‘Strewth!’ Heaps of reflections on Australia! By Steph

Aside from having torn our bank balance to shreds, Australia has been very good to us during our two month stay in its lair. We weren’t eaten by a shark, stung by a jellyfish, bitten by a deadly spider or snake, we didn’t die of thirst or starvation in the outback or get swept out to sea to drown in the rip tide. In fact, we had a jolly good time! All of the afore mentioned are entirely possible in this country: Australia is home to more creatures that will kill you than anywhere else in the world. With the exception of the attack of the leeches in Washpool National Park and the huge number of mosquitoes we fell victim to, we did pretty well on the survival front.

It is also so mightily far away from anywhere else in the world other than New Zealand. This may seem obvious but before I came here I naively thought Australians rather lucky to have the oh-so-many hotspot tourist destinations in South East Asia on their doorstep for some summer holiday action. I didn’t know then that a flight from Sydney to Bangkok takes a whole nine and a half hours. It only takes two and a half hours longer to get there from London. Looking more closely at a globe recently, I’ve had to reassess my whole global outlook, especially where distance is concerned, and even more especially where Australia and New Zealand are concerned.

This country (the only country in the world that is also a continent) is just massive. I sent a postcard home to Mum and Dad which placed other continents and land-mass areas in the world inside Australia showing truly how mahoosive this place is comparatively.


Since our camping trip around New South Wales, we have met backpackers who are utterly shocked that this is ‘all’ we got to see. Erm, we drove more than 3000 km, thank you very much! We covered some serious ground and saw an awful lot during our one-state roadtrip and are content we didn’t attempt more than this in the timeframe we had. We would often endeavour to get to a place that was only a few centimetres away on the map before realising with the help of the sat nav that it would take around 7 hours to get there. Thank goodness for the sat nav - this was the main reason I was such a convert to Chris’ decision in the end. Without Tallulah (our wonderfully named electronic baby), we would have attempted some of these more lengthy journeys, the pesky, small-land-massed Europeans that we are.

While staying with Dave and Iulia in St Kilda, Melbourne, I wrote home that Australia - or at least the parts we had visited - is a truly desirable place to live. There is so much to make it desirable to me: the friendliness and social nature of all Australians, the weather which leads to an incredibly outdoor lifestyle, the number of activities most Australians seem to be involved in, the feeling of adventure you can so easily get by going on a camping trip for the weekend - you could drive for miles upon miles and pass only a few cars, not to mention the potential for being eaten or bitten alive by one of Oz’s less desirable creatures!

What's interesting is that it's not only today that the Brits and the rest of the world have seen Australia as such a desirable place to live. Though Australia was originally populated by the Brits as a penal colony in the late 18th century, it was the ‘Gold Rush’ of the 1850s that really made this new country thrive. As more and more people flocked to make their fortune from Europe, the Brits became worried that it was no longer seen as a punishment to be sent here and thus had to stop exporting criminals. Petty thieves were apparently starting to get caught on purpose to ensure safe passage to this land of dreams and gold!

An interesting fact: Sydney, though only 16 miles in length, has 152 miles of coastline around it’s harbour. It’s no wonder that surfing is such a popular pass-time here for people of all ages. It’s amazing to me that almost all children from Sydney, a densely populated city of around 4.4 million, are members of either a surf or life-saving club from a young age. I mean, what about the geeks who would prefer to stay in and play video games rather than getting wet? Apparently, there are no such children in Oz. Britney, the daughter of Sue and Peter Kennally who loaned us their house for new years, told us fondly of how she would race out of bed on a weekend morning to hurry down to the lifesaving club she was a member of at the local beach. She couldn’t wait for the beach running races and ocean swimming races they would have and made a huge number of friends through the club. She even went on to win the town’s ‘Iron Woman’ competition. And all this (besides being crowned the Iron Woman champion) is apparently quite typical for children living in Sydney and elsewhere on the East Coast.

