deal on my five bucks. He passes his own fiver to a drunk blonde who grabs a small guy in jeans who passes it to his mate to give to me. With the money in my hand I make eye contact with my opponent to reassure him I remember who he is. I hold both our notes tight and we wait separated by the heaving crowd.
There are several more minutes of ramshackle dealing until the sunset stripes the sky outside and the referees begin to calm us down, herding us off the square of carpet we’re on, gently pushing so even the drunkest comply.
Until now the referees too have been looking for bets, demanding opponents for my hippy friend Karen who’s come to stand beside them. Having matched her money – the pile of notes lies in the middle of the square between them – they can now get us going.
There is a tiny silence whilst we all wait. A mass hesitation, like when the little man turns green and everyone breathes before crossing the road. Then the man beside me shouts “Tails!!!” and there we are all yelling again “Heads heads heads!!” “Tails, tails, tails!”. Karen’s loving this and she revs up the crowd, her left hand to her ear, her right teasing us with the wood holding the coins. At last she tosses them, a perfect toss which follows the rules, all three coins raising above our heads and all three of them landing inside the square.
Again, a tiny silence whilst we look. They’re old Australian pennies, huge and dark, a large white cross on the tails side so they’re easier to read in the shadows near our feet. I see one cross, then I spot the other coins and both are showing dark. So it’s heads! So I’ve won! Half the crowd yells with joy, its cheers drowning out the small sighs from the other half. I search out my opponent who sees me and smiles in defeat. No worries mate, keep my money.
And immediately the next round of dealing starts.
A week earlier I’m in a similar pub playing cards with Kurt and Karen and Zen. One of the old guys who works behind the bar ambles over and says g’day. “Just checking you lot aren’t doing that for money?” We smile and reassure him. Everyone knows it’s illegal to gamble in a pub away from the pokie machines. “Not even matchsticks which you’ll change later on?”. No mate, it’s 500, it’s just for points. Well, alright then and he ambles back to his taps.
So what’s the difference? Same state, same laws, could have been the same pub.
The difference is Anzac Day. On 25th April every year the populations of Australia and New Zealand (and Somoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands) remember the troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought at Gallipoli. That’s World War 1 folks, Winston Churchill still young and thinking a quick hard strike would knock Turkey out of the war. An early mistake which got bogged down in an eight month stalemate and left 8,000 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders dead in foreign soil. And 86,000 Turks dead at home.
Australia was still a young nation then, only thirteen, and it was their first foray onto the world stage of conflict. Now, years later and prouder than ever, the country never forgets.
In Australia, Anzac Day is a public holiday, one which starts earlier than most as thousands attend dawn services across the country. If the original heroes have passed away, their descendents march wearing their medals. In fact this has become such a popular pastime that this year New South Wales has asked descendants to march separately so the shrunken veterans of Gallipoli can be seen by the crowds attending. And Anzac Day is the only day of the year when it is legal to play two-up. The gambling game with three coins that gives you better odds than any other (always fifty-fifty) and which was the only fun to be had in the hellish trenches of 1915.
I needed Anzac Day this year. I’ve been going through one of life’s regular lows. No-one wants to publish my book, nor do I, volleyball is an uphill struggle, Oliver’s away in Ireland and it’s been raining for thirteen days. Under a slate grey sky Sydney’s just another big city and the smiles which come more naturally here have been over-watered and drooping. To walk into a pub full of strangers who trust each other with their money (whoever bets Heads always holds the cash), to laugh with twenty, thirty people I’ve never met before, to watch the madness of alcohol-infused gambling go on without the tiniest hint of aggression, this is what I needed. It reminded me why I live in Australia.
Private Schools (April 2008)
Please excuse the delay since my last letter. I’ve got a new boss and he seems to expect me to work for a living. So its been full (or at least half) steam ahead as I prove to the new incumbent that part-time doesn’t mean half-arsed. One advantage of having a committed boss is that I’m getting involved in more influential stuff around the bank, which generally means I’m doing the same sort of thing but with bigger cheeses than before.
