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.

Belly Up

You probably haven’t heard of the orange-bellied parrot but then there are only 50 breeding pairs in the world and they’re only to be found in Tasmania in the summer and then across the other side of the Bass Strait in Victoria and South Australia in the winter. Despite not really having much orange on their bellies, these parrots have come into the money, $3.2m to be precise, or $32,000 per parrot.


They're deemed to be an endangered species on a par with the Siberian Tiger and the Giant Panda. So the Federal Government has stepped in.

This is clearly a parrot with punch. Recently a plan to build a $220m wind farm on the Victoria coast was scrapped because it lay on the migration route. Even though it was calculated that approximately one parrot in several decades would be minced by the blades, that was clearly one parrot too many for the Government.

So now the parrots will be not only be relieved from having to negotiate whirling turbine blades but they’ll also have millions spent on improving their habitat and, because this is Australia, the country where cats are kept in at night and encouraged to wear bells so they can’t creep silently up on their prey, there will also be slaughter of feral cats.

I’m comforted by the fact that while Siberia has a huge, ravening carnivore in need of care, Australia has a small, but well-travelled, parrot with a bit of orange on its tummy. It makes up for all the poisonous stuff, I suppose

A Sobering Surf

After a week of heavy showers and grey skies, the weekend was back to normal with blue skies, warm sunshine and a crystal clear sea. It’s very easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by all this.

Carl and I were surfing at the point at Arrawarra on Sunday morning. Unusually, there were few others out but Leroi, a gnomic figure who has apparently not missed a day’s surfing since fibreglass was invented, and possibly before that, was there. He is even older than Carl and me. We noticed a large number of boats further out and, ominously, several helicopters, sweeping the ocean.

Leroi told us that they were looking for two fishermen who went overboard from their boat during the night. Suddenly, I felt less blasé about bobbing up and down on my board so near the rocks of the point and so far from a safe shore. Later we found out that there had been four in the boat. One, wearing a life jacket, had swum ashore and another was found clinging to an empty oil can. It appears the boat had struck a whale.

Watching the humpbacks as they migrate north every year at this time is a stirring experience, whether from the shore, or from one of the whale-watch boats but, having seen a whale beating the water, apparently in irritation, with its tail, I have wondered whether I’d want to be anywhere near them in a small boat, whether they felt malicious or were just going about their business and you happened to get in the way.

Those fishermen were not doing any wrong or particularly stupid, with the exception, possibly, of not wearing lifejackets. They probably had not thought they were taking a risk by going out in their boat. Perhaps their mistake was taking nature for granted.

Planting Thyme...

This is what all that lurching around the Pacific Highway in an overloaded ute was about (see She'll Be Right, Mate below). Now we've done the planting and we have lavender, coriander, chives, parsley, rocket, thyme, chillies, oregano turmeric and basil. At least we will have if the slugs don't get them. It is raining frequently and Australian slugs are voracious.

Latest Visitors

Llywelyn has just arrived with his university mates John (centre) and Dean. After a morning's surfing at Arrawarra, during which all three of them managed to stand up on the boards, we walked over Mutton Bird Island in the hope of seeing some whales, which Sara, Dean and I did but, sadly, John and Llywelyn were just out of sight. Fickle, those humpbacks. We'll be out in the whale boat on Thursday.

She’ll Be Right, Mate

You frequently hear Australians using the phrase “she’ll be right, mate” in the context of some risky or dodgy activity or a repair job that isn’t perhaps quite all it should be. It’s indicative of a laid-back attitude and, I think, a sunny optimism. It appears to be catching.

Saturday morning saw Carl and I at the England’s Road tip, home of a vast compost producing enterprise and vast mountains of compost. Unfortunately, the man who operates the JCB to load the compost into your hired ute, or whatever, was nowhere to be found. Not to be deterred, we started shoveling after I’d wandered off to the recycling depot and negotiated the loan of a $2 dollar shovel.

After a while, Carl decided to turn the ute round to make it easier to fill and I distinctly remember saying “she’s looking a bit low.” To his credit, Carl distinctly remembers me saying this as well. He also remembers ignoring it. Some shoveling later, it was obviously full. Also obviously, it wasn’t going anywhere as the back mud flaps were bent back whereas the front wheels had only a tenuous relationship with the ground.

We looked at each other and started shoveling out, until some sanity had been restored. It was at this point that the phrase was uttered and buoyed up by this, we crept over the entrance speed bump and wobbled off the nearest garage to get the back tyres pumped up.

It was an interesting drive back to Sandy Beach. We were remarkably slow pulling away from traffic lights, much to the amusement of a lorry driver. Corners were a challenge and only to be taken slowly. In Coffs, we spotted a police car outside the Plantation Hotel so took a detour which unfortunately involved four 90-degree turns. We were sweating at this point. A fine queue built up behind us on the hill by the Big Banana. Various responsible citizens glared at us when they eventually overtook.

