Kiss My Yasi

On Wednesday, News.com.au ran this rather terrifying superimposed graphic of what Cyclone Yasi would look like if placed over the continents of the world. With a diameter of 250 miles (400km), the storm quite comfortably swallows the whole of England, the state of Louisiana, and half of New Zealand.

Furious gusts of up to 285kph - flattening the towns of Tully, Cardwell and Innisfail - somehow managed to avoid killing anyone, but certainly made an aggressive attempt. Quickly identified as a Category 5 cyclone, Yasi was more intense than both 2006’s Larry and 1974’s Tracy, the latter of which convincingly destroyed the town of Cairns and 71 of its inhabitants over the Christmas period. And that was a Category 4 cyclone. Category 5 is the highest you can get: “extremely dangerous with widespread destruction,” according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website, which over the past month has become the home page for nearly all Queenslanders.

Channel 7 cancelled their scheduling for another hysterical non-stop talk fest, whipping the winds into a further frenzy and giving Queensland Premier Anna Bligh an ample platform to reclaim her soap box. She earned it well and truly with her compassion and sentimentality during the January floods, where she actually broke down in tears during a press conference, inspired by the selfless nature and courage of those affected by the carnage. This is now referred to as The Queensland Spirit. You can even buy your own slice of The Queensland Spirit on three CDs, with all proceeds going to the Flood Relief Appeal.

Bligh was back like a rampant Rambo commanding the TV coverage with her well honed, Churchill esque rhetoric, as if she might be preparing to head north and physically wrestle with the cyclone from the state’s shoreline. This was no storm in a teacup, as Bligh issued her final warning: “You have to take this window of opportunity now. Do not bother to pack bags, just grab each other and get to an area of safety. People are irreplaceable. We shall fight this on the beaches. We will never surrender.” Yes, OK, I may have embellished that a little, but with such positive public support, surely Bligh couldn’t possibly fail to retain her premiership when it comes to next year’s state elections. Heck, you would believe she was practically running the country right now, making sour-faced Labour compadre Ms Gillard look like some form of robotic intern.

If such a thing exists as The Queensland Spirit, then surely it's very embodiment can be explained by a simple sign in a Cairns café which reads, ‘Kiss my Yasi’. So it might be an idiosyncratic mixture of both tenderness and bravado, of laughing in the face of adversity, and a sort of underdog mentality: like the Bulldog Spirit, but a bulldog in thongs and a singlet. It’s actually a media invention, mostly, purported by the likes of Channel 7, who threw caution to the wind and their sanity out the window with the sort of excruciating news coverage that could actually warrant the end of the earth.

Still buoyed by the horrifically captivating scenes of Brisbane’s monumental floods, the network went into full 24-hour disaster porn mode, reporting on news that hadn’t even happened and, then when it did, a complete loss of power guaranteed that the majority of it would be completely incomprehensible. At one point, nonsensical two-ways were broadcast via Skype and a reporter’s iPhone. With journalists clearly exempt from evacuation notices, the most anyone could possibly deduce from this garbled interference was that actually, yes, it was really very windy outside. “But just how windy is it?” and so on and so on and so on.

But it’s hard to take such excessive scaremongering seriously when members of the public are continuing with their daily routines in the background. Category 5 cyclones may be unique in their severity, but storms are not unfamiliar to Australia. We are now entering a tropical cyclone season. There is actually a specified season for this, and the Bureau of Meteorology are predicting more cyclones to follow.

Being English and completely unaware of what to do in this situation, you can be sure that Toxic Math is taking precautions. I’m told the safest place is the bath tub. But without one, I’ll just be standing in the shower until this whole thing blows over.

One of the reoccurring debates on Australia Day is the design of the flag - it's an annual patriotic sticking point, like having the Queen on a postage stamp. Modern consensus seems to suggest that the Southern Cross bit is quite alright, but what really gnaws on the public conscious is that Union Flag in the top left. I was a bit surprised at the extent of vehemence considering just how many Australians proudly fly the flag even when they’re not annually obliged to do so. I can honestly say that I have never felt the need to paint a flag on my face. Any flag, for that matter. Yet Australia Day passed in a sea of blue, red and white, seemingly proud of it’s symbolic gesture despite the design.

