Elvis Has Left the Thunderdome

Que squealing tyres....

Elvis has left the Thunderdome

Hmmmm, as the dust settles and the fog clears from Melbourne Cup, “the (horse) Race that stops the Nation” across our home in Australia and winter gains it’s icy hold upon the souls of our North American friends and family you're probably being driven towards distraction.  Perhaps you’re even thing thinking "when was the last time I read anything new from the Antipodal Updates?”  Or “what’s Darren Hanlon doing?”  Yeah, ok, maybe not the former, but perhaps the latter question.  I’m happy to advise that Darren Hanlon, the namesake behind another of my blogs, is currently running an Aussie tour and finalizing a new album.  Good days indeed.  But what of us, you may wonder? 

As far as updates go, well things haven’t been moving along quite so well.  What was it?  Something about socialism, perhaps we’ve succumbed to the red menace?  Have we become habituated here in sunny Queensland? 

What was the last story you heard, something about a great Canadian party perhaps?   It could have been Riverfire beside Dirtbag Greg or maybe one of the New Years parties.  Maybe it was Canada Day, but when was that?  There seemed to have been one party that was about some sort of just cause.  It wasn't Australia Day because they didn't manage to get the date down correctly.  F'ing Canadians.  At any rate it was back before Lance Armstrong became just something else that came out of  Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.  Or at least officially.

Regardless of how your inner monologue wends it's way, here’s the answer, or at least a clue to an answer by way a note that went out to our local friends:

1 December 2012, 4pm 

That's the Last Great Canadian Party.

Now, before some West Ender corrects me and suggests that this is merely the next or the latest Great Canadian Party, let me assure you that this is in fact the Last Great Canadian Party.  So if you've counted on "getting to the next one" or "maybe you'll drop by later" take your excuse list and put it in the bin.  This is it.  This is the last.  

Why do you ask?  Well, because of a few reasons.  One, the owners of our house have elected to sell, so we're being cleared out one way or other and two, Nicole's time with Linc is over.  So we're moving on.  Lock, stock and smokin' barrel.  Details to be parsed out like, like I don't know something rare and valuable.  But by the time the party is in swing the details of our plans will be clear, or at least we'll have made up some cool sounding ones.

That's right, Elvis has left the Thunderdome.  But there's still the love, so we're having our last hurrah and hoping that you'll all drop by or at least give us an excuse we've never heard before.

Same type of part as before.  Open house format, but with a twist.  Nicole and I will not be cooking, serving or fetching drinks.  Because we're now all friends, and really I suppose because the bloom has come off the rose, we're going to set out the wine and beer, the food and spend our time visiting with friends that it will be more difficult to see again.  It's really an investment.  An investment in you.  But, yes, there will still be heaps of food, just without us serving.  

So, we're inviting everyone that's been through our parties before and hoping that you'll join us in a pre-Christmas, pre-departure party.

Please let us know how many will be attending so that we can make sure of our numbers for both adults, children and full aged adolescents.  

We've enjoyed our time with all of you, we love and will miss Brisbane, so please come by.

That was that.  Without much adieu, we hosted a party and let our friends know that our time in Brisbane was closing out.  And in fact, closing out rapidly.  The party was 1 December and our departure was 5 days later.  It was perfect, would could be loud, obnoxious and anti-social and there wouldn’t even be enough time to bring charges for the party before we were out of the jurisdiction!

But what of the Thunderdome?  I’m hear to tell you that it really does exist and that’s how matters are typically resolved in Australia.  Sure, there are courts (both of first instance, but also at appellate levels) but the Thunderdome is where it all happens.  Or at least that’s how it was planned to be. 

Brisbane Thunderdome, or so I'm told

As fate would have it, there was actually a Thunderdome constructed close to our first place.  Our first exposure to the Thunderdome concept of justice was shortly after we first arrived and were looking for a car.  Making a long story short, the deal fell through and the much malignly car salesman started berating me about honesty, virtue and how a deal had been struck.  For those of you that have seen Mel Gibson at the pinnacle of his excellence, you know the story: A challenge is issued and a fatal fight ensues.  All of this I suspected as a simple ruse to get me to return to the sale and set things right.  What our car dealer hadn’t anticipated, was that my legal training would assist me more than my (lack of) physical prowess ever would.  I successfully pointed out that while a deal had truly been struck, it was he, not I that had failed to process the deposit that we had agreed to.  Therefore, as no consideration had passed between the parties, there was no basis upon which to ground a fight.  Further, since there had been a verbal deal, part of which was to accept the deposit that he didn’t charge, it was he that broke the deal.  A chant of “Break the deal, face the wheel” arose among the gathering crowd and it took some quick work for the salesman to cite existing case law how “an agreement to agree” isn’t binding but merely starting point for commerce. 

