Melbourne's warm weather, Victoria's bushfires and the cool change

It's sometimes a surprise to people new to the city to learn that Melbourne is the hottest city in Australia...

...by one measurement anyway.  Sydneysiders and Brisbanites like to mock their southern cousins for living in a "chilly" city.  Melburnians certainly experience cooler winters, as befits people living as close to Antarctica as it's possible to get on the Australian mainland.  Anyone from Northern Europe or much of the USA or Canada may question the accuracy of the description, though.

But when it comes to the ability consistently to deliver the hottest day of the year, Melbourne trounces every other city in the country.  

Melbourne, 2009

The height of summer is in January and February.  If you look at the average temperature figures  for these months, you will see a pleasant range, between a low of about 14̊ centigrade and a high of around 26̊.  But for some days in every summer, winds will gather in the far north or northwest.  After sweeping their way across four thousand kilometres of roasting desert, picking up temperature on the way, they throw themselves onto Melbourne with all the force of a continent's heat, before rushing on to cool themselves over the Southern Ocean.

On days like this, Melbourne's temperatures will shoot up to 40̊ centigrade or more, and if you're very unlucky they won't drop below the mid 20s even at night.

Several of Australia's cities get up into the 40s at some point during summer, but Melbourne generally has the knack of topping them.  Perhaps the most extreme example came in 2009 when, between the 28th and 30th January, the city experienced three successive days in excess of 43̊ C, followed about a week later by its all time record of 46.4̊.

Melbourne's heatwave crown rests uneasily on her head.  Quite apart from the personal discomfort of her residents, the city sits in the state of Victoria, which is one of the most fire-prone places on earth.  Whether started by happenstance or (regrettably) arson, when a blaze gets going it can be virtually impossible to extinguish, particularly whilst it's being fanned by a strong, hot wind.  The 2009 temperatures helped cause the devastation of the Black Saturday bushfires in which, tragically, 173 people died and 414 were injured.  Property was devastated and many survivors were rendered homeless.  

During a major fire there's a good chance that the smoke from its incinerated hinterland will blow over the city, filling the air with a slight mist and invading your nose and throat, and making it impossible to forget what's unfolding perhaps just a hundred kilometres away.  Victoria's propensity to fire is truly astounding:  the coloured areas on this map show only the major areas that have been burnt out over just the last ten years.

When they're in the middle of one of these enervating heatwaves, one thought keeps Melburnians going:  the cool change.  This is what they call the weather fronts that bring relief from the oven-like temperatures.

If her summer temperatures are noteworthy, Melbourne's cool changes are quite impressive too.  Suddenly, the wind will swing from the north to the west or south, and the change is instantaneous.  The mercury may drop by fifteen degrees in as little as ten minutes, and people go from planning trips to the beach to putting on an extra layer of clothes.  I have yet to complain about this inconvenience.

Julia Gillard v Tony Abbott: Australian politics for dummies

Bill Bryson wrote that there was nothing in Australian life more complicated and bewildering to the outsider than its politics.  Not only is it difficult to argue with that, but also if the price of being an insider is having to try to understand them, I'm quite happy to stay on the outside.

Bryson gave up when he got to the voting system.  I consider him a bit of a lightweight, personally.  At least that bit's written down in the Constitution and various Acts of Parliament, so you can actually read about it.  What I can't cope with is the fact that, as soon as you think you've got to grips with an issue, some more knowledgeable Aussie will wink and tell you that it's all nonsense.  With a superior but confidential air, they will tell you that the only reason for that policy is because of some dirty deal done, or vendetta started, back when Mr or Ms X was climbing the greasy pole in trade union politics.

What follows is therefore a simplistic, unfair and highly prejudiced introduction to Australian political life - enough, say, to equip you for the first twenty years or so of living here.

What are the groupings?  Well, there are two main parties, one of which isn't one party but two.  The first is Labor, which is currently governing the nation in a loose coalition with various independents and Greens.  By a quirk of history, its name is the only place in Australia that the American spelling of the word is used in place of the British "Labour".

I wonder if he's had enough cake?

The second is, confusingly, actually known as the Coalition, and is made up of a confederation of the Liberal Party and the National Party.  The Liberal Party is the larger of the two, and when they win elections it tends to supply the Prime Minister.

Labor supporters are, I am led to believe, a bunch of Communists whose aim is to expropriate the property of hard-working Australians, shoot anyone who owns their own house, and distribute the proceeds to criminals, drug addicts and the chronically workshy.   

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be crypto-fascist gun nuts with religious mania, who are never happier than when they're sending orphans to the workhouse, hanging gays from lampposts and shackling feminists to the kitchen sink.  The Nationals are similar, but not as nice.

The final party worth mentioning are the Greens.  They are made up of female vegetarians whose brains have been enfeebled by long term exposure to nut cutlets, and men who are only there because they want to sleep with the women.

The current Prime Minister, and leader of the Labor Party, is Julia Gillard.  She combines the distinction of being her nation's first woman Premier with an accent that curls the toes of many of her fellow Australians, reminiscent as it is of your less sophisticated grandmother enquiring earnestly whether you'd like another slice of cake.

