Heat by Rob O’Neill

Girlie’s had her fun and I’ve been to, well, Canberra.

Hung over Girlie called on Sunday to report “not too much” damage had been done and she was off to Manly with the survivors: “Can you not come home too early so I can clean up later?”

Sure.

No problem.

I got out of the house early on Saturday and would have made it to the capital of this great lucky country by 1 at the latest had I not decided on a scenic detour through the Southern Highlands. Pretty damn good it was too. I saw my first ever wombat roadkill for starters. One gets so bored of putrifying kangaroo.

Beautiful countryside, rough as guts road up to the Wombeyan caves. Coming out the end I stopped for coffee and lunch at Taralga. It’s odd how you can be reasonably close to civilization over here and still wander into a small town and be treated like an alien. Hey, it’s not a flying saucer, guys, it’s a Ford Fairmont!

In Taralga time goes slow. Real slow. But that gives me enough time to read most of the jumbo weekend Herald before anyone comes to take my order. I ask if there’s a service station in town and they look at me as if I’m retarded.

Maybe it's me, the city boy who takes far longer than a day to chill out.

I finally make my way into Canberra at 4ish and head straight for Parliament, lucking in on the last hour of an open day. Interesting place the Federal Parliament. While it’s imposing enough, set on a rise to the south of the city, it also looks a bit like a bunker, covered in grass as if it wants to hide. It’s kind of defensive. You could draw all sorts of analogies with the Australian psyche there.

So I will.

It's was obviously supposed to be a confident statement, but it's ended up being only "semi-confident", as it were. You find that all over; the brash go-getting exterior betrayed by all sorts of insecurities about identity, recognition and security: "Australia will claim it's place in the world! (If that's okay with you.)"

Security is understandably high, with x-ray gear at the entrance and armed police everywhere (sidearms only). Apart from that dose of 21st century reality the rest was a bit like a school fete. It was a family do and there were lots of activities for the kids, but I think only in Australia (or New Zealand) would the gardeners have cleaned up their machines (ride on mowers and the like) and parked them prominently for inspection in one of the interior courtyards.

The building itself works in the shape of a cross, intentionally I’m sure, so as you enter you pass through a great hall and then the building is intersected left/right with the senate chamber on the right and the house on the left. At the head of the cross are the various committee rooms.

Portraits of past prime ministers, governors general and luminaries cover the walls in the upstairs mezzanines. Highlights here include a wonderful portrait of Gough Whitlam.

Gough is still active and remembered for many things, but most memorably to me for a rejoinder he made in Parliament one time. A member from the bush was waxing on about services to his constituency before finishing grandly, addressing himself to the speaker: “Because in the end, sir, I’m a country member.”

“We remember,” Gough responded urbanely.

Another more subtle but equally impressive portrait of Paul Keating is nearby.

A portrait of Her Majesty is stuck in amongst a bunch of governors general and miscellaneous others, as if they are not quite sure what to do with her – which of course they aren’t.

By the time I got out it was getting pretty damn cold so I went off to find a hotel and some dinner. The city is a bit of an overgrown country town full of memorials and museums, and despite the fact that it is a “designed” capital, the center is still a bit hodgepodge. But I did find a good, warm South American restaurant, Rincon Latino, which knocked up a more than respectable coriander chicken. Being in the center of some great Australian wine country, I selected a nice Chilean cabernet as accompaniment.

My Comfort Inn wasn’t particularly comfortable, or particularly cheap. Not a good combination. But Sunday was a big day with the National Museum, Art Gallery and War Memorial to cover and still get home in time for tea.

More on that next time.

Girlie wants me out of the house. She’s desperate to have some friends round. I told her I’d love to spend an evening with her and her girlie friends. There’s so much we could all talk about. You know, hang out in our PJs and stuff, eat junk food, giggle a lot.

Anyway, she wants me out so I think I’ll spend next weekend in Canberra. I hear the place is amazingly dull, but I’m the kind of loser that likes museums and art galleries, so it should be okay, for one night anyway.

