b r a v e c r e a t u r e s

There will be Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover? The bluebird isn't native to Europe or the UK. Some stupid american songwriter came up with that one. An early example of the US foisting there culture (and animals) on the rest of the world.

In Australia, any bird stupid enough to sing just because its happy gets eaten by the giant, incredibly toxic, jumping spiders - unless its covered in inch long, razor sharpt spikes.

This should tell you everything you need to know about the emotional life of my homeland.

I thought it might be worth introducing this to London. I use Strine a little, but I keep being misunderstood by people - so time to educate the masses*

Australian spoken english using slang terms with no spaces in between words.

Someone who can actually speak fluent strine is very rare, generally only found in surf clubs or bowls clubs

e.g.

itsfuckenorrightaymate

avagoodweegend

garngetfucked

* The 6 masses that actually read this bloody thing

My mother, being fiercely patriotic and  not wanting me to forget how fabulous the home country is while I travel the old world, sent me this the other day. It got a laugh, I thought I would share.

It reminds me of Sharon and my "Observations on London" from 2001 - which I must get around to bringing up to date.

1. You know the meaning of the word 'girt'.

2. You know that stubbies can be either drunk or worn.

3. You think it's normal to have a leader called Kevin.

4. You waddle when you walk due to the 53 expired petrol discount vouchers stuffed in your wallet or purse.

5. You've made a bong out of your garden hose rather than use it for something illegal such as watering the garden.

6. You believe it is appropriate to put a rubber in your son's pencil case when he first attends school.

7. When you hear that an American 'roots for his team' you wonder how often and with whom.

8. You understand that the phrase 'a group of women wearing black thongs' refers to footwear and may be less alluring than it sounds.

9. You pronounce Melbourne as 'Mel-bin'.

10. You pronounce Penrith as 'Pen-riff'.

11. You believe the 'l' in the word ' Australia ' is optional.

12. You can translate: 'Dazza and Shazza played Acca Dacca on the way to Maccas.'

13. You believe it makes perfect sense for a nation to decorate its highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep.

14. You call your best friend 'a total bastard' but someone you really, truly despise is just 'a bit of a bastard'.

15. You think 'Woolloomooloo' is a perfectly reasonable name for a place.

16. You're secretly proud of our killer wildlife.

17. You believe it makes sense for a country to have a $1 coin that's twice as big as its $2 coin.

18. You understand that 'Wagga Wagga' can be abbreviated to 'Wagga' but 'Woy Woy' can't be called 'Woy'.

19. You believe that something resembling cooked-down axle grease makes a good breakfast spread.

20. You believe all famous Kiwis are actually Australian, until they stuff up, at which point they again become Kiwis.

21. Hamburgers. They contain Beetroot. Of course!.

22. You know that certain additional words must, by law, be shouted out during any rendition of the Angels' song - Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again.

23. You believe, as an article of faith, that the confectionary known as the Wagon Wheel has become smaller with every passing year.

24. You still don't get why the 'Labor' in 'Australian Labor Party' is not spelt with a 'u'.

25. You wear ugg boots outside the house.

26. You believe, as an article of faith, that every important discovery in the world was made by an Australian but then sold off to the Yanks for a pittance.

27. You believe that the more you shorten someone's name the more you like them.

28. Whatever your linguistic skills, you find yourself able to order takeaway fluently in every Asian language.

29. You understand that 'excuse me' can sound rude, while 'scuse me' is always polite.

30. You know what it's like to swallow a fly, on occasion, via your nose.

31. You understand that 'you' has a plural and that it's 'youse'.

32. You understand that it's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle.

33. Your biggest family argument over the summer concerns the rules for beach cricket.

34. You shake your head in horror when companies try to market what they call 'Anzac cookies'.

35. You still think of Kylie as 'that girl off Neighbours'.

36. When returning home from overseas, you expect to be brutally strip-searched by Customs - just in case you're trying to sneak in fruit.

37. You believe the phrase 'smart casual' refers to a pair of black tracky-daks, suitably laundered.

38. You understand that all train timetables are works of fiction.

39. When working on a bar, you understand male customers will feel the need to offer an excuse whenever they order low-alcohol beer.

40. You get choked up with emotion by the first verse of the national anthem and then have trouble remembering the second.

41. You find yourself ignorant of nearly all the facts deemed essential in the government's new test for migrants.

42. You know that, whatever the tourist books say, no one actually says 'cobber'. That's a load of cobblers!

43. 'Mate', on the other hand, is compulsory.

44. And you will immediately forward this list to other Australians, here and overseas, realising that only they will understand.

 

As aways, the regular newsletter creates a flurry of email activity, which in turn takes me a while to respond to. I am working through it though.

