Vainglorious, but minus the glory: thus was the decision to sell camels to Arabs and wolf piss to the Canadians. This is what is exposed when the curtain on the Australian psyche is peeled back. The cultural pantomime is played out. Young girls ride greyhounds & children play on elephants to the tune of Johnny Farnham’s “Sadie the Cleaning Lady.”
The id, ego and super-ego are blind-baked as one would a quiche. This sets the firmaments in place and allows for the nice browning of the life-well-lived. The urge to leave the nation is as strongly contested as the race to the coast. We travel badly, beating out the Americans for volume and everyone else for drunkenness.
Quasi-blind to the irony the disparity is commented upon but the baksheesh is always denied – a sad enunciation of the worst kind of bogan billionaire. Once that fiscal gauntlet has been run, all bets are off – unless, of course, they feed State and Federal coffers.
When proprioception gives way to such fever dreams are you surprised to find that a kangaroo clutching a schooner is what’s prized?
Written on Saturday, 18 December 2010