I’ve been reading Down
Under by Bill Bryson, in which he talks about how ridiculous Australia is. Did
you know they had a prime minister who was walking along the beach one day and
got swallowed up by the waves, and was never heard from again? That happened to
their head of state, and yet nobody – outwith Australia, at least – seems to
really know about it.
Nobody seems to really
know anything about Australia. Or at least not as much as I feel like we
should, considering it’s really not that different from the UK in many ways.
It’s like a weird parallel dimension. A lot of the TV broadcast by the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation is just BBC stuff (Midsomer Murders seems
to be on most hours of the day), but it’s good to know that the TV we always
knew Australians really watched –
Neighbours and Home and Away – is also on all the time.
Other classic
Australian telly includes the heavily trailed “Puberty Blues”, in which a
teenager appears to be troubled by things, and one breakfast show which breaks
up all that tiring sad news stuff with clips of cute animals from a vault
apparently unknown to the newscasters. It adds an unsettling air of mystery to
proceedings, like they’re being forced to improvise by some deus ex machina
character for absolutely no reason other than to test their ability to cope
under pressure. They never do very well. “I’m not sure whose golden retriever
puppies these are,” muses the anchor, “but they sure do love playing with ice
blocks.”
There’s a lot that I
don’t understand about Australia, but is familiar enough to be comforting.
“Bam! And the dirt is gone.” Almost. “How you going?” the Australians say. (I’m
used to this, as I worked with a massive Australian contingent at my last job,
but it’s still novel. I’m going… well?) I’m even confused by the book I’m
reading, the one I said was called Down Under. After discussing it with Rachael
we realised that we’re reading the same thing, but her book is called In a
Sunburned Country. Why?!
There are some things
about Australia that were pleasant surprises for me when I got here, like how
Sydney has the largest IMAX cinema in the world. It doesn’t seem the obvious
place, because it’s not even a particularly densely populated city, but I
enjoyed watching Catching Fire in a half empty cinema. Most surprising, though,
is probably the fact that there is a Spiegeltent in Hyde Park in central Sydney
– I worked in one almost identical to it in Edinburgh a number of weeks ago,
and one of the shows I staffed is performing here too. “Give me work!” I’ll
say. “I’m pretty sure we know the same people! Do you want to see how good I am
at holding a fire blanket?”
And then I won’t be
jobless and homeless any longer.
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