Fado, Fado
Thirty-two hours of penal transportation and here I am in Australia. I think that’s the farthest my penal has ever been transported in one sitting.
Australia’s first non-Aboriginal settlers came from England after its discovery in the 17th century. It was decided by the British crown that the “hellish” surroundings in this newly discovered land made it the perfect place to ship its criminals and the perfect solution to the problem of over-crowded prisons in England.
Of course many of the prisoners languishing in British jails were Irish rebels and petty thieves who faced death at the end of a noose. The British felt penal transportation to New South Wales a worse alternative, and duly proceeded to ship thousands of convicts, many of them Irish, to the land down under.
Is it my Irishness? Did I do something wrong? I’m still not sure what I did to deserve this two-week sentence in this hellish land down under, but here I am.
For those not familiar with the place, the continent is shaped like the head of a dog. Not a poodle, or other type of incessant miniature dog, but a good, big dog, faithful and true. And here I am in Brisbane on the scruff of his “good-dog” neck.
It looks and feels just like San Diego here. It’s late autumn now (end of May), and the weather is perfect, 78 degrees or so in the day, 72 or so at night. The streets are laid out in grids, and from my hotel-apartment downtown, the grids are walled with modern, clean looking buildings that give you that urban canyon feel that is so familiar to us Americans. Half the people are Asian, and there is every kind of Asian restaurant imaginable. I had the best Vietnamese Bun salad I’ve ever had in a little suburban strip mall that boasted 47 different Asian restaurants.
I rented a car on the weekend and drove south along the coast on the Pacific Coast Highway 1 (sound familiar?) for about two hours to the little surf-hippie town of Byron Bay, which is a miniature version of Santa Cruz. Byron Bay is a touchy-feely paradise. Crystals, mystical healing bodywork, and surf shops on every corner. Alas, I’m told the “real” hippies split for the hills long ago where they live in a semi-legal pot paradise.
I wound my way north, back up Coast Highway 1 along the Pacific, but the Pacific was on my right, and the turn signal was on my left, and I was moving closer to the equator with each mile I drove north. The highway signs and the super shopping malls were just like the ones at home, and at the risk of sounding like Vincent Vega, McDonalds’ are McDonalds’, but Burger Kings are Hungry Jacks, and they regularly put beetroot on your cheeseburger. I tell you, it’s a backward, upside down cake, alternative world going on down here. A lot for old OOJ to get the head around.
And, the Aussies are so cute like. They actually do say “G’Day Mate”, but are more likely to greet you with a “Haw Ya Gaw’in?” I couldn’t believe my own ears when I was watching the Aussie equivalent of “Good Morning America”, and they started talking about the upcoming Aussie elections. The news commentator when asked if he thought John Howard would be turned out of office broke into a long tirade about how the country is “Gaw’in Good” and the economy is “Gaw’in Good.”, and if we’re “Gaw’in Good” what’s the point of turning John Howard out of office.
Everything here has a cute nickname. Breakfast is “Brekkie”, Aussie Rules Football and League Rugby, which have little to do with the feet, is “The Foottie”. Football, which has everything to do with feet is Soccer. When you fall off your board and are knocked unconscious while surfing, after they drag you to shore, they call “the Ambo”. And, if you win the Queensland Lotto, you’ve actually won the “Golden Casket”.
And of course, wherever there’s Chinese food there are Jews. The first 16 Jews came to Australia in 1817 as prisoners, more followed during the Aussie gold rush and even more before the Holocaust of World War II. Most settled in Sydney and Melbourne with the more secular in Sydney and the more Orthodox in Melbourne.
Checking the “Jewometer” my wonderful brother-in-law sent me, I see that there are 103,000 Jews in Australia, making it the 9th largest country population of Jews in the world. Much more than the anemic 1,200 in my native Ireland.
So, let’s recap. They have a Pacific Coast Highway 1, we have a Pacific Coast Highway 1. They have Byron Bay, we have Santa Cruz. Almost half of their population are from the Pacific Rim, almost half of our population are from the Pacific Rim.
They have big shopping malls and modern grid-like streets, we have big shopping malls and modern grid-like streets. They have surfing, we have surfing. They have McDonalds, we have McDonalds. They have Hungry Jacks, we have…. wait a minute, I knew something was fishy about this place.
Before I headed back to my native Ireland, I had to go have a drink in an Aussie pub in Clontarf. Yes, you heard right, they have a Clontarf and it is in the north-east part of Brisbane, just like my Clontarf in the north-east part of Dublin.
I bellied up to the bar. Decided against the Guinness as the one I’d had a few nights before was not up to my admittedly high standards. Felt like some wine. So I ask the bar-keep “what’s your best wine?” He asks, “Red or White?”, I say, “Red”. He replies, “Well that would have to be a Petaluma Cabernet.”
Copyright (C) 2004 – 2019 Abram Richman All Rights Reserved
The Only Other Jew In Dublin 