The race riots on Sydney’s beaches - Anglo-Australians (”Aussies”) versus Lebanese (”Lebs”) - have repercussions far beyond a drink fuelled punch-up on a sweltering summer week-end.
They have revealed that the “lucky country’s” historic racism lingers on, like a sun cancer just below the skin. Given the right circumstances all the advances of recent years - the abolition of the White Australia policy, the encouragement of a multi-cultural, multi-racial society with emphasis on tolerance and harmony - can apparently vanish overnight. There was time to act to avert trouble but no one had the will.
It does not matter whether England or Australia triumphs in the fifth Test which begins at the Oval tomorrow–the significance of this clash of two cricketing titans has already been established. England is again a power in the game and Australia is the struggling underdog. I see this this an early sign that England and Australia are trading places, not just in sport but in other walks of life as well.
England has been regarded as a class-ridden, arrogant, unreliable, condescending nation, in mourning for its lost greatness. Its sporting efforts have invariably ended in disappointment. Australia was the young, forward-looking, egalitarian country and its many sporting triumphs a symbol of its confidence.
The Rugby World Cup has ended with sweet, sweet victory for England and mortification for Australia. For weeks the Aussies have been accusing the Poms of being “smug” and “arrogant”, of playing “boring and unimaginative” rugby, of being “miserable people living in a cold, old country”. Will England now justifiably rub the Australians’ faces in the mud? And will relations between the two countries never be the same again?
Of course not. Nothing will change. England has been gracious in victory. The team paid tribute to Australia’s gallant effort. English supporters joined Australians in singing “Waltzing Matilda in the stands after the match. Yes, the Australian press reported the result under the headline “Read This And Weep”– and many did. But they were often consoled by English fans who know only too well what it is like to be “gutted” by your team’s defeat.
This is history at its sparkling best–interesting, enlightening, painstaking and objective. If you want to know about prime ministers and politicians, wars and class, economics and production, religion and sport, then look elsewhere. This is a book about people, ordinary Australians, and how they organised their daily life a long while ago.
It describes where they lived, how they shopped, what they ate and how they cooked it, what they drank and why. It tell us how they kept warm and cool, how they lit their houses, what they wore and where they bought it. It begins in the middle of the 19th century when there were less than half a million white Australians and ends with the First World War when there were five million.
We can handle six weeks of World Cup rugby but can we survive six weeks of Australia? Here’s a country just a little over 100 years old, and with only 20 million people, that is a world leader in so many fields, and not afraid to boast about it. Six weeks of seeing and hearing confident, optimistic Australians enjoying their life in their Spring sunshine as our winter closes in may be too much even for Rugby fans.
Review of Australia: a biography of a nation by Jan Morris
This book is a grand encapsulation of all Australia, past and present. It evokes in me just the emotions Australia itself evokes. It astonishes me, it shocks me, it entertains me, it saddens me, it bewilders me, it makes me think there’s rather too much of it and it makes me proud - for who could not be proud for Australia, who has seen the Southern Cross flying floodlit at midnight on Sydney Harbour Bridge?
The scene is familiar to everyone who has watched a Hollywood Western. The lone cowboy has just made camp and is heating his beans and brewing his coffee when a cloud of dust on the horizon or the distance sound of hoofbeats indicates that someone is approaching. The cowboy douses his fire and immediately reaches for his gun.
