Advance Australia Fair

Notes on Oz from behind the mechitza


Much of the public debate is valuable - issues get much more of an airing here than I was ever awair/awhere/ aware of them getting in South Africa - and there sems to be less dumbing down of this area of public life (even in the TV is the same crass and lowest common denominator oppiate of the masses) so that something like, for example, new health legislation, will be intelligently denated in the media with lost of sophoisticated op ed pices by both senior journalists and politicians making their case for various points of view.

Australianisms

My hair is cut by an Iraqui.And Turkish and Korean and Bangladeshi sales people greet me at the till with "How you going mate" and farewell me with "No worries mate" - although the beautiful and unique intonations of their mother tongues are not hidden so easily.

"bashings" "glassings" and now "grassings"

also unfamiliar to the educated South African ear is the usage of "what" as in


Australians priviledge their pooches
whip their horses
and torture their pigs
"go home then mate, fuck of back to where you bloody well caym frohme"

Wentworth courier and its plastic cover

Coles and Woolies and their plastic bages

The role of alcohol - we could hardly ignore this one - and sport

I see an Australia where every Australian has a place to live, and where every living place has solar panels and water tanks and a veg garden and a compost heap, an Australia of plenty, an Australia that ius clean and green (and when necessary, mean)