The leader of the Liberals, and of the Coalition, is Tony Abbott.  A balding, jug-eared hatchet man, his biggest claim to fame is probably his addiction to demonstrating his virility by parading around on beaches wearing nothing more than budgie smugglers (Speedos) and a pelt that would shame a gorilla.

Sorry, Putin wasn't available.  Will
Tony Abbott do instead?

What of the current political situation?  Well, so far as I understand it, the Coalition has no policies whatsoever.  This means that it is far ahead in the opinion polls, as a result of Labor's habit of introducing new taxes that it unfortunately forgot to mention to the voters at the previous election.

Many Australians will tell you that the only reasons for voting for the party on the other side of the spectrum to theirs are moral degeneracy or intellectual inferiority.  This is unfair.  Their electoral laws say that they have to cast a ballot, so they've got to vote for someone.  Even if that means that they end up literally having to vote for anyone.

Chadstone Shopping Centre and retailing in Melbourne

Whether you're after a guinea pig, a special outfit or a family member who disappeared suddenly, Chadstone is the place to start looking.

Melbourne is made for the motor car, which means that it was also made for the cathedrals to consumerism that are shopping malls, with their easy parking facilities.  And the biggest of them all, the mother, father and grandparent of all the other malls in Australia, is Chadstone.

Uptown Chaddy

Known affectionately (or otherwise) as "Chaddy", Chadstone's vital statistics are impressive, even when compared with its American cousins.  The biggest shopping centre in Australia by far, if it were transplanted to the USA it would be the 15th biggest there, and expansion has been announced that would make it bigger than all but six American malls.  It already has 530 stores, more than any American site, and free parking for 9,500 cars.

I'm no adherent of modern consumerist culture but, for a Briton of my vintage, Chadstone is something of a wonder of the modern world.  Where I was brought up, a shopping mall was a fairly small and definitely seedy place.  Probably built in the 1970s, its interior would display an awful lot of concrete.  Perhaps there would be some central area that the planners had fondly thought would be a focal point, but which would in fact be used by the sorts of teenager whom your mother had warned you about, to get off with each other. If that was beyond them, they might seek apprenticeship with one or more of the derelicts, who gathered there because it was better than drinking in the rain.

Chadstone is nothing like this.  Quite apart from its sheer size, the customers who frequent the Gucci and Tiffany & Co outlets wouldn't stand for being panhandled by a semi-permanent feral population.  They do their shopping in a spacious, calming place, full of white and light, where tall palms grow towards a well-designed roof.  

It's not all Fifth Avenue.  Chadstone has things that people like me want to buy, but you have to leave the palms and piano players that embellish the high-rent zones behind.  The roof lowers and becomes opaque as you enter what I like to think of as the useful part, where they will cut your keys, and you can find a riot of delicatessens, greengrocers and cut-price kids' clothing stores.

You can see it from the moon, you know.  Probably.

If the wonder of Chadstone is its sheer size, it's also the best reason for not actually going there in the first place.  When added to a somewhat incongruous design, it's a very easy place in which to get lost.  
Even if you know where you are, whether or not you can remember where you parked your car is another question entirely.  For the uninitiated, the best advice is to locate a couple of the major stores and never to go anywhere where you're not confident of being able to find your way back to them.  Instead of teenagers and derelicts, if Chadstone has a semi-permanent population it's likely to be made up of straggling, pale-faced parents, looking for the shop where they agreed to meet their children last year.

News on the radio and TV

Want to feel like you've got away from it all?  Try catching up with the news via the commercial broadcast media.

Australia is, famously, a long way from anywhere else.  One of the attractions of its vast open spaces is the feeling that you've escaped from the trials of everyday life, and the relentless grind of depressing news stories.  When you're out in the bush, famines, war and tsunamis are all thousands of miles away.

But really, why spend all that money and endure such discomfort if you just want to get away from the ceaseless roll call of global catastrophe?  A few days with Australian commercial free to air (FTA) TV or radio will achieve the same thing for a fraction of the effort.

OK, it does contain a good deal of drama - mostly in the form of imported US cop shows, and emotional incontinents blubbering about their life crises on the Oprah Show and its bastard offspring.  Really heavy duty misery, though, is almost entirely absent.  

That's not to say they don't provide news bulletins.  It's just that the news they supply is almost exclusively local, and local news in a prosperous, well-regulated country like Australia tends towards the anodyne.  A ferry could have sunk in the Philippines, killing 600 people, and the chances are you wouldn't hear about it.  And why would you, when there are teenagers being beaten up in suburban fast food outlets and car smashes on the freeway during rush hour?  Global financial meltdown still in the offing?  Have a heartwarming story about the senior citizen who beat off burglars who were trying to make off with his service medals instead.

If you only watch commercial TV, this is probably
where you think news comes from

It's probably those who come from the UK that notice the difference most starkly.  At almost all levels in the British broadcast media the news is reflected through the prism of the BBC - a vast, well-funded organisation dedicated to bringing the big stories from around the world to your sitting room.  Even the commercial FTA media to a certain extent dances to its tune as far as news coverage is concerned.

