The Final Countdown

G'day

If my year in Melbourne were an Aussie footy match then the third quarter would have just finished and I'd be about to start the final quarter. Yes, it's been nine months since I arrived and exactly three months until I leave - but let's not think about that too much (sorry Britain, but while I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, I'd be quite happy spending another six months to a year in Melbourne).

So, in the tradition of retrospectives, I'd thought I'd look back over the last three months and dispense some more words of wisdom (or bullshit, as some of my mates here may tell me) about Australia and Australians.

What I've read
As you may remember, during my year here I'm only reading Australian literature. I'm a pretty slow reader (I usually read in bed and it's a trigger for falling asleep so if I manage a chapter that's quite an achievement) so there haven't been that many tomes added to the list, but there've been some goodies - and one real stinker!

• Three Dollars by Elliott Perlman - pretentious and overly (unsuccessfully) profound book about Melbourne's recession in the 90s, but the portrayal of the city is interesting, especially at the end, which all takes place about five minutes from where I live.
• Town Like Alice by Neville Shute - I read this because I was going to Alice Springs (the Alice of the title) but actually the whole point of this hideous, racist, dull-beyond-belief book is that the main female protagonist wants to change a smll town in Queensland into a 'town like Alice' and Alice Springs features hardly at all. Avoid this book at all costs!
• An Imaginary Life by David Malouf - an extraordinary book. It's about an exiled Roman poet (Ovid) and his friendship with a wild boy that he meets, so it's not exactly brimming with Australian references or a bundle of laughs, but the author is a local and the writing is stunning (apparently there's a subtext about dispossessed aborigines and indigenous rights but you can enjoy it without knowing anything about that).
• The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville - two books by the same author might seem a bit limiting (I also read her The Secret River) but she has an ability to write in very different but equally appealling styles. This one is about a small community and a broken bridge. Sounds dull. Isn't.

Things I don't like about Melbourne/Australia
Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. Things that get on my nerves here, in no particular order:

• Lack of plugs in sinks - for a nation that is keen on saving water (and needs to be) it's astonishing that I have yet to see a plug in a sink in a bathroom, meaning if you're washing your face or shaving or whatever you have to leave the tap running (or keep turning it on and off but who's going to do that?).
• Adverts - have I mentioned these before? Seriously, not only are there so many ad breaks on TV with so many adverts that you forget what you were watching, but they're so bad that you wonder how stupid the ad agencies' employees are to come up with them and how stupid Australians are to watch them.
• Lack of heating - news flash Melbourne, it does get quite cold in winter. Not UK cold. It never snows in Melbourne and the temperature during the day is pleasantly in double digits, but at night it's chilly and yet most homes have only the most basic of heating, if any. In denial would be a psychiatrist's conclusion.
• Public transport - now I know I've mentioned this before but come on, trams that are difficult to board even for able-bodied people and which run every 15 minutes, and an appallingly inefficient train system do not a public transport system make.
• Cars - so what do you do if you live in a city with a useless transport system? You drive of course. Everywhere. On your own (anyone heard of car sharing?). In stupidly big cars. And then you complain about the amount of traffic on the roads as if you weren't actually part of the problem.
• Parrochial news - so it's the six o'clock news. There are wars going on. A global recession. Etc, etc, but what's the main news story on the Melbourne news? Usually something about a traffic jam in the eastern suburbs.
• Winter - it's soooo boring! Yes, the weather's not bad but there's nothing to do. At least in the northern hemisphere you have Christmas and New Year to see you through the short, cold days. Here it's just June, July, August.

Things I like about Melbourne/Australia

• Naming songs in programme ads - you know when you watch TV and they advertise a new programme, maybe a new series or something, and they use a song, often a recent one, as the soundtrack to the ad, and you sit there thinking 'What's the name of that song again?'. Well, here they put the name of the song on the screen so you know what you're listening to. Little things...
• Bag packing in supermarkets - get ready Sainsburys cos I'm going to be complaining when I get back. About what? About the fact that in every supermarket here you just dump your trolley/basket at the till and the assistant packs everything into bags. You pay, pick up the bags and leave. It's great. Little things 2.
• Melbourne making an effort - so yes, winter's dull, but I have to admit that Melbourne does make a big effort to make it less so. At the moment there's a film festival on, and next weekend is the city's Open House (when usually-closed buildings open up to the public). Maybe it comes out of the city's inferiority complex with Sydney, but who cares? It makes it a more interesting place to live.
• AFL - I LOVE Aussie football. Not just the game itself, but the good-humoured enthusiasm people have for it.
• Australians - and last but not least, and following on nicely from my reason for loving the AFL, come Australians themselves. Even in a city as big as Melbourne there's a politeness, friendliness and sense of humour that's like the British at their best, but here it's all the time. There's a simplicity to Australians (which isn't the same as saying they're simple) that makes them a joy to be around. Three months from now it'll be a sad day saying goodbye.

And that's it for now. More (some) photos next time.

G'ye

Cliff