We’ve just been out to Leichardt to get a dose of Italy and see a movie, Igby Goes Down. A warning beeper went off in the car on the way there. Girlie’s concerned. She’s concerned because she thinks it might keep me in town.

“There’s a train to Canberra,” she offers. “And you owe me $175.”

And: “Can you buy me some alcohol?”

Bloody cheek.

Igby was terrific, but when I write about films I’m conscious the folk in NZ get to see most films before they arrive here. Nevertheless, Igby is great. The cast is unbelievable. Bill Pullman as the schizophrenic father stands out amongst a whole set of amazing performances. Claire Danes is soft and gorgeous and beautifully conflicted. Both Culkins stood up. The younger, Rory, as young Igby is right up there.

This is one movie where the bit players are as impressive as the names - and since those names are Sarandon and Goldblum, that’s saying something. It’s nicely shot and has a great soundtrack.

But the real star, as with most goodies, is the writer - Burr Steers, who also directed.

As regular readers know I’m having whiteware woes. We finally managed to get the electrician in. He looked at the stove and pronounced it irreparable and then passed the same judgment on the clothes dryer. Now the two appliances just sit there sulking, sighing occasionally in the manner of old electrical goods, knowing the time is nigh for them to go to the big Harvey Norman in the sky. I’m tempted to move the dryer into the kitchen so they can spend their last days together.

Note to self: anthropomorphism can only take you so far.

Yesterday I went to see Wim Wenders’ photographs at the MCA. Very impressive, huge and sharp landscapes mostly, with some of ground zero, some of Cuba, quite a few of the Aussie desert. These wall-sized panoramas are noted as “C” type photographs, I presume that means Cibachrome, but who knows? Whatever the technicalities, they are stunningly huge and sharp and well seen.

However, I couldn’t help feel the exhibit was a populist move by the MCA. There is nothing particularly challenging here. Wenders’ pictures are great, but in a very traditional way, or rather very traditional ways for he has several styles. Apart from their scale, much of the ground has been covered before by the likes of Ansell Adams and Ernst Haas
among others.

The gallery has been having a tough time. It was 10 weeks away from closing before our “high art” premier Bob Carr relented with a five-year state rescue package. The gallery insists on measuring its success by counting numbers through the door. More people means you must be presenting better art, right? And when you do that you need headliners like Wenders.

When living here in Aussie you keep a close eye for news from and about home. It’s odd what turns up.

Every few months over here, for instance, there is some sort of item tracking the progress of the Kakapo. I don’t know who the Kakapo uses for PR, but whoever they are, they’re doing a great job.

Here the Kakapo is seen as one of the strangest, funniest and least worthy animals ever to walk the face of the earth. And walk it must – being flightless – with its trump defence mechanism, to play dead, bizarrely ineffective against cats and dogs. The male Kakapo’s low booming mating call, that scarce females have trouble hearing, simply completes the a picture of evolutionary incompetence.

The Kakapo achieves this media attention, I think, because that’s pretty much the way the Aussie media likes to think of all kiwis (the people, that is, not the bird): Slightly naïve, unworldly, a chip on each shoulder.

Bumpkins, in short.

It is the oddball stories that really get legs in the media here. Last week there was an item on the Auckland moth spraying. Now when I was there I didn’t really think about it. Spraying an Aussie moth to hell and back seemed perfectly reasonable – even if it was in the middle of the city. But when you see it on the telly from here it looks very odd, very eccentric indeed; helicopters and planes spraying in the middle of the city and seemingly no comeback for the people being poisoned below.

Recently there was the tragic case of the kiwi backpacker who was tortured for his bank account details. The crime was certainly newsworthy in its own right, but the abiding impression from the comments was the naivity of the unfortunate victim come fresh off the boat to the big town.

Going back, the Ansett debacle fitted this mould perfectly - bumbling kiwis screwing up an Aussie icon.

