On the Road to Wagga Wagga

It seems that the names of cities, towns and districts in Great Britain have been taken off the map, shuffled around, and scattered over Australia. Melbourne is a small town in Derbyshire, Perth a market town in Scotland. Liverpool and Canterbury become industrial suburbs of Sydney. Cardiff and Swansea are quite rightly on the coast of New South Wales, but both are tiny villages, between the coal mining town of Newcastle, and another town near Newcastle, in north-east England, Gosport. Jesmond, Hexham, Wickham, Wallsend, Gateshead and Morpeth are all near both Newcastles. The districts of London are split up between Melbourne and Sydney. From Richmond in Melbourne you stroll to nearby Kew, but it on the Yarra River, not the Thames, thence to Fitzroy, part posh, part not so posh. Brighton, Doncaster, Windsor and Blackburn all seem out of place in the suburbs of Melbourne. But Tamworth is a sizeable farming town in NSW, outdoing its Midlands namesake. In Sydney Kensington is not so nice, Paddington has become trendy, and King’s Cross is the “in” district. I’m enormously disappointed by Stratford-on-the-River-Avon, Victoria. The River Avon is a piddling dried-up creek, and the “town”, with its population of about fifteen, shows no sign of a theatre festival.

Names intrigue. I pass by Lambing Gully Road, Saucey Creek, Cabbage Tree Creek, Dead Horse Creek, Luck Creek, Stockyard Creek, and Diggers’ Rest. As one would expect, the founders of the towns gave the name of their town of origin to their new town. The founders of Newcastle in the early 19th century were convicts from the north-east of England sent there to dig coal. And Captain Cook called the first colony New South Wales merely because its coast appeared from a distance like that of South Wales.

Sydney immediately reminds me of London, maybe Hampstead, Camden Town. Not only Paddington, King’s Cross, Kensington and Hyde Park. It looks arty, bohemian, slightly raffish. I stroll along Oxford Street. No chain stores here, but rainbow cafes and pubs. I arrive in Taylor Square and find myself in front of the urinal, now no longer in use, which has become an icon of the gay movement. There is a competition to jazz up the square. One of the entries proposes an audio connection with San Francisco whereby visitors to Taylor Square can make immediate contact with their counterparts in California.

From the point of origin of the gay movement in Australia I move to the point of origin of European settlement in Australia, Botany Bay, now in the southern suburbs of Sydney, inside a national park. I read about the landing of Captain Cook in 1770. In the words of the Endeavour artist, “Sydney Parkinson: “Though it was the beginning of winter when we arrived, every thing seemed in perfection. There is a variety of flowering syrups, a tree that yields gum; and a species of palm, the berries of which are of two sorts, one small, the other, as large as a cherry, has a stone in it; it is of a pale crimson colour and has the taste of sweet acid.” Cook declared Australia “Terra nulius”, and land was awarded to settlers. In 1788 the first convicts were settled in Sydney, and in 1793 the first free immigrants came. From 1788 to 1833 63,000 convicts and 14,000 free men and women emigrated; from 1830 to 1850, 83,000 convicts and 173,000 free people; and from 1850 to 1860 the Gold Rush brought thousands more.

Contacts with the Aborigines soon brought disease, and within two years smallpox killed fifty to ninety percent of the locals. Botany Bay used to be decorated with flags and bunting on the Queen’s Birthday and Anzac Day, but now the dominant voices are other. Cartoons in the exhibition hall try to set the picture right. In one the local Aborigines spot the British boats arriving and say: “Here come the international terrorists…”. And another voice contemplates: “Well, what a sight that must have been to my mob down around Sydney Harbour, and years before it at Kurnell to see these fellows come ashore, white like ghosts, wearing those stupid bloody wigs, in red and blue uniforms”.

Sunday morning, and the Sydney Harbour is packed with Sydneysiders and tourists, strolling, drinking gourmet coffee, eating ethnic food; jogging and climbing up the Harbour Bridge; hanging about, chilling out; catching a ferry across the harbour to Manly; listening to Aborigine buskers play the digeridoo; or discovering the streets of the old working-class area of The Rocks, much of which has been preserved, despite attempts to extend the skyscraper zone in the 1970s.

