:: One People, Many Cultures ::



::Living Together in Respect and Friendship::

January 26 is Australia Day, or Invasion Day as the Aboriginies call it, when the first fleet landed in Botany Bay in 1788. The natives have a point. Is it right that we celebrate a day when one culture turned up and began to annihalate another?

It’s not as if we think about history on this day. We focus more on the present – recognising Australians who’ve made major contributions to our country and the world, enjoying the strong summer sun and celebrating all that this harsh country has given us. It’s also the day of the Hottest 100, run by the national alternative radio station 2JJJ. All around the country, people gather at parties to listen to the nation’s favourite songs counted down. Our friends gathered at the house I’m staying in for a BBQ and a swim, while listening to 2006 reviewed through music.

What link does this really have to the day white people first arrived en masse at our shores? Might we not be better celebrating the day that our constitution was signed, creating a (mostly) autonomous Australia? But the Aboriginies wouldn’t find much to celebrate in that either. And on January 1st, it’s too close to the New Year for a Hottest 100 to be compiled.

I always say that one of the most interesting, but wearying, things about living in another culture is that you don’t know where to find even the bost basic items. And just finding out can take weeks. Today I spent half an hour in the grocery section of the supermarket looking for celery. Even the shop assistant thought there wasn’t any, but how could a supermarket not stock celery?

When I found it, it wasn’t in a bunch as I expected, but cut into edible pieces. I had to collect the amount I wanted into a bag to be weighed at the cashier. I’m dying to know the rational behind that move. Perhaps not enough people buy celery any more and this is a value-add in attempt to make some money from the few that do.

My keepers (still staying with a friend’s family) turned on the TV this morning to find Discovery Channel had an American documentary on bush fires. It was quite surreal to realise that the subjects were Australian. Bush fires are such a part of Australian life that they hardly require a documentary, but to see someone from the other side of the world had come across to make one seems like overkill.

Until last night, the friends I’d been staying with until recently were worried about their house. The fires have come very close and their local football field is full of helicopters refueling before water dumping trips. But then it started raining last night. We were sitting under an annex in a restaurant on the harbour for a friend’s farewell, when the storm came in. Lightning flashed across the water and the rain became rivers to pour from the annex’s corners. It wasn’t the monsoon rain of January storms that I remember, but neither was it the misty rain of Brussels. Better still, it kept it up all night, an inch of water soaking into the forests and soil and hopefully flowing into dams. If all goes well, the fire fighters will have an easier time of it now.

There’s more to Aboriginal culture than digeridoos and carrobories, but they have the most impact, integrating music, art, dance and storytelling in one go. A couple of years ago, I stumbled across an aboriginal culture centre in Darling Harbour, just under the IMAX theatre. I wanted so much to take Marie there, but when we came last year, it was missing. It didn’t send a good message for our attitudes to Aboriginals and their integration in any form into our society.

Today, I realised that I’d simply misremembered the location by about 100m. I had lunch in Darling Harbour with an old work contact from Japan who’s been living here for 5 years now. After lunch, we took a walk around the Harbour and there it was again. And a show was just about to start. A part Aboriginal man who expresses himself well as both performer and ambassador, sits on stage with a selection of digeridoos and shares his world of animals, music, history and story with the help of modern background music and stunning photo backdrops.

I’m sorry you didn’t get to see it, Marie.

When I last lived in Australia, I used to laugh at the advice that said everyone should drink at least 2 litres per day. I used to drink that much before leaving home. But somehow, I lost that habit when I moved to Japan, then Belgium, then Bhutan. In the past 9 years, I’ve struggled to drink even a litre a day.

When I saw Marie drinking up to 5 litres per day in Bhutan, to my 1, I had to assume that it was a change in habit / need / lifestyle. But now I’m back in Australia, I’m drinking about 5 litres per day myself. It must be the dry air. Australia is still in the middle of severe droughts and Sydney’s water reserves are down to 30%. If it doesn’t rain the next few months, next year will not be a good time to be living here. As it is, people are only allowed to water gardens on Wednesday and Sunday evenings and the government is looking at using recycled water in more places.

My friends recently installed a new toilet and were disappointed not to be able to get the Japanese style with the basin in the top of the tank. It was illegal (in the sense that importing and distribution wasn’t allowed). Why? That toilet seems to be the ultimate in water savings, letting you wash your hands in clean water before using that same water to flush. Another friend was able to shed light on the reason. It seems that the government is looking at plans to use recycled water in homes for (among other things) flushing toilets and those two ideas don’t go together well.

I used to believe that it was as compulsory to be registered with Medicare as it was to vote. I’m coming to learn that neither is really true. I’ve never been interested in politics and wouldn’t trust the person I voted for to live up to the promises that made me choose them anyway, so I took leaving Australia as an excuse to leap off the electoral role. In recent years, there’s been fierce movement among expats who lost their right to vote when they left Australia and want it back. I left the debate to them, mildly surprised that they were being denied.

Yesterday I ducked into the Medicare office to get the forms for signing up again. Again, I’m not particularly interested. I prefer to put my money towards eating well and keeping fit (assurance rather than insurance) and investing the rest so that if I do decide that I need medical help, I’m able to afford it. But it’s compulsory, so in I went. It turns out that I need to prove I’ve returned by supplying 2 documents that prove I’ve rented or bought a property, started work, put children in school or such. If I choose to move in with someone else and keep going with my company, I don’t have a chance of getting any of those documents. Not until I have children and wait for them to be old enough to go to school, anyway.

I guess it will be the same when I reregister for voting. I wonder if the tax man will also deny me my right to pay full tax…

It’s great. I’ve been away long enough that the culture has changed in Australia. I have run a cable through the house where I’m staying so that I can get onto the net without having to bother my friends on their PC. Using their’s usually means booting it up rather than booting them off. If it’s not in use for half an hour, they’ll shut it down. Now I don’t have to worry about that, but it seems that they even shut down the DSL modem if it’s not obvious that I’m using it, so I have to keep switching it back on and renewing my IP.

They even go so far as to turn off the power at the wall, which just didn’t make any sense to me. Of course, I could ask them why, but that takes all the fun out of discovering a new culture. My first plan was to watch what others did to see if this power panic is cultural or just an isolated thing. My cousins don’t but my aunt suggested that many people do probably because of a campaign by the electricity commission saying that you can save 11% on your energy bill by turning appliances off at the wall.

So not only is Australia extremely water conscious, but we’re power conscious as well. Howard may not have signed the Kyoto Protocol, but much of the country is trying to enforce it anyway.

“Do kangaroos really hop down the streets in Australia?” It’s been a while since I’ve been asked this question, but the number of times I’ve heard it is surprising. Of course, I’m part of the problem. Every Aussie abroad spins stories of the wonder of our land and such a question begs a ‘drop bear’ answer.

But then, to say there are kangaroos hopping down the streets of Sydney isn’t far from the truth. I’m staying with friends in Hornsby in a house that backs right onto the Kuringai National Park. They have a wallaby problem in their vegie garden and I’ve seen many of these small kangaroos hopping through the bushland around their house, just shy of the street.