Thursday, August 23rd .....

We had the editor of the Launceston Examiner as our guest speaker at Rotary on Tuesday evening.  He gave us twenty minutes of the party line and then, foolishly, asked for questions.  Of course, we all wanted to know about media bias, how do they choose which Letters to the Editor get printed, if someone came with half a million dollars of advertising and wanted a specific editorial printed, what would happen, and so on.  Sturdily, he held to the fiction that his newspaper is independent (it’s part of the Fairfax stable and if Gina Rinehart took control, she would have him for dinner.)

One thing he did say was that he believes the centralisation of reporting staff would lead to better articles and, as if by magic, I had read one the previous Sunday in The Sunday Examiner.  Written by Sam de Brito of Fairfax Media, it set out to debunk some of the treasured little Aussie myths which bolster our self esteem and help us to understand our place in the world (the little Aussie battler, punching above our weight.

He starts on our athletes and the myth that they make great sacrifices and ‘do it for Australia.'

‘Please.  How many people get the taxpayer-funded opportunity to put their adult life on hold, cocooned in a state of arrested development while they fly around the world chasing a dream?’  It’s the parents of those ambitious, single-minded and selfish people who make the real sacrifices – of energy, time, money and fossil fuel.

He then takes a swipe at some other myths: We’re egalitarian ‘despite the vertiginous gap between rich and poor, the most concentrated media ownership on the planet and the fact we’re home to the richest woman on earth and still think she deserves a widdle tax break.’

We’re laid-back, yet we work the longest hours of any nation in the developed world’ (is this true?)

We’re bronzed aussies, yet 61% of Australians are either overweight or obese and we’re ranked the fifth fattest nation on earth.

We believe in a fair go, except if you’re a 13-year old Afghan boat person .  Or you’re a gay couple who wants to get married.  Or you’re disabled.  Or Aboriginal.  Or Muslim.

We get on with it, and don’t complain, yet perpetuate one of the most vexatious, self-centred talk-back cultures in the Western world.

I haven’t copied the whole article but you get the idea. I suppose people might say it’s easy to be negative but I’m enough of a cynic to enjoy when someone pricks the smug bubble in which too many of us seem to live.

Sunday, August 19th .....

We had an invitation to the opening of a new gallery in Deloraine last night.  On the bottom of the invitation it said ‘Black Tie’.  Beauty, said Marilyn, rubbing her hands together.  We’ve hardly been out for weeks and a black tie affair was the perfect vehicle for us to re-enter society.  I’d been suffering from a sore back for a couple of days but even that wasn’t going to get me out of going.  All dolled up – Marilyn in sparkly black and silver and me in my dinner suit – we headed off to the ‘do’. 

The gallery is in the main street of Deloraine and has previously been a second-hand furniture shop.  Cindy, the owner has cleaned it up with new paint and it’s a very welcoming space.  She’s a very well-known quilt-maker but makes a whole range of other crafty things for sale.  The place was packed with all the local hippies in their finery.

I misunderstood the meaning of ‘black tie’.  In my naivety, I thought it meant wear a dinner suit with formal shirt and black bow tie.  Not any more, apparently!  Among the crowd of 100 or so, there were three dinner suits: the first was an elderly gentleman who seemed bewildered and I think he had come to the wrong function.  The second was a man of my age, wearing a dinner suit I suspect he inherited from his father (or even grandfather), and the third was me.  Every other man had been dressed by Vinnies. 

Unironed shirts were popular as were a variety of hats.  Several men wore over-large overcoats; one, in fact, kept tripping on his.  Dreadlocks are in, semi-shaved chins are de rigeur, boots are an essential fashion accessory.  Most seemed to have made a point of not combing their hair.

For the women, think shabby.  Fur coats are back (one attractive young woman bought hers at the City Mission for $15 and wears it everywhere!).  Again, boots are in, worn with everything.  Even the kids looked odd.  One little girl wore pink wellies with her red dress, a teenage girl sported a man’s khaki trenchcoat complete with belt, and a bowler hat to set it off.

The food was eccentric.  The first trays brought around had little spoons filled with tofu and shredded seaweed, then we had sushi with a dollop of guacamole on top, followed by Curry Puffs on sticks.  There was plenty of wine and the supply seemed endless.  When we left after an hour and a half, it was still flowing freely.  No doubt the party kicked on, but we had an hour’s drive to get home so left them to it.

This has been the only black tie affair that we have been invited to this year and we stood out like sore thumbs.

