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order to provide the family with an additional income, classifying hundreds
of Mills and Boon romances by subgenres and titles, tracing back your
genealogy to the correct street where one of your great-grandfathers was a
tailor in Budapest and another a watchmaker in Wales, all this is not mere
entertainment, it contributes to your social life and makes up your identity,
but no Australian life is complete without extensive travelling. We are or feel
so far from the rest of the world and, on the other hand, adventure is so close
to our door, that there is little difference after all between driving through to
Perth on the Eyre Highway and exploring Burma.
If you can overcome prejudice, you definitely don’t need to take
risks to see something different while enjoying all the same pleasures and
facilities as in your suburb. Bali, for example, much despised by our intellectual
gurus, may have lost part of its authenticity with the tourist boom.
It is beyond doubt that Kuta and Denpasar are not virgin territory for ethnographic
studies, but the large thatched hut of the “Bali Waltzing Matilda
Too” bar and restaurant, open on three sides and well ventilated, has its own
special charm on a different scale from an Austrian Restaurant in Alicante
or a French bakery in Gosford, N.S.W. For one thing, this is one of the few
places in the world where you can find Foster’s, VB and Emu Export beers
parading together in a friendly reunion on the same shop front. The Great
Book of Australian tourism and the Great Book of Australians abroad are
still to be published, they would be an instant success as Xmas presents in
Angus and Robertson’s stores. Then you will be served with exquisite politeness
a large platter of nasi goreng for a couple of dollars in any of the
Balinese cafés conveniently situated inside or very near the batik, leather
and silver markets. Unless you prefer the Sunset Bar and restaurant, which
will provide “gourmandaise seafodd” (sic).
Let us return to a conversation overheard at Prof. Newman’s birthday
party, by the swimming pool at his new Rushcutters Bay home last Saturday :
“I would hate to generalize and sound exaggeratedly idealistic, but, you
know, the crucial difference between Australia and America is that, in the
U.S.A., only winners win, while down under, losers, or most of them, win
too: there is something about the sky that recycles the trash in our minds,
so that being styleless becomes a style too, I’d call it ‘the last wave’. It’s the
end of the road, not the middle of nowhere. Sure you can return where you
came from, some people will, but this is the farthest you could go, and that’s
what’s so attractive about it.»
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