Chillies

The latest crop from our garden. You wouldn't think caterpillars could eat them without dire consequences, but they apparently do.

Sydney – Wildlife

Next to the splendid Sydney Aquarium in Darling Harbour is the newly-opened Wildlife World. We gave it a go and emerged slightly disappointed because the vast majority of insects, mammals, marsupials and reptiles within could all be seen or heard within a kilometre of our house. That includes the lethal red-bellied black snake and the brown snake. Useful to know what they look like as, so far, we haven’t seen them. But they are there…..

Sydney – Water

It’s always a bit of shock arriving in Sydney after the rural calm of Sandy Beach, what with the crowds, the tall buildings and the traffic (OK, I’ll take the straw out of my hair, now). It makes quite an impact at first but then I found myself thinking how precarious it all was. Every time I turned on a tap, I remembered that the city’s water reserves were down to 35 per cent and there’s no sign of substantial rain. In fact, 92 per cent of New South Wales is now in drought and yet, with the exception of the announcement of the building of a controversial desalination plant, there’s no sign of any action to ensure the city’s water supplies.

Sydney – Voices

We went to Sydney last weekend. As I emerged from the shower in the hotel bathroom, I heard Mike’s voice above my head. This was quite disturbing, as he’s in London, until I realised that Sara had turned on the television, tuned to BBC World, Mike was reading the news, and there was a speaker in the ceiling. Come to think of it, it’s still disturbing that friends on the other side of the world can make themselves heard in your bathroom.

Night Visitor

Found in our back garden one evening....they make a very loud noise when they start croaking in a drain pipe.

Dear Pom

In a victory for common sense, the Advertising Standards Board has ruled that the word “Pom” is not offensive and is more an affectionate term, on a par with “Kiwi” and “Aussie” (see earlier post). Unless, of course, it’s combined with words like “whingeing” or “b**tard.” Then they might think again.

British People Against Discrimination, who brought the complaint are reportedly disappointed, though you would have thought that England losing the Ashes in three straight Tests would have disappointed them more. Those car ads enjoining Aussies to “tonk a Pom” will have to be updated because that’s exactly what’s happened.

Now, by all the rules of blogging, I should include a link to the Sydney Morning Herald story, but I’m not. For one thing, you don’t really need to know any more. For another, obsessively peppering posts with links just says to me that you see your post as a signpost or a gateway, rather than a worthwhile destination. If everything on the web is just pointing the way to something else, then where’s the substance?

Relax.....

It's always interesting to see what Australian news items make it in the international media and to see how others view the country. BBC News Online had this today and it's about a piece of research that shows that more people in the UK are more likely than in Australia to have heart attacks when watching sport.

No surprise, really. I recall hearing a Kiwi comedienne talking about watching the Socceroos exit the World Cup with a bunch of Aussies. After weeks of hysteria, their demise was greeted with a shrug and "Oh well, there you go." Everything is more relaxed here and it's probably due to a combination of sunshine, space (there's only 20 million of us), and the knowledge that there's always another beer, barbecue or beach just round the corner.

Of course, that doesn't apply to those actually competing, as the England cricket team knows to its cost. I'm grateful to The Guardian for reminding them that "it ain't over til the fat boy spins." Of course, the writer was referring to Shane Warne.

Shelter From The Storm

Carl found this young lorikeet with its tail feathers missing and he and Anne and Darius are looking after it until it can fly again. He (or she) is rather nervous of everyone except Carl and likes having his neck scratched. He spends most of his time in a big cage in a tree in the garden, which is just as well, because Took the Terrier and one of the local currawongs (they're a bit like magpies) don't seem to have his best interests at heart. We heard the other day that there used to be a far greater variety of bids, particularly small ones, in Sandy Beach until the currawongs moved in and started killing them. Still, this small bird seems to have struck lucky.

Blowing Hot and Cold

Summer’s here, with temperatures touching 40 degrees in Coffs yesterday. We’re having the usual vicious electrical storms and gales in the evenings, with the subsequent power cuts and phone failures, the surf’s rubbish, the police in Sydney are on stand-by in case of race riots, and the Ashes series has started with a convincing Australian win.

That’s all pretty normal (I’m glad to say it’s a lot cooler today) but enter British People Against Racial Discrimination (BPARD) which has asked the Advertising Standards Board to ban the use of the word “Pom”. This follows an Ashes-linked advert by brewers Tooheys for a new super-chilled beer which is “cold enough to scare a Pom.”

I hope BPARD isn’t serious, but it appears to be. It does remind me of the time when some Welsh nationalists tried to get Wales listed as an oppressed nation in the UN (I wanted to send them to Iraqi Kurdistan to learn what oppression was all about). This really will give new meaning to the phrase “whingeing Pom” and only this morning neighbour Chris paused while lashing down his boat against the next, inevitable storm, to remark “so you don’t like being called a Pom, then?”