The shells and sails of the Sydney Opera House are now known to all the world. Its history is odd. Dane Jorn Utzon’s project arrived late for the competition in 1957. It was initially rejected as being incomplete. But then the chairman of the committee saw it, liked it and persuaded the rest of the committee to accept it as it was a project with vision. The familiar scallops are a mere shell, and the studio, playhouse, theatre, concert hall, opera house are mostly housed underground and do not follow the billowing contours. Its construction was full of problems. The budget went up from $7.5m  to $102m , and it took was opened on 1973, ten years late. The  NSW government demanded Utzon take an advisory role, and he resigned. Only recently in 2007, just before his death, was his contribution formally recognized.

Newcastle. A wealthy town two hours north of Sydney. At nearly 200,000 the largest city in Australia outside the big five: Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide. Ships taking coal and wine ply their way across the harbour. But, like many cities in the US and elsewhere, life has moved to the suburbs. Downtown at 5 p.m. on a sunny winter Tuesday. Not a mouse stirring. A number of shops are boarded up, many are To Let. An occasional customer takes a bag out of MacDonalds, Subway or Hungry Jacks. As dusk falls the nearby beach promenade becomes deserted; the joggers have already finished or are at the gym. Drug dealing territory, I’m told. It hardly seems like the Wild Side but a Korean student was beaten up on the university campus a few weeks ago by a group of very young teens. Indian students have been beaten up in Melbourne. Foreign students are bussed from campus to Woolworths to do their shopping once a week. And foreign students are a big market for Australian universities.

I drive back a thousand kilometres to Melbourne. The roadside signs warn: ” Booze, Snooze, Lose”, “Better Late than Dead on Time”, “Rest, Revive, Survive”, “A Microsleep Can Kill in Seconds”, “Don’t Close Your Eyes for the Last Time”, “Yawning? Take a Powernap”. I’m stopped for a random breathalyser. Fortunately negative.

Open roads, hardly a car in sight, as I drive past the sheep ranges in NSW and into Victoria. I stop to take pictures of the gum trees at sunset. Darkness falls as I approach Jigong, population 150, to fill up. Next stop Gandagai, then Millamolong, and a silver slither of a new moon appears in the night sky. I’d love to see Wagga Wagga, but I have no time…

Queen Victoria’s Thongs

At least twice during the conference I attended in Melbourne, once during the opening ceremony, and once before the presentation of the aboriginal interpreters, we heard the words: “We acknowledge that this conference is being held on the ancient lands of the Koorie people”. On 13 February 2008, at the beginning of his term of office, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to the Aboriginal peoples: ”We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry”. And now the Aboriginal flag, top half black (the Aboriginal people), bottom half red (the earth), and a yellow circle (the sun) in the middle, flies together with the Australian flag on government buildings. 

http://www.aboriginalartstore.com.au/photos/aboriginal_flag_photo.gif

 At Kangaroo Ground, sadly minus the kangaroos, now a suburb of sprawling Melbourne, I drive up to Garden Hill on a mild winter day to see the glistening skyscrapers of Melbourne some 27km away. Panels tell the history of Kangaroo Ground and deftly try to balance the interests of all the communities. I learn that the area was inhabited by the Wurundjeri clan of the Kulin people. Then in the 1850s came the Scots, who brought their cattle. A picture shows them in kilts. In Victoria men outnumbered women three to one; the English outnumbered the Scots two to one; and sheep outnumbered people by a thousand to one. But not in the close-knit Scots society of Kangaroo Ground.

Many of their descendants were killed in the First World War, especially at Gallipoli. Here on Garden Hill a tower was erected in their memory, and an ANZAC tree was recently planted. On 25 April 1915, 860 young soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were killed when landing to attempt to take the Gallipoli peninsula from the Turks, who were fighting with the Germans. They landed on the wrong beach and proved easy fodder as they scrambled up the steep hill to try to take the Turkish stronghold. More attempts were tried in the next four months, but advances were only temporary, and the Turks, under the command of Mustafa Kemal, later Ataturk, withstood. A total of 8.709 Australian soldiers died before Gallipoli was finally abandoned in January 1916, and a total of 61,522 were killed in WWI. And remember, the population of Australia was only three million. The five Australian colonies had only formed a nation in 1901, and this was their first war. To use a cliche, it was the day when the new country lost her virginity.