All of which links us back to the country’s colonial past and the significance of January 26 as the date when the first British fleets sailed into Sydney Cove in 1788 (and not when Captain Cook first landed in Australia, which actually happened in April some 18 years earlier). But what most Australians actually prefer to celebrate is the notion of not having to go into work, bolstered by a unified but jovial sense of celebrating their national identity. Which is why the day is traditionally spent around a barbecue, tucking into lamingtons, damper and assorted bush tucker, with the odd eccentric past time to boot: cockroach racing, for one, and even the odd thong-throwing competition. Sadly, I’m completely stumped to conjure up a British equivalent, other than eating fish and chips, at a bus stop, while it rains. On a Tuesday.

Australia Day is instead referred to as ‘Invasion Day’ by some, used as evidence of yet another aspect of marginalising the country’s indigenous population. Given that the oldest Aboriginal art in parts of South Australia are estimated to be around 40,000 years old, and that the indigenous population possessed the lay of the land for about another 20,000 years on top of that is food for thought especially to those who seem to regard Australia as a young country. I noted a greater sense of inclusion and compassion on the day in recognition of the country’s first Australians, but more can and should be done on all the other days. So perhaps a new flag is necessary, but one with a bit more yellow, red and black.

I will end on the results of this year’s Triple J Hottest 100, which is slowly announced over the course of Australia Day on the ABC’s flagship Gen Y radio station. And just what did those rebellious, pill-popping, know-all teen layabouts in their trendy sneakers vote for as the nation’s best record of the year? ‘Big Jet Plane’ by sleepy folk siblings Angus and Julia Stone. I know. Those crazy bastards.

From Wonglepong with Love

Here’s a fun if ultimately juvenile way to spend an arvo: trying to find funny Australian place names. There are many, ranging from Humpty Doo in the Northern Territories right down to Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. The more bizarre locations derive from ancient Aboriginal terms, ranging from names of specific tribes to proverbs, landmarks and respected elders - as in the word ‘bunda’, which means ‘important man’, which when conjoined with the German word for mountain, ‘berg’, creates the name of my current location: Bundaberg.

But still, it’s hard to not crack an immature smile at any of the following: Boing Boing, Wee Waa, Tittybong, Wonglepong, Burrumbuttock, Humpybong, Moolooloo, Woolloomooloo and Bong Bong. But then even the colonialists weren’t seemingly without a sense of humour: there is a creek in South Australia called Cock Wash, while a rather steep mountain in Victoria has been christened Mount Buggery.

All of which leads neatly onto the origins of place names, and just how many locations coined by homesick English settlers are still in circulation today. In an attempt to populate their own piece of Blighty down here in Australia, you will encounter many townships in the country that still hold very recognisable British namesakes, like Ipswich, Croydon, Hungerford and Scarborough in Queensland, to locations in New South Wales like Newcastle, Kendall, Tottenham, Epping and Exeter. There’s a Peterborough in South Australia, a Sheffield in Tasmania, a Highbury in Western Australia and an Ascot in Victoria. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering the names of the states themselves, with Victoria obligatorily named after Queen Victoria, similarly to Queensland, while it was Captain Cook’s original idea to name the whole country New South Wales, in recognition, allegedly, of the Welsh countryside which Cook believed bore a striking resemblance to Australia’s east coast.

I’d like to question Cook’s reasoning here, mostly because when his vessel, the Endeavour, first made contact with the eastern shores of Australia in 1770, he was surveying the botanical wilderness of the accurately named Botany Bay, which is where he first made contact with the natives, noting that “they appear'd to be of a very dark or black Colour but whether this was the real colour of their skins or the C[l]othes they might have on I know not.” He would then run aground in Cooktown (named thereafter) for seven weeks after crashing into the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest living thing and an area of truly outstanding natural beauty. Now, I’ve been to Wales a few times, and my recollections are somewhat different. That’s all I’m saying.

