(I started writing this before any of the drama in Sydney began)
Shortly before I flew to Australia, a colleague at work asked me the following, ‘if your family were in London, would you prefer your Christmas to be cold or hot?’ Without hesitation I answered…’hot, of course hot’.
For the majority of the Christian world, Christmas is celebrated in semi-darkness; by the light of a burning log fire, drenched in mulled wine and stuffed with fruity Christmas cake. For those of us born south of the equator, Christmas is an altogether different affair. There are no Christmas specials on television, there are no ironic Christmas Jumpers and every family devises their own unique explanation for how Santa breaks into a nation of houses devoid of the requisite chimneys. #magickeyring
The last time my mother cooked a traditional hot meal for Christmas Day I was still at school. When the temperature is hovering in the high twenties, lighting an oven is a Bikram Yoga style torture and thus, we rarely extended the preparation of heated food beyond the grilling of bacon for pre-dawn breakfast. Christmas Day lunch at our house involves kilos of prawns*, Balmain Bugs and the myriad salads that each of the aunties have prepared the night before. There’s always enough cheese to see through the New Year and icy cold White Wine. When you think you can eat no more, there is the ritual fight over the Cadbury Favourites as everyone tries their darnedest to get a hold of the Flake (why is there only ever one), feed the Whites to the toddlers, outstretched hands like the beaks of so many seagulls, and the dilemma over whether or not to feed the Turkish Delights to the Dog. #ischocolatereallypoison
Other southern British relatives do the hot roast dinner on Christmas Eve, profiting from the late afternoon ‘southerly’^ to cool their overheated kitchens. But I challenge any passionate devotee of a Yorkshire pudding to drown one in gravy and nibble away while the mercury rises. The gluttonous satisfaction of eating a hot roast meal dwindles somewhat when you’ve just got out of a pool and can’t walk past a hot oven without your shoulders tingling with the needles third-degree sunburn.
I do love my Christmas at home, surrounded by family, most especially now that there are little people who share my childlike obsession with Disney Princesses. #partofyourworld I enjoy the dusks on the deck, wine chilled with ice cubes sweating the hot glass, jokes, piss-takes and the cacophony of cicadas as the sun sets red and low over the western desert.
There is not a whole lot else to love about Sydney these days.
I lost a few Facebook friends this past year for writing about Australia’s decline under her current leadership. I shed a few more for talking so openly about feminism and how the sexualisation of young girls is contributing to a rising culture of violence against women. I copped a lecture from a neighbour for being pro-choice, pro-marriage equality and “pro-if I can’t believe in Mermaids then I’m sorry but your dude who rose from the dead is dubious at best”…and most satisfactorily, only because they would go on to lose; I fought with Scots about nationalism.
I also spent a good chunk of my summer holiday refuting the notion that Islamic Terrorism had landed in a chocolate café in Sydney. That cost me a few mates and possibly two cousins. #Icantbetheonlyone
I suspect Russell Brand does not have all the answers; perhaps if he belonged to a minority group who’d fought to the death for the right to vote, he might not be so cavalier on the subject. I am sure most officials elected to govern compromise their integrity at some point or another to win over the vocal majority in their electorate. I lament the current trend for quoting social media as a source of absolute truth, especially now that the ‘enemy’ has successfully manipulated the medium to disseminate their own violent propaganda.
Most of all I despise old men in suits that own the lion-share of all the messages that reach the eyes and ears of the wider public. Headlines designed only to breed hatred, insecurity and ignorance, tawdry, incorrect headlines that grab the attention of the misinformed and the ill educated. Which is why I was unsurprised that the Sydney Siege took place behind the windows into Channel 7’s Sunrise studio. ∞
One idiot, one psychotic, delusional madman took it upon himself to teach the world a lesson for his own aggrandisement and tabloid glory. He knew that if he appropriated the name and badge of Public Enemy Number 1, he’d get his name up in lights. Such a desperate shame that two others had to die so one moron could achieve his 15 minutes. The litany of untruths, suppositions and errors that were subsequently vomited upon the people climbed to the very highest levels; the Prime Minister issuing retractions of incorrect statements made at his press conference was a memorable low point.
My Sydney, the Sydney that nursed me through the ups and downs of 30 years on earth has changed so much I barely recognise her. The water still flows in through the Heads, the Tower marks the spot where I tripped and fell in my first ever pair of High Heels and every thirty minutes, the Manly Ferry makes its way into Circular Quay. But the people have changed. Australians have picked sides; they’re either battening down their hatches in preparation for an invasion, or a vocal few, like the word warriors of Get Up are shouting against the heavy tide of bullshit, begging to be heard.
Singular viewpoints and dissenters and change-agents and individuals are not so welcome in this Sydney of nodding sheep.
Frequent visitors to these pages will already know the Art-sis-tologer. She is an earthy thoughtful Green to my fiery thoughtless Red. Named after the Queen, she is my sister, a trained astrologer and an ever evolving artist; her latest creative incarnation, and there have been many, is as Textile Designer. Completing her first year at Sydney’s Fashion Design School, her final assignment of the year was to design her version of the ancient French fabric known as a Toile de Jouy. The theme was Australiana.
Rather than paste bikinis, Opera Houses and surfboards onto white cloth, she showcased the Sydney that we know, the Sydney that I love, My Sydney. Ibis birds stealing your chips in the park, colour-coded Wheelie bins lining the streets and the quad-engine jets that fly just overhead as they come in to land…every five minutes. The centrepiece is a sketch of an inner Sydney pub, tiled walls wrapped around a post-war façade, depicting the drinking houses that are cornerstones of a city that spends it’s evenings sharing stories and cold drinks in the sun.
A City built by criminals, by ne’er-do-wells, by chancers and by thieves. A State that forged her economic and industrial progress upon the backs of those who came from afar, escaping the dictators and the psychopaths that local boys had died to defeat. A Country ruled by a man who was not born in Australia and whose media ally is a former Australian who was adopted by the US so he could sell more newspapers.
It is a good thing then that we still have a sense of humour.
*The police are called in to manage the traffic jam around Pyrmont as Sydney’s Fish Market opens for 36 straight hours over Christmas Eve in response to the overwhelming demand for every imaginable sea creature
^The cooling breeze of the Southerly Change blows through Sydney of a late afternoon, often followed by a thunderstorm dumping rain guaranteed to render the ensuing morning as sticky as a skiers groin
∞ The studio faces out onto a public space much like the Today Show in NYC
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