Gone Away to Australia

For a few weeks now, The Blog Herald has been running a series called 100 blogs in 100 days. The idea is that a different blog will be highlighted on each of those one hundred days, thereby introducing new readers to blogs they might like. Duncan Riley, who runs the Blog Herald, asked for submissions from his readers and, I have no doubt, was swamped by the resulting response.

Well, today Technorati informed me that Gone Away had risen to the top of the pile and was featured as the blog of the day. Of course, I immediately rushed over there to check and, sure enough, Technorati does not lie (although it can't count - I know my links are increasing all the time but Technorati sticks doggedly to the total it chose ages ago).

I ran all the way home and started laying the table for the hordes of visitors, bought party hats and sent out for a huge celebratory cake, made sure that there was plenty of beer in the fridge, dragged in an assortment of chairs from other rooms and blew up a few balloons. It was as I was laying out the paper plates that I realized it was all wasted; the blog stands or falls on what it is and it's too late to pretty it up somehow and pretend to be anything other than I am. I sat down then, surrounded by those party trimmings, and pondered.

Cause for celebration, indeed, I thought, and what is a celebration without a present? Yes, that's it, a present for Duncan as a symbol of my gratitude for his foolhardiness in selecting my blog. No fancy bows or ribbons on it, however; Duncan is Australian and it's doubtful he'd go for that sorta stuff. But a present at least.

And there I had the clue: Duncan's an Ozzie. I'm supposed to be talking about America and England but inevitably those Ozzies have crept into the posts, particularly the last one, in which I'd lumped all old colonials together. We could have an Australia Day to applaud that land of straight-talking, wry-humored individualists.

So what do I know of Australia? I have never been there but Mad, my son, visited a few years ago and loved the place. And I've had my thoughts about it over the years.

In my youth I subscribed to the standard view of Ozzies at the time: that Australia was a great place but had one drawback - it was full of Australians. The problem with that opinion was that it didn't last very long once I started meeting a few Ozzies. They're just so darn likeable.

Oh, there was the proverbial chip upon the shoulder, that defensiveness about their supposed lack of culture and the resulting disdain for the poms (English). But I had not understood my own pommihood at the time and tended to agree with them. We Southern Africans tried hard to stay a cut above them but I had a sneaking suspicion already that they were very much like ourselves. They had the same experience of life in limitless space, mile after mile of dry, dusty continent. They, too, were groping their way to a new definition of their nationhood in the southern hemisphere.

Later, when I moved back to England, I was often mistaken for an Australian, thanks to my accent. This seemed ridiculous to me at first, there being such clear differences to my ear. As I became accustomed to English accents, however, I began to see that they were right; there is a similarity in the way southern hemisphere old colonials flatten vowels and refuse to move their lips too much. For a while, I even acquired the nickname Rolf (after Rolf Harris, an Ozzie who was big on British TV at the time).

It was the internet that introduced me to more Australians than I'd met in my entire life up until then. And they turned out to be even more likeable than I'd thought. There is something very appealing in their gift for inventing colorful words and swearing beyond the wildest imagination of the hoariest old trooper. If there is a funny way to view anything, those Ozzies will find it and describe it. And the women are worse than the men!

I remember one Ozzie woman in chat who was in the habit of collecting boyfriends and discarding them faster than a roo on the run. Her descriptions of her exes were enough to sear the eyeball (especially when she spoke of one particular pommie bastid who'd let her down) but so brightly colored, one couldn't help but laugh.

And I suspect that it is this that endears us to the Australians more than anything else. Sure, we can admire their sporting prowess (I won't mention the Ashes) and envy them the Barrier Reef, Ayres Rock and the weather. But it's their delightfully coarse and honest humor that we respect above all else. Everyone loves to see pomposity and self-importance taken down a peg or two by a dry Australian comment.

So here's a toast to the Ozzies (well, someone's gotta drink all this beer). Forget all the culture you're so carefully nurturing in Sydney and never lose your clear eye and biting wit. We love you just the way you are!