Half-way home, at Moonee, another police car lurked and there was no escape. We stared straight ahead, striving to be nonchalant, and all was well. As Carl remarked: “If he’d had his radar set for stupidity instead of speed….”

Anyway, we got home, slightly frazzled (“I was cacking myself there, mate”), and did another three, smaller, loads that day with the ute on an even keel to top up all our vegetable beds and lay the foundations for a three household veggie cooperative. There’s nothing like optimism when it proves to be justified. And the man with the JCB turned up as well.

Sunday Stroll

Iwan and Steph are visiting and took a Sunday afternoon stroll over Look At Me Now headland, where they saw many kangaroos and two surfers fighting their way out through big waves accompanied by some some large marine life, which thankfully turned out to be dolphins.

'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."

'Roos Go Through

Well, they did it. The nation had a definite spring in its step this morning despite getting up at 5am to see Australia play Croatia with qualification for the knock-out stage at stake for both sides (this is the World Cup, it's football, played with a round ball, for those non-sporting readers).

A late goal from Harry Kewell, or King Harry, as the Prime Minister calls him, was enough to draw the game, which was all they needed to finish second in their group. Travellers stranded at Canberra airport this morning because of fog were still fondly watching the replays many hours later. This was just as well as many were there for some hours (I know, I was one of those travellers).

Here's an irony. I've mentioned before that football here is very much the preserve of immigrant communities, though that may now change, and the list of player's names has a distinct European/Balkan flavour. The Socceroos' captain is a guy called Mark Viduka and he's of Croatian descent and started his professional career there. I reckon he passes Norman Tebbit's infamous cricket test, if that's not too confusing.

Now For The Manacle Marks

I’ve just been told that I am now a Permanent Resident in Australia. The letter came from the Department of Immigration this week. I’ve been on probation, as it were, for the last 18 months or so. I can’t pretend that it’s been a worry for us, though the consequences of a rejection would have been pretty horrendous. So now I can, in due course apply for citizenship and have the hereditary manacle marks put on my legs. (Sorry, that comes from a joke that New Zealanders tell – how can you tell an Aussie from a Kiwi?)

As I’ve noted before, it’s easy to forget that we’re living in a foreign country. This week reminded me that, until now, I could have been asked to leave at any time. Curiously, for the first time, I’ve also been racially abused. At the end of a long and, from both sides, fruitless phone call about the Government selling its stake in the Snowy Mountain hydro scheme, I was told I was a Pommie bastard and could piss off.

Now I don’t for a minute this ranks high in terms of racial abuse (though I am having counselling, obviously) but it does make you think. I didn’t get a chance to tell him I wasn’t a Pom because he put the phone down, but the point was I was being abused because of something over which I had no control, over something he thought I was. What must it be like to put up with that every day because of the colour of your skin? To add insult to injury, the Government pulled out of the sale the next day, citing strong public sentiment. I’ll say.

And for the record, I will be supporting Australia against England in the first rugby union test this Sunday, though what that proves in this context, I’m not sure, given that I am, of course, Welsh.

Codes for Kiwis

I read in The Australian this week that New Zealand is introducing a full national system of post codes. It was only a short article, but the four paragraphs managed to be pretty superior about the fact that our neighbours across the water were only just attaining this level of sophistication. This is very much in keeping with Australian attitudes to New Zealand generally, despite recent rugby results.

Personally, I find it rather encouraging that they’ve managed without codes until now. What it says to me is that, by and large, their communities are of a manageable, humane size and they’ve presumably been able to provide a decent service without reducing every neighbourhood to a sequence of digits or digits and letters.

Even now, they only need a four-digit code, as opposed to the six or seven letters and digits you have in the UK. And Australia is still getting by with only four digits for the whole continent.

Anyone for Wogball?

To a cavernous pub in Canberra last night with a few colleagues for a sporting occasion, the first of the State of Origin games. It’s Rugby League we’re talking about, which is more popular here than Rugby Union. Anyway, every year New South Wales and Queensland each put up a team of professionals and they play three matches. The attraction is not necessarily the rugby – because they’re virtually scratch sides, they’re not used to playing together – but the tribalism.

A newcomer could easily feel that the two states were separate countries, which they virtually were until federation, and not just when it comes to rugby. A newcomer might also ask “what about the other states?” Well, to use the vernacular, they don’t give a rat’s arse about Rugby League. They go for Australian Rules Football, which few understand and no other country plays.

It’s not to be confused with soccer, which is becoming a mainstream sport, helped by Australia qualifying for the World Cup for the first timen since 1974. Tonight the Socceroos play European champions Greece in a friendly in Melbourne, which has a large Greek community. For many years, soccer was played only by European immigrants and I’m grateful to this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald for telling me it was once (and possibly still is) known as “wogball.”

By the way, Canberra has seasons, unlike the Coffs Coast, and now it’s winter. The trees are bare, it’s freezing, and I need a coat, scarf and gloves to walk to Parliament House from our lodgings. It’s quite a change.

