Sorry

All the snippy things that I might find myself saying about being back in Australia, back in Sydney, need to be shelved today because of this, the long overdue acknowledgment of the wounds inflicted on indigenous communities by Federal governments of this country. May this hopeful gesture mark a turning point in Australian history.

Reading the entrails

I made it back to Sydney and so did all my bags. Waiting in the long queue for customs, an official started chatting and asked me what I did for a living. I told him I taught English Literature and he waved me through the gates. Even though I didn’t have the satisfaction of exceeding the duty-free booze allowance, this struck me as a particularly good omen for re-entry into terra Australopithecus. This blog has been sorely neglected but I’ve managed to get a job and find a place to live since hitting the ground. I’ve also eaten variously formatted trout several times and righteously emptied a number of glasses of sauvignon blanc. There’s ceviche marinating right now and a zillion photos of the Taj Mahal to putter through.
Oh look, here’s one. My guide ran into a friend in the gardens at the back-end of the Taj and they spent half an hour taking winning photos like this. If only I had a picture of the Harbour Bridge to match it.

Here and there

I missed the biggest barbie day of the year in Sydney without too much regret. Last year on Straya/Invasion Day I traversed the city twice on public transport. The buses and trains were for the most part full of bright-eyed youngsters keeping alive the great Australian tradition of getting tanked and affectionate in public places. They wore Aussie flags and Southern Crosses on their backs and green and gold stripes of zinc on their cheeks; peel-off flag tattoos from the Tele emblazoned many surfaces. The kids seemed to have been pulled from every shelf of the demographic pie shop and I wondered how they had come to accept and express so apparently uncritically the true blue lamington dogma. If the holiday was just a pretext for social interaction, why all the nationalist paraphernalia? Mostly though, I just wished they’d stop singing Waltzing Matilda. Things got a bit uglier later in the day: flags turned into drunken superhero capes; off-key singing turned into shouty aggro incoherence and corpses began to cover the pavements of the Cross. Waterside picnics con vino (chardonnay the tipple for special occasions like Australia Day) aside, I wasn’t devastated to pass it up this year.

The 26th January 2008 began far too early in the morning for me. I rose at 3.30am in order to catch a train from murky, menacing Gaya station. The train was late and I huddled in my blanket feeling very cold and cranky. Eventually the train shunted in and out with me aboard and I arrived in Varanasi, the most ancient city I’ve ever visited. Here in Shiva’s city, I discovered that the 26th January is also India’s Republic Day, this year celebrating the 58th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of India. More people milled on the streets and ghats of Varanasi than in Sydney but the milling was a little more low-key.
Lots of sari-strolling, marigold wreaths, floating candles, paper flags (none worn as capes) and perhaps a bit more tooting and beeping on the streets.

As far as I know, Varanasi isn’t a dry city but I haven’t come across any booze vendors thus far; perhaps this is why I also didn’t happen upon any marauding clusters of Antipodeans thronging with nationalist fervour. Varanasi may be one of the few cities in the world not under sharia law where you can pass Australia Day under such conditions.

The Land of the Waratah and Dahlia

I’ve been going all Waltzing Matilda since Kevin 07 went official. I’m still thrilled about the election outcome and the delay in the results – due to a blackout in Bagamoyo – has only served to prolong the glee. I knew the full moon would come to good. It’s an odd jubilation, the excitement being more that the Libs lost than that Labor won. Except for Maxine. ‘Oh, Maxine,’ I keep finding myself murmuring.

I got such pleasure out of watching Howard’s concession speech. Schadenfreude is cheap, but gee, it can be fun.

There’s much that’s cheering here. Howard’s whole ‘My Fellow Australians’ spiel is one that I’ll be happy not to hear for a while. Shades of reality TV too, with the statement, delivered fists clenched, that prime ministership is an unbelievable experience. Like, totally. The joyously shickered hecklers interrupting in this clip are great, pure Aussie faux pas-dom. I ‘m not sure about Howard’s claim that he has bequeathed the ALP a stronger and prouder nation, Tampa and WorkChoices and the GST and Iraq and Reconciliation Rollback and regional political fiascos all being conveniently edited out of the picture. Still, Howard used the adjective ‘special’ like a genuine evasive battler when he referred to his ‘very special debt of gratitude to Costello.’

The fact that it seems to have been a landslide victory makes me feel slightly less despondent about apparently getting bumped off the electoral roll and so not being able to vote. When I checked the AEC rolls in that bastion of democracy, the Ukraine, I discovered that my name wasn’t on the list and that I didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to re-enrol. Irate emails to the AEC lead me to deduce that the people living at my old address, where I was registered, had sweetly sent my mail back. Probably bloody Liberals who got wind of my pinko tendencies when a mail-out from the Radical Separatist Treehugging Femo-Front (ah, the RadSTFFront, those were the days) arrived and decided to sabotage my vote. Elizabeth Bay is full of them.