ANZAC day is a public holiday here. Many Australians and new Zealanders visit Gallipoli on 25 April. The main cities all have ANZAC monuments. At the supermarket I buy ANZAC cookies, surely tastier than the hard and dry rocks that the soldiers tried to digest. In the War Memorial Museum in Canberra I get an idea of Australia at war. In the Second World War Australia declared war on Germany as soon as Britain did and sent soldiers to North Africa to fight. Then Japan began to flex her muscles in the Pacific, occupying various Pacific islands and parts of Papua New Guinea. A Japanese attack and even occupation to get hold of Australia’s precious minerals was a real threat. The UK was too stretched in Europe to help. So the US sent Australia Kittywake fighters and helped set up aeroplane factories in a country that had never manufactured a car. Though Japanese submarines attacked  in Sydney harbour on 31 May 1942. Japan was eventually repelled, but Australia owed a great favour to the US and sent soldiers to Korea, Vietnam, Afighanistan, and even Iraq.

Australia has been suffering a severe drought, reservoirs are only 25% full; water restrictions are everywhere, but sheep and cattle grazing happily in the showers and lush green of Victoria belie this. In this part of Australia kangaroos are mainly to be found in the reservation areas and sanctuaries. At the entrance to Wilsons Promontory a chubby wombat grazes at the side of the road. I thought I had seen wombats in the trees at night in Fitzroy Park in Melbourne, but no, they were possums, which look like big rats and behave like squirrels. And then there are the smaller roos, the wallabies, the Tasmanian red devils, the only carnivorous marsupials, the lazy koalas, which sleep 20 hours every day up in the gum trees. And here in Sydney many of the trees in the Royal Botanical Garden are full of flying foxes! Weirdest of all the lyre bird, a henlike bird covered on one side by fancy ostrich feathers and the other by a plume which resembles a lyre. It cackles and cawks, imitating all the other birds within range.  http://www.aussie-info.com/identity/fauna/lyre.jpg

And the gawky emu: according to Aboriginal lore, this is how the emu lost its ability to fly: “An emu with very long wings once made her home in the sky. One day she looked over the edge of the clouds, and down on the earth she saw a great gathering of birds dancing by a reed-grown lagoon. High in a gumtree the bell birds were making sweet music with their silvery chimes; the kookaburra, perched on the limb of a dead tree, was chuckling pleasantly to himself; while the native companion danced gracefully on the grass nearby.

The emu was very interested in dancing, so she flew down from her home beyond the clouds, and asked the birds if they would teach her to dance. A cunning old native companion replied: “We shall be very pleased to teach you our dances, but you could never learn with such long wings. If you like, we will clip them for you.” The emu did not give much thought to the fact that short wings would never carry her home again. So great was her vanity that she allowed her wings to be clipped very short. When she had done so, the native companions immediately spread their long wings-which they had previously concealed by folding them close against their backs-and flew away, leaving the emu lonely and wiser than before. She never returned to her home in the sky, because her wings would not grow again. They have remained short and useless ever since. This is the reason why emus run very fast, but never fly”.

 At immigration in Melbourne Airport I shift queues. “Mate, it sometimes pays to stay in the same line”. The Indian-looking official who checks my passport wishes me: “Have a good day, mate!”. And everyone uses the expression I had never heard: “No worries!” The bloke, and here every mate is a bloke, who picks up my heavy bag to put it into the boot of the car I hire, quips, “Bet you got a body in here, mate; it’s gonna do me hernia in!” Our guide round the Victoria Parliament hardly seems to respect politicians: “They put the press up there in the gallery, right over the members of parliament, so they can see who’s asleep”. In the main hall a statue of Queen Victoria faces a cardboard cutout of Mary Poppins. Melbourne, and not Sydney, will now receive the musical production of Mary Poppins, a cause for municipal celebration. The statue of Queen Victoria was rejected by Britain and sent to the colony as the Queen was wearing thongs (sandals not the skimpy bikini bottoms). We were certainly not amused!

On Friday in the Second Test (cricket) at Lord’s, London, the players are introduced to the Queen, as is tradition on the second day of the Lord’s Test. On SBS TV, Stuart McGill, ex-Australian player is the commentator: “Here’s Lizzie being presented to the players. I hope nobody does what Dennis Lillie did and ask her for her autograph!” And we cut from her Majesty to the advertisement for VB beer, celebrated in a march by “Blokes Who Refused To Eat Quiche”. Well, England are now stuffing the Aussies (for a change!)

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