Category: Australia

This is a long overdue post. Australia has been in drought for many years and I’ve had frequent reports from my parents and friends to say that stored water is down to a couple of months for major population centres. You can see from the Sydney Water website that we use nearly 1500 Megalitres per… Continue reading Broken Drought?

Every year Australian filmmakers of all ages and experience compete in the short film festival Tropfest. We watched the 16 finalists a couple of nights ago and as usual, a couple stood out for me. One, The Story of Ned, was a quirky animation where the characters are stories and the main character has some… Continue reading Tropfest

I was having a conversation with my mate’s mum the other day about aboriginies. She talked about how poorly they fit into society (by which she means white society) and gave the example of one man in a settlement neighbouring their town west of Sydney who had to leave. Apparently he’d been doing his best… Continue reading Stolen Generation

I’m staying with a christian Lebanese Australian friend at the moment and am having trouble dealing with the anti-Muslim sentiment from his parents’ generation. The younger generation are very open-minded, but my friend’s mother and aunt are adamant that Muslims are breeding up to take over Australia. It’s not all Muslims, they concede, but the… Continue reading Muslim Domination?

A year ago, just before christmas, we had big racial riots in Sydney. It began when some Lebanese Australians beat up a life saver in Cronulla. I wasn’t here at the time, but I’m guessing it was a personal, spontaneous event having nothing to do with his status. But we’re proud of our life savers… Continue reading Multicultural lifesavers

I rented a car and drove up to Port Macquarie to see my parents over the weekend. One advantage to renting a car is that the stereo is worth listening to, so I bought a few CDs to catch up on what I’ve missed while I’ve been away. One of them was Missy Higgins ‘The… Continue reading Australian Accent

January 26 is Australia Day, or Invasion Day as the Aboriginies call it, when the first fleet landed in Botany Bay in 1788. The natives have a point. Is it right that we celebrate a day when one culture turned up and began to annihalate another? It’s not as if we think about history on… Continue reading Australia Day

I always say that one of the most interesting, but wearying, things about living in another culture is that you don’t know where to find even the bost basic items. And just finding out can take weeks. Today I spent half an hour in the grocery section of the supermarket looking for celery. Even the… Continue reading Celery

My keepers (still staying with a friend’s family) turned on the TV this morning to find Discovery Channel had an American documentary on bush fires. It was quite surreal to realise that the subjects were Australian. Bush fires are such a part of Australian life that they hardly require a documentary, but to see someone… Continue reading Bush fires

There’s more to Aboriginal culture than digeridoos and carrobories, but they have the most impact, integrating music, art, dance and storytelling in one go. A couple of years ago, I stumbled across an aboriginal culture centre in Darling Harbour, just under the IMAX theatre. I wanted so much to take Marie there, but when we… Continue reading Aboriginal Culture