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.