But there is another kind of story emerging now. It isn’t being clearly enunciated as yet and may never be, because it runs completely counter to the Aussie media’s “country cousin” angle on New Zealand news.

First there was the New Zealand government bailing out Air New Zealand. It has been a spectacularly successful intervention both in business and political terms. The company’s balance sheet is much improved – to the point where some reasonably question whether Air New Zealand really needs to go cap in hand to Qantas any more.

The move also offered the opportunity to bring former Business Roundtable chairman Ralph Norris closer to the Labour camp when he was selected to lead the bailout. Not only was Norris given a great high-profile opportunity, he was lured to the left and put in charge of – shock, horror! – a government intervention in the market.

Sweet irony!

More recently the government changed the rules from under Fairfax’s feet to protect $100 million in tax revenue following the company’s purchase of INL. And then it moved in on Toll Holdings’ New Zealand railway bid, and effectively became a competitor in that transaction.

For years New Zealand governments have been passive in the face of private sector activity. Markets could and should look after themselves. We had our garage sale of state assets, some sold ridiculously cheaply because of our one-dimensional 1980s adherence to a private = good, public = bad ideology. (At this point I should say much of what was done in the 80s and 90s simply had to be done. I hit the streets of Onehunga to get Roger Douglas’ Labour a second term and an opportunity to finish the job.)

Our adherence to market economics was possibly the purest in the world – pure to the point of indifference to our own national interests.

No more.

Around the world rightist governments, including Australia’s, are abandoning fiscal responsibility – spending big on defence and security and war while simultaneously cutting taxes. This is a sign to me the right, dominant for so long, is now losing the battle of ideas. They are losing their religion and their legitimacy. They are becoming the new Keynsians, spending and hoping, trying to stimulate their economies back to life to avoid the specter of a global deflationary spiral.

In New Zealand fiscal responsibility rightly remains a cornerstone of policy and is honoured in word and deed. In its cause, the highest marginal tax rate was increased. You have to pay for what you spend.

And leading all this activity is Saint Helen. Politically untouchable Helen. Hardball Helen, who is willing to mix it with Aussie’s iconoclastic businessmen, so used to being able to do whatever they want in New Zealand, buy whatever they want at whatever price they deign to offer.

She learned a lot from being trapped on the tarmac at Sydney airport, unfairly blamed for one of Aussie's many private sector failures of recent years, and she's been applying those lessons ever since.

Go you Kakapos.

Okay, I know what it’s like over there when the All Blacks lose. I’m sure you are all feeling a bit deflated. But hey, the ref was a cock, it’s a new team and it stood up really well considering it was their first game.

And they can only get better with Justin Marshall gone.

I wandered out to Homebush to see the Aussies beat Wales but watched the main event in the bar at the Homebush Novotel. A forty minute queue for the bar and lot’s of Welsh cheering the ABs whenever there was an Englishman in hearing distance. My Aussie mate going “go you kiwi fucks” cos he hates Clive Woodward and the exciting style of rugger the Poms are developing.

The Aussies looked a bit tentative but put their game away okay. I think they could harden up dangerously in the next month. The Yappies are starting to come right too, so we could have a humdinger of a World Cup.

Anyway, I thought there were a lot of good signs from the ABs.

I’ve been spending a lot of time at the bottom of the Public Address list recently. As I say, it’s a busy time over here.

I had both Girlies in residence for a week, which was great. They haven’t seen each other for six months, so day one they had a fight and stopped talking. Next day we headed up to the Hunter Valley in silence. The thaw started at lunchtime and by early afternoon we were rocking and rolling.

Did a winery, Undercliff, and bought half a dozen including a very nice “basket press” shiraz. Shirazes can be quite taninish but by using a hand press this can be reduced markedly. So it was a soft shiraz but still with that big shiraz flavour. We saw some kangaroos and a monster open cast mine and then headed down to Port Stephens for the night.

Next day we took a walk to the top of the headland, Girlies whining in unison. They don’t like walking. They like shopping. So we had lunch and headed back to Sydders.