There are Australian FTA broadcasters which aim to provide the news junkie with more.  The ABC, which is the national state-owned broadcaster, provides serious international news and comment, and has both TV and a radio presence.  It doesn't have the BBC's global reach, but via tie-ins with its British sister and US networks it will bring you the biggest stories from around the world.  Similarly SBS, which has a particular remit to provide the nation's many migrant communities with programming relevant to them, has a more international flavour to its bulletins.

But it's the commercial TV channels - Seven, Nine and Ten - that have by far the biggest audience share.  The commercial radio stations hold the vast majority of the listeners.  Unless their audiences are switching over en masse to take in the better coverage available elsewhere, or getting all their news from the web, it's hard not to conclude that they're happier in blissful ignorance of the wider world.

It has its attractions.  The world's pain is, after all, a terrible thing to have to bear, and when it's all so far away anyhow, why not forget about it all?  For a bit, anyway.  

Nature Strips

They sound like they might be something to do with intimate waxing, and they represent both a burden and an opportunity for Australians

It was only when I looked into it that I discovered how many names there were for the bit of land between a footpath and the road.  Americans mostly know it as the tree lawn, but in some states it's the berm, or if you're really lucky, the devil's strip.  Where I come from it's called the verge, but Aussies know it as the nature strip.

Here, it's the responsibility of the householder whose property it fronts to take care of it, which Brits coming to Australia may find a bit onerous - back home it's generally the council's problem.  Being a public-spirited bunch, most Aussies like to keep their strips nice and trim, either maintaining them themselves or paying specialists a small sum to come round every week and do the work for them.  And since that is quite enough euphemism for one paragraph, I will move on.

When they're not hassle, nature strips hold the promise of free stuff.  Local councils in many areas will collect hard rubbish that's left out on the nature strip, but not before a furtive trail of ragpickers has inspected it to see whether there's anything that could be re-used.  And thanks to the nature strip, the Meynell family will not find themselves going cold next winter.  I have managed to harvest a couple of tons of high quality firewood that my neighbours have cleared from their own gardens and left out for passers-by to collect.  

Nature strip and hard rubbish in perfect harmony

Finding pre-loved property on your neighbour's nature strip is not always free of risk.  The Victoria Police - nationally famed for their hardline approach to, well, everything - decided to start prosecuting those who took hard rubbish before the council could collect it.  The pretext for this seems to have been that once it was left out, it became the council's property, and taking it was in effect stealing from them.  The fact that the local authorities were probably only too pleased to have less junk to clear up was not, apparently, a consideration.

Fortunately the police have now realised that the ownership of the rubbish may be a grey area.  Perhaps more importantly, the fact that they were making themselves look stupid by attempting to criminalise people for what was basically recycling also seems to have percolated through.  The case of a man who was recently arrested and later released, after being suspected of attempting to make off with a vaccum cleaner, suggests that they've reviewed their policy.  This is a relief to many urban Victorians who object to paying for firewood. 

Fast food - beyond KFC and McDonalds

It can be an occasional treat when no one feels like cooking, or a lifestyle choice leading to morbid obesity and early death.  But what are your options if you find yourself in Australia and you're too lazy or incompetent to make something healthy?

This is the question that literally no one has asked me.  However, my mission is to tell people what it's actually like to live here, and for almost everyone it's a question that will crop up at some time.

Of course, KFC and McDonalds, the undisputed heavyweight champions of feeding the heavyweight, are well represented and can serve you all your favourite artery-cloggers from back home.  If you're looking for a more authentically Aussie experience, though, you're not short of options.

Skippy, Rolf Harris and the Sydney Opera House are all authentic Australian icons, but arguably none of them are as Aussie as the meat pie.  Everyone claims that their pies are the best, but as a rule of thumb the smaller the operation producing them, the more enjoyable your experience will be.  Try and find a bakery that makes them daily on the premises.  Having found the best meat pie, the locals do their best to make it taste like a mass-produced condiment by smothering it with tomato ketchup, which has permeated the national consciousness to the extent that it's just known as "sauce".  You'll know that you're on the way to naturalisation when this seems like a good idea.

Mmm...sauce

The benefit of a vast coastline is that Australia has a lot of good fresh fish, and fish and chips is arguably Australia's highest quality quick meal.  Most fish shops will sell you at least four different varieties, and you can choose to have them breadcrumbed and grilled, or deep fried in batter.  Some of their other offerings are only for the hardy.  The Chiko Roll is not, as it name might suggest, made of chicken, but instead consists of bits of beef of indeterminate origin.  These have been added to vegetables, and a whole load of other stuff, in order to make a product intended to provide an answer to the age old question of what to eat at a football match.  Dim sum is one of the high points of Chinese cuisine, but by the time that little savoury dumplings have been re-engineered for the Australian market, deep fried for several minutes in chip fat, and re-christened "dim sims", there's little to identify them as such.

