Larrikin

A Ned Kelly Icon

      I don't remember reading the term larrikin before I packed for Australia. It popped up when I was reading up on that iconic Australian figure, Ned Kelly. (Yes, the character portrayed by Heath Ledger in the 2002 film of that name.) Ned Kelly, the armor clad Australian Robin Hood, was a something of larrikin: 

 ...almost archly self conscious, too smart for his own good, witty rather than humorous,       exceeding limits, bending rules and sailing close to the wind, avoiding rather than evading responsibility, playing to an audience, mocking pomposity and smugness, taking the piss out of people, cutting down tall poppies, larger than life, skeptical, iconoclastic, egalitarian

 yet suffering fools badly, and above all, defiant...(as described by Australian historian Manning Clark)

     Most larrikin traits describe my father, Croswell Bowen, about whom I'm writing a book. Not surprisingly, given the history of the Irish as convicts in Australia, when it was a British penal colony, the term is thought to come from the Irish pronunciation of larking. As a behavour, it evolved, as Ned Kelly did, as a reaction to corrupt and arbitrary authority. Suddenly, I see my father, the Irish-Catholic, the larrikin, at Choate, that American model of an elite British school; I see the larrikin confronting Sinclair Lewis and the FBI. 

     A brilliant Australian scholar, Melissa Bellanta , writes about larrikinism and other Australian cultural phenomena. (Cate Blanchett fans should check out Melissa's review of Blanchett's performance as King Richard II, in the Sydney Theatre Company's War of the Roses, Pt. 1.) Bellanta has found that the larrikin type evolved and persisted in various Australian cities into the 20th Century. 

     I decided to conduct a little sociolinguistic research, asking everyone I met in Australia to define the term. From my small sample, it seemed that younger Aussies define larrikin differently than their elders. The young responded with synonyms like silly, joker; people my age i.e. early sixties, mentioned the transgressive nature of the larrikin. I'll leave it to the Australians to figure out what that means.

A Fraud? A Hoax? A Prank? A skirmish in the Culture Wars

     Keith Windschuttle is to the Australian Far Right as the late William F. Buckley was to America's Conservatives. He made his journal, Quadrant, a platform for world climate change deniers. Windschuttle precipitated a battle called the History Wars when he published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. He denied the violence of Aboriginal vs. British conflict in Tasmania, attacking the scholarship of other historians. The second volume of The Fabrication... challenged the claims that the governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory had systematically tried to "breed out the color" of Aborigines by forcibly taking children from their parents.

     Windschuttle has been hoisted on his own petard. In the weeks following the holidays, it emerged that Quadrant had published an article, "Scare campaigns and science reporting," on biotechnology and genetic engineering, without checking its authenticity. The article was a fabrication by a scientist, Dr. Sharon Gould, who wanted to demonstrate Windschuttle's acceptance of un-scientific science.

     Accusations, complaints of trickery, glee followed the revelation of the hoax, almost as much fireworks as New Year's Eve in Sydney Harbor. I'm impressed and inspired by Gould's clever method for uncovering Windschuttle's academic double standards. I can think of quite a few proponents of un-scientific science and un-historic history who merit the same treatment.

Thru the Looking Glass

     You think you know what I'm drinking, right? Caramel machiatto? No, it's a Flat White. (And a Lemon Curd tart. Don't go there.)  Here's the thing about Australia: it is easy to think you are in the United States of America, and you are not. 

     I've talked about language as a differentiation. Some social issues in the two countries have run roughly parallel courses. Do redefinition of gender roles, multi-culturalism and immigration sound like American hot topics of the last quarter of the 20th Century? True for Australia, too. (Please to remember that flaming Women's Libber: Germaine Greer: Australian!)

     According to Hugh MacKay's 1993 report, Reinventing Australia, the Mind and Mood of Australia in the 90s, these above were critical social issues for Australians between 1968 and 1993.

     Those decades saw a tremendous rise in the number of women in the workforce, to include 53% of all  married women in 1990. Aussie men were uncertain; hatred of women as a class and mock sensitivity being two responses that developed. Australia abandoned its "Whites Only" policy in 1968. This threatened the image of Aussie as pioneer, soldier and sportsman. Although Australia is one of the most urbanized places in the world, the fantasy of the "Real Australian" as a out-back bushranger promoted a craze for 4 wheel drive.

     However, Mackay claims that Australia leads the Western nations in the boldness of its multi-cultural initiatives. As migration to Australia has shifted from European to Asian, the white majority welcomes migrants, with the caveat "as long as they..." followed by a list.

     Migrants are welcome as long as they:

     *are prepared to embrace our way of life and its values

     *make learning English a top priority

     *not robbing jobs

     *not bringing their prejudices and conflicts into our country

     *assimilate and don't live in ethnic enclaves

     *import enriching culture; especially FOOD

Sounds familiar, no?

     Another familiar refrain: teenage binge drinking is rampant. In fact, Australian drug educators have concluded that this is a lost generation, in spite of a Federal Government campaign.

     But wait, there is one huge difference between Australia and the US:

The Australian Media loathe, despise, hate, disparage, denigrate, satirize etc. PARIS HILTON!

