It’s a long journey to Australia
from Beaver County, at least 20 hours by air. So
avoid the hassles of travel, the inconvenience of jet lag and the risks of Deep Vein
Thrombosis. Forget about canceling the papers and putting the animals in kennels. Remove the nuisance of dealing with foreign money,
worries about the water and struggles with a strange language. In Australia we do speak English, but you might
have some problems with the vernacular, and the accent is certainly different. Settle back in your comfortable chair and let me
bring Australia to you.
To Americans, Australia is that big
blob at the bottom of the map, somewhere between Africa and South America. Some years ago a revised map of the world was
published here. It showed the world from our
perspective, with the Northern Hemisphere at the bottom and the Southern Hemisphere at the
top. All the countries were upside down. No longer was Australia ‘down under,’
but Europe, Asia and North America occupied that position.
It looked very odd, but it did make us realize how we had unthinkingly
accepted the tradition of the Northern Hemisphere being the rightful occupier of the top
position on the map.
Australia is a large island
continent with a vast, sparsely populated, central desert area; most of its 19 million
people inhabit the fertile coastal areas. Most
of us live in cities and towns and most of these are near the coast. The largest city is Sydney, but the capital of
Australia is Canberra, an artificially created city where mainly politicians, public
servants, diplomats, journalists and academics live.
It’s our Washington, if you like.
Modern Australia’s start was
more than a little unpromising. What do you
do when your prisons are overflowing and you can no longer send them to America? You put them in boats in rivers until all the
boats are full, and then what do you do? That
was the problem confronting the English Government when the American Revolutionary War
prevented any more convicts being sent to America. Fortunately
Captain James Cook had discovered the east coast of Australia in 1770, and in 1788, eleven
ships containing convicts and soldiers, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, set
sail for the new land. What a relief for
England! Yet again it had found somewhere far
from its own shores to dump its surplus criminals. Thus
the new country was founded, with felons and the military as its first citizens.
Of course the land they came to was
not empty. It was well and truly occupied by
the many tribes of indigenous peoples known collectively today as Australian Aboriginals. They lived by hunting kangaroos, crocodiles and
other animals, fishing the rivers and seas, and gathering foodstuffs from the land. They moved from place to place in their search for
food. White settlement deprived them of their
lands and way of life in much the same way as, for example, the American Indians and Inuit
people have suffered. So, while colonized
Australia has flourished, the Aboriginal story is very different.
Australia is a very cosmopolitan country today. It’s a country of immigrants from all over
the world. The various nations that have made
Australia have brought their customs and cuisines and eating is a multicultural feast. We are only a young country, but now have our own
literary and cultural traditions. But some of
the characteristics of the early days remain. We’re
suspicious of bureaucracy, more than slightly cynical, and there’s a bit of the
larrikan* still lurking in us too. We’re
friendly and open and we love to tell others about our country and ourselves.
I hope you will come here with me.
*Larrikin: an independent or wild-spirited person,
usually having little regard for authority, accepted values etc.
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