Re: concern
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sun, 02 Aug 1998 10:29:04 +1000
Naturally I take all this Australia bashing with good grace but more than a
little sadness. Could the world really be so backward that they still
honestly believe Australia is a rural backwater with one powerstation, half
a cinema and a quarter of a water supply? I find it a very big shame that
the perception remains - though hardly surprised in a lot of ways.
Australia is actually one of the most urbanised countries on the planet,
has one of the highest literacy rates and highest rates of higher education
attendance. We have a world class public health system and a wonderfully
diverse multicultural populace. All that aside, the thing that most puzzles
me is the perception of our isolation. Isolation seems to me a very strange
concept today - well, here I am talking to people halfway across the world
for one thing. Any place in the world is just at the end of a plane flight
here, just like anywhere else. Australia's cities, while more spread out
than those of America, are just as large and urbanised - sometimes more so,
because they work out all the kinks of a new technology in America before
they send it out here. True, we get our episodes of `Friends' a couple of
months late and have to get up in the middle of the night to watch the
World Cup, but I would certainly not look on living in Australia as a
handicap. Far from suffering from the mealy mouthed jingoistic patriotism
that much of Right wing God Bless America espouses, I do love my country
simply because it is good and honest and beautiful.
Just like any Aussie I'm very good at laughing at myself and my country,
*but* - I would rather be discussing something else, namely, JD Salinger.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
THE INVERTED FOREST
www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest