The 'Ekka'

Today is a public holiday for Queensland’s ‘Ekka’ festival. Its official name is the Royal Queensland Show, though like many Australian words was shortened to ‘Ekka’ from its original title, the ‘Queensland Intercolonial Exhibition’, which dated back to 1876.

It’s principally an agricultural show and was, and to some extent remains, an opportunity to demonstrate new technologies and inventions. Lasting a week and held on Brisbane’s showgrounds, it’s the annual chance for many Queenslanders to visit the ‘big smoke’, many of whom will travel distances over 2,000km to get here (and that’s just within the state).

I went along last night and it was quite an experience (and good fun). It was full of people donning cowboy hats, sheepskin jackets and leather boots. Entertainment included rodeo, wood chopping, monster truck driving, various agricultural prize shows, and a laser and fireworks show sponsored by the Dairy Farmers union. Not much more to add really, but thought as it's such an iconic Queensland event I couldn’t not add something on it.

New cultures

At the weekend I went along to 'Queensland Roars Against Racism'. First on the bill was a celebrity football game followed by a match between the Brazilian team, Palmeiras, and Queensland's professional team, 'Roar'. The tickets were courtesy of local author, Nick Earls, who was playing in the celebrity game and is a friend of a friend.

Two observations from that night. First, that disappointingly football isn't really a world game after all. On a number of occasions the various celebrities - including players of aussie rules and rugby, TV stars, and musicians - had to be explained the basic rules of football like which part of the pitch you're allowed to stand in during kick off and how to do a throw in. And I'm not even allowed to call it 'football'.


Second, that there's a whole popular cultural history in Australia that I've never come across. Of course each country has its own cultural stock of people and events. But what's slowly dawned on me is that I know almost nothing about the popular cultural history of this place -- save for perhaps the Minogues, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Harry Kewell, Nicole Kidman, and the present and past cast of Neighbours.

Indeed I can only ever remember hearing about three news stories relating to Australia in my entire life (which were the American scuba divers left behind by their boat and presumably eaten by sharks, the beauty therapist jailed in Indonesia for drug carrying and causing outcry across Australia, and the Cape York rape case).

Before arriving here I wouldn't have been able to name (certainly without prompting) a single band, author, painter, playwriter, politician, film maker or actor actually living and working in Australia.


Just as an example of things over the last week alone, is it just me that has never heard of the chart topping band Powderfinger, the motor racing 'legend' Peter Brock, the classic comedy film The Castle, the eclectic and popular painter Sidney Nolan, and for that matter the bestselling author Nick Earls??

Industrial policy in the Gold Coast

I spent the weekend travelling along and around the 'Gold Coast' to the south of Brisbane. The 60km coast receives over four million visitors per year, to see not just the great beaches but also the whole host of tourist attractions such as the Florida style Warner Bros Movie World and Sea World theme parks.

Perhaps the most famous part is a resort known today as 'Surfers Paradise'. It's a glizy and glam place, with the skyline lit up by a multitude of casinos, shopping malls and nightclubs. But it wasn't always like this. Indeed the town formerly known as Elston was still a very rural, remote and largely unvisited town as late as the 1950s.

So what's the secret to transforming a small and insigificant seaside town into one of Australia's major tourist hubs? Targeted capital tax breaks? Relaxed planning laws? Investment in infrastructure?

Apparently not. Instead it was down to the ingenuity of local entrepreneur Bernie Elsey who, in 1965, decided to employ 'meter maids' in gold lamé bikinis to feed the parking meters along the strip. People soon flocked to Surfers Paradise where, rather than have militant parking wardens dole out fines, they would find glamous young girls to feed their meter for them and, if they returned late, leave a calling card for them to pay later.

The region has never looked back. (Actually part of the explanation was also the building of road and rail links, a couple of risky but eventually profitable high rise developments and massive investment in marketing campaigns, though that all sounds a bit too boring).

