'Roos Go Out

Sad to say the Socceroos were booted out of the World Cup by Italy who won with a 92nd minute disputed penalty. I'm glad to say that some round here did point out that if they'd taken their chances and put the ball in the net earlier, then the penalty wouldn't have mattered.

We were at the Jetty Theatre in Coffs last night for the Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow, a good place to test the mood following this sporting disaster. The female Kiwi compere reported that her Aussie friends were on the edge of their seats until the final whistle then sank back with sighs of "oh well, there you go." And now it's forgotten. It takes a foreigner to deliver the best insights, I think, and her theme was that Aussies are pretty laid back, if not more laid back than Kiwis, in fact. She pointed out that New Zealand has no dangerous wildlife at all. In Australia, by way of contrast, we have a world-beating array of deadly creatures and insects and even something as apparently cuddly as a duck-billed platapus can poison you. And yet we don't seem to worry.

It's true. Our shortest route to the beach is known to harbour red-bellied black snakes and brown snakes, both potentially lethal, but it's still the route we all use, even barefoot, in some cases. A schoolgirl was even attacked by a kangaroo in Coffs last week.

The other significant contribution came from an American who had been living here since 1992. He confessed that he hadn't applied for citizenship yet. "I've had the forms for two years but I just can't be arsed to fill them out. See...I reckon that means I'm a citizen already."