Oz isn’t so bad. Ozzies too, of course. I mock it and them whenever I get a chance. There’s that under-arm bowl, which of course was bigger at the time than even their recent sandpaper thing in South Africa. They say pavlova is an Oz thing; it’s not and they’re being cheeky even thinking that. They snatched Phar Lap from us just like they kidnapped Fred Dagg. They say Crowded House is theirs, but any band that sings about Te Awamutu can’t possibly be Oz, right?
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 and even the weka has a laugh at us when it’s running off with the car keys. The kea is good natured too, laughing as it wrecks cars in the car park at Treble Cone. The ABs are probably our scariest mammals, but they’re not deadly like a saltwater crocodile or a really pissed-off koala.
They send eN-Zed-born criminals to en-Zed after they’re released, even if they left eN-Zed when they were wee kids and even if they don’t know anyone here. They try to do the same with Russell Crowe too; he’s not ours. In fact, they’re quite anti-immigrant, maybe even xenophobic, which is ironic because most of them were xenos not so long ago.
Skippy the bush kangaroo was way better than Lassie. Rolf Harris was good before he turned out not to be. And Oz-eN-Zed 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 are so bad in Oz rugby that Eddie Jones even asked Lord High Commander Sir Steve Hansen the Great to come and kick the tyres and have a look under the Wallabies’ bonnet as if they’re a V8 Commodore. Pfft… they’re more like a Prius with a flat battery.
Vegemite’s made in Oz and it’s better than Marmite, in my opinion, so Oz is OK, you know, some of the time.
Or is it? What do you think, maaate?
eN-Zed 