My standard response to jibes like this is that it doesn’t relate to me because I’m Welsh and Poms are English in Australian minds but then that doesn’t really stand up to analysis since the term “Pom” is popularly supposed to stem from “Prisoner of Her Majesty” and presumably some of these prisoners were Welsh. But any port in a storm.

For a flavour of the debate, spiced with references to the convict stain, go
here.

Fresh Fish

We’ve got some new neighbours. It was fairly easy to spot that Chris is a keen fisherman as there were two boats parked on the lawn (Australians seem to go in for parking things on their lawns, which seems very strange to us). Anyway, there was a knock on the door just before supper the other evening and Chris presented me with two Nile Perch fillets, part of his afternoon’s catch. So fresh they were practically still twitching, they smelt of nothing but the sea. We ate them that night and they were delicious. Strange to think that they’d been swimming around only a few hundred metres away but I suppose you get used to that idea.

An Australian, His Bike and His Axe...

A cycling revolution has swept Sandy Beach, as you can see from this photo. Ever since the Red Rock Triathlon, Saturday morning has seen us all up at 5am to drive into Coffs Harbour for the community bike rides, which draw up to 80 riders in four groups differentiated by speed and lycra. You have to do it that early because this is Australia though, I am glad to say, afterwards you have to have a cafe breakfast sitting outside in the sun as well. But Carl, for it is he, and his axe? Well, not only do we rise at dawn for a ride on the road, but we also head for the trails of the Wedding Bells Forest in the afternoon and Carl has become increasingly frustrated by the trees lying across some of the trails. So today he took his small axe and sent the woodchips flying. He may have a big axe too, for all I know, as he did spend some time living in the bush. I happened to mentioned that I'd never been mountain biking with an axe before. "This is Australia," he replied.

Bird Watching

Trudging back from Parliament to the rented apartments we use when we're in Canberra last night, I was depressed by the bureaucratic wasteland created by the Communist-style planners - wide highways with hardly any cars circling vast anonymous office blocks surrounded by dusty, sunburnt verges.

Some of the verges do have lush grass and these have sprinklers installed which spring into life with no warning and give your suit a good soaking. There is possibly a knack to knowing when they're going to start up but, if there is, no one's told me. Canberra is not as friendly as the rest of Australia, with the exception of the mainly immigrant taxi-drivers, and I am beginning to see why. It's not a good place for the soul.

However, in the vacant lot next to the Department of Foreign Affairs, waddling around in the scrubby grass, I found four galahs, splendid plump, pink and grey parrots, and a sulphur-crested cockatoo, which, as the name suggests, sports a fine yellow quiff, contrasting with a pure white body. They were only a few feet away and completely unperturbed. But then they are big birds. They added a welcome touch of the exotic to the bland surroundings.

Old Ways, New Country

Back in Canberra after a brief weekend in Sandy Beach and, just after 6am, joined the multitudes out on the running and cycling trails. Just past the Greek Orthodox church, and on the shores of the vast Lake Burley Griffin, I saw an elderly Chinese gentleman, in a black, loose shirt and trousers, with a conical bamboo hat and fishing rod, silhouetted against the water. It was an utterly foreign sight.

There are many immigrants in Canberra. A bewildering racial array of cab drivers ply their trade at the airport and Eastern Europe and the Balkans are well-represented on the Parliament House staff. Perhaps it's because Canberra is considered an unpleasant place to live - too cold in winter and too hot in summer - and there are more opportunities for those starting afresh. I'm sure it's a sign of tolerance that the old man was clearly comfortable sitting by the lake.

Nerves of Steel

Went to a showing of a new Australian documentary in Parliament House last night. Nerves of Steel was about four young women who, with no experience whatsoever, formed a team that qualified for the skeleton in the Winter Olympics.

They did, I should point out, have the backing of the Australian Institute of Sport and were experienced in various sports. On the other hand, they had absolutely no experience of winter sports, or of hurtling head-first down a tunnel of ice on something like a tea-tray at 130kph.

There are many good reasons why many of us lack that experience, not least of which is the will to live, to retain the use of our limbs, and a keen sense that tea-trays are best used for other purposes.

I know I keep banging on about it, but here, again, was the “she’ll be right, mate” mentality writ large and taken to whole new level of professionalism. Apart, perhaps, from when they turned up on their first slope without proper gloves and apparently used washing-up gloves instead. The amazing thing is, and it’s a tribute to the women themselves and the whole enterprise, that, apart from many spectacular bruises and a few broken bones, they were more than “right”.

In five months, the team came from nowhere to qualify for the Winter Olympics. Only one team member could compete, and, on the day, fifteen months after starting out, one touch of a foot on the ice saw a possible medal-winning position slip to 13th.

I think what impressed me most was that, despite all the technical and financial help, it was their confidence in their ability and willingness to risk their necks time after time, that brought them success. Nerves of steel, indeed.

