Christmas in Oz
Extremes of wrath
Ludovic Kennedy
It is absolutely forbidden to bring plants into Australia,' said a notice at Cairns airport — a nice touch when you recall that was just what Joseph Banks was doing when he landed at Botany Bay. We had come to Cairns as our daughter in Sydney had said not to miss the Great Barrier Reef, that 1,000-mile stretch of coral which nearly did for Captain Cook in 1770. It was a disappointment. We had been led to expect multi-coloured coral and multi-coloured fish. But the coral was beige and the fish (apart from a disgusting, dark blue giant clam) grey and rather small. We were told that the coral would have been less beige had not the begin- nings of Cyclone Joy been stirring it up. No sooner had we left than Cyclone Joy hit the coast and gave to Cairns a Christmas without heat, light or telephone and a New Year of floods.
`Nature Shows Extremes of Wrath' shouted the front-page headline in the Sydney Morning Herald. It showed pic- tures of the ravages of Joy and of bush fires raging further south, whose smoke and flames we saw licking the treetops as we motored down the Hume highway for Christmas in a farmhouse in the southern Highlands. The farmhouse was one of many in the area, a hundred acres or more of brown grass for cattle and horses, scattered trees and the statutory watering- hole.
Apart from the livestock and a few parrots and chattering kookaburras there was little animal life, though I was shown a hole where a wombat was said to live. On walks we wore trousers and boots against snakes we never saw. More hazardous were the flies, which seemed proof against
TRAVEL
any repellent: I tried to buy one of those ridiculous hats with dangling corks to discourage them but the local store was out of stock (thank God, said my wife). The nights were cool but the days hot, so on Christmas Day in a temperature of around 30°C our daughter gave us stuffed turkey and bread sauce, and later we heard Australia's Queen approving our policy in the Gulf. On Boxing Day we braved the surf on Seven Mile Beach, tussling against a rip tide which next day carried away two young men who haven't been seen since more grist for the Herald of Nature's wrath. On television we watched the Mel- bourne Test which we lost because of some lousy batting which made our Gurkha son, who captains the British forces team in Hong Kong, hopping mad. Between every over and whenever a wicket fell, there were commercials of an awfulness you would hardly believe.
Then to Sydney (named after the Secret- ary of State who despatched the First Fleet in 1787), and a week in our daughter's charming flat overlooking the harbour and famous bridge. The traffic over the bridge, which includes trains, is now so great that they're building a tunnel underneath. It's a toll bridge, but to keep the flow moving they only charge for entering the city, assuming that those leaving will sooner or later return. We preferred the ferry, a balmy 15-minute journey across the bay which lands you near the opera house and Botanic Gardens.
The people are enormously friendly, open and direct, some quite witty in a Paul Hogan sort of way: sunny dispositions generated by a sunny clime. Never heard anyone say, `G'day, sport' or anything like it. It's not true that you don't see many old people, rather that in summer clothing and holding themselves upright, they are not conspicuous. Some language problems however. 'Friend of yours on the telephone called Tyler,' I said to my son. When he came back, he said, 'Not Tyler, Pa, Taylor.'
The newspapers are as boring as most foreign papers usually are, with a plethora of their own domestic news and none of one's own. But I caught up with a nice item in the Australian about corpses containing pacemakers exploding in crematoria. Mr Reg Roberts, a crematorium director, said, `I have witnessed very appreciable explo- sions, enough to cause the incinerator to tremble and its doors to be blown open,' while Dr Cowling, a pacemaker consul- tant, said he knew of one case where an exploding pacemaker had ripped 11 bricks from a crematorium oven (Golders Green papers, please note). Another unusual item was an advertisement in the Herald by the New South Wales government warning of the perils that await motorists who use radar detectors and jammers to neutralise police radar transmitters in speed traps. `Buy one, use one, sell one,' said the ad, `and you could be fined up to $750. Refuse to surrender a unit to a police officer and you could be fined up to $2,000.' Does this happen in Britain? To reduce road acci- dents further the government has also just introduced legislation requiring people under 25, taxi, bus drivers and drivers of heavy lorries not to exceed an alcohol limit of .02 per cent — equivalent to less than a small can of beer or one glass of wine. The quality of photographs in all the papers is abysmally low.
We had hoped to see the Sydney Test match in the comfort of the flat, but they have a rule that in cities where a Test is being played no live transmissions are allowed until 4 p.m — so as to encourages sluggards to visit the ground. On the day we were at the ground the electronic scoreboard showed those awful telly ads right up to the moment the bowler starts his run. Someone had put up a banner saying. 'How DO 11 PoMS FIT INTO A MINI?' and underneath, 'BECAUSE THEY'RE COL- LAPSIBLE.'
On New Year's Day we had the BBC's New Year's Eve farewell to 1990 con- ducted by the Greatest Living Australian, C. James, whom the Herald's television critic described as 'the bald kid from Kogarah who's just worked out the best key in which to break wind'. I particularly enjoyed the clip of the gushing Kenneth Baker at the Conservative Party confer- ence calling for hands up from those who thought Mrs T the best prime minister we've ever had, followed by a cut to a solitary Mrs T on the platform with right hand held high.
The new aquarium at Darling Harbour must be one of the best in the world. They have set up a lovely stretch of coral, better and brighter than anything in the Great Barrier Reef, with blue and yellow stripy fish to match. The most impressive feature is a tank some 80 by 30 feet on the bottom of which has been laid an enclosed glass passageway. As you move along this, you see sharks and giant sting-rays beside you, below you and, as they cross the glass top of the passageway, literally inches above you: a spooky but exhilarating experience.
Yet my most abiding impression of Sydney was the overpowering presence of thousands and thousands of Japanese tour- ists — Japs in caps; Japs with maps; Japs taking snaps. I had nothing against them personally and they all seemed to behave impeccably, but in such bulk they seemed very slightly to change Sydney's character.
`That's quite a mane you have.'
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