I usually mock it and them mercilessly whenever I get a chance. There’s that under-arm bowl, which of course was bigger, at the time, than even that sandpaper thing in South Africa. They say pavlova is an Oz thing; it’s not. They snatched Phar Lap from us and they say Russell Crowe is ours; he’s not. He’s a ratbag so he’s an Ozzie. They say Crowded House is Ozzie, but any band that sings about Te Awamutu can’t possibly be from Oz. They always steal New Year’s Eve; so many news programmes announce that the new year has started ‘down under’ and they show that bridge in Sydney being all sparkly and bangy and show-offy, about 3 hours after the new year actually started in eN-Zed.
They have snakes and deadly spiders and sharks and whopper, killer jellyfish and dingoes. eN-Zed doesn’t have killer-animals. I can’t imagine a kereru even getting upset. I saw an angry toheroa grab my brother’s fingers once, but pauas and oysters… calm as, mate. Never scary like a fighty, punchy kangaroo. The ABs are probably our scariest mammals, but they’re not deadly like a saltwater crocodile or a really angry wombat.
Ozzies send eN-Zed-born criminals to en-Zed after they’re released from jail, even though that’s supposed to mean they’ve ‘done their time’ and even if they left eN-Zed when they were wee kids and even if they don’t know anyone here. In fact, Ozzies’re quite anti-immigrant, maybe even xenophobic, which is ironic because most of them or their rellies came from somewhere not so long ago.
But Ozzies’re OK, I reckon. Skippy the bush kangaroo was way cleverer than Lassie. Rolf Harris was good before he turned out not to be. And Oz-eN-Zed rugby games were exciting and frightening in equal measure because the Ozzies often won and that never felt good so there was tension. Now though…, things have got so bad in Ozzie rugby that Eddie Jones asked Lord Sir Steve Hansen the Great to come and kick the tyres and have a look under the Wallabies’ hood as if they’re a mis-firing V8 Commodore.
And Vegemite’s made in Oz and it’s better than Marmite, so Oz is OK, some of the time.
Or is it? What do you think, maaate?
eN-Zed 