Perhaps it's purely a Melbourne thing, arising from the high number of Italian migrants, but the major international pizza chains haven't made that much of an impact in Victoria's capital.  Melburnians are far more likely to get their pizzas from small, family owned outlets.  These places will often also sell takeaway pasta in a variety of sauces.  A word of caution for Europeans:  ham on pizzas here is generally shredded.  For some reason, if the pizza is in any way overcooked, shredded ham instantly turns into something similar to the chargrilled relics you clear out of the bottom of your toaster.  You can ask for sliced ham instead, but you won't always get it even then.

A common feature of the Aussie takeaway scene is roast chicken, often cooked on a spit over charcoal, and there are a lot of shops that offer it.  Although the chickens themselves are often a good way to feed the family, watch out for the chips.  Before I first came to Australia I had never heard of the abomination known as chicken salt.  This is a vile concoction of chemicals that some of these places (and KFC as well) apply to their chips after cooking, apparently under the impression that it turns them into an even more delicious accompaniment to the meat, by adding an extra hint of chickeniness.  What it actually does is to replace the delightful taste of chip with the manufactured flavour of the laboratory.  Unless you're a particularly dissipated character, make it clear that you don't want it.

Looks good, but watch out for the chicken salt

Melbourne's Greek heritage means that there is always a variant on the kebab on offer here, often in the form of a souvlaki.  British visitors may be disappointed to find that eyeball searing chilli sauces are less in evidence as accompaniments than they are back home.  There is also the usual array of ethnic cuisines - for example Chinese, Thai and Indian.  Australians have no macho culture associated with finding the hottest thing on the menu and then eating it until they bleed through their pores.  For afficionadoes of the curry as it is sold in the UK, Indian food as served in many places may even seem a little bland, so if you want it hot, ask for it.

Finally, there are indeterminate independent fast food joints which will serve a variety of most of the above, along with other things as well.  If you're in the mood for culinary novelty, these places will be able to serve you a burger with The Lot, as seen on When Burgers Go Bad™.  If you're the sort of person who's always felt that what your meat patty really needed was to be accompanied with thick slices of beetroot and pineapple, and perhaps topped off with a fried egg, then this is for you.  

Australia's national obesity rates are ample evidence of its ability to punch its weight in the fast food stakes.  With all this on offer, the problem may be choosing how to get those crucial excess calories into your life.  

Driving and road safety in Australia

Australia is one of the safest and easiest places in the world to drive, despite the authorities' efforts to pretend that just slipping behind the wheel is a prelude to death or dismemberment

Australian road safety advertisements, brought to you courtesy of bodies like Victoria's Transport Accident Commission (TAC), have become famous around the world for their graphic and hard-hitting nature.  Every night, Australians can sit in front of their televisions and see rag doll motorcyclists bouncing off the fronts of trucks, children's heads hitting car windscreens like ripe coconuts, and small villages of grieving friends and relatives.

TAC ads:  these are the healthy-looking ones

Deaths on the road feature prominently on news broadcasts.  After the audience has been given the gruesome details, they are treated to the updated annual road toll for the state, with the new numbers chalked up.  Holiday periods have their own mortality statistics, in which the performances of the various parts of the country are compared.

This media blitz certainly seem to work, at least if the aim is to persuade the country that its roads are a place of perpetual menace.  You don't have to look far to find an Aussie who is willing to discuss the country's apparently appalling road death toll.  It's sometimes difficult not to leave these conversations convinced that a fair proportion of their compatriots are inherently lethal drivers, born to maim and kill as if to original sin.

Yet for anyone from overseas who has actually driven here, much of this is baffling.  Australian roads are wide, with ample parking, and generally well-maintained compared to other countries.  They certainly don't look like death traps.  Australian motorists are generally far more observant of speed limits than most of their foreign counterparts.  In my experience they're also more likely to behave courteously, waiting patiently for their turn to drive through narrow spaces, or for the person in front of them to finish a parking manoeuvre.  Most of the cars don't look to be in particularly bad condition either.  

Despite this, and armed with myriad statistics, the TAC and others seem to believe that they are falling behind other developed nations in the battle to make the roads safer.  However, as is the way with statistics, other factors point the other way.  By any objective analysis, Australia's road safety record is in fact very good.  It has massively reduced its annual traffic mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 of the population) since the 1970s, from a high of 30.4 to 6.9 in 2008.  On the downside, the rate has, in relative terms, plateaued over the past few years, but this has also been the case in most other countries that have made similar strides.  

The list of large-population developed countries above it is small, though, consisting of such nations as Germany, Japan, the UK and Scandinavia.  Critically, as of 2007 Australia's road safety was better (when measured in this way) than Canada, and streets ahead of New Zealand (a rate of 10.1) and the USA (13.9).

It's hard to deny that the distressing scenes in the advertisements portray a truth about road accidents and the damage they cause.  Campaigners would doubtless argue that if they deter anyone from dangerous driving, and a life is thereby saved, then they're justified.  

However, they do also appear to instil a false consciousness about road safety, more reminiscent of the bad old days of the 1970s than today's reality.  Which is that Australia is one of the very safest places in the world to be on the roads.  Of course, any road transport involves some risk - but just be grateful that you're driving here, where that risk is minimal, rather than in most of the other 193 member states of the United Nations.