'Queenslander' buildings

Hiring a car today I headed west to explore some rural areas of Queensland. The roads were dusty and quiet, the radio waves filled with Banjo players extolling the virtues of a God fearing existence.

But I came across a couple of gems. One was an excellent train museum in a industrial town called Ipswich. As many good museums do, it manages to mix its theme with some well researched and presented social history.

The other was some great examples of the 'Queenslander' architectural style. Most of these were built in the mid to late 19th century, with the notable features being the large verandahs, timber builds (often raised on stumps), and plenty of windows and doors to ventilate.

As the photos show they make for really attractive buidings; the 'Architecture of Happiness' guru, Alain de Botton, would be pleased with them I'm sure.

What's in a name?

Something that’s really struck me since arriving in Australia, and which Bill Bryson also notes in his excellent Down Under book, are the small number of incredibly commonplace names.

To make the point, there is, for example, a Macquarie Harbour, Macquarie Island, Macquarie Marsh, Macquarie River, Macquarie Fields, Macquarie Pass, Macquarie Plains, Macquarie Lake, Port Macquarie, Mrs Maquarie’s Chair, Macquarie Point, and a Macquarie town. Not content with this, there’s also a Macquarie bank, a Macquarie University, a national ‘Macquarie’ dictionary, a Macquarie shopping centre, Macquarie Lighthouse, Macquarie Park and Macquarie Hospital, not to mention a main ‘Macquarie’ street running through central Sydney.

There’s then a Darling Harbour, Darling Drive, Darling Island, Darling Point, Darlinghust, Darlington, Darling Downs and Darling Ranges, a slew of Daringtons and a River Darling. Apparently, what isn’t called Darling or Macquarie is often called Hunter or Murray. Awfully confusing.

Making matters worse there are also a lot of places named Sturt or Stuart such as the Sturt and Stuart Highways, both of which leave Adelaide, one of which takes you to Sydney, the other 3,994 kilometers off to Darwin. Clearly would be a tad costly mistake to miss the ‘a’ when you are shooting around the ring road.

So who were these people who so successfully managed to implant their family name all over an entire continent?

Perhaps unsurprisingly it turns out they all had what might be termed a well defined sense of self. Some were more deserving than others to have the legacy.

• Lachan Macquarie was one of the first colonial administrators of Australia (indeed it was he who first used the term ‘Australia’ in official documents) and seems to have had some relatively progressive ideas like re-integrating convicts back into positions in society.
  


• Ralph Darling on the other hand appears to have been guilty of both that common mix of egoism and tyranny, for example insisting prisoners “worked in irons that the example may deter others from the commission of crime” and reportedly many other torturing to death.


• Sturt and Stuart were both Australian explorers of the 19th Century; the former who made the first pioneering explorations inland from Botany Bay, the latter who was the first to traverse the continent from south to north.

Aussie rules at the Gabba

I went to my first live Australian rules football match last night with the Brisbane Lions taking on the Adelaide Crows. (Well done whichever brave Adelaidean decided to break the mold of naming the team after the usual Bears, Lions, Tigers, Bulls etc and opt instead for the mythological creature of doom).

I’d seen a few matches on television but found it nigh on impossible to understand what on earth is going on. It’s definitely a sport that needs watching live, as it’s actually tactically very interesting. People say it’s a cross between Gaelic football and Rugby league – the main aim kicking the ball between two centre posts for 6 points or just between these and another set of posts for 1 point. You can call mark (i.e. stop the play and have a free kick) it you catch it from a kick, but also pass by hand (but then obviously not call mark). So the main action is in and around the range from the goals where it's reasonably reachable.

But it certainly reminded me of a few other sports too. It’s played on cricket pitch (last night at the Gabba which hosts the cricket tests from October), and has the athleticism and pettiness of football, the length of US sports (it ran for about 3 hours over four quarters), and the scores (and scoring patterns) of basketball.

In the end Brisbane Lions won 83 to 70 after pulling off a remarkable and decisive turnaround in the final quarter. The Gabba itself is also a very impressive stadium (see Panarama shot below).