Saturday, August 18th .....

As I drive into Launceston, there’s a farm dam on the right, not far from the road and very popular with black swans.  During the summer there was a thick growth of reeds in the middle of the dam but they have all but died off with the cold weather.  Over the past week or so, pairs of swans have been building their nests in the shallow water; there were four when I last looked but that number could increase to ten or more by the end of next month.

I checked Wikipedia to see whether the nest were floating or built up from the bottom and discovered some extraordinary information about swans’ mating habits.  They mate for life (I knew that) but about a quarter of all pairings are homosexual.  Apparently, the gay couple acquire eggs by forming a relationship with a female and then chasing her away when she produces the eggs.  Alternatively, the two males will drive off a female sitting on her eggs and take them over.  Do the chicks from that ménage suffer in later life?  The Christian lobby tell us that children need both a mother and father.  Does that apply to birds as well?

In Tasmania, the government is talking about allowing gay marriage.  I wonder if they should take evidence from an ornithologist before they draft the legislation.

I’m reading a book at the moment written by Charles Todd, one of a series. It’s in the tradition of Agatha Christie mysteries with the hero a Detective Inspector who has just returned from WW1, suffering from shell shock.  He’s a psychological mess and carries around with him, in the back of his mind, the voice of his platoon sergeant, Hamish, who had been summarily executed on the battlefield for so-called cowardice.

There’s lot to like about the books.  Charles Todd is, in fact, a mother and son writing team, one of whom lives in Oregon and the other somewhere else.  Their descriptions of English life in the 1920s are excellent and they capture the nuances of country villages very well.  Hamish is, as you would expect, Scottish and the way they capture his accent is outstanding.  Just occasionally, an Americanism slips in: putting sugar and cream in tea, and a load of lumber being delivered to the cart-maker.  However, I suppose they are writing for an American audience and we all know that Americans can’t cope with anything except their own narrow perceptions on the world.

This time next week we will be joining the ship.  Our previous cruises have been on ships like the Diamond Princess and the Volendam, marketed for the mature traveller who enjoys some of the finer things in life without necessarily having the wherewithal to pay for it.  The Pacific Dawn is aimed at younger people and families.  We’re more likely to get a chicken schnitzel for dinner than an escallope of veal, but no doubt we will cope.  The ship was designed by Enzo Piano and built in the early-1990s but a major refit in the past couple of years has given it a new lease on life.

Thursday, August 9th .....

Thank goodness that Australia has won a couple more gold medals in the past few days.  I had visions of the team coming back to Australia with their collective tails between their legs and being ignored by the usually-adoring public.  Even more worrying was the thought that our lack of success would lead to calls for more government funding to make sure we win more medals at the next Olympics.

I can remember the Montreal Olympics in 1976 when Australia did not win a single gold medal.  The immediate reaction was to throw money at the problem.  It took two or three Olympic cycles before we (the Australian public) were satisfied and we have now been locked into continuing funding of elite sport to the tune of some $170 million per year.  Just think what else we could do with that money.

The questioning has already started with so-called experts telling anyone who will listen what we should do to fix the problem.  The excuses are also rolling out – our best coaches are working overseas, we can’t afford to keep them in Australia, and so on.  As well, though, more and more people are starting to look at our obsession with Olympic gold medals and asking what spin-off benefits we receive from the spending.  Dr Steve Georgakis from Sydney University says:

“The notion that if you support the elite, it will stimulate interest at a grass roots level where kids follow by example, having gained an interest in swimming and sport is rubbish. It’s never been validated or supported.”

Somewhere I read of one commentator who was bemused by the fact that we, the second most obese nation in the world, is spending millions on a handful of elite athletes and almost nothing on sports which genuinely attract kids to take part: netball, soccer, gymnastics, etc.

I’ve been mulling this over for the past few days but my thoughts gelled when I saw Gruen Sweat last night.  The show is dissecting the marketing hype surrounding  the Olympics and last night they featured two mock ad campaigns addressing the question: how would you convince people to accept no government funding for Olympic athletes?  Both agencies took the tack of what else we could do with the money with such ideas as ‘for the same amount of money we could provide homes for 1000 homeless people or support Jason to run 15^th in his heat of the 800m’.  It was impressive stuff but I wouldn’t take much convincing that we have missed the plot.

Australians like to think that we ‘punch above our weight’ but we pay a high price for a bit of cheap pride. Maybe this Olympics will give us a reality check.

I am writing this as a Tasmanian whose government is closing schools and hospital beds but can still find $5 million to sponsor the Hawthorn Football Club to play five games of football in Launceston each year.  I can’t help thinking of the Roman idea of providing bread and circuses to keep the populace happy in the hope that it will stop them revolting.  Maybe it’s time we encouraged people to be more revolting.

Wednesday, August 8th .....

I’m reading a book at the moment called Finders Keepers by Belinda Bauer.  It’s nothing startling: a fairly typical police procedural but one part did make me draw breath.  Describing a reporter, Ms Bauer produced this extraordinary paragraph:

The third thing that made her formidable was that she was Australian – to which there was no defence. It made her bold enough to doorstep the most hostile of targets, thick-skinned enough to deflect the most brutal of insults, and so whiny that unfaithful politicians, lifelong criminals and hardened police press officers routinely crumbled before her – preferring exposure, censure and even jail to another minute of her nasal, mosquito-in-the-ear wheedling.

Well, that’s telling us!

I really had mixed feelings about the author but I’m now hooked and will look for her stuff again.

I’ve been whinging about the Olympics but I can’t resist watching it, even if I have to put up with the rubbish being spouted by the so-called commentators.  I know it’s hard to fill all those hours with genuine and interesting comment (and I couldn’t do it) but it’s hard sifting through the dross for the occasional glimmer of gold.  However, I turned on this morning to see Sally Pearson’s race and was enthralled by the best interview I’ve seen yet in this Olympiad.  Mark Nicholas knew what he was talking about, showed just the right amount of delight in Sally’s success and drew a terrific picture of her journey to this point.  And he’s a pom!  Our people could learn a lot from his professional attitude.

Thursday, August 2nd .....

I haven’t got myself involved in the Olympics this year as much as I have in the past.  I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with all the hype, all the unreasonable expectations of the athletes and the appalling medal count.  I’m sure Baron de Coubertin didn’t have this in mind when he resurrected the Games in 1896.  In fact his initial idea was to improve education by developing a focus on exercise. He later broadened this to suggest that sport could bring peace to the world.   He said:

Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true Free Trade of the future; and the day it is introduced into Europe the cause of Peace will have received a new and strong ally.

Another reason I’m a bit off the Games is the inanity of the commentators.  On the first day I heard someone (maybe Fast Eddie) talk about one of the Australian teams as ‘a pelaton of potential’.  Huh!  Creative use of language is a good thing; creative abuse is another thing entirely.

Yesterday, at the finish of the Men’s Rowing Eights, won by Germany, the talented commentator talked about ‘a top-class germinate’.  I thought I was watching Gardening Australia.  However, the best one came in a judo match.  Close to the finish the Australian was leading a fellow from Georgia 10 points to 1.  The Georgian was striving manfully to throw the Australian to the ground and the commentator said, ‘it doesn’t matter how many yukos he gets, he really needs a waza-ari.’  Wonderful!

It’s going to become my new mantra for life:  It doesn’t matter how many yukos I get, I’ll always strive for a waza-ari.

Tuesday, July 31st .....

I’ve already had a bit of a whinge about the Tasmanian weather in a previous post but the reality is that nothing much can be done about it and life just has to accommodate it.  Certainly an effective heater, warm clothes and good soup help to mitigate the problem but, if you life in Tasmania you have to accept, at some point, scraping ice off the windscreen, cold sniffly noses and numb fingers.

The usual Tasmanian response to the first of the icy blasts is to leave and I suspect there are more Tasmanians in Surfers Paradise in July than in Hobart.  That’s not even counting the Grey Nomads who flock like seagulls to the sun.  The habit becomes so entrenched that many Tasmanians retire to the Gold Coast expecting it to be one long holiday but, of course, it’s not.  It doesn’t take long before they start to miss their friends and familiar neighbourhoods and come back with their tails between their legs.

Anyway, we’re starting to miss the sun and decided to have a cruise to charge us up with a dose of Vitamin D.  We’re on the Pacific Dawn, sailing out of Brisbane on Saturday, 25^th August for a week in the South Pacific.  Brisbane was really the only option in August as everything else was booked out but it will give us a chance to see Madeleine before we set sail.

Another idea we looked at was a week on the Sunshine Coast or in North Queensland but, by the time we paid for the accommodation, all the meals, etc, it was a much easier option to go cruising, so it’s all arranged.  We fly direct to Brisbane on August 24^th, will have dinner with Madeleine and join the cruise on the 25^th, returning on September 1^st.  It should be lots of fun.