One thing did strike me, and it was in the sig file from a mate in Australia. It does sum up how I feel about life and the absense of this thinking is central to the things that I am now very glad to have left behind in Australia*.

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, Champagne in one hand - strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO - What  a Ride!

As much as I do love this phrase and see it as a philosophy, its exactly the sort of thing my mother would say - in fact I think she has sent it to me in the past. So I am continuing to sound like my mother. This is not HUGELY surprising, but it is a little disturbing.

* There are lots of other things from Australia that I am not glad to be without including (but not restrictred to) my dog Saxon, David "The Boy Friend" Chapman, Bitchie Barbie, Penny, Al, Avi, Sunday brunch at Ice and my Art work.

The day is coming soon when I will depart these sun burnt shores to follow in the footsteps of some of my countries great cultural exports, Edna Everage, Clive James and Kylie Minogue. That impending departure has had me  thinking about my countries obsession with travel

Like them, and thousands before me, I am leaving this Great Southern Land to seek my fortune in the "mother country", whose green and pleasant shores have long held a fascination for Australians. Steeped in history and rich in cultural significance, two things noticeably lacking from a place only 2200 years old (to us whities), for Anglos (or skips as the Wogs call us) England has an attraction that is hard to define, and impossible to deny.

The land from which (some of) my forbears were exiled, supposedly to the remotest, most unforgiving place on earth, is still called home by some in the, now, incredibly multi-cultural and diverse Australia. While we eventually thrived, how we arrived here and the unforgiving landscape left us with a lingering desire for Another County .

For Australia's in the 50's & 60's there was a sense of pilgrimage about the voyage back to England, partially because of the immense distance, cost and time involved in the voyage but mostly because it was like returning to the house of parents who had cast us out of. We return to Blighty as prodigal sons & daughters, either as a supplicant. Desperately trying to conform, or as the brash, uncultured antipodeans out to gain acceptance by force.

Australians returned to England to rejoin a world they felt cast them out, abandoned them. A world of culture and refinement, the like of which, in the 1950's, was hard to imagine would ever come here.

Nowadays things are very different. It seems the whole world is beating a path to our door ad you can't throw a rock without hitting an enormous, up coming talent.

The galleries, salons, opera houses, recording studios, films & television programs of the old world and the new world are full of the children of the New New World. Children of no revolution - apart from an internal one, that has led us to find a buoyant joy in who we are, and where we have come from.

The old drive to travel is still there, but n0w it is motivated by the desire to explore, to adventure. to learn, to experience - all under pinned by a sense of play that is palpable and With none of perception of smug, entitlement that makes the average American so painful - and unpopular.

So with my long hermitage nearly over I am preparing to pick up the bags my countries past has packed for me and walk the ether way down the yellow brick road.

The last few years have had more than their fair share of self doubt - somehow I kept everything moving forward but there were times I want not entirely sure how or why I was managing.

My life pretty much always has a sound track to it, usually its up beat and eclectic but the Songbook for 2005's is particularly and uncharacteristically sad - or possibly just self pitying, the difference is usually perspective and/or time. A big contributor to that song book was Australia's newest singing wonder - Missy Higgins with her debut album, The Sound of White.

There are songs on it that gave voice to the bad things I was feeling and crow bared in a little hope

Now its getting to the middle of 2007, and this years song book is well underway. Its much happier, with only the occasional touch of melancholy. Rob Thomas's - LIttle Wonders is a shoe in to make my end of year mix but now Missy has released her new album and I may have found the anthem track for the year - Steer.

So hold this feeling like a newborn
Oh with freedom surging through your veins
You have opened up a new door
So bring on the wind, fire and the rain

But the search ends here
Where the night is totally clear
And your heart is fierce
So now you finally know
That you control where you go
You can steer

My life is regaining the direction and drive that characterised the first 35 years, and again Miss Higgins is going to help provide me the sound track as I start on the next adventures I have planned for life - and life has planned for me.

Have a listen to the remix at You Tube .  

In the last week I had the alarming experience of finding myself agreeing, in general principals, with three positions being taken by Federal Liberal politicians. First, and most disturbing, was agreeing with Amanda Vanstone over Taj Aldin Alhilali comments on Egyptian morning television over Australia. Basically if you don't like the countries values, and you are not willing to engage in the process of representative democracy, then why the hell are you here?

Now I don't think that someones disagreeing with the government is a reason to ban them from the country, but Alhilali statements in Egypt certainly damage whatever minimal ground he gained with his apparently heart felt apologies over the "meat out for cats" statement. And on morning television, I mean really. Its like making major policy announcements on Kerry Ann.