Fraser Island

I headed north over the weekend up to Fraser Island, a gigantic sandbar that stretches over seventy miles long. Home to native dingoes, it has World Heritage status and is reachable only by 4WD, and is all round incredible. I’ll let the photos do the talking…

Australia vs Iraq

So the game was a close affair in the end, with Australia’s woefully inept defence matched only by Iraq’s lack of attacking prowess. A Harry Kewell goal in the 47 minute proved conclusive though, which means Australia progress to the next round of the world cup qualifying.

Watching any Australian team play is certainly a colourful and enjoyable experience, and there were a hardcore of boisterous Iraqi supporters among the fifty thousand in attendance to make it a good occasion. A couple of other observations. First, the etiquette of watching football seems to vary wherever I’ve caught games overseas – lots of whooping and screaming over here, not to mention random bouts of applause and unsporting cheering for opposition yellow cards. Second, the football itself is played quite differently despite obviously having the same rules and many of the players plying their trade in the UK. Much more about the athleticism than skill or composure, and a real absence of robust challenges.

Finally, I got to hear the Australian national anthem, called ‘Advance Australia Fair’. You can hear that below. Unfortunately I didn’t hear a whisper of Waltzing Matilda…

Greek festival

I spent Sunday at Brisbane’s annual Greek festival. It was an interesting mix of all things Hellenic with plenty of Baklava, Halloumi, and grape crushing along with a healthy lashing of Queensland on the side in the form of Castlemaine XXXX beer tents. The fact that there are enough Greeks in Brisbane not just to run an annual festival but also maintain a large social club on the grounds is all down to Australia’s post-war ‘Populate or Perish!’ campaign. It’s difficult to fully consider the position Australia was in by the late 1940s, but being extremely under populated and having come six months or so (and a MacArthur) spare of being invaded by the Japanese the Australians opted for an active policy of encouraging (white) emigration of Greeks, Italians, Slavs, Serbs, Croats, Dutch, Poles, Turks, Lebanese, and of course the odd Brit. In the space of three years alone, around one quarter of a million people migrated into Australia. So, more than sixty years later that results in a very fine annual festival on south bank of Brisbane.

Around Brisbane...

I’ve spent the last couple of days exploring Brisbane, not least in the hunt for a place to live. During which I’ve been struck by two things. First, that this place is, in many respects, perfectly familiar to someone coming from Britain. Not only do we share the same language, but apparently also many of the customs, attitudes and ways of going about our daily lives. But second, in many other respects, this place could hardly be more alien to one from Britain.

There are at least three things that make me think this. First, the sheer size and scale of even the Queensland region (let alone the rest of Australia) is hard to reconcile with the experience of Europe. After all, the next decent sized place up the coast – Cairns – is well over one thousand miles away. That’s over half the distance from London to Moscow, by which time you’d have passed at least several hundred million people compared to several thousand or so you’d see on your way up the Queensland coast.

Second, even the most urban of areas are inextricably linked with the environment in a way very different to home.

I kid you not: the park in the central business district of Brisbane actually has a sizable Mangrove swamp in the middle of it (see left).

Only yesterday, as I peacefully strolled down one of Brisbane’s riverside boardwalks I was confronted by a giant lizard, the likes of which I thought native only to places like the Galapagos.

Third, this place is all just so new. To give some reference points, by 1825, when Britain was well in the middle of the industrial revolution, the official population of Brisbane was just 45 males and 2 females. (It must have been a tough existence, at least from the male perspective). The house I previously lived in London was as at old as that. Even by 1980s the population was in the low hundreds of thousands; it’s now a little fewer than two million. But with this come many great things: a capacity to build into the urban design a high quality of life; an infusion of youth, creativity and energy; an ability to make freer and easier choices and how and where you live (in very stark contrast to London); and (I trust) a greater appreciation of the beauty of, and our symbiosis with, nature and the environment.