Goodbye to all that
This had never happened until a recent trip to Phuket, but then it happened twice more on one night, and that was being swabbed in search of explosives. Bags, body, frisked all over with a wand attached at the one end to a square of material which in turn is run through a detector looking for things with the potential to light up the night, or at least an aeroplane. This was the farewell from Perth, the last hurrah, and the same happened again at Melbourne the next morning. This type of check may be a new phenomenon but three times in four flights could give rise to speculation of hyper-sensitivity or that an innocent grandfather from New Zealand could vaguely give the look of terror. I didn’t ask which, those that operate these sorts of security apparatus aren’t given lightly to such speculation.
If the security is sensitive, the airline is good and a second trip on Virgin Blue from the west of Australia to New Zealand was every bit as good as the first. Virgin’s plane have legroom, they provide a reasonable service and they run to schedule; everything a discerning passenger could want. In fact not only did the flight from Perth get away on time, it landed a half hour ahead of schedule, a tail wind pushing the Boeing 737 along at over 1,000kph. This has been said before but it is worth repeating, and it may be a free ad, but Virgin Blue leaves its Qantas-owned rival Jetstar in its trail of vapour and it beats other low-cost carriers such as Tiger, Air Asia, Ryan Air and EasyJet hands down. Although again, just to repeat the point, those other airlines are all OK with the exception of Jetstar which is in a class of its own, and that’s not a recommendation.
If there is a negative about a four and a half hour stopover at Melbourne Airport it is the absence of free wireless internet. In Singapore, free wireless internet access was a godsend during a five hour wait in the budget-carrier terminal, but at Tullamarine there’s nothing unless you pay. To add insult to injury, the Vodaphone mobile broadband service appeared blocked, and at 6.00am little is open to occupy transit passengers.
There are things to be missed about Perth and Western Australia, not least of which are the Monday night television interviews with John “Woosha” Worsfeld, the coach of the Western Sea Eagles, one of two local AFL clubs. The Eagles have an unassailable spot as wooden spooners of the AFL League and it is sheer theatre each week to watch a beaming Woosha confidently tell Channel Seven’s Basil Zemplas that the team is on track and that his job as coach is rock solid safe. Last Saturday, the assistant coach told The West Australian that Woosha was at the very peak of his coaching career, and that is the very thing to love about Australians. They are optimists; when the chips are down, lower than ever imaginable, they can always see the positives.
To put other things in perspective, a scheduled television debate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, the leaders of the two main Australian political parties, has been moved; the timing clashed with the final of Australian MasterChef and it was feared, rightly so, that this would distract viewers away from the lesser stuff of who is going to lead Australia over the next three years. Gillard and Abbott are neck and neck in the polls which is a surprise given Abbott’s loathsome persona.
During out time in Australia we have scoffed, loudly so, at the prospect that Kangaroos run free in the wild. We had heard stories about their antics and were told on countless occasions we would see them, or at least Kangaroo road kill, in any number of places we travelled; on the Nullabor, in the south-west, while out camping and on our travels north. But not a one other than those tamed or in wildlife parks and so it was fitting that on the last day, between Perth and Ellenbrook where Seath and Nicole are building their house, there was an unexpected presence. In a paddock about a dozen, standing around grazing, the occasional one hopping at speed along a fence line looking for all the world like the tail on a Qantas aircraft. After seven months in Australia, it was like we had finally arrived.

Of Barrys and Shaggas
The summer may have been hot, but it gets cold too in Western Australia, and the news has been preoccupied in the last weeks with reports of the coldest winter on record and leading items on television bulletins showing frost being scraped from the windows of cars. The overnight temperatures have plunged below zero, and it may be too cold to stay much longer.
It may also be the cold which has caused a blockage to the brain at the Karratha Natural gas plant; the West Australian reports that the plant’s nine page Bicycle Procedures make riveting reading. Among the examples of the carefully crafted procedures are that staff are not permitted to ride their own bicycles on site but must submit a “Request for Bicycle” form including a 26-point bicycle maintenance checklist each month. All bikes must have a kick stand and carry basket sufficient to hold 5kg of cargo on the front and 15 on the back. It would be good to see these big, burly plant worker getting about in these bikes.
If there was any doubt that Australia is an uncultured, bogan nation there can be none now after, Rivers, one of the local discount retail stores started advertising “metallic shagga” boots. There are two things to consider here; if metallic footwear is not bad enough, calling them shagga boots is really quite beyond the pale. Apparently a derivative of Ug, Ugh or Ugg boots, the ad describes them as having a unique Australian history, created by surfers who, after a day paddling the cold water, wanted these sheepskin boots to keep themselves warm in the evenings. “As Australian, we consider them a cultural icon”, the ad concludes, and as a New Zealander this may be the last time a sheep joke will be enjoyed at our expense.