Another Rescue

While the story of the rescue of the two men trapped underground in a Tasmanian gold mine for 15 days unfolded, relatively little attention was paid to the fate of three men lost in a small boat off the coast at the other end of the country.

The three had set off to collect some members of the local rugby league team for a game, which gives you the first cultural pointer - we’re talking about seventy kilometres in an open boat as opposed to getting picked up in the team mini-bus. They got into trouble and drifted out of range of their mobile phones and waited until they were back in range to send a text asking for help. It took 22 days before they were able to send the message and survived by eating raw squid, drinking rain water and fashioning some sun shades from bits of metal.

There are immediately obvious reasons why the story attracted very little attention. The area is remote and no one knew where the men were. But in Australian terms, there are other reasons.

Large numbers of Australians take to the water in boats every weekend and it’s not unheard of for some of them to disappear and it’s far easier to disappear in the Pacific Ocean than it is in say, the Bristol Channel. Add to that the occasional disappearance of rock fishermen, usually swept into the ocean by waves, and such events are far from unusual.

It’s easy to get lost on land, as well. Even in relatively populous New South Wales, you don’t need to go far to find mile upon mile of bush, mostly unmarked by tracks. Australia is a vast and mostly empty land and Australians believe in making the most of it. They’re also realistic about their prospects if things go wrong, don’t expect to be rescued as a matter of course, and prove to be pretty resourceful, as did the trio in the boat.

Perhaps it’s something of that attitude that sustained the two miners, in their very different circumstances.

To The Falls...

On Easter Sunday, we all went to the Sherwood Forest and set off through the bush...


...to the waterfall....


...where you could have a natural massage in the freezing water...


....and then warm up in the autumn sun.

Coffs Harbour Live

You might like to see what the place looks like live, as it were. If you go to Swellnet and click on "surf cams" and then "Coffs Harbour" you'll see how the day's shaping up. Unless you get the time difference wrong, of course, and you log on during our night when you'll see nothing. We're nine hours ahead.

The three views, all from the Jetty area of Coffs, are, in rotation, of Gallows Beach (so-called because of the rocks, I think), the huge beach to the south of Gallows and, bizzarely, the car park at the top of the boat ramp, which is not very interesting. The camera is on top of the Deep Sea Fishing Club, which is good for fish and chips and you can sometimes see whales from the verandah.

If you're lucky, you might see dolphins on the surf cam, jumping out of the waves, as I did one day.

A-Hunting We Will Go

Sara spotted an ad in the local paper announcing that "conservation hunting" had started in a state forest not far from here. Licensed hunters could apply to shoot introduced species of feral animals, including pigs, goats, foxes, rabbits, cats, hares and deer.

Now given that these species were introduced in the late 18th or early 19th centuries, you might thing that, like Europeans, they'd earned the right to be regarded as residents, but apparently not. They take a very strict view of what's indigenous and seem to forget that recent history has been nothing more than remorseless Europeanisation since the first landings. Still, I can't quite see why a few pigs truffling around in the woods should be lined up for slaughter. No doubt they have some fearful environmental consequences associated with them. Just like the Europeans, really.

Anyway what really caught my eye, after the bit about hunters being required to wear some blaze orange clothing so they could be indentified at all times, was this: "These areas will not be closed to the public while conservation hunting takes place."

I don't quite know whether this is another example of the "she'll be right, mate" mentality or a subtle attempt at culling another introduced and damaging species.

Some Retreat...

Took to the hills behind Coffs this weekend to celebrate our first wedding anniversary at a place called Friday Creek, which consists of a few comfortable chalets and a vineyard. It's described as a retreat and, as we were the only ones there and the weather started rather murky, it certainly was quiet and secluded.

However, only I could book a country retreat in earshot of an all-night rave. The pounding bass started at 6pm on Saturday and was still going when we left at 10am on Sunday. Bill Munoz, the Chilean immigrant owner, was shaking his head as we paid the bill. "I've called the police," he said. "I'm half deaf so I'm OK but my wife didn't sleep all night." The volume was remarkable as all the action was taking place in the next valley, over the ridge in the picture below. Doesn't seem possible, does it? Do you still have raves in the UK or are they out of fashion? Luckily, Friday night had been as quiet as the grave.

Teen Spirit

Running along the moonlit beach this morning (it's quite dark at 6am now), I was surprised by a number of luminous, long, oval shapes on the steep dune leading over the neck of the headland to Fiddaman's Beach. When I got closer, they turned out to be surf boards, carried by a group of teenage boys and girls, some wearing hoodies over the usual boardies and bikinis - there was a slight coolness in the air - which made them look even more spectral. Of course, they may have been up all night, but I can't help being impressed that they were up at all, and, while surfing under a full moon may be romantic, it's still not light enough to see anything that might be sharing the water with you. It needs a certain nerve.