Books

Whether you're coming to Australia on holiday or for good, don't plan on buying your books here

This was really brought home to me during my first Christmas living here.  As I browsed the shelves at Borders, it became clear that what I had thought of as stocking fillers at home were in danger of becoming the main gift, such was their cost.

It varies from book to book, but it is not uncommon to find them priced at a third higher or even more than you would expect in the UK, for example.  A study by the Productivity Commission has found that, on average, books in the US and UK are 35% and 18% cheaper respectively.  If this comparison is between bookshop prices in the three countries, then once online prices are taken into account, the differences probably become even starker.   

Strictly for the wealthy

The ludicrously high cost of a good read has been the product of Australia's Copyright Act.  In a nutshell, if an Australian publisher wishes, and is able, to publish a book within a certain period of it being published in another country, then retailers are banned from importing copies for sale here.  What that means in practice is that Australian publishers have hitherto existed in a protected market, in which they can more or less charge what they like without fear of being undercut by cheaper imports.

Australian publishers argue that this has enabled them to protect and nurture Australian writers.  The extent to which this is actually true is debated.  In any event it's hard to admire a piece of protectionism that helps propel books into the class of luxury items and disincentivises poorer people from buying them.

Perhaps even more pertinently, it appears to be in the process of causing an apocalypse in the Australian book retailing market.  Booksellers the world over are facing troubling times, as competition from online sales and e-readers undercut them.  In Australia they have been hit harder than most.  Not only are the shops here expensive in the first place, providing a major incentive for shopping around, but customers ordering from overseas don't have to pay the locally applied 10% Goods and Services Tax, either.    

The results so far have been messy.  Earlier this year, two of the largest chains of bookshops - Borders and Angus & Robertson - collapsed into insolvency.  This has simply added to the woes of those who love the opportunity to browse before buying.  Not only are you paying through the nose for the privilege, but it's become harder to find a bookshop to do it in.

The Productivity Commission has recommended the scrapping the protections - but not for some time yet.  Even when this comes it may be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.  With increasing numbers of Australians getting their reading online direct from offshore sellers it's increasingly difficult to see that it does anything but damage the local book industry at multiple levels.

This year I will have to remember to order my family's Christmas reading online, well in advance.  Even if I were prepared to pay Borders' prices, they're not there any more.

Whilst writing this post, I found this informative and entertaining piece from a writer who's a bit more sympathetic to the stated aims of the Australian publishing industry than perhaps I am:  MissAdventure: Parallel Importation (Or: Why Are Books in Australia So Expensive?) 

Beer

Australian beer carries a number of traps for the visitor, not all of them related to excess consumption

The international profile of Australian beers is still stuck resolutely in the world of Paul Hogan-style adverts, in which rugged men put away Olympic-sized swimming pools of rugged beer.  To their credit, discerning Aussie drinkers have increasingly realised that the cheap beers they've sold to the world deliver commensurate levels of rugged bad taste, and hangovers to match.  One of the features of watching Australia for the past twenty years has been seeing the expansion of craft breweries selling higher quality beers and allowing people to educate their palates with a wider range of tastes.

Once, the only thing that mattered about beer was that it should be cold.  And to be truthful, that still matters to Australians.  A lot.  But they've increasingly come to recognise that icy coldness can mask a load of nasty flavours, and smaller scale operations like Little Creatures, Fat Yak and James Squire and others have been able to exploit this with a range of new beers which they can sell for premium prices.

So, if the unwary foreigner finds himself in a bar or bottleshop, what are the basic rules?  Well, first of all, ask the staff.  That way you're more likely to find something interesting.  Second, and most importantly, don't buy any Australian beer that you've heard of before.  Since most overseas visitors are aware of Fosters, XXXX and VB, following this rule gives a decent chance of avoiding any additive-induced nasties later on.  Finally, if in doubt, buy Tasmanian.  The two leading breweries from that state are Boags and Cascade, and though both are substantial operations they are renowned throughout the country for producing good, clean-tasting beers.

If you're in a pub, having selected your beer, you're going to have to decide how much of it you want, which is not as straightforward as it sounds.  In order to confuse outsiders, and delight students of linguistics, the locals have adopted a variety of terms for different-sized glasses, which vary depending on which state you happen to be in.  Depending on where you are, a 285 ml glass will generally be referred to as a middy or a pot, and a 425 ml one as a schooner.  However, you will certainly find local variants and, to complicate things further, in South Australia the smaller glass may also be referred to as a schooner.

Sick of being sneered at by the British for the smallness of their measures, and intrigued by large measures of alcohol, Australians have increasingly taken to drinking their beer in imperial pints.  Finally, in most establishments you can buy it in two pint jugs.  Whilst this is generally associated with a convivial, sharing atmosphere, I am advised that in less salubrious places the patrons are known to sit around a table, with each drinking directly from their own jug.  If this is so, then the Aussies have found a way of taking the challenge back to the Brits. 

