¡Prohibido!

This pic was taken at one of my favourite Sydney stomping/sploshing grounds, the beautiful Coogee beach. The beaches are possibly the best thing about this city. How lucky are we to be able to consume and pollute to our hearts' content, and then still stroll down the street to stretches of golden sand and crisp clear water? This is where we go to connect with the essential Australia - to get seriously laid-back and enjoy our home "girt by sea". Welcome to Sydney!

But, just before you kick off your thongs and rush out there, I will ask you to take a moment to read the rules and regulations:



Still feel like swimming? Perhaps, like me, you feel more like leaping into the waves and drowning yourself. As long as you do it between the flags, I don't think they've got a sign up for that one yet. And I'm not sure what gets to me more: the sheer negative weight of so many items with red lines through them, or being described as a "user of this facility". Dude, I thought we were just going to the beach. I recently read Death Sentence - Don Watson's lament on the state of public language in Australia - and this is precisely the kind of thing that would get him riled up.

I also wonder what chain of events led to the council putting up a little picture to prohibit the use of kites. Did someone get hit in the eye? Tangled in the string? Or was it just a case of locals who have nothing better to do than ring up and complain?


It makes me reminisce with fondness about the relative chaos we lived with in Colombia. In Cartagena, the way the buses veered towards the curb and the conductor gestured madly out the open door, trying to coax people onboard. A couple of times I was almost shocked into getting onto a bus going who knows where. It was comical, but here we have the other extreme - drivers won't let you on if you're not standing at the bus stop. One morning I saw a man sprinting towards the stop as the driver closed the doors and rolled the almost empty bus about five metres forward to a red light. The passenger mimed his pleas through the safety glass of the door, while the driver looked at something very interesting on the other side of the street. It's almost like they don't want you to get on. And why? I'm guessing, but I'd say it's because if they let you on somewhere other than the bus stop and you have an accident, State Transit becomes liable.



I still remember the little thrill and the frescura of jumping into the back seat of a taxi in Colombia and not putting on a seatbelt. Meanwhile, in Australia, my mother-in-law who is visiting at the moment is slowly learning to buckle up every time we go out in the car. "Nos pueden poner una multa", we explain to her ($253 dollars and 3 demerit points), more to poke fun at the way things are done here than to convince her. And obviously it's not about money, but safety. Still, it does raise the question of where basic common sense and self-preservation leaves off and legislation begins. At what point do you say that people are allowed to take acceptable risks, and are we starting to go overboard?

I could go on to talk about new laws on car child restraints and caesarean sections, but hey, it is a beautiful day out, and despite all those warning signs, the water is calling. And for the first time in quite a while, I'm actually starting to feel like there might be a viable middle way.

Flamin' galah!

Lately I've been thinking about how our wildlife informs our national character. A book I've just finished reading pointed out that one of humans' intrinsic tendencies is to imitate, whether it be parents, spouses, work colleagues, or even the natural environment. And I reckon the author is onto something.

There's a desert-like rawness about the Australian character. At times this manifests itself as a beautiful honesty and unaffected, easygoing charm. At other times it's a complete lack of grace. It is attractive, but not in the way that beauty is packaged by the world's largest and most dominant outlets (Hollywood for example). Aussies make good larrikins, good sportspeople and this is reinforced by what we call our tall-poppy syndrome - which at its worst is basically a preference for the mediocre tryer (read underdog) over the arrogant, beautiful genius.

So what does this have to do with wildlife? Not much, except that the animals here seem to have a similar kind of presence. Take the kookaburra: solid, pleasing to the eye, certainly not flashy. And that call - pure Australian.



Then there's the galah itself. Never seen one on fire, but flamin' may well refer to its plumage. It's a really attractive colour combo, too, but look into its eyes and honestly tell me if it's beautiful. It's not, is it? And that strut... not one for the fashion runway.



