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It's always most difficult to talk about your home, but I'll take up the challenge and try and describe my birthplace, Australia, to you.

Australia May 2001

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 15:37:40

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/>Rule number two for Oz - don't stick your hand under anything that a frog might hide under. This applies to televisions sets, newspapers and letter boxes. Oh and there's always a Redback spider (highly poisonous) under the toilet seat.

This is another reason for the phlegmatic character of the average Australian. If you've made it through twenty or thirty odd years of being hunted by everything that walks, crawls or swims you'd be pretty laid back about things like drowning in the bath tub or being run over by a number nine bus.

So despite the sun and the venomous animals, Australia is a beach culture and although we've broadened our horizons a bit more than that it remains our spiritual heartland.

Australian culture is a strange beast in any case. Eclectic is probably the best word for it.

It evolved from the predominantly anglo-saxon immigration of the early colonial years through waves of migrants from places as disparate as Greece, Macedonia and Italy to China, Thailand and Malaysia. It has suffered such imperial stupidities as the state sponsored abduction of aboriginal children from their parents and the farcical "White Australia Policy" of the sixties. But as the world has come of age over the past two decades so has Australia.

Petty squabbles and racism have given way to a more hopeful, multicultural environment. Yes, racism still exists as it does everywhere and yes there is still a vast gulf between indigenous people and the immigrants but sensible, constructive work is being undertaken by all parties to address the problems.

The one cloud on this otherwise sunny horizon consists of Pauline Hanson and the One Nation party. An extreme right wing party, One Nation surprised everyone by winning a few seats at the national elections a couple of years ago and have subsequently failed to fade into obscurity ...