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God bless Australia
Theirs may have been a forlorn hope, but it had to be admired, the Cessna-type airplane which circled the beaches of Perth towing Cancer Society banners variously with the messages, There’s nothing healthy about a tan and There’s no such thing as a healthy tan. There wasn’t a hope anyone would take the slightest bit of notice, even with the plane circling and swooping low over the shores to make a point, the temperatures were in the early forties and the beaches were packed with bathers, including us, who probably wouldn’t have even been shifted by the sighting of a school of sharks. One deeply tanned woman (and most of them seem to be English or European people judging by their accented conversations) in her sixties at least observed that she had to die of something.
While New Zealand seems to remain perpetually shrouded in bad weather, we have had a curious shift in mind-set. Anything less than 30 degrees and we reminisce about hot water bottles and thermal undergarments as though our throat have been cut. Perth has had a run of very hot days, two at least as high as 43 degrees, the skies are cloudless and blue and a brief shower which hardly wet the pavement the other day ended 62 days without rain. As the Cancer Society might say, this is a climate to die for.
We have been pleased to learn more about this glorious country this week. What is described as “larrikin” Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s loud Australian jacket is on display at the WA Maritime Museum, albeit having been dry-cleaned to remove beer stains, and, between them, Australians eat 380 million Tim Tam biscuits a year. According to the Sunday Times, the question of who put the dope in Schapelle Corby’s boogie bag remains one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries, along with the whereabouts of former Prime Minister Harold Holt, and Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc is Australia’s favourite wine.
Meanwhile, a former Australian Rules football player has been accused by animal rights activists of accepting blood money for a comical advertisement in which he appears lobbying the United Nations to declare Australia Day as an international public holiday, all the time encouraging Australian to eat more lamb. The spokesperson for the animal rights group has the unlikely Christian name of Fawn; maybe they would have preferred venison.
If nothing else, Australia Day provides a brief respite from work by falling in a Tuesday, its timing being described by a killjoy spokesperson for the Employers’ Federation as “unfortunate”. Newspaper and television reports estimate the number of sick days or sickies thrown on the Monday as expecting to jump by about one third to give those people a four day weekend. Last year, when Australia day fell on the Monday, absenteeism was 34 percent higher than usual on the Tuesday but we reckon those people would have been genuinely sick nursing frail, post celebration heads and bodies.
As for us, Marty, in very un-Australian fashion, turned up to work on Monday, but together we will make amends by heading downtown for the Skyshow celebrations with our Australia Day drinking hats, adorned in green and gold wigs and flag capes, fake tattoos and wearing Aussie flag thongs. The footwear that is.