Down Under
I love Australia and Australians. (But ‘Shhh’, Dear Friends, please, please keep quiet about this admission, it is something that I should never confess. Please keep this a secret from any Australians that you may know).I travelled there with a friend in 1980 and spent 18 months working in a variety of jobs. I subsequently returned there on two occasions on rugby tour with Collingwood School. So on my initial stay I was subject to all kinds of teasing , I was a ‘Pommie Bastard’, a ‘bleeding one tubber’ (So named because I came from a nation that reputedly only bathed once per week) and many other epithets. I remember working as a ‘bar useful’ in Sydney. As I picked up glasses and emptied ashtrays in the public bar, my accent labelled me as a monarchist and the republicans produced very reasoned arguments why they should not have a British Queen as a head of state. I never let on that I might agree with them. After all, on principle a Brit back then did not agree with Australians. I also remember, with embarrassment , bouncing into a roadhouse in the red centre of the country and announcing to the three locals leaning on the bar that it was ‘a lovely day wasn’t it.” Their eyes and their expressions said all that had to be said as it hadn’t rained in the area for about three years! (See “Kilt in the Closet”)
But I loved the sport. The cricket and rugby were wonderful, particularly when there were internationals involving the ‘old country’. I loved the ‘work to live’ attitude rather than the ‘live to work’ demeanour which I had experienced elsewhere. I loved the casualness and the lack of formality. I loved the almost total lack of respect for authority and loved more the disdain that so many had for the banality of celebrity.
The sound of the kookaburras and the smell of the greenery were an evocative nostalgia when I returned there after a score of years and more. The coastline, the small community towns in the vast interior, the Blue Mountains, the convict histories that I read in ‘For the Term of his natural life’ and eventually ‘The Fatal Shore”, the wonderful love story that is Neville Shute’s “A Town like Alice”, all played a part before and after my visit. Eventually the poems of “Banjo’ Patterson and Henry Lawson; the movies “Breaker Morant” and the very moving “Gallipolli’, also struck a chord with me.
Of course every society has its faults. Racism and awful treatment of its aboriginal population was prevalent back then. Women were and still are ‘Sheilas’ and seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time at get-togethers separate from the men folk. Despite Sydney boasting a large and active homosexual population, the opinions prevalent beyond the cities were not very tolerant. But, such things are a world-wide problem are they not? And, by the sounds of it, a new found tolerance and understanding is coming there. But humanity still has a long way to go wherever we live.
But, Dear Reader, and please keep this to yourselves, I learned one of the most valuable lessons in life in Australia. I learned the true meaning of mateship. I who had been taught at boarding school that one should serve others before oneself, knew the mantra but not the action. I, slow learner that I am, found at last that the verbal banter, abuse it might be called now, meant nothing when one had a crisis; that very quickly one’s ‘abusers’ had one’s back; that suddenly unlikely sources rallied around and enveloped one in a cocoon of kindness, mostly no nonsense practical help and down to earth common sense.
So why am I spouting forth this self-indulgent nostalgia at this moment? Well, I have realised over the last few days of extreme oppressive heat here in BC that probably the only reason that I left Australia, apart from my visa running out, was that it was simply far too hot for me in the summer time. We are now in a forest fire season that is earlier than usual here in British Columbia. The poor people who lived in the village of Lytton can do so no more as fire swept through their homes and livelihoods in a period of about 15 minutes. More people died of heat stroke here this week than did of Covid. I struggled mightily with it all and wished fervently that I was back in winter. A famous Norwegian saying goes, “There is no such thing as bad weather only bad clothing.” Give me a brisk winter’s day to wrap up for rather than the inside of an oven on which the door handle is broken.
I am all too aware of the horrendous fire season that Australia experienced last year. I am also aware that forest fires are all part of the seasonal pattern here in British Columbia. I am not ignorant of the perspective where so many people are suffering in very dire circumstances and that I am voicing issues here from a position of privilege and luxury. For all of my scientific ignorance I am a believer in science and scientists. Rigorously proved facts and research does not lie, although opinion often manipulates the facts for its own ends. So evidence of global warming when things like excessive temperatures and extreme weather events are happening as predicted suggest to me that many scientists may rightfully take out a patent on the phrase “I told you so’. Having a monopoly on such actions as patting themselves on the back and preening their feathers with pride may be a little bit hard for the rest of us to take, but I will now more than ever give a respectful nod towards somebody who says they are a climatologist, an epidemiologist, a firefighter or a medical professional of any shape or form. I do hope that if some of these good people happen to be Australian by nationality that they understand that if my Pommie nod of approval towards them is less vigorous than it would be if they were from a different part of the world it has nevertheless an heartfelt honesty. No Australian would really take it seriously if a Brit gave them too much respect anyway, Dear Reader. But as I said at the beginning, “Mum’s the word”, we don’t want the colonies getting above themselves do we??!!
In other news the Ukrainian military have ordered their female soldiers to parade in high heels to celebrate the 30th anniversary of independence! The world is a strange place is it not.
Stay cool, friends.