I was told about Pulled Apart by Horses’ debut on the Triple J radio station via text message. They’re a scrawny bunch of shouty ragamuffins if ever there was one, and while I was drumming in Leeds band Wintermute, we played a number of live shows together and grew to be very good friends. If I think of memories of Leeds, then surely Tom screaming “I’ll make you dance with my balls of fire” on their track 'High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive' is pretty much up there as a leading thought. Or maybe the time when we stumbled into the recording of their first EP (we were practising in the same pub at the time) and assisted by shouting backing vocals into the microphone.

Their album is out now on the Transgressive label and their appearance on a Triple J playlist is big news, not solely because it’s the only decent radio station here, but mainly because it broadcasts across the whole country. Local station Hitz FM is particularly un-listenable, boasting about playing ‘today’s best new music’ before launching into 'Come As You Are' by Nirvana (from 1992), or some godforsaken nu-metal record from the late 90s. Its interpretation of ‘new music’ appears to be based solely on playing ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga three times in one day.

Huge things beckon for these chaps, which is an exciting prospect, and should hopefully be enough to keep them within easy reach of antiseptic and band aids for a very long time. 


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘Border Security: Australia’s Front Line’ (Seven)

The main reason I wanted to talk about this particular programme is, of course, to discuss rabbits. They may be cage-dwelling bundles of cute, floppy eared domesticity in Britain, but Australia’s relations with the unassuming European rabbit has been quite tumultuous to say the least.

This is largely thanks to an early Somerset-born settler named Thomas Austin, whose pioneering expeditions in the mid nineteenth century saw him eventually acquire 11,736 hectares (around 45 square miles) of land in Victoria. Austin was a member of Victoria’s Acclimatisation Society, whose ill informed if not malicious intention was to introduce new plant and animal life into their new and bountiful environment. Yet Austin’s intentions when he asked his brother to send over 24 grey rabbits from England (along with ‘five hares, 72 partridges and some sparrows’) was less of an attempt at preservation. He wanted them so that he and his guests could enjoy a spot of game shooting. “The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm and might provide a touch of home, in addition to a spot of hunting,” is how Austin put it at the time, which is just about the gold standard in the history of understatement. Nothing could have been more profoundly to the contrary.

For starters, the fresh pastures and mild Australian winters proved incredibly habitable for rabbits who, being completely new to Australia, enjoyed the freedom of having no natural predators. So they started breeding like, well, rabbits: an average litter size can be between four to eight bunnies, and the female rabbit can produce seven of these a year. Couple that with the fact that new born females can start breeding from six months old and we’ve got a quick and considerable number of rabbits on our hands. So much so that the bilby - Australia’s rabbit equivalent - would almost be driven to complete extinction in the shadow of their new rival. Rising rabbit numbers feasted on native plants and dived into young trees, particularly jeopardising the topsoil on valuable farmland which would take hundreds of years to recover.

One suggestion was to build a giant rabbit proof fence to ebb the growing tide, and three were eventually built in Western Australia. The biggest stretched for over 2,000 miles and was completed in 1907 after taking six years to build. It is now known as the State Barrier Fence as it crosses the state from the north to the south - an incredible feat of engineering which, at the time, cost £337,841 (just under £20 million in today’s money) and, quite annoyingly, didn’t work. European rabbits are known for jumping to an incredible height, as well as being highly adept burrowers. Shooting was (and still is) advised to help control population growth, but this would prove just as futile. Authorities have now turned to more biological means, like the horrifically sounding ‘rabbit haemorrhaging disease virus’ which is highly infectious, causing fatal organ failure and causing a rabbit to be ready for stewing in just under 24 hours.

Although it is unfair to label the fault solely with Thomas Austin and his 24 furry friends (indeed, many other settlers would follow Austin’s lead in introducing small numbers of rabbits into Australia), the current population of European rabbits is predicted to be somewhere over the 200 million mark.

I mention all of this merely as a means of understanding why Australia is so precious, almost to the point of paranoia, with regards to the stability of their sumptuous and unique landscape. Much of the plant and animal life in Australia cannot be found anywhere else in the world, and even the slightest outside interference (like Austin’s 24 rabbits) can cause an awful unbalance. A few weeks back I mentioned the introduction of the cane toad from Hawaii which was designed to feed on the growing numbers of sugar cane beetles busily munching through crops in Queensland, but the toads were quick to concentrate on procreation instead. Since the introduction of 102 toads in 1935, they, like the European rabbit, now number in the hundreds of millions.

