Tag: Australia

Australia, the forever frontier

I moved to New Zealand years and years ago, but secretly, I’ve had a longstanding crush on Australia. 

I just got back from my ninth trip ‘across the ditch,’ which I guess isn’t a lot compared to many Kiwis, and I feel I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the vast sunburnt expanses of Australia.

As part of my so-called career, I’ve worked for Australian journalism on and off for more than 10 years now from the comforts of NZ. It’s something that would’ve been impossible in the pre-internet age, but I’ve written headlines and copy edited from Sydney to Cairns, Darwin to Melbourne, Shepparton to Townsville, and “worked” remotely in far more of the places in Australia than I’ve ever visited. It does the head in a bit, actually, to think about this too hard. I’ve worked with a lot of Australians and visited scrappy newspaper offices in rural Victoria and deep in the vast Northern Territory, and it’s always kind of cool to realise journos are basically the same no matter where you go. 

Australia has sparked my imagination since I was a kid, bopping along to Men at Work songs and was caught up in the brief weird wave of Australia-mania in the US in the ‘80s, when Olivia Newton-John, Mel Gibson, Crocodile Dundee and Koala Blue took over. Since I moved to New Zealand, I’ve managed to meet both Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett and Men At Work’s Colin Hay, both totems of my youthful fascination with all things Aussie, and in my stumbling geeky way got to tell them both how much their music helped shape my brain. 

I first made it to Sydney circa 2007 and if it weren’t for a combination of pandemics, expensive trips back to American family, and juggling life, work and school back here in Auckland, I imagine I might have gone a lot more. Some of those things have changed in recent years and the wife and I are hoping to make hops across the ditch a more regular thing. After a mere three hours or so flight, you can explore a whole different world. Australia contains multitudes, from sprawling big cities to rugged bush to staggeringly beautiful wide horizons. 

Australia and NZ are both allies and “frenemies” and while there’s a lot shared between our two countries there’s a lot of differences as well. Australians are a bit brasher, bolder and louder, with more of that American-style frontier spirit combined with a very Aussie informality, sometimes crudeness. It can, like everywhere, be an ugly place at times and has a rough and raggedy history. Unfortunately, like America, Australia’s indigenous culture was largely suppressed and exterminated for decades, but is still alive in the heart of the Dreaming and it’s not quite like anything else in the world. 

But hey, I’m no expert, mate. I just like it there. I like that you can see these huge iguana-sized water dragons in city parks strolling around, hear kookaburras in the trees, towering gum trees everywhere you look, the rocks in the Red Centre that hum with ancient whispers. I like that for now, Australia still has a robust newspaper industry in the cities even if it’s mostly the Murdoch Empire, I love the scrappy sounds of young Australian punk bands and the writing that tries to capture the mysterious meaning of the bush.

There’s so much more I want to see – I’m desperate for another trip to the haunting Red Centre, want to check out the famed Ghan train ride across the desert, still haven’t been to Adelaide or Cairns, or just wandering along the bush and the Outback and heck, maybe even ridiculously far away Perth. I’m curious about the steamy weirdness of Darwin and really want to check out the Mad Max-style badlands of Coober Pedy and Broken Hill. And Tasmania! What about Tasmania? 

Don’t get me wrong – New Zealand is swell, comfortable for us, with a lot cooler temperatures and a whole lot less creatures that can kill you. But the grass is always a little greener on the other side – or perhaps, the dirt is redder. I’m always excited to explore that forever frontier just across the Tasman Sea. 

The Kinks, the Australian Outback, a memory, a dream

I’m roaring through the Australian Outback, more than 100km/h, past red dirt and yellow grass and under blue skies, and I’m listening to the Kinks. 

Every day I look at the world from my window – Waterloo Sunset, The Kinks 

I’d always wanted to go to the Red Centre, the wide-open Outback sung about in songs by Midnight Oil and ancient, enigmatic and empty. I went a few years back to Alice Springs, isolated and strange, and Uluru, the massive sandstone monolith hunched right at the heart of the old country. 

There was no internet, and a few CDs I’d grabbed in Sydney in my rental car for the 4-hour drive from Alice Springs to Uluru. One of them was the Kinks’ Something Else, their fifth album, from 1967. 

Uluru stands out alone in the middle of a vast plain of red dirt, a giant unopened eye half-peering over the horizon, expanding in your car windshield from a distant hill to a  towering monolith, all the more impressive for its isolation. 

This is my street and I’m never gonna to leave it / And I’m always gonna to stay here if I live to be ninety-nine – Autumn Almanac, The Kinks

The Kinks are a band that grows on me more and more the older I get. Perhaps it’s because of all the big ‘60s bands, The Kinks are the ones who seemed middle-aged even when they were young. Oh, they were hell raisers, don’t get me wrong, but Ray Davies’ lyrics always looked inward, introspectively. They were nostalgic for a world that’s never been. Ray Davies’ world view always seemed perpetually middle-aged. 

Time is as fast as the slowest thing – Wonderboy, The Kinks

The Beatles looked back at the past either with droll mockery (“For The Benefit of Mr. Kite”) or soul-baring pathos (“Eleanor Rigby”). The Stones generally only looked back at things that involved them getting laid. The Who looked back, with anger. 

But The Kinks often looked back with rose-coloured glasses, with wistful thoughts of the way things used to be, or should’ve been. “Waterloo Sunset,” “Death of A Clown,” “Victoria,” “Celluloid Heroes,” “The Village Green Preservation Society.” 

I miss the village green, And all the simple people. – The Village Green Preservation Society, The Kinks

The Australian Outback humbles you. It’s vast, sprawling, primordial and raw. It’s the oldest place I’ve ever been. Hiking through 40C+ heat, desert black flies pickpecking away at all your exposed flesh, the world reduced to prime colours – red, blue, brown blending into yellow. You feel a weight. You feel history, and the weight of something that’s been around way longer than you, or anybody you’ve ever known. 

Nobody has to be any better than what they want to be – Australia, The Kinks

The Kinks felt a weight too, even if they would never articulate it precisely as that. It’s the weight of what might’ve been, what was, what could never be. Sometimes music and a place blend together in your mind, and you can’t separate the two in your memory. 

The Outback is an old, old place, older than just about anywhere else, and Ray Davies sings for me. 

As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise.