Being an Australian. What is that?
As I look back I can sub-divide my life in many ways: single and married, young and old, skint and having a few bob (and then skint again), happy and unhappy, confident and terrified, loving life and looking then looking for a way to end it so that the only one I wold hurt was me……. Well, that is just a few, but you will get my drift.
Another subdivision is Australia, before and after. A Pom, I arrived in Melbourne, well actually Fremantle, but only for a few hours, in September 1974. Apart from a stupid Customs official (another Pom actually) who thought that I was running an International smuggling ring focused on household effects, the day was a happy one. My in-Laws picked me and their daughter up in a brand-new Leyland P76. Okay! We all make mistakes, but they didn’t understand it and nor did I. Many years later we argue about Ford or Holden… That truly amazes and astounds me. Ford, Holden and the Queen: Foreigners all of them.
I knew that I had not made a mistake when Dan and Joyce drove toward the Dandenongs. I suddenly knew that the Australia of my dreams was real and I fell in love with it and I still love it. In my heart I became an instant Australian. I arrived on Thursday and had a job starting Monday.
Not long passed before I went to the MCG and watched Australia and the Windies do battle: I copped a lot of good-humoured Pommie bashing only to find that the bloke that ‘gave me heaps’ was a Pom like me.
Australia has changed and I didn’t expect it not to, but I do worry. I wonder how many younger people can’t spell ‘Banjo Paterson’ and have never heard of Henry Lawson and I wonder who cares….. The Federal Govt set up this little test to see what applicants who want to come to Australia know or have bothered to find out. Sure, maybe I don’t know all the answers, but I’m not applying to come here right now, but if I was I would take the trouble to find out. When I went for my driving test I had to read up a bit. Same thing isn’t it? If you care…….., you look into it, but no, the bleeding hearts say that 5% are failing, so they say “Make the test easier.” Why have it at all then? Make the test so easy that Osama Bin Laden would pass. Come to think of it…. He probably could, because he would probably get out from under his rock and look up the probable questions and answers.
So…. What is an Australian? We still tug at the forelocks of the Queen. We go to war based on American lies. I am not at all sure we are anything like as good as we believe we are. Even at Cricket we seem to be apologising for winning.
Or am I just a Grumpy Old Man???
Bill S.