As a result the meetings are mildly less boring. They’re held higher up in the building, you see, and the views over the harbour, the bridge, the opera house and the other skyscrapers are simply fantastic. The sun still comes out at this time of the year but it never climbs too high and if the meeting is timed correctly the top floor is infused with the most beautiful pale light, at least it is until someone pulls the blinds down so we can focus on his spreadsheet. Anyway, I was waiting for one of these meetings to start the other day when I overheard the following conversation:
Suit 1: So where are you from originally then?
Suit 2: Coogee (an Eastern Suburb with a nice family beach)
Suit 1: Oh, so where did you go to school?
Suit 2: Magellan College in Randwick. It’s a medium middle-class school.
A what? I had to ask. Suit 2, who’s actually a bit of a dude for a finance guy, explained. “Most of the guys in this room will have gone to one of the better schools, Scotts or Kings or Knox. Or one of the North Shore high schools. By calling it a “middle class school” I meant it’s a private school but not a well known one. So he didn’t have to pretend he’d heard of it”.
Private schooling has a different connotation in Australia. In the UK it generally denotes toffs and boaters. There are exceptions I know, but average school fees in the UK are still 35% of the average salary so don’t tell me everyone can afford it these days. Also, only 7% of children in the UK are in private education. In Australia the figure is 33%.
What, you gasp. You mean there’s a whole population of well-spoken Australians out there? Surely that’s the best kept secret in the world? Well no. As I said, the connotations are different.
For a start, many private schools cater to the thousands of kids who grow up scattered away from cities in this huge, underpopulated continent. I have friends who are as rough and tumble as they come but who went to boarding school because the nearest town was 58 miles from their farm. (My friend Karen was so terrified of the experience of population density that for four years she only ever did a poo when she was at home for the weekends…ouch!).
But, even in town, the kids who go to private schools are sometimes indistinguishable from those who don’t. Now clearly, the Sydney school that this week fell victim to a machete-and-baseball-bat attack by ten members of the local gang probably wasn’t fee paying. But you’re just as likely to see groups of badly-coiffed yoovs with socks at odd angles in an expensive uniform as in a state one.
That said, I suspect this “we’re all in it together” feeling might be a little bit of marketing by Australia.com. This year’s hit TV show “Summer Heights High” was set in a state-school and one of the most popular and cringeworthy characters was J’aimee, on exchange from a private school (“where there are less criminals because our parents are richer”). And up in the towers of power of the Sydney CBD a little research by your intrepid reporter did indeed prove Suit 2 correct. Everyone else in the room – and remember we’re talking bigwigs now – had been to private school. Everyone of them.
Start saving folks.
The Hardest Word (February 2008)
I want my money back. I moved to Australia for sunshine and clear skies, beaches and barbies and bare skin. To live in city which even in winter stretches and yawns under clear blue skies. But this week I look out of my window what I do see? Come back el Nino, all is forgiven. It’s raining again.
I know we should be glad the dry spell is over. I know “it takes a flood to kill a drought” but really, enough is enough. This has been the wettest summer in New South Wales for sixteen years and the coldest February in fourteen. Sydney’s not had it too bad but large areas north of here are under a metre of water for the third time this year. That’s a lot of bad carpet that needs replacing.
There are few things I like less than being wet or cold, and it’s rare that a grey sky will find me far from a fireplace, but last Thursday I dutifully headed out through the pouring rain to stand in Martin Place. This is the closest thing Sydney has to a main square. It’s more of a paved street really, albeit lined with the city’s few historic buildings, but it’s where you tend to go if you have a forty-foot Christmas tree to light or a large demonstration to suppress. On Thursday it held an enormous cinema screen surrounded by speakers the size of telephone boxes (remember them?) and about five thousand people.
I couldn’t actually see the screen but I didn’t need to. The hushed silence that fell over the crowd as the speakers crackled to life was enough. It’s not often you get a sense of being at an historic occasion and the only other time I can quote was being in Berlin when the wall came down. Clearly, our new Prime Minister’s apology to the stolen generations was not as earth-shattering as that great event, but I can tell you a similar sense of magic was in the air.