The cockatoo is next. The cries from these guys shred the air, and the way they swoop around in the sky and perch themselves brazenly on public monuments... could there be anything more like cheeky Aussie teens, or toey blokes with a few beers in them?



My favourite around our suburb is the black cockatoo. It has an unmistakable cry, harsh and plaintive at the same time - it's hard to know what it will break first: your heart or your eardrums. Here's one I caught on camera out the back of our house.



Even the coat of arms... the kangaroo and the emu. Neither winning Miss Animal Kingdom, both kind of cute, hardy, reliable. What is that if not the Australian character?

The hardest decision for a parent to make...

So, the little guy turned five a few weeks ago and we got the green light from Mum to watch... STAR WARS! Great news, but it left me with a difficult call: which order should we watch the films in: release order, or story order, or something else again?



I was about five when I saw the original Star Wars, and it took up a permanent place in my imagination. The Empire Strikes Back had just as big an impact, and Return Of The Jedi tied it all up nicely. Star Wars figures were the toys of choice back then and priced reasonably enough that you could amass a decent collection. My friends and I spent whole days making up scenarios with the figures in the backyard. On hot days we'd create whirlpools in the above-ground swimming pool, creating a whirlpool then chucking in the figures that floated to see who'd be the first to go around five times. One classic scenario took place at the incinerator. This was the large brick fireplace in most backyards where people could burn off their rubbish (outlawed in the early '80s I think). One day, when my friends' dad had just finished burning off, the snowspeeder "crashed" on the edge of this pit of smoldering ash and we had to quickly assemble a rescue squad to get them out. Thanks to some brave Star Wars figures, the snowspeeder and its crew were saved. But many characters suffered severe burns, and poor Greedo never made it out of the ashes. Lucky we had two of him.



My son will never know the joys of playing that close to an incinerator, and with the figures now going for about $30 a pop, he won't be collecting those any time soon. But his imagination may still yet be populated with Banthas and Jawas, X-Wings and AT-ATs, Gamorrean Guards and Mon Calamari.

I want my son to share the joy, but as you can see, it's also an opportunity to indulge in a second childhoood - why else do we have kids?. So, since I've never watched the films in storyline order, I decided we ought to do it now. The pause button got a major work-out, as I stopped mid-scene to answer all the questions and show off my useless knowledge of Star Wars characters ("That one is Nien Nunb") while my wife looked across at me as if to say "who is this person I married?".



After six weeks, we wrapped it up with Return Of The Jedi last night and I'd totally recommend doing the films in this order - for Star Wars newbies and old fans. It helps you forgive the naffness of the first film, and recognise the constraints George Lucas had, trying to construct a storyline with such a massive arc. Put together, the six films work as a surprisingly believable story of Annakin Skywalker/Darth Vader's turn to the dark side, and his return to the light.

The little guy's precis: It's a movie about real people who have sticks that is light, and there's a worm and bounty hunters. May have to work on the blurb-writing skills...

Where the streets have no name

Ever had one of those "of course!" moments with song lyrics? You know when you've sung along with something countless times, could even write the words down if pressed, yet you've never really understood wtf it means? It happened to me with the U2 classic the other day. I'd always assumed it had something to do with religion - Bono was all preacherman swagger and righteous vocals back then. Probably some biblical city I figured, you know, with no street names.

Then I thought back to the video clip, where they're playing a surprise gig on top of that building, and I'm like, hang on... they don't have street names in a lot of American cities, do they? Is the whole thing just about four Irish dudes going to the USA?



Subsequent research has taught me the wrongness of that theory, but the reason I got onto the subject is that the streets do have names in Sydney - unlike Bogota. Not sure how much of a difference it makes most of the time. "I got stuck on Parramatta Road," is more or less equivalent to walking into a meeting late in Bogota and blaming it on la septima (Seventh Avenue). Everyone knows what you mean, rolls their eyes in sympathy the same way.

The numerical approach does make it easier to get your bearings. Where is 34th street? One block past 33rd, you moron! Tough market for satnavs.

