Anne

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, Anne.  “There’s a sister?!” my stepmother gasped when she heard of Anne’s existence.  Like the rest of us, she struggled to believe the world had produced anything close to my mother.  Oh yes.  

Anne 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 Tina 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 Anne’s 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” Anne 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.

Anne was found by her neighbour and best friend Julie 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.  Julie, 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 Anne had intended.  There were no flies apparently so we’re not too worried 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 Anne had been sleeping with for 25 years (despite being good friends with his wife).  Also, Anne’s half-brother John had displayed the family’s propensity for drama by flying in with 80kg of luggage despite having only met Anne once for an hour several years ago.    Anne’s son, Tim, couldn’t come as he’s “unwell” with major quotation marks.  But the real draw card was to be Antonia, 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 Anne 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.  Tina, 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.  Mum was stoical until the very end of her eulogy (“It’s very strange” said Oliver who’d typed it up “but it all seems to be about herself”).  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 Anne’s flat.  Mum and Mike have been helping Tina clear it out (Antonia 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 Anne 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-opiniated 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 after that.

Schapelle Corby

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 some 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 loud Australians who stumble between dance parties and cockroach-infested hostels.  It’s San Antonio versus Ibiza town.  

On 8^th 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 newsfodder, 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 Territories at the time of her 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 surf club 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 14^th 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 day the pope got in the way

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 and Bourke, have been shut off entirely.  Those foolish enough to drive this weekend have been funnelled into Crown 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, the 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 left my car at home I asked one of the council workers if a pipe had burst.

“No pipe” he said “Just pope”.

The water vans 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 17^th – 21^st inclusive are World Youth Day (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, he’s not so big any more is he?  

Oh how out of touch we atheists 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 that’s how my thinking went for a while.  But then, on Thursday evening, the pope 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 popemobile was about to drive to where it had just driven.  Four thousand catholics turned as one and ran past me to get a second look.  And there’s me carrying ten volleyballs.  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 oh 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

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 I warn you 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 (never been but it 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 give it 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.  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 for someone (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

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 five over, handing it 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 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 my mate Kurt shouts “Tails!!!” and there we are all yelling again “Heads heads heads!!” “Tails, tails, tails!”.  Karen loves this and 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 in 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 find 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 25^th 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 overwatered 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

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.  This 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 as they’re held higher up in the building 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.  Until someone pulls the blinds down so we can focus on his spreadsheet that is.  Sigh.   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 went to boarding school because the nearest town was 58 miles from their farm.  (My friend Big Andrea, for example, 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 kicking cans 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 had been to private school.  

Start saving folks.

Sorry

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 drought is over and “it takes a flood to kill a dry spell” 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 as children and entered into 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 it 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-Intellectualism in Australia

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 google-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.  

There was a broadcast on 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.  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 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, importantly, Acker Dacker are a true-blue Aussie group and you’re a dag for thinking some trumped-up use of the 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!

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 “without at least some desenting voices 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 he was very drunk 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 (26^th January) 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 south 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 in 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.  

I’m telling you, this is the future.  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.