If New Zealand were Northern California, then Australia is definitely Southern. There is a flashy side (Sydney/Los Angeles,) a quirky side (Adelaide/Pasadena,) and the beachy/industrial complex of Perth/San Diego. The people have a feral joi de vivre that comes from their unique history of being a continent of incarceration at the end of the world. These British Texans, they make do: From being some of the best ersatz engineers in all of creation to finding the simple pleasures of life in a sunset atop a camper van with a frosty VB in the shadow of Uluru.
When the cat’s away, the mice will play, however. And play they do. The wilderness is not just contained outside, but within, just under the surface. In some cases on the surface, I have never seen so many human canvasses in such proximity. Maybe thatʼs why the liquor laws are so strict in the larger cities, which I learned firsthand. A lot of their history is based on prisons, prison insurrections, citizen insurrections, government strikes, police strikes, that often ended in baton strikes. As the song says, the women glow and men plunder.
The first hospital in Sydney was built by a syndicate of rum barons at the urging of the colonial government. For the sole right to import and thus gain a monopoly of 45,000 gallons of rum to the colony, the governor of New South Wales invited two merchants to build a hospital to serve the prison workforce. The governor could not get funding by any other means. This serves as a metaphor for Australia: expedient dealings (or some might call victimless crimes) are the norm for the people of the land Down Under. Fitting that hospital now serves as one of the buildings of the NSW Parliament.
The interesting thing I learned here is that they really do not discuss their history: not about the penal colony, not about the Aboriginal injustices of the past, nor of their exploitation at present. They, like their New Zealand counterparts, pay lip service to the ancestral 60,000-year-old caretakers of this land, but there are no reservations, no casinos, no mobility, and no hope.
The anomaly of this whole country is Melbourne, which has become one of my favorite cities in the world. It reminded me of my childhood in Philadelphia; the streets lined with comforting sycamore trees and the quaint row homes. Philadelphia finds itself in the casted shadows of New York and the District of Colombia, much like Melbourne finds itself in the umbra of Sydney and Canberra. And in that shadow, like beautiful toadstools, creativity flourishes. This is why Melbourne has a distinct culture, unlike the rest of the country. The streets exude je ne sais quoi. So many famous artists hail from this city of four seasons in one day: Cate Blanchett, Kylie Minogue, Olivia Newton-John, Flea, Ben Mendelsohn, Isabel Lucas, and even Ruby Rose. There are few cities outside of America where I feel I could live peacefully and comfortably, but Melbourne has definitely become one.