Here are the facts: between 1920 and 1972 up to thirty per cent of aboriginal children were taken away from their parents and imprisoned in institutions where they were taught to be domestic servants to white people. They were chosen based on the colour of their skin, the idea being that any child not completely black would benefit from being separated from the aboriginal way of life. 1972 is a not a long time ago and there are a lot of people alive today who were taken away from their homes and imprisoned in an environment of violence and abuse. They still no have idea what happened to their families.
Twelve years ago an enquiry was commissioned by a Labour government into this atrocity and the resulting “Bringing Them Home” report made one thing clear: an official apology to the native people of Australia was a vital starting point in any reconciliation. But by the time the report was delivered a Liberal government was in place and the Prime Minister of the time (John Howard) steadfastly refused to apologise. He had done nothing wrong and nor had the people he represented. 100,000 people took to the streets to persuade him to think otherwise but he wouldn’t budge. Ten years later, in November just gone, we got another Labour government and this month, within one week of parliament reconvening, PM Rudd laid out a strongly worded ‘sorry’.
Not everyone approves of the apology but, in a quite remarkable feat, Mr Rudd delivered a speech which everyone agreed was a masterpiece of dignity. There were tears in the eyes of the people around me in Martin Place. We cheered loudly every time the live broadcast from Canberra used the word “sorry” and we stood with our heads bowed when we heard the details of what had been done in the name of building Australia. By the end of the speech there was an incredible buzz in the air, an aura of excitement that a new era was beginning. I can honestly say I have never felt prouder to live in this amazing country. And that has to be worth a bit of rain.
Anti-Intellectual Australia (February 2008)
This week I forgot I was in Australia. The problem started at a barbie when I confessed to a Scottish friend that I never read non-fiction. He insisted on lending me a treatise entitled “Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern” which politeness dictated I at least attempt to read.
I’d forgotten what intellectual texts are like. How slowly you have to read to understand the complex sentence structures (clever parentheses) and pronouns where you’re not quite sure to what they refer. So after an hour or a half there I was googly-eyed with a headache when I switched on the radio for some light relief. Except I’d forgotten it was tuned to Radio National, the closest thing here to Radio 4.
They were playing a broadcast from the BBC, a conversation between Will Self and the editor of The Paris Review on the subject of George Orwell and what a faker he was. It was interesting-enough to cook to, so I listened all the way through. Then, the next day, The Guardian Weekly arrived with the bad weather and I spent the morning on the sofa looking out at the rain, reading about the difference between Islam and islamism.
So all in all you can’t really blame me for forgetting what country I was in. It wasn’t the weather that was so un-Australian, it was all the long words.
Germaine Greer is so reviled in this country (she left + she criticises it = she is evil) that only her barmiest comments are ever reported. Until I got here I quite liked her though and I do remember her complaining loudly about the “anti-intellectualism” of the place. Never was she more accurate. Not “lack of intellectualism” you note, but positive “anti-intellectualism”.
There is a commonly held belief in the rest of the world that Australians are outspoken. This is bunkum. Australians will only tell you what they think if what they think is positive, so you have to learn to read their facial-expressions very carefully. One of the expressions I’m learning to read is the one which follows the use of any foreign, multisyllabic or erudite vocabulary. It’s a bit like the expression a cat would wear if it had been bitten by a mouse. Surprised, a bit unsure of itself, just waiting to prove how sharp its own teeth can be. So a conversation might go like this:
Naïve foreigner: I’m not sure, if we observe the status quo we might learn something.
Most listening aussies: Mm, yes, mm.
Aussie brave: I prefer AC/DC myself.
You see, it’s not that they don’t know what status quo means. It’s just that you deserve to have the mickey taken out of you for using a latin term. And, more importantly, Acker Dacker are a true-blue Aussie group and you’re a dag for thinking some trumped-up use of language will ever be better than honest-to-God Aussie rock. AND you’re a foreign ponce for telling me that I might need to learn something. Got it? Mate?
This rejection of intelligent discourse is all-pervasive. Time and again I hear European colleagues at the bank being told to “make it simpler”. Bearing in mind half of them work in financial services strategy this is a challenge. They might have the most fantastic insight into the purchasing, sorry buying, habits of Gen Y but if they can’t present it in short headlines it won’t get heard.