Taking on the Brits (photo www.australiablog.com)

Fortunately, in a bottle shop, things are likely to be easier.  The bottles and cans are all clearly labelled with their sizes, and for the beer lover the main decision to make on quantity is when to complete your Australian experience by walking out with a slab (a case of 24).

For the English beer lover there will be the usual regret that Aussies haven't chosen to taste all these new beers they've got at any temperature higher than icy cold, the better to appreciate their flavour.  However, on a hot summer's day this will please most - as will the fact that in decent establishments the glass will also be chilled.




Follow this link to read about the adventures of some Queenslanders who're now fully exploring the wonderful world of beer, after years of drinking rotgut XXXX and similar fighting brews

Hook turns

On your first day of driving in central Melbourne, try not to go anywhere that involves turning right...

Unfortunately, if you're going to take to the roads here, at some point you're going to have to do it.  And I hope it will be less fraught for you than it was for me.  The first time I indicated to turn right, it was followed swiftly by a terrified yelp of "left!" from my wife, a crescendo of car horns and a swift rummage through my vocabulary for my choicest expletives.

I was aware, vaguely, that Melbourne is the world capital of the obscure traffic manoeuvre known as the hook turn.  I had gawped at it, slack-jawed, as a tourist.  I had subsequently mentioned it at dinner parties in London, holding my audience rapt (so I thought) in the manner of an explorer recounting the details of a year spent amongst cannibals.  And damn it, I'd even married a Melbourne girl.  But despite all this it was about five years after my first visit to the city before I ventured into its centre in a hire car, and somehow so counter-intuitive a move had slipped my mind.

Counter-intuitive, that is, except in a city that uses the tram as one of its major forms of public transport.  Melbourne was blessed, shortly after its inception, with a plan which involved a grid of exceptionally broad streets.  This later enabled tram tracks to be run down the centre of many of them, whilst still leaving plenty of room for other vehicles.  The only problem with this arises when drivers want to turn across the oncoming traffic (which, as Australia drives on the left, means a right turn).  Under normal traffic rules - even the ones that apply in the rest of Melbourne - this means moving to the right, stopping, and waiting to complete the turn.  However, this would mean stopping on the tram tracks, thus blocking them, which would cause bigger problems in the busy centre than elsewhere.

Which brings us to the hook turn, which involves nothing more than turning right from the left hand lane.  If you want to see an animated example of how this works in an ideal world, click here.  In my case it tends to include violent jerking of my head as I attempt both to check the traffic lights (in front of me) and the traffic coming from behind, followed by a Starsky and Hutch-style squeal of tyres as I turn 90 degrees at speed in the nanosecond between the lights turning red and a taxi hitting me in the side.

The hook turn broadly divides Melburnians into two groups.  On the one hand there are those who see that it is a sensible and necessary compromise to enable public transport to run smoothly in their city.  On the other there are those who simply avoid driving in its centre at all costs.

The city elders could probably help the hook turn virgin a little more.  Australians have a mania for public signage, much of it confusing owing to its sheer profusion and small size (you can fit more signs in that way, see?).  The signs indicating Melbourne's most confusing traffic rule certainly suffer from these issues.  Apart from that, it's difficult to see any other way of doing things, apart from getting rid of either trams or cars, neither of which is about to happen.

On the other hand, if you happen to be in Melbourne seeing the sights, you should certainly take a minute or two out to see some drivers attempting one.  After all, people shouting at each other are so much more entertaining when you're not involved.

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Gambling

Betting's influence pervades both society and government

Most forms of betting are lawful here, and Australians seem to be obsessed with all of them.  It has been estimated that they spend more per capita on gambling than any other nation on earth.  In 2009-10, in the state of Victoria alone, almost $1,000 was lost for every man, woman and child.

The number one culprits are the "pokies".  These are the Australian version of the slot machine, or one-armed bandit - so called because the symbols on the reels are often those of a deck of cards, reminiscent of a game of poker.  They account for the majority of the money lost nationally, and have the strongest association with problem gambling.

It is difficult to overstate the degree to which parts of Australian society have become dependent on gambling.  Sporting clubs all over the country, from the professional level down, rely on income generated from battalions of pokies stationed in purpose-built clubhouses.  The Returned and Services League (the Australian veterans association) is also in on the act.  Meanwhile, many pubs have built large annexes or turned over significant space to dedicated rooms, all filled with the clicks and chirrups of the omniscient machines.  These things matter in a vast country where these bodies are often the focus of social life in the community.

Believe it or not, this is probably a sports club

Meanwhile, professional sporting bodies, such as the Australian Football League and the National Rugby League, are becoming increasingly interested in the possible revenue accruing from a newer kid on the block - sports gambling.  The TV companies are, it seems, only too willing to help.  Live sports broadcasts are peppered with news-style announcements of the latest betting movements on the game.  Young fans, many of whose parents are already supporting their favourite teams with varying quantities of pokie revenue, are exposed to a barrage of advertising suggesting that they will only extract the full relish from the contest if there's money on it.