On the downside, you don't get to celebrate famous plants/explorers/places as gratuitously. Some new suburbs in Sydney even go with a theme. Raby out near Campbelltown, for example, is all aircraft related - Lockheed Street, Spitfire Drive, Kittyhawk Crescent, Cessna Place. No Focker Road, which must have disappointed the schoolkids in the area.



And it's not just the streets that have names in Sydney. One thing that struck me after a short trip to Melbourne was how many words there are on buildings, shopfronts, facades...



OK, so that's a shite example (it was the best I could find between the bus stop and the office!), but it does your head in after a while - the world as an advertising placard. How about one day of the year when we cover up all words on public display? Few people would thank you for it in the current economic climate, but wouldn't the city be a nicer place without all that racket going on?

What we did on our summer holiday

If I told you that one of the highlights of our end-of-year holiday was building a compost heap, you might assume that the trip was a bit of a fizzer. But bear with me - watching grass decompose is a lot more exciting than watching it grow.

We spent Christmas and New Year on what is becoming a yearly pilgrimage to Tasmania. My brother and sister-in-law live on a property about an hour outside of Hobart, and for us city folk, it's a huge gulp of fresh air. At the risk of sounding like a try-hard hippie, you do feel more in touch with the land and the turn of seasons there. This year we noticed the grass was a little bit dryer than last year, and it hadn't been cut or bailed yet. The berry crop was huge (no complaints there) and the cherry farms in the area hadn't started picking yet (major disappointment, obviously).

The house isn't connected to town water so they're really dependent on regular rain. A good shower can mean that they don't have to go out and water the veggie patch and orchard (saving them a couple of hours' work), so dark clouds are welcomed over the horizon. As we sat around chatting at night, I'd find myself getting unnaturally excited by the sound of drops on the roof. "It's raining!" I'd say, probably grinning like a madman.

While we're there we try to help with odd jobs, and this time we joined in building a compost heap. We followed a special "recipe", based on something called bio-dynamics - a theory of farming developed by Rudolf Steiner. You might have heard of Steiner schools - his ideas on education form the basis for those. He's also well known as a philosopher and he even dabbled in economics. "He had his fingers in a few pies, didn't he?" I commented to my brother. "Mate, you haven't got enough pies for all his fingers," was his reply.

As we worked it was a bit like making a lasagne, except with wet grass, hay, dirt, chook poo... ok, ok, it's not sounding much like lasagne, is it? But I'll persevere with the metaphor - we tossed on salt (crushed eggshell), pepper (basalt dust), special herbs (nettle, comfrey) and, finally, a special preparation which my brother keeps in a jar buried at the bottom of the veggie patch. Very secret farmer's business. Here we are congratulating ourselves on our work.



When we finished the heap stood pretty tall, but over the next week it settled down. The day before we left my brother took me over there, stuck a wire into the compost for a minute, then pulled it out and told me to touch it. It was hot! That's the material breaking down. My brother's smile was like the one I had when I was listening to the rain.

On other matters, it's already the second month of 2009, and as you can tell, my New Year's Resolutions didn't include updating this blog more regularly. It does feel that as Sydney becomes the norm for us, and Bogota recedes into memory, I've got less and less to say about the differences between the two places. Never mind. The plan is still to go back eventually, and when I do, this blog should come in handy.

Pod people

No socks or jocks for me this Father's Day - check out what I scored:


Pretty cool eh? When I registered online, they said I was the 17th last person to get one in Sydney. "There are that many people in Sydney without iPods?" I asked in disbelief. Seriously, around the CBD nearly everyone has the earplugs in. And having done it for a few weeks now, I can definitely see why.

It's like having your own personal climate control. Chilly wind blowing your way? A bit of salsa - MarkTunes recommends El Preso - will temper that. Sweltering spring day? Stick on Eisbär by Grauzone and feel the temperature drop. And if you're just walking along the street and could do with a boost, there's nothing like Kurtis Blow's Gimme The Breaks to put a spring in your step. Just be careful listening to drum and bass in enclosed spaces - it's hard standing still with that shit going on.