Weeks later I ventured to the location of the Thunderdome to see what it was actually being used for.  It turns out that whatever the original plans were, it’s now a meeting place.  Every second Tuesday the local society of engineering chapter meets there to discuss who’s hotter, Princess Leia, Seven of Nine (from Star Trek Voyager) or Trinity.  It seemed a place every bit as dangerous and unwelcoming as the Thunderdome from the Mel Gibson movie. 

Sydney Board Meeting

All the same, our time in Brisbane, at least for now is over.  We’re not going out like a fat, depressed Elvis, but rather the cool rockabilly that maybe wasn’t still at the top of his game, but could still hold serve. 

So we’re leaving and as Darren Hanlon’s asks in What Can We Say?  It’s over, but maybe it was supposed to end this way after all.  But then maybe not.  Sure there’s an end to everything, but how it ends is usually a mystery. 

Not going to be missed

What we are left with is a series of things that will and will not be missed.  

Here’s the start of the list:

Going To Be Missed	Not Going To Be Missed
Friends	Public servants
Warm sunny days	98% humidity
Going out with friends and watching the Wallabies play	Watching the Wallabies lose to New Zealand and having to listen to the caterwauling of friends
Warm oceans	Oceans full of Box Jellyfish, crocs, sharks, aggressive surfers, fast rips, boats, other people, jetsam and flotsam
Watching the whales and dolphins at the local beach	Watching out for the Box Jellyfish, crocs, sharks, aggressive surfers, fast rips, boats, other people, jetsam and flotsam at the local beach
Listening to the virtues of a local Surfie (Surf Life Saving Club) being extolled by a particular friend.	Listening to a particular friend incessantly prattle on about the virtues of a local Surfie.
Parks with endless growing seasons, that provides food, shelter and perches for birds and other wonderful creatures.	The M(*#$er F#<&ing birds that you can’t hunt, can’t throw things at, can’t train cats to kill and can’t ignore, because they all start to squawk at 4am.
Being outside all year around	Wishing that we could install A/C outside
Eating anything at all off a BBQ	Eating anything at all off a BBQ
Coffee from local roaster	Coffee at $4 a cup
Living somewhere that’s warm enough to swim in outdoor pools all year.	Living somewhere that’s too bright outside to swim in outdoor pools, most of the year.
Bats	Snakes
Short skirts	Short skirts

How irony comes back to mock.  The sign says "flood"
and was set submerged in concrete to remind
of past floods.  

For sure there will be things that will be added to the list along the way, but that's the start.

Australia will be missed.  For those of you who have never visited, do.  But remember that a place is just a place; it’s the people that make it what it is. 

Surf town, where "high" pedestrian activity means different things

We’ll be back, certainly as tourists, perhaps of we’re lucky again, and we’ll get to live here again.  If we’re really lucky our friends will visit us and make the efforts to meet us along other travels.  It’s happened before, so why not again? 

So, what happens next?  What happens now?  What will become of the occasional dispatch from the Antipodes?  Don’t worry, the same thing that always happens next will happen.  Life goes on and there’s always another story.  

Socialism 101

It's been a while since I'm managed to provide an update as to our lives down here, for a range of reasons.  We have been well, we have been busy and we have been enjoying ourselves.  Sure, we could complain about how our winters are the same as the summer weather that you're enduring, how great the beaches are and how good cheap wine is but all of this has been said before.  Another reason is that as we become more and more entrenched in our lives here, it seems much more like a routine and while life is certainly different down here for us, for better or for worse it is still just daily life.  

Consequently the social observations seem to dull and what was once novel or foreign has become more commonplace.  Fortunately there are still a lot of strange things to report back in various dispatches, so as your pickled minds lurch back to reality from the abuses that you visited upon them during Stampede, allow me to share with you our observations on the social state in Australia.

