Thursday 30 June 2011

That thing with the Australians.

I recently returned from doing some travelling around England with my parents who were visiting. While out in the countryside several of the locals mistook us for Australians. All were extremely apologetic for their mistake once we broke the good news that we were in fact Kiwis. This story is inspired by them.

It is a chilly September evening in London, I’ve rushed across town to Clapham Common and have just sat down with a table of New Zealanders to play bingo. Stoaked I’ve got here on time, I say ''Hi'' to my friends and survey the room to find plenty of them…the Aussies. All of us ‘twenty-somethings’ are here for bingo, but it is no ordinary bingo though, this is Bogan Bingo!

Hosted by two Australian bogans, we are encouraged to be as bogan as possible, told to shout obscenities such as ‘six, show us your tits’ and be generally grotesque when the balls roll in our favour. There is mullets, there is 80s music, there is smoke machines, there is slow motion running and there is mockery. I’m in heaven! I smile with my newfound enjoyment of Australians.  

You see until I was 24, I disliked Australians immensely. George Gregan, the halfback for the Wallabies had a lot to do with this, but I believe the two mains reasons were:
1) my very Australian name Kylie and 2) my full blown jealously.

Reason 1: Being called Kylie in the early 90s  
So when you are 10 and out on the school field you want to be the coolest of the cool, cooler than Teletext even. But it is pretty damn hard to be the coolest of the cool when someone with the same name as you is on TV singing, dancing and wait for it, dating Jason Donovan! Her name was Kylie Minogue and the school children didn’t let me forget it. 

But back in the day, there was an even worse Kylie to be compared to and her name was Kylie Mole. She was a character from an Australian comedy show whose key characteristics were to be an obnoxious teenage, who wrapped chewing gum around her finger and spouted inspiring quotes such as "She goes, she goes, she goes, she just goes." But even more painful was that Kylie Mole had a tendancy for peeing her pants and blaming it on her doll with the words "Dolly did it!" Ah yes, can you hear the children taunting me with ‘Minogue, peed her pants"? So what is a girl to do? Well you start to get annoyed at Australians that is what. Although I should put a disclaimer that I did own a Kylie Mole t-shirt at the time, a hypercolour one that changed fluro colours in the heat, mean 90s mean!

Reason 2: Full blown jealousy
As I got older I realised the Australians had some cool stuff, a lot of it actually, and it was annoying. They had my favourite Director 
Baz Luhrmann, my favourite Actor Heath Ledger, they had the Olympics, they had doctors that just weren’t doctors, but 
Flying Doctors (who could save kangaroos also…god they were good). They had daughters that came from McLeods, they had bays where winter never came and they even had neighbours that became good friends. 
They had it all and I hated them for it! This of course had nothing to do with the fact that they bet us in every crucial rugby, cricket and netball game. Nothing. 

It wasn’t until I moved to America, I started to appreciate Australians and dare I say it, even miss them, spew! I missed the banter, I missed the self-deprecating humour that is usually followed with a pat on the back and a funnel each. The majority of the Americans I met seemed to be too well behaved for such nonsense. I spent a lot of time lost in translation with the Americans which meant for a number of awkward dates. In one particularly bad date, a guy from the Mid West was listing off all the things he was awesome at: studying for a masters, in the top LA football team, doing charity work. No one talks like that back home so the best response I could come up with was "So when do you have time for fun?" By fun I meant when do you go to the beach, do road trips, go to concerts. The blood drained from his face, much like it had when he offered me cutlery to eat my burrito with to which I responded "I’ll just use my hands." Shortly after the fun comment went down like a cup of cold sick, a pack of seagulls descended on the table and began pooping on it. It didn’t work out.
   
Back to the Australians, a few weeks ago I was at Stonehenge and this happened:
An Aussie walked up to my Dad, no ''Hi" etc just "Take a photo for me won’t ya?"
Dad’s response "But you are Australian, oh I guess I'll just take it anyway."
About 5 minutes later, I’m lying on the grass trying to line up a shot and the same Australian walks up to me and says "Hand me the bloody camera, you look like a bloody idiot down there." Without flinching, I jumped up, wiped the grass off me, and with a smile, handed him the camera and ran to get my photo taken. No more words were needed, we help each other out, that is what we do. 

The Americans asked me a lot about our relationship with the Australians, mostly due to the Flight of the Conchords. The English however know exactly what is going on and therefore seem all the more horrified when they guess the nationality wrong. The guide on our boat cruise who announced "I believe we have some Australians on board" even went as far as saying "I’m really sorry about before" as we stepped off the boat, upon learning he was wrong. 

So what is the relationship? Well the Australians are our stinky big brothers who we love to hate, but secretly like to hang out with and live in their country...have you seen their beaches!

While travelling around America I looked forward to getting to the accommodation because I new there would be at least one Kiwi or Aussie there. Someone who would be up from some random adventures and some laughs. Plus I new they would have my back. Like when I flew to Canada to spend Christmas with friends. I arrived in Calgary only to find my poor shuttle bus driver had had a heart attack and there was very few other ways of getting to Banff, an hour and half away, that late on the night before Christmas. Stranded I looked around the airport for support. There I saw a tanned girl with long blonde hair, surfy clothes and highly inappropriate footwear for snow, much like mine. Yes!! I walked over to her, and asked "Hi are you Australian and are you trying to get to Banff?" She was! I then asked something along the lines of "Should we help each other out?" We both looked down at the four pieces of giant luggage between us. She looked at me and said "Yes, what should we do first?" And then it was all go! Both of us operating like a slick transport finding machine. After 15 minutes I found us the last two spots on the last bus leaving for Banff on that Christmas Eve night. I turned in the snow outside the bus door, just in time to see my new Australian friend coming through the doors of Calgary Airport. As she went down the ramp, she struggled to maintain our two overpacked trolleys in her inch high, non waterproof boots. Once she was steady again, I yelled out to her, gave her the thumbs up and then ran to help. We were the happiest Down Under kids as we jumped on that bus to defrost. 

Back at Bogan Bingo in Clapham, I break out of my reminiscing to find Bon Jovi is playing. I realise I am staring at an Australian male just as the chorus for ‘Living on a Prayer’ begins. My head yells ‘disengage eye contact, disengage!’ I can see his Australian mates behind, all clad in hoodies, banging the table, pumping fists in to the air and stomping their flip flops under the table. It’s too late, I know it’s coming before it happens, he’s singing to me and as the words 'take my hand’ fill the air, he doesn’t fail, he reaches out his hand to me. I have no control at this point, the inner bogan takes over, I reach out my hand for his and we sing to each other ‘and we’ll make it I swear.’ Brought together by Bon Jovi, this was Trans-Tasman bonding at its best. It felt good to be home!

If you too would like to sing Bon Jovi with Australians, check out Tourism Australia.

To catch the Bogan Bingo boys live in London, head down to The Underdog Bar in Clapham Common on Thursdays. You'll bloody love it.

1 comment:

  1. So true Kylie, I am an Aussie living in London, although my mum now lives in Tauranga so plenty of allegiance with New Zealand in my heart. There is that rivalry that will always be there, but especially when we're abroad, we stick together!

    And god, you gotta love a bit of Bogan Bingo!

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