Now let us consider those really, really small living things, like micro-organisms found in fungus - like, say, the chytrid fungus, which is currently threatening the lives of many Australian frog species since its introduction into the country. How it got here is a matter of some considerable debate for environmentalists, whether a poisoned specimen somehow entered the country or infected water was at some stage released unknowingly. Regardless, it’s here, and the fungus remains the single biggest threat to amphibian life and the main cause in the decline of over 385 different frog species. Then there is the plant life: the Australian government spends $3.5 billion a year on the management of weeds. It is second to land clearing as the biggest threat to the country’s biodiversity. Half of Australia’s most poisonous weeds have crossed the border deliberately - ‘a third of which as garden ornamentals’.

And so we finally get to why a Chinese lady was having such a hard time from Nadia, a quarantine office at Melbourne airport, on this week’s episode of ‘Border Security’ - a long-running behind-the-scenes look at the day-to-day life of customs officers at Australia’s busiest airports - especially after failing to declare a huge amount of nuts, seeds and plant life buried in her luggage, despite the strict instructions which greet passengers upon entering Australia. Quarantined goods include all foodstuffs, animal products, skins, feathers, wool, bark, dried flowers, fruits and herbs, right down to soil on your shoes and ‘biological specimens including tissue culture.’ Our disgruntled visitor causes a big drama and refuses to budge for five hours after being issued with the on-the-spot fine of $220.

Also featured is a British backpacker trying his best to look unassuming when traces of morphine and methadone are found in his suitcase. More alarming is how closely he seems to resemble me. His interrogation doesn’t go well, particularly when he refuses to visit the toilet alongside a customs officer, but they let him through regardless. “Maybe I look like a dirty, seedy criminal type,” he says, “Maybe it’s the beard.” Speak for yourself, mate.

G’day Tripper

Paying $46 for a latte and a bottle of water at Hong Kong airport seems steep to me. They’re also selling croissants for HK$60. For that much, it had better have some chocolate in it. It seems bizarre to pay these vast numbers for such a necessary item as breakfast. Not that plane food hasn’t improved. Cathay Pacific are the region’s native airline, complete with a soothing panpipe soundtrack and smiling air hostesses with chopsticks in their hair (I may have imagined this. I am very tired). But check this for a menu: orecchiette pasta and hot smoked salmon, pork provencale, sautéed beef. Sounds like a meal fit for the French, and we all know how fussy they can be. Of course, when it arrives, it’s difficult to tell the various components apart, as the beef seems to share the same consistency as the rice, and a yellowish vegetable which (I can only imagine) started life as a swede, but lost its sense of purpose long ago.

Edible, though, which is all you can ask for during such an excruciating long haul flight, although even the fixed pleasantries of the amiable cabin crew did start to fray at one point. Come breakfast time (a formality when you’re tripping through time zones), one young lady explains the menu to me over the buzz of a jet engine which has already been airborne for about nine hours. When I ask her to clarify, her response is prompt: “Look, do you want Chinese or western food?” The façade had crumbled slightly, and I can’t say I blame her.

Before I move on, a word regarding Hong Kong, of which I appear to have gleamed all of my knowledge from watching Jackie Chan films. Upon landing, you observe dozens of junks and ferries traversing through the South China Sea on their way to the various mountainous islands which look spectacular amongst the deep blue of the ocean - this tiny, bustling metropolis seems to be so overcome with activity that the airport (many will tell you) appears to be planted so close to the sea that there is a brief moment of panic as the plane descends and threatens to take the head off one of the boat’s captains, or at least blow their hat off. The terminal is vast even compared to most shopping malls, as the Chinese queue for bowls of congee and fried rice (you probably need to re-mortgage the house to cover that lot). I’ve just spotted the actor Andy Lau on the cover of this month’s Hong Kong Esquire, and I also recognise actresses like Karen Mok and Gigi Leung advertising various brands and charities (Donnie Yen is the current face of Head & Shoulders), which makes me feel a little bit closer to a culture which has long since fascinated me. Spotting the skyscrapers from the Starbucks in the departure lounge, I know that I will need to come back here, and maybe even leave the airport.

