Last night Boadicea and I cooked a roast for our Aussie grandson and his current girlfriend.
She’s every inch a modern Brisbane girl; she’s tall, elegant, intelligent, poised, and has that sort of healthy physique that tells you she would be equally at home on the high-fashion catwalk as she would be as a beach-bunny surfing a 5 metre wave or outback wrestling a croc – and winning.
At present she’s teaching in Charters Towers, a small rural town in far north Queensland, one of the places where cyclone Yasi stormed through earlier this year. She entertained us with stories of the storm and chatted about the effect on the local children of the recent Gillard knee-jerk halt on live cattle exports.
But the tale she told us to illustrate some of the differences she’s found between life in the capital city and in her bush town, bears repeating.
She was driving home from an evening out; if you haven’t experienced the vast emptiness of Australia you may find it hard to appreciate the feeling of isolation that no street lights and no human habitation within cooee can provoke, but I assure you it’s real – almost tangible.
Her headlights picked up a man standing in the middle of the road. As she approached, he flagged her down. In most countries a lone girl in such a situation would press the pedal to the metal to pass the stranger as quickly as possible. That’s not the way in Oz; she slowed and stopped, thumbed the window down and asked, “Y’all right, mate?”
“Have you seen a herd of cows, love?” he asked, “I seem to have lost mine. When I went into town this arvo they were all in the paddock, but when I rocked back, they’d shot through.”
Not a common request at midnight, miles from nowhere. But our lass had no problems.
“Look, at about five o’clock they were in my neighbour’s back yard at xxxx, but I don’t know where they went after that.”
“No worries, love, I’ll keep looking then. Catch you later.”
Boadicea's Chariot 
Drat, I had a comment but then the rugby started and I mooved to the TV room and forgot what I was going to say 😉
(Half time Bokke 13, Samoa 0)
Only just made it, Soutie! 🙂
I’ve mooved back.
Howzit FEEG, we did indeed, our win also guarantees Wales’ progress allowing them to coast on Sunday. So, a week off then next Sunday the Aussies.
In this country it is more a case of ‘have you seen my car (or the contents of my house?)
I think you’ll find it is like that in any rural area.
Integrated homogeneous communities with the same values are pretty safe. The dark won’t hurt you.
Well there you are sipu, lacking in homogeneity!
Yes, indeed it is like that in most rural areas, Christina, but then again, is this a perception or a reality?
I think it is more to do with knowing an area and belonging. There are areas of London which sound horrendously unsafe, but it you know the area and feel confident, then you are usually fairly OK.
My daughter lived in Tottenham for a year, which frankly caused some parental concern, but she didn’t have a problem.
It’s a question of knowing the area and the risks, and acting accordingly. You can still unfortunately get it wrong, in cities or rural areas, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
Regarding the “current” girlfriend, tell me about it! I’m just recovering from a wedding where there were so many beautiful, vibrant, stunning young ladies, I was amazed.
I thought it was just my daughters but apparently all their friends are just as lovely, although most of them had just given birth or were pregnant! They still looked extraordinarily though.
Perhaps I’m just getting old. 😦