This is an excerpt from an e-mail that made it's way to me that provides at least an anecdotal antipodal comparison of the cost of living between two blue collar regions, one that is in the grip of a socialist regime and the other that is perhaps heading that direction thanks to some of the more recent Provincial leaders, but isn't there yet.

The email claims (although not verified by myself) as follows: 

So when I was back home I took some photos in the grocery store to match some I took here before I left:

Price for New Zealand Kiwi fruit here in Brisbane:

 In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (16,000 km away from here) ($3.86/kg)

 Rack of Lamb here in Brisbane: ($44.99/kg)

 Back over in Edmonton: ($29.99/kg)

 Bundy Rum here ($38.95 for 700 mL)

Edmonton: ($32.75 – but then was discounted down to $28.75 at the till)

Fair enough that this isn't exactly the most robust of evidence, and in fact may have nothing to do with socialism or anything other than the fact that most people are willing to pay double for things just so they don't have to live in Edmonton.  However, I think that it does suggest a certain socialist leaning of the Australian markets.

Note:  Bundaberg “Bundy” rum is distilled just north of Brisbane in a town ubiquitously called Bundaberg and as you go further north in Queensland people drink rum to escape the heat in quantities that make them insane.  Really insane.  Other Aussies call it “going Tropo” (pronounced with an elongated “oooooo”, in reference to the Tropic of Capricorn). 

Northern Queensland is supposed to be a magnificent place to travel, but only before it gets “too hot” or “too humid”.  In Australian terms anything over 45C is “too hot” and anything over 97% Relative Humidity is “too humid”.  For me the corresponding values are 30C and 75%, particularly for Northern Queensland, but 45c and 97% rel hum sounds like the unpleasant parts of Hell, so suffice it to say I’ve avoided that area. 

Why?  Well, because once the weather gets “hot” the blue bottle jellyfish “stingers” or “jellies” populate the coastal waters, and while their stings are not lethal, the paralysis that they cause frequently leads to drowning which is fatal.  So, if the coastal waters are out of the question, then refuge may be sought in any number of the regions rivers, provided that you can out swim or our wrassle the crocs.  So, copious amounts of rum it is then while you look for a place with A/C or get Tropo enough that it doesn’t matter.  So conceivably, the additional local charges on Bundy Rum is to offset the local demands on social programs, but hold that for now. 

I was raised, as most good Alberta kids were, to believe that “S____ism” is a dirty word.  A “red menace”.  A way of life or system of government for weaklings or vegetarians, but certainly not for enterprising freedom loving souls of hearty disposition that roam the Albertan landscape, those who aspired to stand on their own feet.  Fair enough.  Our parents had grown up during the Cold War and McCarthyism.  They had witnessed the British government impose a capital gains type tax that destroyed The Beatles (before John claimed to be a socialist), programs of government growth, a crippling National Energy Policy, etc. so why wouldn’t they be guarded and suspicious. 

Even the symbols chosen for socialism (and worse communism) were ominous, the hammer and a sickle.  These weren’t the stars and strips symbolic of freedom and patriotism.  This wasn’t the maple leaf famous for tasty breakfasts and big trees that only live in one small region of our vast country, no hammers crush and sickles maim.  I guess, unless they’re used for other things….

For our parents, socialism was bad.  It was wrong.  I’m not talking about the kind of socialism that pays for your university education, or justifies you drinking all the beer in your friend’s fridge, but the sort of socialism that raises taxes, misappropriates wealth and builds government machines with insatiable appetites, machines that strip wealth from private individuals like locus in a wheat field. 

Before leaving Alberta I had never lived under a socialist government, perhaps the closest that I got was a socially active conservative Provincial government or a Liberal Federal government, but that was more like living in the forest with Robin Hood, with Ontario and Quebec being the benefactors, not really socialism.  Besides, Robin Hood was a good guy right, his cohorts were Merry Men, they didn’t deploy missiles into Cuba.  Hood’s redistribution of wealth was heroism not socialism.  Right? 

