I suspect you Australians won’t be welcoming me back to your country any time soon. Last time I travelled down under, way back in 1991, the country was in the grip of a recession, and during my visit this time, Australia’s first quarter of negative growth since 1991 was recorded. Didn’t mean to do it. Honest. But can anyone be surprised that the economy is doing badly when a Mars Bar costs $2.80? I mean there are limits. I’ve been in the country three weeks and have spent $800 on nothing. Well, I’ve nothing to show for it. It’s all gone on taxi fares, $5 bottles of Lift and regular supplies of barbeque crisps from convenience stores. It’s all because I can’t afford to eat normally. The one evening I went out for a meal at the Cafe Sydney in Circular Quay, it set me back $230. Well, when I say “me”, I use the word loosely, as my Aussie companion took pity on me. The strong dollar does have some compensation, after all.
I came to these shores at the beginning of June thinking I’d have a nice, quiet three weeks, make the odd speech for Microsoft Australia (the ostensible reason for my visit), renew some old friendships and travel around a bit. I should have known better. Twitter, you see, got the better of me. These I was, in my Sydney hotel room, and I decided to watch Question Time. Big mistake. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. "The UK House of Commons is often accused of behaving like a playground. It has nothing on the Aussie House of Reps. Unbelievable behaviour. Absolutely shameful", I tweeted. I didn’t think much of it, imagining that there were probably only a handful of Aussies among my 20,000 followers. Wrong. Within minutes I was being asked onto virtually every talkback programme on Australian radio. Oh dear, I thought, I’m going to be hung, drawn and quartered for this. But not a bit of it. Everyone seemed to agree with my views that most Australian politicians should be ashamed of their tribalistic behaviour. Everyone that it, apart from The Spectator. The good old Speccie reckons “the Australian body politic is remarkably healthy”. Really? Come again! The country is led by a prime minister with a voice like a pneumatic drill who wouldn’t look out of place on the perfume counter at Myers and has a PM-wannabe who looks like a Baywatch veteran and has the political dexterity of a sledgehammer. Question Time is a shocking, shambolic display of political partisanry and has little to do with holding an incompetent government to account. Isn’t THAT what it should be about? Not throwing Dorothy Dixer questions to the PM, or the Opposition making out the government is worse than Stalin on one of his more kindly days. When people like Gillard and Abbot can ascend to the two top jobs it is a travesty to describe the state of Australian politics as healthy.
I had an email the other day from someone who had been looking at my family tree online. He told me I had long lost rellies in Sydney. Well, what would you do? I immediately made contact and we had a nice family reunion in Winston Hills last Friday. Truly lovely people. They showed me all the work they’d done on our ancestors. Turns out the rumours that Robbie Burns was an ancestor were rubbish. Shame. But I did learn that King Edward I features in our ancestry. I also learned that we now have the name Pinochet in the family. Who’d have thought?
They say that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language. Whoever said that should pay a visit down under. Until I came to Sydney I never knew the word ‘farewell’ could also be used as a verb. And what about this word “cruelled”, which, so far as I can make out means ruined? But I think this language invention should work both ways. I have decided to import the world ‘Coolilinga’ into the Queen’s English. For the uninitiated it is a small town just south of Darwin, which I had occasion to visit for reasons I shan’t bore you with. I hereby declare that ‘Coolilinga’ shall replace ‘kewl’ as an exclamation depicting modish behaviour by a young person. We’ll see if it catches on.
Talking of Darwin, I spent a very pleasant weekend with my friend Shane Stone, the former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, at his coastal hideaway 200k south of Darwin. It really was an idyll. Walking along the beach, with the Peron Islands just over the water, I really felt as if I was about to star in an episode of ‘Lost’. Call me superficial, but I have to admit I was dying to see a crocodile or two. Instead, I only got to hear them bark. The fact that crocs bark was a revelation in itself. But I did get to see some kangaroos, which for a Brit of my age was like having a rite of passage. You see, I belong to the generation of British kids who were reared on a weekly TV diet of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. “What’s that Skip? Gran’s fallen down a mineshaft?” Ah, the memories. I still say Ed Devereaux is the greatest ever Australian actor. And that includes you, Nicole Kidman...
I can honestly say that Australia has the best airports of any country I have been to. Glisteningly clean, easy to navigate with polite and helpful staff. Contrast Sydney Airport with Terminal 3 at London’s Heathrow and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve never understood why British airports are so uniformly ghastly. They were awful when they were stated owned and they’re one of the few sectors which privatisation has failed to improve. London badly needs a brand new airport, but, with the notable exception of London’s mayor Boris Johnson, none of our politicians have the vision to allow a new one to be built. The climate change agenda has a lot to answer for. But don’t get me started on that...