With the advent of the internet and smart phones meaning that punters can now drop thousands of dollars in the comfort of their own home, or even on the train to work, many Australians do accept that their country has a gambling problem.  However, the nation's constitutional arrangements mean that Australia is uniquely poorly placed to deal with it.  For its state governments, which are responsible for licensing and regulating gaming, are among those most addicted to the revenue it generates.

Under the constitution, the states have conceded the vast majority of their tax-raising powers to the federal government.  This leaves them reliant on a few sources of revenue, of which the duty paid on gambling is one of the most important.  On average, each state relies on gaming for around 10% of its income.  This in turn this makes them particularly susceptible to the powerful lobbies of the clubs, sporting bodies and betting companies, even when their governments recognise the damage that betting causes.  

Although the federal government has no specific power over gambling, it could partially regulate it under its other powers.  However, this would be messy and would probably leave loopholes.  The best option may be for the Federal and State government to negotiate any changes to the law.  However, this means that desirable changes could be watered down via the gambling lobby's influence at State level.

Matters have come to a head because the minority federal government is relying on support from independent MPs, one of whom - Andrew Wilkie - is demanding reform of the pokies laws.  In particular, he wants gamblers to have to commit to a maximum loss before playing certain machines, which will then cut them off when it's reached, and restrictions on cashpoints in gambling locations.

These may seem like fairly minor reforms, but they're being fought tooth and nail by the various lobby groups, who don't appear to be embarrassed about running apparently inconsistent arguments.  For example, it's difficult to see how they can confidently assert both that club revenues will drop by 40% (potentially driving them out of business) and that problem gamblers are unlikely to be helped, but they have done.

In the meantime it's estimated that 2% of Australians are problem gamblers, and that their problems each affect another 5 to 10 people.  If this is so, then between 12% and 22% of Australians suffer as a result of gambling.  Enough to demand some action, you'd think.


For an excellent article incorporating a personal and statistical take on the social and societal problems of gambling in Australia see http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/2011/09/waiting-for-feature.html

Coffee

Melburnians raised a glass when the US coffee giant Starbucks announced, a couple of years back, that it was closing most of its Australian stores, including sixteen in Melbourne.


Chances are that most of the glasses contained coffee - but not of the Starbucks variety.  For coffee, more than any other beverage, is what makes Melbourne tick.  Virtually everywhere you go in the city and its suburbs you will find legions of independent cafés and kiosks, each of them with a loyal clientele convinced that they serve the best beans in town.

Melbourne in action

Coffee is the drink that powers business, gets everyone through the day, and is the excuse for sneaking out to network, or just catch up with friends.  As in other cities, most large office buildings have their own dedicated cafés to meet the needs of the workers' caffeine addiction on the doorstep.  Unlike many other cities, having a captive client base does not seem to prevent them trying to serve the very best cupfuls they can.  Possibly the best coffee I've had in Melbourne came from one of these places, which probably had hardly any passing trade at all.


Quite why Melbourne should have developed an obsession with the coffee bean that dwarfs that of any other city in Australia is something I've yet to get to the bottom of.  Certainly it seems that during the 19th century, while the rest of the British Empire was drowning in an ocean of tea, Melburnian office workers were staying awake during the day with nips of coffee.  Then, after the Second World War, large numbers of Italians migrated to Australia, bringing their love of the beverage with them.  By some distance, Melbourne was the city of choice for these new Australians.


Coffee also seems the natural drink for a city that prides itself on its metropolitan sophistication.  Some of its hipper residents, when they deign to think of Sydney at all, probably imagine the inhabitants of Melbourne's brasher northern sister getting by on Fanta and fruit cordial.


It was into this market that Starbucks stepped in 2000.  In retrospect they never stood a chance. Although in fact there were plenty who told them that at the time as well.  The coffee giant has been in full retreat throughout Australia, but in Melbourne it has been reduced to a token five outlets.  There can't be many cities of 4 million inhabitants where it's been routed to that extent.


It's a heartening story.  Australia - and Melbourne in particular - have proved that so long as there are enough little guys, and they do what they do well enough, the major multinational doesn't stand a chance.

The strange decline of Paul Hogan

I eased my backside onto a bar stool and ordered a beer.  One of my neighbours heard the accent and, in a voice that bespoke years of smoking heavy tar and gargling with ironmongery, asked me where I came from.  I said I was from England, to which he replied "What the **** d'you wanna come from there for?", and dissolved into guffaws of laughter.

Both Australia and I have come a long way since that encounter in 1991, though since it took place in Tully, Far North Queensland, that was probably always going to be the case for me - it's a long way from most places.


Back in those days, Paul Hogan was the undisputed international face of Australia, and my friend clearly fancied himself as having been cast from the same mould.  When he wasn't punching out crocodiles and blowing the froth off cold ones as Crocodile Dundee, "Hoges" was hurling bucketloads of shrimp onto barbies and blowing the froth off cold ones in adverts for Australian tourism or Fosters lager.  Generally he'd conclude with a laconic remark at the expense of some hapless foreigner, though fortunately his material tended to be of a higher standard than was available in Tully.