I've become one of those people who walks along the footpath, oblivious to the sounds around me, and so busy texting that I often bang into people and traffic signs. I don't pay as much attention to the outside now that I've got music in my shell.

In Bogota, you didn't get many people walking around with iPods. That was partly because you try to avoid showing off your cool and stealable gadgets, but also because you got enough songs on the street, in the shops, even in the buses. That wouldn't wash with Sydney-siders. There was actually an advertising campaign recently targeting people who have their iPods up too loud in the train - commuters were getting annoyed by the sound leaking out of the headphones. I often wonder if there's an etiquette for lifts. How far should I turn it down? Sometimes I take my headphones out, just to check that it's not irritating the people around me. Of course, I kinda wish they could hear. In fact, what I'd like to do more than anything is to plug into the PA and pump that mother up to 11 so everyone can hear how cool my songs are. Come on everybody put your hands in the air! I know. They wouldn't appreciate it. There's a reason I'm not a DJ.

Still, in the future I'd like to see an option on mp3 players which would let you "catch" tunes from other devices. If I'm walking along the street and see someone who looks like they're really dancing on the inside, I could point my player at them and pick up whatever tune they're listening to. Technologically possible? Definitely. Invasion of privacy? Probably. Copyright issues? Hmmm. Another one for the "great ideas" file.

May the best mascot win

It's footy finals time again here, for both the AFL and NRL. That would be the Aussie Rules and the Rugby League for those who don't care for acronyms. (Those who don't care for sport, you can probably stop here.) The clear favourites are the Geelong Cats and the Melbourne Storm respectively, and those two teams sum up what I've been pondering lately: mascots.

Geelong have been around for about 150 years now, and for most of that time they've been the cats. It's actually pretty interesting how they got the name, but I'm sure you don't need directions to wikipedia. The point I want to make is that they're not lions, tigers, cheetahs, pumas, leopards, panthers, cougars or even lynxs - they're ordinary house cats. This was their emblem when I was young:


Intimidating eh? We're gonna come out and moult all over you, man. We're gonna kick you to the curb, then scavenge some food scraps while we're at it. Nowadays they're looking a bit more serious.


Could the revamped emblem be behind their recent upturn in form? I mean, there is an argument that names and mascots are self-fulfilling prophecies. Would Usain Bolt be the god of speed that he is today if he'd been christened Ronny Toddlebottom? U Bolt. You couldn't make it up, could you?


Onto the NRL where the favourites are... the Melbourne Storm. Yes, to NSW's shame, the best team in Australia hails from the city which doesn't really give a rat's arse about Rugby League, and they can still get more people to a game than we can in Sydney. What about that name - awe-inspiring, isn't it? You can imagine the thunderous tackles, the lightning runs, splitting the opposition defense apart. There would have been some hefty pats on the back for the person who came up with that name. It also subverts the jibe Sydneysiders always trot out about Melbourne: it rains all the time. No man, it storms. Plus it's great for headlines. We're going to rain on your parade. Hail storm. Storm warning. Etc etc. It's a copywriter's (wet) dream.


My team is the eels and this is the logo I grew up with and still prefer. Slipperyness is a useful quality in football, but we lack backbone and grit. In the late '80s they changed the mascot to make it an electric eel, but that was a bit naff, and I feel it marked a period where we lost touch with our roots.


Most people's second team (and the usual choice of celebrity visitors) is Souths, aka the Rabbitohs. How can you not like a bunny? Though I do wonder what colourblind people make of the jersey. "Bit plain, isn't it?"


My second team is probably St George, as that's where I grew up. However the team has a serious identity issue to resolve before they can expect to win the premiership: are they St George, or the dragon? Given that the Saint slew the dragon, I don't believe you can be both; or to put it another way, you can't have your lance and eat it too.