After a long fallow period I’ve started reading a bit again – getting back into a routine from a few years ago where I read on the bus to and from work. You can really cover some ground if you do it consistently.

Anyway, I've just finished John Birmingham’s Leviathan (the unauthorised biography of Sydney) and it really is terrific and great fun. Birmo, as we call him, has an adjective for just about every historical character and brings out the fear and loathing of early colonial Sydney wonderfully well.

Obscure fact of the day: the first brewery in Sydney was highly regarded, the beer had a very distinct flavour. Little did the punters realize the water used was draining through the local cemetery.

Now I’m reading William Brandt’s The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life. Talk about a laugh! This book is genuinely funny, not witty, not humorous – funny. It would have been laugh-out-loud funny if I wasn’t reading on the bus and worried about looking a dickhead.

Here's an appropriate example: Our hero, Frederick Case-Carlisle, has broken up with his partner Sophie, who after giving the first blow job in a mainstream movie has fallen in love with the blowee.

Frederick is wandering the streets of London when he comes across a fellow kiwi, an attractive prostitute from Levin. She gives him her business card, on which she claims to be Australian.

"People don't respond to New Zealand, she explains. "Australia is more sexy."

They chat. Frederick tries to come up with marketing angles that would allow her to be kiwi - or at least South-Pacific.

They part: "She waves a saucy little goodbye. The poor thing has no idea. Talking to me she might as well be a liquor wholoesaler cultivating Saudi connections. Still, I am moved to stop and turn back and watch her go. And I feel sad. I feel such sadness. That a young woman like that, so full of promise, bright and perky, her whole life ahead of her, has sunk to such a terrible, deluded, degraded existence. Pretending to be an Australian. It's enough to make you weep."

Brandt could well be funnier than me...

I’ve spent the last week waiting. Sometimes sitting alone huddled over my beer, watching my mobile on the bar. Waiting. Other times I kept it in my shirt pocket, as you can often miss a call when it’s in your jacket. My diary was clear. I’d cleared it the week before, on the off-chance.

You know.

You know how it is. When you’re waiting.

I’ve found it hard to concentrate.

I was never one of the cool guys at school, you see. When I left and got a job I went through a cool phase, but it didn’t last. Still, it’s more than some get.

There have been a few calls, but not one that mattered. I was terse on the phone, trying to clear the line quickly in case I missed the call. The call I was waiting for.

Sometimes I’d boot up the computer and check the email again. Just to make sure. Or go online and check the dates. Just to make sure. Girlie noticed I was dark and distracted and took to her room, cheesecake in hand.

My clothes dryer has broken down. It spins but it doesn’t heat up. The oven doesn’t work either. Well, it does, but only at one temperature (220C) and the grill doesn’t work at all. One of our toilets leaks and the other is blocked. Girlie’s got stitches in her mouth that need to be taken out. There are reminder messages from her dentist on the answer-phone.

But I can’t seem to get anything together. As I say, I find it hard to concentrate.

I check call register on my phone in case I’ve missed something.

I mean, it was just an off-the-cuff email exchange and he’s been busy, I know. And you can’t really say we’re mates or anything. He said we should get together and I sent my mobile number. End of story. Happens all the time. Doesn’t mean anything.

CK was in town too. He didn’t call either, but I never expected him to. He’s never heard of me, so it would be a little out of the blue. Also I wrote a story a few years ago in which my cat threw up on one of his books, Villa Vittoria from memory. So even if he had heard of me he’d probably be nursing a grudge.

Writers are so sensitive. I imagine.

Anyway, it’s all over now. Situation normal.

You might say I should have just gone along, sauntered up and said g’day. What’s so hard about that? But I’ve never been to a writers’ fest before and it doesn’t really attract. It would have been out of character, you see, and therefore a bit brown-nosey. Don’t you think?

And he was busy. Three sessions in three days, all that whisky to drink, Birmo, the Random girls to entertain.

Still. Nevermind.

I’d better call that dentist.