Second Minister was the Environment Minister (and his youthful ward) banning Japanese Whalers from Australian ports. Excellent! 'Bout bloody time, but excellent.

Finally I found myself cheering Guy Barnett, arch-conservative from Tasweja who is getting pretty het up over David Hicks. Given Guys voting record, i suspect me cheering for him is as disturbing for him as it is for me. But every voice raised to bring David Hicks to trial - and back to Australia, even if he is imprisoned - is a voice I will support.

Fortunately the Libs and be depended on to not maintain a streak of left leaning, namby pamby, human rights cry baby, tree hugging behaviour for too long. And of course it would be the likes of Alexander Downer who changed things back to "normal".

If you haven't been following the news Alex, referred to by a former Prime Minister as the "Idiot son of the Adelaide aristocracy", decided to go public on a comment passed to him by an anonymous visitor† to Guantanamo Bay.

Showing his signature epilady sharp wit, Mr Downer told ABC radio from New York that "There was no suggestion that he [David] was suffering from mental illness, though no doubt he doesn't like being in Guantanamo Bay but that would, I suppose, be a definition of mental illness".

MWAH HA HA HA HA - my sides are splitting. Hilarious to make light hearted jokes about someone trapped in a detention centre for 5 years with no trial. Particularly since Mr Downer is no doubt staying somewhere nice and comfy in New York.

But is just gets better. Mr Downer refused to tell who had passed on this assessment, just that it was from a representative from another country. At the time I thought it was probably somewhere tiny, like Tobago or something, but most likely it was from the the UK. Imagine my jaw dropping surprise when it turned out to be from Public Affairs Officer with the US Embassy in Canberra.

So lets all pause for a moments embarrassed silence - the kind that follows someone at a black tie event proclaiming loudly that they just soiled them selves and giggling in a high pitched and arrhythmic way.

Cough. Shuffle.

So thats the background, but whats it going to mean? In my book we are increasingly seeing a turning of the tide in Australia and that Mr Teflon, aka John Howard, may not be able to dodge these bullets for much longer. Australia position on David Hicks is becoming increasingly untenable and even the most hardened Liberal Supporter is starting to question the policies that have gotten us, and David here.

Because its NOT about David, he is just the case in point. Its about Australia's place in the world. Are we the sort of country to leave one of our people trapped in a black box facility, in solitary, and with no access to a legal system that gives him a fair chance of defending himself?

If the situation was reversed, the Americans wouldn't have stood for it. If their popular culture is to be believed, they would have stormed where ever their citizen was being kept and forcibly taken him home by now.

Why cant David, at the very least, come back to Australia to wait trial? In almost 6 years surely he has no more intelligence of relevance. Its not like he was in command or a position of authority, he was a foot soldier for Christs sake. Whatever his crimes, the poor man and his family deserve some resolution.

You can read more about Davids case or about  the details of the new US Tribunal system and make up your own mind on the substance of the matter, but he has been there for nearly 6 years without a trial, isn't that long enough? If you haven't written to your local member, please do so now. If you haven't signed a petition, please do so now.

If conservative liberals like Guy Barnett are starting to publicly question the policy around David Hicks, now is the time to raise your voice.

† Anonymous to the public, one presumes that the folks at Guantanamo knew who it was, unless they were doing the whole French Lieutenants Woman thing with the big hooded robe. Highly unlikely since that would just be impractical in Cuban heat

This Christmas I was given a Wii.  Well actually because there are none to be had for love or money, I was given a gift card FOR a Wii. So ever since Christmas I have been stalking the stores trying to find one. They have been highly Elvis like - constantly rumored to have just left the building. But I keep on hinting them.

Some people are however, apparently MORE determined than I.

Consumerism gone mad(der)? Or maybe radio stations should be banned. At the very least, a top contender for the Darwin Awards this year†.

Apparently a 28-year-old suburban Sacramento woman died of apparent “water intoxication” after participating in a contest — “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” — sponsored by local radio station 107.9 KDND. The rules were simple: Participants simply competed to see how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom. The winner would receive a shiny new Wii video game console, the highly coveted, $250 must-have from Nintendo.

†Actually this is a somewhat unexpected  outcome, and very sad because she left behind a husband and three kids, who presumably she was trying to win the Wii for. You would think the radio station would have checked that there was no likely harmful outcome - but given some of the radio competitions that have been suggested here in Australia - Celebrity Sperm Donor springs to mind - its not all that weird.

Imagine the fall out from that one, the conversations with an 8 year old child explaining that Mommy never met daddy and in fact the genetic material had been won as part of a radio show.

Now there's family values for you.

The question for me though, is who wil the family sue? The radio station, Nintendo or both?