For those Dewers who’d like a change from US politics, may I offer up an alternative entertainment? The people of far-away Tasmania go to the polls next weekend when the fate of the incumbent Labor government will be decided. Australia’s island State is among the most beautiful places on earth but if you ever wish to see the consequences of unfettered corporate power, political hypocrisy and politico/religious bastardry, then Tasmania is the place to look at – though Western Australia looks set to soon be its equal in these attributes.
First, though, a bit of background. Tasmania, like the Federal Government ...
I hate supermarkets with a passion. I’m getting on a bit – not ancient, mind, but getting on – and I’m old enough to remember when the first of these horrors opened their doors in Australia. The Aussie equivalent of the five and dime – based on the US model – had been around since 1914, but the supermarket idea didn’t reach the Wide Brown Land until the 50s.
Before the first of these wonderful institutions opened its doors, its representatives flooded the airwaves with radio commercials and speeches telling us of the wondrous benefits that were soon to shower down ...
I suppose I should let this go because in the great horror of what has just happened it's a mote – annoying yes, but a mote nevertheless – but I can’t; I'm sorry, I just can’t. The shock of the events in Chile snapping so close at the heels of the tragedy on the other side of the Americas was bad enough, but teevee’s ‘coverage’ of the tsunami in the quake’s aftermath was nothing short of abysmal – well, it would have been abysmal if it hadn’t been so blatantly shallow.
Where do they find these people whom they stick behind ...
It pains me to say it, but please don’t experiment at home with anything mentioned here. Not only is there a risk of injury to yourself and others – indeed, in some parts of the country you may get eaten by an alligator – but, and perhaps this is worse, your parents may be thought too poor to buy you an X-box.
There’s an old Australian poem with a chorus that goes something like:
Stringybark and greenhide, it’ll never fail ya!
Stringybark and greenhide, it’s the mainstay of Australia.
By the time I was old enough to be aware of such things, greenhide ...
Once upon a time, all public buses in Western Australia carried a prominent sign above the driver’s seat: “PASSENGERS MUST NOT TALK TO DRIVER”. One day on my way to trade-theory classes in Perth, I stepped on a bus in Fremantle. Its sign had been altered using paper patches and red ink. “PASSENGERS MUST NOT TALK DRIVEL”, it commanded. Widdershins again, but it will become relevant.
In Australia on a quiet news day, the teevee networks are fond of slipping in the occasional “Only in America” story, often one of the urban myths you find circulating on the Internet, the ...
Steve Krodman’s Cheerio stirred up a lot of memories and set me to thinking about life, and New Zealand, and oatmeal, and the springtime of my life. If you're not sure about any of the lingo contained herein, just ask.
Back in the '60s and '70s I spent a few years in the Shaky Isles, living mostly off the music. If money got really tight I’d work at anything I could get, and back in those opulent days there was plenty to be got. As well as working in the trade when the mood took me, I’ve been a laborer in ...
Mark Johnson covered it brilliantly in his most recent post and I touched on it a while back, and this recent spell of really cold weather has led me once more to that putrescent fount from whence I draw much bile-arousing material: the commercial teevee networks and *The News*.
Taking the cue from their second cousins in the US, Australians have pretty much got used to news anchors whose expertise seems to lie more in the choice of the smart frock or the nifty tie than in an understanding of the world beyond the studio, so to someone from, say, Muckinbudin, ...
There are many similarities between my birth country, Australia, and the USA but there are also many differences, and they’re not always noticed at first glance. One that took a while to become obvious lies in the attitudes of politicians towards their constituents – and I’m talking about “us mortal critters here at the headwaters,” to borrow from Pogo.
Anyone who’s ever lived in Australia will tell you that pretty well every time you move house (I’m getting better, I used to say “shift”), among the first items to arrive in the new letterbox (you can’t win ’em all) would be letters ...
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