The Glory Years

They say that advertising works best when it uses some sort of truth about the product.  And whilst I wouldn't pretend that any of those images represented the whole story, at the time they still reflected a recognisable facet of mainstream Australia.  You didn't really have to go looking for it in out of the way places.  Bars in most parts of the country had examples of people hewn from the same slabs of Australian granite as "Hoges".  Hard-working, hard-drinking, hard-bitten bastards who had a put-down for every occasion.  


If you were English, it was an archetype you recognised all too well:  this was the same stock as the Allan Borders and David Boons, who could thrash the Poms at cricket and be back at the bar before their beer had got warm.


Old stereotypes die hard.  Many of the tourists and backpackers who arrive in Australia for the first time today probably still have expectations of a country bursting at the seams with Paul Hogan clones.  Some may even be hoping for it.  But beneath the kangaroo scrotum purses, stuffed cane toads and merchandise festooned with the logos of various beer companies, all of which can be found in any tourist shop, modern Australians hide a little secret.  


Which is that a visitor is overwhelmingly likely to find that they're friendly, courteous and helpful, and laconically-delivered insults are in short supply.  They drink less than they did as well, and in the cities lower-alcohol beers have become common, as has blokey one-upmanship involving hair-raisingly physical sporting activities.  If you're looking for an experience out of an old lager advert you're increasingly going to have to get off the beaten track a bit.


I'm sure that my friend from the bar stool in Tully is still there, probably in both the literal and figurative senses.  And Australia boasts plenty of places which are far remoter than that.  Tough places breed tough people, who generally aren't too bothered about offending anyone.  


But most Aussies don't live in tough places.  Out of a population of about 22.7 million, around 14.3 million live in one of the state or territory capitals, and quite a lot of the others probably live in other urban centres.  Australia's character is now substantially metropolitan, and it's in these areas that the Hogan archetype has declined.

The sort of bloke who doesn't play cricket against
England any more, thankfully

For all the warm welcome you'll get in Australia these days, there are some downsides to it.  The Australian cricket team's current travails have been partly blamed by some on the lack of precisely the sorts of hard-nosed characters they used to pick.  And I suppose we should mourn the gradual passing of character traits that used to distinguish the country immediately from others, though fortunately for the tourists you can still find them further away from the more built up areas.

As for Paul Hogan, he has followed his own archetype and now lives largely in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles, having spent many years in battles with the Australian tax authorities concerning the proceeds of "Crocodile Dundee".


On a more personal level, the British now drink substantially more than the Australians, which means that at social occasions I am now often drunker and ruder than the locals.  This is a cross that my wife bears with her usual stoicism.

McMansion

Honey, the house ate the garden

When they think of Australia, people often imagine everyone enjoying the warm weather outside, and healthy kids learning sport or just playing in the back yard.  Many Australian families do live like that .  But an increasing number of them are opting to build or buy houses so large that they virtually eliminate any usable garden space.  They have supersized, and their home has become a McMansion.

They're pretty easy to spot.  They're so damn huge, for one thing.  Many of them have a large side order of ugly to go with that.  Often they're built in the outer suburbs, where land values are much less than in more established areas.  This seems to have encouraged families to spend  what they've saved by moving out there on covering virtually every square metre of the plot with house.  


Unfortunately, their popularity has encouraged increasing numbers of homeowners and developers to tear down smaller houses on good-sized plots in more established suburbs and build all over them as well.  What all of these places have in common, apart from their size, is a pocket-sized back garden, sometimes not more than three metres across, and often impractically L-shaped along two sides of the house as well.

It probably looks worse from the other sides

The extra space inside is given over to extra bedrooms, home theatres, "entertainment zones" or simply outsize hallways, kitchens and living areas.  Over the past half century the number of Australians per household has dropped by 30% but the size of houses has doubled.

The environmental impact of all this is profound.  Australia is already one of the highest per capita consumers of energy in the world, and these monstrosities are air conditioned throughout the summer and heated in the winter.  The outer suburbs where they conglomerate are already poorly served by public transport, and such low-density housing makes what there is even less practical, leading to increased reliance on the motor car.  Moreover, the sheer quantity of land concreted over to build them increases water run-off and therefore the risk of flooding.

Some have argued that one of the driving factors in the growth of the McMansion has been the desire for ostentation, often by those who can't really afford it.  Certain aspects of the phenomenon seem to bear this out.  Although there is often little in the way of usable outdoor space (for the kids to play in, for example), some land is generally found for a formal front garden whose only apparent purpose is to give the house "kerb appeal".  Often the only part of the exterior that looks as if any thought has been put into its appearance is the front, with the sides in particular often resembling those of a shop or industrial unit.

It has been claimed that the market for McMansions is declining.  The turbo-charged Australian housing market has lost some of its edge, and some of their disadvantages may only become fully apparent after purchase.  These include the eye-watering running costs, and the need to travel everywhere by car in an era of rising fuel costs.  We'll see.  In the meantime, McMansions are still being built, and they are likely to remain a feature of the Australian environment for many years to come.

For a readable summary of some of the problems posed by the McMansion phenomenon, this article by Professor Terry Burke may be of interest.