On the Post Colonial in the Post Colonial

Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art

     When I visited this museum, I realized that my time in Australia was going to provide a mirror to my current pre-occupation: trying to write a book about the intersections of my world with my journalist father's world of the 20th. My father participated in World War II as a photographer with the American Field Service Ambulance Corp at Tobruk in North Africa. He watched the British Empire begin to crumble. I went to Ecuador as a Peace Corps Volunteer. After I returned from the Peace Corps, I began studying Anthropology, just as the critiques of the colonial agenda of anthropology were beginning.

     This world class museum, located in the heart of Sydney, next to the transportation hub called Circular Quay, is featuring two brilliant exhibitions which reflect Australia's situation: historically European and geographically Asian. (The phrase is Alison Broinowski's; I'll be writing more about her in another post.)

     Simryn Gill is a Sydney based Malaysian artist. She works in a variety of media, including photography and found objects. Her work is both beautiful and thought provoking, as in a series of necklaces that resemble pearls or Hawaiian puka shells, but are actually beads made from the paper of her friends' favorite books. My favorite work was her treatment of a vintage 1950-1960 Time-Life series on countries of the world. She carefully gessoed or sanded away all of the text of each volume, leaving only the photographs, as the authors and editors had arranged them. The viewer has to reconstruct and may question the rationale for the visual content of this Cold War propaganda.

     On another floor was the astonishing work of Yinka Shonibare, MBE, born in England, raised in Nigeria. Shonibare styles himself a "post colonial hybrid." His work is vivid and disturbing. Headless life size mannequins form a series of tableau vivant of baroque and rococo paintings; their clothing is constructed of gorgeous African textiles. The period's decadence is made visible, yet its folly seems universally, endlessly human.

     Those who preceded my Dad at Tobruk, the generation of Australians who defended Tobruk for the British Empire, the famed "Desert Rats," are now few on the ground. In Sydney, in the Contemporary Art Museum, two brilliant artists offered meditations on all sorts of Empires.

Swimming Across Australia, Pool by Pool

North Sydney's Pool, Harbor Bridge in Background

     Although I haven't repeated the 10 pool marathon of our Singapore/South India/Hong Kong trip, I knew I liked Australia when I discovered the 50 meter salt water swimming pool in the shadow of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It was less than a half mile walk from our hotel and it opened early, even around the holidays. While we were in Sydney, I swam there every morning. It is right next to the 1930s style amusement arcade, Luna Park. I could look at a colossal clown face or at the Sydney Bridge. Mostly, I looked at the Bridge. I've loved that Bridge ever since I made a model of it with pipe-cleaners for 6th Grade Social Studies. 

     50 meter pools are the gold standard of long distance swimmers. They provide a better work out than 25 yard pools because you get no free ride, pushing of a wall every 25 yards. It felt natural to stop at the end of 100 meters and chat with my fellow swimmers; a chance to converse with Aussies in their native element. 

     One day I took the ferry to the beach side suburb of Manly. Lovely waves for body surfing, no wet suit required, but not much of a workout.

     After our week in Sydney, it was on to Adelaide, about a 2 hour plane ride. Adelaide is in another State: South Australia, as opposed to New South Wales, the home of Sydney. We stayed in Burnside, a leafy suburb, with YES! a 50 meter pool, a third of a mile from our host's home. Once again, I swam every day.

    My final pool experience was a new one for me. We visited my Vassar classmate who lives near Gawler, north of Adelaide, and has a lovely small pool, set in her Eden like garden. It provided a great workout: it was equipped with strong jets, creating a current to swim against. 

     Water is my element. I think I must have been a water buffalo in a previous life.

It's All Cricket to Me

Listen carefully, and you can hear 300 years of history diverging. Australian English and American English are daughter dialects of the British Isles, separated in their youth. Now they almost mutually unintelligible. Almost? Like a good Socio-linguist, let me put a number around that. Our book-loving host provided me with a book of Aussie slang, about 300 terms. A quick study, and 100 of them were identical to American expressions. 2/3rds were not. So there you have it: in another century or so, Americans and Australians may not understand each other at all.
In some areas, incomprehensibility is already complete. The game of cricket itself is opaque to me, as are the headlines it yields. "Mother of all scalps takes the biscuit." "Pup and wagging tail lift hosts."
My favorite headline is from the game of politics: "Howard to get highest US civil gong from Bush." You can guess that gong means a medal. Dare I date myself by saying that I wish Bush had been given the Gong Show gong long, long ago? Bush called Howard a Man of Steel, the Australian paper calls him The Man of Steal, for usurping space in Blair House and forcing the Obamas into a hotel.
My pet theory about Australian English is that among urban teenagers, it is diverging from the sort of standardization referred to as Broadcast English. The oddest thing is that my accent is taken as Canadian!

DisLocation, DisLocation, DisLocation

I think we have been here for a week. I'm not really sure; the plane was delayed 24 hours and then we lost a day, and we are a day ahead of the US.
Or is it that we are in Asia, and much of Sydney is named for places in England: Blackheath, hotel at Manley called New Brighton? Or that fish and chips appear everywhere?
Or is it that the dialect of English spoken here and American are mutually unintelligible? Or the left hand driving; Dick only created one death defying moment once on a two hour trip to the interior...
Well, I've adjusted, and am scribing madly each day, and will transmit when we have some down time/computer time. Topics: 50 meter pool; prime minister who exercises in local gym, Larrikins, Ned Kelly, Post-Modern/Post Colonial Art Exhibits, geology, the merits of building campaigns during the Depression, shared trials of the 21st Century, and so on. Stay tuned.

P.S. Good on the Aussies, they can't stand Paris Hilton.