Red Rock Results

The start of the Red Rock Triathlon. It was 25C, windy and the water was fresh. John and Anne are in there somewhere. John's business, Coast and Plateau Fine Foods, sponsored two teams in the business category, the Babes of Baclava and Cheeses They're Fast.

Two of the Babes of Baclava in transition.

Carl brings home the bacon for Cheeses They're Fast.

Sara mops up for The Babes.

The teams, with our cheerleader, Darius, and Will, who did the whole thing on his own. Our strategy of entering the business category paid off handsomely as both teams won. And yes, I'm sure there were other business teams taking part.

Traing, training, training...

Carl and Anne are away in Sydney but the rest of us went up to Red Rock to swim, ride or run our triathlon legs. Here are John and Will about to sample the delights of the creek. For the record, the water was quite cool but the air temperature was 27C. There were no homicidal magpies on the run or bike routes and there was nothing untoward in the creek either. So far, so good.

Red Rock On....

It was right at the beginning of the evening that John suggested we all enter the Red Rock Triathlon, giving us exactly two weeks to prepare. I'd barely taken a sip from a bottle of beer and the others were stone cold sober so there was no excuse for saying yes.

So John's delicatessen wholesale business, Coast and Plateau, is sponsoring two teams - Me, John and Carl, and Sara, Anne and Liz - for the 800m/22k/5k event. We each do one leg, so it's not too demanding. Well, it would be if I had to do the swim, but I haven't. And Will is doing the whole thing as an individual. But he's onyl 21.

The commitment is frightening. The next morning, everyone was out in Sandy Beach doing their thing, Anne even getting bitten by bluebottles (jellyfish). It hasn't stopped and we've even done a recce of the course, Will heroically swimming in the creek at low tide, so it was rather brown. There's a fine air of "she'll be right, mate" about the whole enterprise but I suspect everyone is harbouring their own little fears, not the least of which will be letting the others down. I'll keep you posted.

Australian Values

The Opposition Leader here, Kim Beazley, is taking a bit of pasting over his suggestion that all visitors to Australia should have to express their commitment to Australian values. It's all to do with concerns that many Muslims who settle here allegedly see their allegiance as first and foremost to Islam (and we all know what that means).

Quite what these values are isn't clear. Are they reflected, perhaps, in the fact that a number of dead sting rays have been found on the Queensland coast with their stings cut off, prompting speculation that this is a bizarre form of revenge for the death of Steve Irwin? Even if this is just speculation, it says much that it's regarded as perfectly feasible.

For a historic perspective, and in reference to the continuing controversy about the treament of the Aboriginal population, you might turn to The Australian's front page cartoon on the topic showing a bearded gentleman in a robe facing an immigration offical and swearing: "I plan to steal your land, trash your culture, and never apologise."

Meanwhile, I'm left wondering how many Australian visitors to, say, France or Thailand, would be happy to sign up to French or Thai values? Not many, I'd guess.

Jaws of Death….2

Admit it, you love all this shark stuff. So….last week a Coffs Harbour surfer was out for his usual early morning session, caught a wave, surfed into a two-metre (allegedly) bronze whaler and got soundly nipped for his temerity. He struggled and the shark let go. And it was only in waist-deep water, too. This is a bronze whaler.

Jaws of Death…..1

A death in the family always brings out the divisions that normally lie just below the surface and, on a national level, that’s just what the death of Steve Irwin did.

His demise led news bulletins here for several days, coverage starting with a clearly upset Prime Minister, crowds gathering outside Irwin’s Australia Zoo, first hand accounts of his death and then his family’s gracious rejection of the offer of a state funeral.

One of the words often used to describe him was “larrikin”. I think what Australians usually mean by this is that he was a cheeky chap, a bit of a rascal, and a generally loveable bloke who did no real harm to anyone. And those tight shorts are very popular.

Just to make sure, I turned to the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (yes, there is one) and found a number of definitions, including “a person who acts with apparent disregard for social and political conventions.” This leads rather nicely into the second phase of press coverage.

Enter Germaine Greer in the pages of The Guardian, suggesting that her fellow countryman was a bit of an embarrassment for most Australians, and questioned his attitude to animals in general, and recalled his exploit with his baby son in his crocodile enclosure. Irwin, she said, insisted he was in control, “displaying the sort of self-delusion it takes to be a real Australian larrikin.”

I can’t help feel she was right on that score and that it was another example of the potentially disastrous “she’ll be right, mate” attitude I’ve mentioned before. But I digress.

If there’s one thing Australian popular opinion hates, it’s an intellectual, worse one who has made a name abroad and not returned, and worse still, one who’s a woman. Irwin was the antithesis of an intellectual and he got the public vote. Ms Greer was vilified as a “feral hag” and “childless” (now doesn’t that say a lot?) and readers of the Daily Telegraph were encouraged to email “the vicious old cow” to tell them what they thought of her. I bet they did, too.

If there’s a lesson from all this, it’s that Australia is a young nation, still to settle on a national identity.