It was a pleasant late October day when the Pan Am flight finally landed at Kingsford Smith Airport in Sydney. I found my way to a train to Burwood and walked up the hill to Broughton Hostel which would be my home for the next few weeks. Along the way, I made note of the Burwood Hotel, the milk bars, and the bake shoppe where something call Lamingtons were presented on a large plate at the window. Little did I know how important each would become to me during the next few years. The hostel was the first step in the immigration process for the Europeans, Canadians, and Americans who roomed there. You may have noticed that I did not mention Africans or Asians. The White Immigration Policy, which had been slowly dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s, was not totally disregarded. Racially-based selection for immigrants would not be formally made illegal until the mid-1970s. About the same time that the Aboriginal child removal policy, now called the Stolen Generations, would completely end.
There were many aspects of Australian life I liked, and some that I did not. The beer and conversation at the Burwood Hotel was enlightening. The milk bar hamburgers with fried egg, beetroot, and salad on the burger was surprisingly tasty. The sponge cake squares covered with chocolate and coconut that are called lamingtons were wonderful. The lack of acknowledgement of their own racial and domestic abuse problems was disappointing.
But things change in Australia. Why they change there, and not in the US always baffles me. Take the little things that shouldn't even be questioned, like changing from Imperial measurements to metric. Aussies did it between 1970 and 1988. Eighteen years to completely change over. The US has opposed the change for decades, and still does despite all sensible arguments.
The one-cent coin was withdrawn from circulation in 1992 after being announced 2 years earlier. The US keeps on stamping out its worthless pennies. The one- and two-dollar Aussie coins were made in 1984 and 1988 respectively, and the US still prints the dollar bill. It seems that we can't change anything. Maybe there is something in the water.
But let's get back to the Burwood Hotel and schooners of Tooheys Beer, which by the way were 5 ounces larger than schooners of beer in Adelaide. I have no idea why, but each state in Australia seemed to have different names and sizes of beer glasses. The "hotels" in Australia existed for drinking beer and conversing, as opposed to today where they exist as gambling casinos. Back then, there was the public bar, which had no places to sit, so you had to stand at a counter and drink, and the only women allowed in the public bar were those whose job it was to serve the beer to men. That's not to say that women could not drink at a hotel. They could if they went into the separate entrance to the "mixed lounge" which had tables and men could also visit there, however the main drink seemed to be lemon squash.
My first visit to the Burwood Hotel was my first full day in Australia, and not realizing that even as a 22 year-old drinking three or four schooners of beer after a long flight and undergoing severe jet lag could result in being carried back to the hostel, I joined the locals because I wanted to know who Australians were in their hearts, and what Australia was. I learned a lot that day, some of which I said I did not like. But it's good to know the worst of a people, for then you can appreciate the best of them.
They didn't like all the wogs--the Southern Europeans who could speak little English that were immigrating to "white" Australia. By wogs they meant Spanish, Italians, Greeks, and even Turks, and they lived in certain Sydney neighborhoods and were destroying the places. And of course the Abos were barely human. Oh, and by the way, why does the US have such racial problems? Wow, all this on the first day.
Much of this attitude has gone from the Australian psyche today, but in following visits I saw the same prejudices directed to Asians. See an early Russell Crowe movie from the early 1990s called "Romper Stomper" to understand what I mean.
Just one more point before I leave for now, and I think it partially explains why Australian men had a domestic abuse problem. It seems that until the 1960s, the bars would not be permitted to serve beer after 6pm. So blokes would rush after work to the nearest hotel and drink as much as they could until the bell was rung for last call at which time trays of beer would be served since the bar could stay open until the last beer was drunk. When the time that bars could serve beer was extended to 10pm, the habit of drinking quickly became an obvious problem. I had often thought the domestic abuse problem became a bigger problem once the bars could stay open longer.
Until next time.