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 (26th 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.