And that’s a lot of the country’s children… Over 80% of Australia’s population live in 5% of its landmass, and this 5% is found running down the country’s East Coast . Wow. You don’t need me to do the sums explaining that very few people live in the remaining 95% of the country. I’m not sure how appealed I am to a taking a trip through the outback for days upon end - I’m not very good with heat for one thing! There have been a few days here where I’ve just about fainted from the heat here, particularly around the end of January. And that’s after having spent the last few months in a very hot India, a very hot China and a very hot and humid South East Asia. You’d think I could handle the heat by now but Australia really gave me a beating on that front.

Since being here (and admittedly rarely before), I have read quite a bit about Australia’s ‘history’ in books and also at various museums. This ‘history’ tends always to begin with European settlement and very little is ever mentioned about the 60 000 years pre-dating the arrival of Captain Cook when the first humans, the Aborigines, were thought to have arrived in this, the oldest continent on the planet, way before humans arrived in Europe or the Americas. As a consequence, I know very little about Aborigines and actually find the whole way they are discussed (or NOT) as very very weird.

Asking a white Australian anything about Aborigines is generally answered in a vague way - we managed to find out that they are all currently raving alcoholics who can’t look after their children and don’t have jobs but live off the state instead. Apparently. Oh, and a few of them are artists. But they’re probably very nice people. Gosh.

A lady we picked grapes with at Bill and Wendy’s told me about her brother in law, a Federal Agent who work up in Darwin. First of all, I was surprised to hear an Australian talk of federal agents in the sense of an actual Australian one, as it’s an occupation that in my head is reserved for Americans, and only Americans on telly - how ridiculous. Anyway, this brother-in-law, let’s call him Bob, works as a federal agent in an all-Aborigine town just outside of Darwin, up in the Northern Territory. I couldn’t imagine what his role there could be but apparently, Bob has been sent to enforce the ‘Dry Law’ in the town and ensure that no Aborigine is able to buy or drink alcohol. “Why?”, I asked. Why why why? Well, according to Sharon, our grape-picking friend, they aren’t to drink because when they do, they drink way too much. They then become violent and start fighting one another. Hmmm. Just a small pause for thought… Don’t white people have this same tendency? Trot on down to Manchester on any evening of the week and I’ll show you evidence. There haven’t been any federal agents in any of the pubs I’ve been to trying to stop me buying a stubby! Why are Aborigines different? I don’t get it at all and it seemed more than slightly racist to me. I needed answers.

Well, after repeating this story to many Australians in the hope of getting a reasonable answer, I found out that - apart from the fact that they are very nice people - Aborigines, in general are all unemployed. The general opinion as to why this is is that they just aren’t adapting to the ‘modern world’ quickly enough. This is a people who hadn’t even discovered the wheel - or at least weren’t using it - when the Brits first came. During the early years of settlement, many Aborigines proved successful as farmhands, particularly in herding cattle and helping chart the land. Today however there are less such jobs available and since then, few have managed to integrate into the school system successfully and thus the workforce successfully. (I still haven’t quite got to the bottom of exactly why this may be apart from that they didn’t know how to use a wheel in the 18th century). As a consequence, Aborigines are collecting a hefty amount of state benefit and, the general opinion is, spending it all on alcohol. It is generally seen that the Aboriginal body is less adapted to the poisons of alcohol as it had been alcohol-less for 60 000 years. Thus alcohol may have a rather more dramatic effect on them when they drink copious amounts than it does on Europeans who have been drinking since the beginning of time to survive the cold winters.

I still didn’t feel I had enough answers, so went on searching. Further internet research tells me that this alcohol-ban was introduced in 2007 in response to child abuse allegations. Not only did the government ban alcohol, but additional police (such as Bob) and medical personnel were sent to certain communities in the Northern Territory. In addition, a percentage of the welfare the Aborigines received was quarantined for ‘essential goods’ only - very interesting, I wonder how this would go down with all those on benefits in the UK. This was all in response to something called the Little Children are Sacred Report.