And so on to Brisbane, the expansive capital of the so-called Sunshine State of Queensland. Contrary to this, it rains when I arrive; that's the thanks I get for putting up with a flight which by any one’s standards is an extravagant price to pay for torture. The jetlag plays havoc with both sleeping and eating patterns, and because of the time distance, practically half a day vanishes as you cross the breadth of eastern Europe, China, the Philippines and arrive on the other side of the Pacific. Just think what you could do whith that missing half day. You could watch 12 episodes of ‘The Sopranos’ in that time. Just think about that for a moment. Yes, Australia is very, very far away.

In contrast, the chummy immigration staff make it suspiciously pleasant on arrival, and seem more paranoid about a fellow passenger’s packet of Chewits than anything else that may pass as particularly suspicious - in fact, you could probably try your luck with a giant shisha pipe and a travel chemistry set complete with miniature collection of toxic liquids and test tubes only to be refused entry when a member of the border police spot the contents of your back pocket: “wait a minute, mate, is that an apple you got there?”

It may be too early to clock anything other than subtle differences between the two cultures but, at a glance, it seems that everything, from the music to the way people drive to the fashions and tastes in takeaway food are all quintessentially the same. The main task for any Brit staying for a long time here is to find a way to settle in with the locals, which I’m guessing happens more in gradients rather than as at an exponential rate: I’ve clocked the boys in basic three quarter lengths, flip-flops (or ‘thongs’ to the Australians, although some of the more confident boys seem to have abandoned footwear altogether), Ts and sunglasses, just like the English in Ibiza. Shorts have never been a staple of my wardrobe, but we all have to make sacrifices. Plus it was 21 degrees yesterday, and it’s nearly winter over here for Christ’s sake.

A quick word about the wildlife. Australians seem to have developed a particularly cavalier attitude, I believe, as a direct result of the waiting numbers of deadly creatures which seem to sit, quite literally, on their doorstep. Like the tree spider, which cuts a scary image to anyone who has only ever seen something similar in glass boxes. I can see three of their intimidating webs from where I’m typing this, as they loiter ominously between the trees and telegraph polls. I’m told they’ll “give you a nasty nip”, but if you sit and think about these things then you would never leave the house. So the prime learning curve at this juncture is one of resilience.

I loved the sight of the Rainbow Lorikeet (pictured), who cause quite a stir amongst the fruit trees with their rather distinctive chirp. They’re strikingly beautiful parrot-like birds who feed on the honeysuckle and (allegedly) become so intoxicated by the nectar that they lose their flight perception and have been known to collide into the passing traffic. The galah is similar, of the cockatoo family, and just as clueless (hence the phrase "flaming galah" to describe someone of a slightly idiotic persuasion). I’ve not seen this myself, although I like the thought of them as being a slightly rebellious scourge on society, particularly against the Noisy Miner, of which there are many, and not half as exciting.


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘Spicks and Specks’ (ABC1)

A music quiz panel show with surprisingly straight questions which delivers a light premise of wholesome banter, the like of which you would find on ‘A Question of Sport’. Hosted by comedian Adam Hills, rounds range from quick fire pop knowledge to a singing game where contestants have to guess popular melodies in which the lyrics have been replaced with selected readings from hilariously unrelated literature. I remember seeing a show similar to this in the early 90s, presented by Radio 1’s Mike Smith and called ‘That’s Showbusiness’, until ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ arrived and both saved and ruined the TV music quiz. The panel seem to know their music more than their jokes, although I’m told that one of the team captains, Myf Warhurst, is one of the country’s premier figures in the music press, akin to someone like Jo Whiley, who has done sterling work on the government-funded Triple J alternative music station (which thankfully has no adverts). I’ve listened to it and it’s really quite good, playing Fucked Up, Mos Def and Sarah Blasko all in quick succession, which is anything if not diverse.