And talking of headlines, you want to know how I suddenly remembered what country I’m in? Well, tonight I flipped past The Biggest Loser Australia, Australian Who Do You Think You Are, So You Think You Can Dance Australia and Australian Idol to watch the television news. And this is what’s happening in the world. There was an explosion in a chicken shop in Sydney; it’s raining; deodorant doesn’t give you cancer. And now, sport.
Pass me that Guardian Weekly!
Young and Old (January 2008)
This could never happen in the UK. Or do I mean Britain? England at least. I’m on the beach watching a low helicopter drag the biggest flag I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it’s about as high as a twelve story building so you can imagine how wide it must be. It’s the Aussie flag of course, the same one I’ve seen festooning half the cars on the way here. I’m used by now to seeing boys with it tattooed around their body, but to see it covering (in colour) all the kids faces, every picnic blanket, half the sky, is weird. But it’s that time of year. Happy Australia Day.
I ask Rafaella at volleyball if there’s any equivalent to this rampant nationalism in Italy. “Are you crazy? she says “We’re too busy hating each other to be unified around anything”.
“I can’t imagine it in England either” I say. “At least, not without some dissenting voices, people questioning whether patriotism is appropriate. But here..”
“I know! I know! Not one person here questions it….they’re all too…proud of being Australian”.
Not that that’s a bad thing. But there is a facial expression you learn to recognise here very early on. It’s the one that appears when you, with your pommy accent, are perceived as being in any way critical of this country. Even long-bearded, anti-war demonstrating, government-hating, camouflage-kitted agro-hippies wear it if you make any generalisation about Australia which isn’t a hundred percent positive.
Once, about six months after we got here, it was all too much for Oliver. He exploded in a drunken rampage “It’s not all ***ing sunshine and lollipops you morons, it’s not perfect and stop telling me she’ll be right mate!” Fortunately it was dark and he was talking to a bush, but I got his point.
We have now, by the way, been here exactly four years. Australia Day (26thJanuary) happens to be the day Oliver and I left the UK for our new homeland, and it’s nice that they celebrate it with a public holiday.
We used the long weekend to go out at last on a Sunday night (the one night, in this strange city, where things are most guaranteed to go off). We met friends in Woollahra, a very smart part of town just east of the city. Woollahra is old money, or as close as you get to it in Australia. Galleries, delicatessens, shops full of cushions you can’t afford. And, I know now, a bar which is a vision of the future.
Imagine this. A large corner pub, nice recent fit-out, good bar staff, real buzzy atmosphere. Funky African band with two drummers and as the evening progresses the whole bar dancing. There are more women here than men and these women are, shall we say, somewhat approachable. No we shalln’t say that. We’ll say they’re downright predatory. Groups of three or four of them eyeing every man in the room with a knowing eye, smiling in conversation but really looking past each other at that new guy who’s just walked into the room. They’re a good looking bunch, well put together and very expensively dressed. My friends and I do not interest them in the slightest. We are far too young as not one of them is under fifty-five.
Welcome to the land of the cougar. The massive baby boomer generation starts retiring this year and it’s never going to grow old gracefully. These people want to go out to cool bars, dance and have fun. They are the generation that was young in the sixties, got political in the seventies and made all that money in the eighties. They’re loaded, semi-retired and ready to party. They might not be down at the beach showing off their Southern Cross tattoos or running through the streets wearing nothing but flags but they are out and they are very proud. You think it’s a coincidence Viagra’s hit the market in the last ten years? The future is here and the future is old, even in this young and cocky country.
Old King Coal (December 2007)
Australia has a system of preferential voting. This means if you think the person you’re voting for might not get in, you can select a second (third, fourth etc) choice to which you’re vote will be transferred should you’re first choice not get through. In other words you can vote “1. Nice green lefty guy who used to be in a band”and “2. Boring middle of the road guy who’s more likely to get in”.
Of course, you’re more likely to do that if you’re first-choice candidate specifically asks you what to do with your second-choice vote. Think about that, then imagine the bargaining that goes on between parties just prior to an election.
Call me a cynic, but I imagine it’s as a result of such bargaining (fiercely denied by all parties) that our new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was so quick to ratify the Kyoto protocol. He may well have a nice green lefty who used to be in a band as his Environment Minister – Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil – but Labour is by no means the Green Party. And get this: Peter won’t be exposed to questions on climate change in Parliament. Those will be handled by the Treasurer, who’s a grown up and a proper politician. Talk about tokenism.