While the Brits decanted orphaned children to Australia after the Second World War, believing this to be a better start in their parent-less lives than if they were to remain in their homeland of Britain, the Australians were removing Aboriginal children from their parents, creating what is now known as ‘The Stolen Generation’. This went on from around 1870 until as late as the 1970s for reasons still disputed.

More reading led me to discover the following: I hadn’t realised that there was an actual ‘White Australia Policy’ which banned non-whites from moving to Australia until 1970. Wow. This law came about because in the 1870s a group of 2000 Chinese gold miners in a place called Lambing Flat were quietly going about their business, digging for gold just like everyone else in Australia at the time. In fact, they were doing exceptionally well on the gold front. Too well in comparison to the Europeans. The Europeans decided this wasn’t fair and the only thing for it was to beat these pesky Chinese up, but only after marching around them singing the French and British National Anthems. Since then it was generally decided that non-whites should not be allowed to emigrate to Australia and this policy was only lifted in 1970.

There’s obviously so much we are yet to know about this country, unless it‘s just me. I hereby make the same challenge that Bill Bryson did in his travel memoirs ‘Down Under’: Can you name the current Australian Prime Minister? Or any previous ones for that matter? Bryson makes the point that Australia behaves itself more than most countries and this, along with the great distance separating it from the rest of , well, the world, means that we don’t hear an awful lot about what goes on here back in Europe/the States. So I hereby make a list of a few of the things that make Oz what it is and that we certainly wouldn’t have known about back home:

Shoeless People: Wherever we went in Australia, there seemed to be shoeless people. Mainly children, but not necessarily. And I’m not talking merely about the beaches; supermarkets are a prime Shoeless-People watching spot. We couldn’t understand it. Nowhere else in the ‘civilised’ world would this be seen as normal - or is this just very Northern, Rainy European of me to assume?! To see children and teenagers and people in their early 20s hop from a car, cross a carpark and enter a shopping mall or supermarket or even walk down the town street barefoot (not even on the weekend!) seemed very bizarre to us in any case.

Sofas on Verandas

Sofas on Verandas: This was a favourite little Australian quirk of mine. Driving through New South Wales and again as we drove through Victoria on our two mini roadtrips, almost every house we passed in every town had a pair of arm chairs and a settee on its porch. What a novel idea for us Europeans who are plagued with rain every other day. Certainly the best way to relax is outdoors and to enjoy it on what in Europe would be considered as only indoor furniture, well, that‘s heaven! I imagine people use their old ones for this purpose rather than throwing them out - what a waste that would be when it could enjoy a prolonged life as an outdoor seat. It gives a whole new, chillaxed and comfy meaning to having a beer and a bbq on the veranda, if you ask me. I imagine there are places in the States where this method of recycling for pure comfort is used but I have personally yet to see it elsewhere in such frequency.

Tin roofs: Very rarely did we see a tiled roof or, come to think of it, a two storey house in Australia. Tin-roofed bungalows are the norm here. It’s rare also to see a house made of bricks. Timber must be in such plentiful supply that it is pointless to go to the effort and expense of making brick houses when wood works just as well.

Water tanks in your garden

Water tanks: In more rural parts, it’s the norm - if not essential - to have your own water tanks which will collect rain water. These tanks will provide enough water for your family’s needs. Something as simple as this for Australians makes a ‘townie’ like me find them incredibly self-sufficient.

The Australian Fly: Arrrrrggghhhhhh - the only utterance to describe these beasties. They look like a common bluebottle back home but these things are damn persistent. They seem to just stick to you. Apparently they seek out moisture and the horrendous consequence of this is that twenty of them at once follow you around, ending up in your eyes, nose, ears and mouth all at once! Urgh. The other consequence of this is the aptly named ‘Bush Salute’. Wherever you go in semi-rural Oz you will find that people constantly wave in front of their face and blow through the corner of their mouth. This is rather hard to get the hang of: you’re trying to blow air to get rid of the flies while at the same time keeping your mouth shut so they have no way to enter! I made Aussies laugh when I told them of the stereotypical image we have of them back home - all wearing a cowboy hat with corks hanging down from it. Never before did I understand the cork thing, but now I see they could be quite useful in batting flies away. Aussies laughed however, saying they’d never seen such hats and wondering also why we would choose corks in the image rather than beer-bottle tops, before realising that it would rather hurt if these were to swing at your face!