An AFL bad boy was in hospital last week, Richmond Tiger Ben Cousins having suffered a reaction to a combination of caffeine tablets and prescription sleeping pills. What has been revealed is that players get stuck into caffeine tablets before and during games to give them that added boost and then take sleeping pills after match to slow them down again. But what is intriguing about this report is that, while Cousins was relatively abstemious following one of his sides rare wins, one newspaper report described the official after-match function as having been attended by a number of “over-refreshed” club legends. Over refreshed, how is that for a euphemism for paralytic?
The final and favourite report for the week is that of a new website dedicated to saving the name Barry from extinction. Barrys built Australia, the site says, and the great name, once popular with parents, is being overlooked in a world of Zacharys, Oscars and Julians. Barrys need all the help they can get and on the endangered list a number of great Australian Barrys; Humphries and Gibb and one of the baddest boys of all, the Australian Football League star Barry Hall. Already the corresponding Facebook pages has over 3,000 “likes”.
Last night, the All Blacks beat South Africa in what must be one of the best rugby tests in recent time and local favourites, the Fremantle Dockers were beaten by Ben Cousin’s Richmond. It must be time to abandon this curious country and return to the sanctuary and sanity of New Zealand.

Rudderless
The dust has settled on the leadership change and in Julia Gillard the lucky country now has its first Welsh-born Prime Minister. If that if not bad enough she is the first ever “ranga”, as they call red-heads in this part of the world, in the role and that has become, perhaps, the greatest talking point of her sudden rise to the top. Television viewers have been subjected to a seemingly endless barrage of her hair through the ages, from schoolgirl to Prime Minister. On that alone, she will likely win the Federal Election, now expected to happen sometime during August..
The move to topple Kevin Rudd coincided with my return from Phuket, and in the transient world of politics it was both inevitable and wise. Rudd and Labor were losing ground at an alarming rate to the Liberal leader Tony Abbott who is, quite frankly, an unnervingly creepy man. It would be an embarrassment to the civilized world should he be elected and, although there is still an outside chance he could win, the betting odds have tipped back in Labor’s favour leaving the Coalition only now a $3.10 long shot.
In defeat Rudd was as every bit as charmless as former Australian leader John Howard who this week failed in his bid to become the Chairman of the International Cricket Council. For some reason, Howard was grumpy and seemed surprised that Sri Lanka didn’t support him after his calling spin bowler Murathilaran a cheat and giving Zimbabwe’s Mugabe his pedigree (not that anyone could argue with him on that score). The Asian nations decided that Howard was racist and after his conduct towards the boat people in the lead-up to the 2004 Federal Election, and who could blame them?
But back to Rudd; he managed to alienate not only his political rivals but also his colleagues, the public and, it seems, even many of his own staff. This mild, meek looking man is apparently no stranger to letting serve and following with a volley of choice four letter words directed at staff and others who may not have satisfactorily fulfilled his every whim.
According to West Australian columnist Zoltan Kovacs, "it is undeniable that Rudd was a friend to his political gravediggers. He was evidently unaware of his fatal political flaw; an addiction to spin as the indispensible means of getting and holding power. . . It is an irony of Mr Rudd's downfall that he was widely known as a master of spin, but wa kicked out of office mainly because of an inability to communicate effectively."
Never better illustrated, Rudd’s tussle with the mining companies over the proposed introduction of a new mining "super profits" tax was his eventual undoing; whatever the merits of the tax, it was a public relations disaster and his toppling became only a matter of time. One thing about the Australians is that they had the daring and courage to replace a serving Prime Minister, still ahead in the polls, just months out from a Federal Election, and there may be a lesson in that currently for the New Zealand Labour Party.
If there is some disappointing new to report, it is that stumps have been drawn on the annual Lilac Hill Festival, an annual cricket match held near the small town of Guildford in the Swan Valley just outside Perth. Since 1990, the Lilac Hill Festival has been home to an opening match for international touring teams, a sort of shrugging-off-the-jetlag warm-up loosener. It would be like having a carnival day at the Heathcote Cricket Club, all good fun, and as well as the touring teams other legends such as Dennis Lillee or even our own Sir Richard Hadlee come out of retirement and play for the local Chairman’s Eleven.
Apparently touring teams no longer want to play, saying it will somehow compromise other international fixtures, this year the death knell being spelled by England refusing to play in what would have been a twenty year anniversary match prior to the Ashes series. It is, alas, another casualty of the corporatisation of sport.