But Australia, as we so often see, is different and even though the factions within the same political party fight, it is still a Labor government that rules the land and these guys are socialists.  “Labor government” is a term that always makes me think of Jimmy Hoffa, but again, this is different here.  It would be like Jimmy Hoffa as a laid back surfer who only really wanted to work flex time, and only wanted to do the rhetoric and not the intimidation.  Probably the kind of Jimmy Hoffa I wouldn’t mind standing up to.  But at the same time, the average guy on the work crew is empowered to such a degree that it wouldn’t surprise me to see a surgeon walking around in a blue wife beater, just to get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

But still, I didn’t really know what to expect from politics when I got here and over two years later, not much has changed.  Although until recently I would have admitted that I was still suspicious of socialists.  That’s all gone now.

During the course of the last two years and some odd months we have gotten used to the laws of the land, the statutes and practices.  To describe the plethora of laws here would be like imagining what it would be like if the Vatican merged all of its rules with those of physics and verb conjugation.  So basically, three groups of rules and laws about things that I have no understanding of, in fact I think I can describe how valences in Bromine function easier than what it takes to get a dog license in Brisbane.  Having said that I am currently undefeated in my defense of parking tickets, resulting in a savings of over $500. 

Between the Commonwealth, State and Municipal governments that is a form, a policy, a help line, a statute or practice, all with fines backing them up for virtually every aspect of your life.  Minimum wage is set around $14/h and the Commonwealth government has implemented both an increased royalty regime / mining tax as well as a carbon tax.  A red menace indeed.[1] 

During our time here, we have discovered one particularly important set of municipal regulation.  This regulation focuses on the timing and duration that your garbage and recycling bins may be placed on the curb for collection.  Failure to comply with said regulation results in immediate fines, because you can’t miss an opportunity to bolster the state coffers. 

So it was with great consternation that I discovered one morning that a ‘tradie’ (short for tradesman, but applied to all working class blokes that shoulder the honest labor burden for the Great Commonwealth of Australia while the nere’do’well lawyers, engineers, doctors, dentists etc all fritter away ……) had left my bins emptied, but turned over and with broken axels.  As I tried spiritedly to wheel the dysfunctional bins back from the curb, the broken axel gouged the turf leaving a tear in the sod. 

Exasperated I thought, “What environmental statute have I breeched now?  Is there a defense?  Due diligence?  Misadventure?  Necessity?” But then also was also the thoughts of how I going to get the bins replaced?  This was the sort of thing that needed immediate attention.  Fines for lack of compliance, garbage that needs to get to the curb by the following week, pests getting in to the bins, etc.  I thought of the logistics of taking two dirty bins in a small car to wherever I needed to take them, and then wait for repairs and transport them back.  And then what of the costs?  What if I get all the way there with these bins that don’t even fit in our car only to find out that I’m not entitled to request a repair, because I’m a tenant and not the property owner?  As my despair was becoming complete, I sought refuge in the only place that I can really count on, the Internet. 

I looked up “Wheelie bin repair” on the Google powered search found on the Brisbane City Council page and was directed to an on-line form that I had to complete as you would expect.  “Address of bins” “contact phone number” “Type of bin damaged”  “Type of damage / repair required” and so forth.  Within 5-6 minutes I was completed the form and hit “send” (ok, after three attempts at the captcha phrase). 

Ok, what next?  Moments later, I received an e-mail advising me to make sure that the bin(s) were on the curb (fines wouldn’t apply) and that the repairs would be conducted on site within two working days.           

TWO WORKING DAYS!!!!! 

REPAIRED ON SITE!!!!! 

I LOVE SOCIALISM!!!!

That was mid-morning Wednesday that I was launched like Spunik into an orbit of socialist love.  Sure, you pay some taxes, but you get good roads, good hospitals, good schools and bins repaired at your curbside.  Repairs were needed without delay.  How bad could socialism really be? 

After a whole other series of misadventures: nocturnal creatures that turned our garden into Fight Club; someone driving into our neighbors fence; and our daughter waking up with a nightmare; at 5 am Friday morning, the M_#$(*  F_(#*ing Socialists turned up with their rubber mallets (not even the real hammers of the USSR) to carry out the curbside repairs on the bins.  WTF?  Could these repairs wait?  5 am?  What was the rush?

Our parents were right to be wary of the Socialist.  I now know why you can’t have firearms here, because people would take them up against the early morning red menace. 

Too bad the beaches are so good here, we’ll probably have to stay

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[1] Incidentally the Red Kangaroo is one of the largest of the species.  Unconvinced?  The Aussie coat of arms has both a kanga and an emu, pretty damning evidence of a socialist connection.