The ‘Manchester’ Section in Department stores: Come on, Manchester! At first I thought this title referred simply to the men’s department but no, for some reason ‘Manchester’ refers to the linen and textile section of a department store. I can only imagine that this is in reference to Manchester as the Queen of the cotton industry? Any ideas? Will have to look that one up.

The Skateboarding Businessman: Only in Oz. Chris missed this one but as we were walking down a street in Sydney at around 6pm, I genuinely saw a suit on a skateboard. Well, he’s got to get home somehow! This is perhaps the only city in the world where a) this is possible and b) you won’t get bullied for such a method of transport in a professional line of work. Wow. If there is anyone from LA, California reading this blog (doubtful), maybe you can prove me wrong as I have always had an image that if this could be seen anywhere it would be in LA.

Cheap Meat: But highly priced everything else! Chris and I were shocked and appalled at the cost of general groceries such as fruit and veg, washing up liquid and bread. Avacadoes cost $5 each at most places - of course, this could be due to import costs but I would have guessed that they grew them there too. Meat, on the other hand, was incredibly reasonable. Chris and I would often pop to the butchers for some rissoles and snags and be pleasantly surprised to find that we could do this again and again without breaking the bank. There are an awful lot of cows here so it makes sense that meat is the most reasonably priced item on a shopping list.

Second Hand Book Shops: Australia has a wonderful selection of second hand book shops and I was absolutely thrilled by this. Even in smallish towns like Singleton there would be a moderately sized second hand book shop. They all have a grand selection of current best-sellers, heaps of fiction as well as shelves upon shelves of history, biographies and travel books all indicating that these shops are thoroughly used. We need more of this in the UK. In fact, I may open a second hand book shop when I grow up. (Mum, you can have a wool and knitting section at the back). In the meantime I will boycott Waterstones and Borders as a statement for the need of more second-hand book shops at home! Why do we need brand new books anyway? Can’t we swap and share?! I’m pleased to have come across a new mission in life.

Independent Shops: Keeping to the theme of shops, we found there to be an incredible number of independent shops still in existence. As a Brit, this is sadly something of a novelty these days and brings back memories of times been and gone. I would liken Australia to Britain in the 80s but I think these shops have more than a decade of life left in them yet. While I hope they live on forever, we in Europe know the dreaded truth. Alas, commercialism will hit these shores in a big American way eventually, but for now we can still rejoice and enjoy the peculiarities and quirks as we walk into privately owned shops still thriving over on the other side of the world, down under.

So, Australia. There’s a lot of potential for a future home here for me and little Christophe. Like I said, I do desire to live here. The problem is the distance from…well, everything. My Dad has always said about France (apologies to any Frenchies reading, Priscille, Marc…) When God made France he realised it was so beautiful and there was so much greenery and gorgeousness that He had to even it out, making things equal for the rest of the world. Thus, in this beautiful country He placed the French. (My Dad has always had a funny relationship with the French!)

Well, here’s what I think about Australia. Here is a place where the inhabitants are happy, smiling, sociable people; where the weather is great and there is an awful lot to do. It’s a place where nature is on your doorstep and you can enjoy miles and miles of untouched coastline. The school system is good and one of it’s cities never leaves the top three in any global survey on the best cities in the world to live in (Melbourne - it’s in constant battle with Vancouver and generally comes second in most surveys). You can eat well and live well and your children will be well educated , healthy, happy souls. So, go on, God says, live there! The only punishment is… you will be so far away from your previous home and the rest of your family and friends that it will take a whole day to return to them and a whole lot of saving up - in fact you may only be able to visit once every two years, once every year at the most… Still up for a permanent move to this wonderful country? Hmmm.