But ratify the protocol Kevin did, just in time to sit at the top table in Bali with all the big boys and pour scorn on anyone questioning harsh carbon limits. Well, sort of. Well, not at all really. Australia is ratifying Kyoto, does want to be green but can’t quite bring itself to support tight emission targets. Why on earth (or what’s left of it) not? Well…
A couple of hours north of Sydney is the city of Newcastle. All distances in Australia, by the way, are expressed not in miles or kilometres but in hours. Ask how far anywhere is and you’ll be told “two hours”, “four hours” or, this being Australia, “twenty-two hours with fuel breaks”. My response is always “But how do you know how fast I drive?” Then of course I get on the road and find an Australian driver in front of me in the “overtaking” lane (ha bloody ha) driving at just below the speed limit. Imagine, three lanes of busy traffic all dragging along behind three adjacent cars doing 78km/h. Get out of my ***ing way!!!. Anyway, Newcastle sits on top of one of the world’s largest coal reserves. An extensive scientific research project (Oliver and me counting the carriages) have shown Australian coal trains to be, ooh, about the longest in the world. The trains we counted all had at least sixty trucks each. And each truck is full of coal.
If you fly north of Sydney (there’s probably some redneck flying slowly in the lane in front of you), you quickly pass Newcastle where you will see up to a hundred container ships waiting to enter its busy port. Lots of big trains, lots of bigger ships, all to send lots of dirty coal to China and the rest of the world.
The only place in the developed world where you should have put your money over the last twenty-five years if not in Australian property was…..the Australian stock exchange. A stock exchange heavily influenced not by technology nor telecoms but by the massive natural resources sector. You’re not actually allowed to write “resources” in the Australian media without using the word “booming”. Uranium, oil, coal – China wants it and we’ve got it. And you know what oil and coal are of course? They are millions of generations of plant life compressed into near pure carbon.
Still wonder why Kevin (oh my God, I live in a country ruled by a man
called Kevin) won’t help lead the way on cutting carbon emissions?
David Beckham (November 2007)
David Beckham’s in town. Now, I don’t want to say Sydney is provincial about this kind of thing, but I think you can tell a lot about a place by the way it reacts to famous visitors. Hip New Yorkers and stiff-upper Londoners wouldn’t bat an eyelid if the son of God flew in for the weekend. Sydneysiders are reacting as if he has. Eighty-thousand people have spent $3.5m to go and watch him play a sport they normally scorn. This for me is a) too difficult to work out the price of the average ticket and b) a bit like buying a plane ticket just so you can watch the movie.
That said, I have two reasons to be glad The David is here.
Firstly, because at last, years after everyone else, I have actually heard him speak (I know, I know, but I’ve been on Mars a lot this last decade). Now at last I can see why he doesn’t speak more often, although it’s strange that the same logic doesn’t stop his wife from singing. But more than this, I’m glad Becks is here because at last the media has stopped going on and on (and on) about the election. Eugh it’s been boring. A very dull Prime Minister has been ousted by an extremely dull Leader of the Opposition. Centre-left has replaced by centre-right in a long test of zzz….
I’m sure it’s interesting if you’re Australian but as a Johnny Foreigner who isn’t yet allowed to vote I do struggle to care. And whilst every one of my friends voted one way, and every one of my colleagues voted the other, and I’ve been unusually privy to both sides of bigotry, I really can’t engage with either of the two grey men who keep pointing at the charts. Imagine a run off between John Major and your father-in-law and you get the picture. You can see why it’s illegal not to vote over here.
Of course if they made voting optional they’d have to put polling booths inside cricket grounds or rugby stadia to get anyone into them. As it is you get a fine if they know who you are and you don’t vote. Strangely, they had a massive campaign a few weeks back encouraging people to register for the first time and then an equally large one threatening fines to those suckered in by it. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to let people be?
But that’s not democracy I suppose. The people, unlike David Beckham, must be encouraged to speak. And spoken they have with a 6% swing to Labour mostly z from Queenzzland zzz….
When does the tennis start?