Out on the patio we sit
And the humidity we breathe
We watch the lightning crack over canefields
Laugh and think "This is Australia"
Two lines out of 4 ain't bad for my reintroduction to Australia.
One of the many Aussie songs from ACDC to Paul Kelly to Kirsty Stegwazi that my longing for home forced-fed my MP3 that used to make me laugh with recognition but really my pre-Bolivian life only saw the stereotypes from afar at best. As if I'd ever find common the cracking of lightning over canefields for god's sake.
On the other hand, sitting at Sydney airport Thursday morning waiting for my connection to BrisVegas, sipping a Cascade Light (it being quite late in the evening by my internal clock) and being suprisingly unsatisfied at the reminiscence forthcoming, I was greeting with three very ocker gents looking uncomfortable in their upperlevel-casual flying wardrobe discussing... well, some activity that I was informed that seeing or doing would have "done [myself] a favour" and then everything else was quite in indecipherable as I couldn't sift through the "f**k'n" this's and "f**k'n" thats.
Certainly not so much Aussie as affluent-world but putting on my seatbelt is still an oft forgotten chore, and I still haven't stopped looking for a bin to put my poo-ey paper into...
More importantly - I come home to find John Howard's popularity plummetting just as fast as Ivo Morales. Fair enough given they've both been in power for relatively the same amount of time (Ivo for about a year and a half but Bolivian presidents rarely last longer than that!) Their societal relativity is just as common, Evo representing a population that is over 50% indigenous, our fearless one representing a population where 50% is of his social class. Of course many are not but aspire to it. This was in fact coincidentally similar to Bolivia. Many many of the more affluent actually voted for Morales, but sometimes it seems they did that just to watch him fail, and therefore be able to lament "We'd LIKE to have an indigenous president but clearly they just can't lead". Maybe they have some genuine gripes on his apparent attempts to divide the country and ignore the genuine requests of the mestizos (Spanish descent ruling class) rather than unite everybody and respond to all. A tidy little mess you can get yourself into running a depressed and unconfident nation.
Not like ours. All proud and prosperous - regardless the home loans, the terrified undertones (we're still all being Lerts I notice...) and the need for bigger 4WD than ever before (no Hummers sighted yet. The odd one went past me in Cochabamba to my own great terror.)
Must be off to distribute the crappy gifts to my Brisbane friends...
Chau,
Michael.
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4 comments:
Just you wait until you've been here for as long as you were in Bolivia, you'll be then trying to convince Australian custom officials that your Australian visa has expired and here's fifty bucks from inside your shoe, and that you promise never to come back or there will be trouble!
xox Rups
Back in Australia for a week now and... you're right.
All I want to do is go for three weeks to visit my brother in American visa. I know you really hate illegal immigrants and all - although I can't think why since you incarcerate them all in detention camps and keep them safely out of sight. This much paperwork could take me a lifetime to put together. Maybe I should take my tourist dollars somewhere else where it’s far more exciting and probably easier to get in - like Australia or Iraq.
What?!! Yeah, that's right. I hate illegal immigrants. They take all our jobs and marry all our women and then abduct them and take them all in a space ship to outer planetary systems to conduct strange experiements on them. Weirdo.
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