Sydney Australia is 9463 miles from LA and Darwin is 8603 miles from the UK. Only Antarctica is farther from from London and New York. Earth’s tectonic plates may be moving closer, but Australia remains on the edge of the unknown and that distance has fostered its own culture of barbies, sheilas, and amber fluid without any osmosis absorption from the darkie culture.
White power ruled supreme.
The closest I’ve ever been to Australia has been Kuta Beach during the 90s. Wild fearless surfers and scraggly-haired beach bunnies. I wasn’t into that scene. My rumah overlooked a bathing spot along a jungle river outside Ubud. To the west volcanoes veed the horizon of emerald rice fields. They were my ocean until Richie Boy came out to visit me in Bali. It must have been 1994. Richie Boy braved the 26-hour flight and deboarded the 747 in a coma.
“You want to sleep?”
“I slept enough on the ride out. Let’s go surfing.” Richie Boy was a dedicated surfer. He had learned from the legendary Duke Stein at Lido Beach. Neither of them could teach me how to stand on a board. Richie wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. We surfed Kuta Beach. I was sucked up by a riptide. I almost drowned. We surfed Ulu Watu. I went over the falls. I almost drowned. At Bingin Beach I got up and a Brazilian cut in on my wave. I fell off and almost drowned. Our Aussie friends made fun of me. Richie Boy couldn’t really defend me. I was basically a log. Harmless unless you ran into it.
At the surf shack I decided to confront the ‘convicts’ on a matter of national pride.
“Name me five famous Aussie rock bands.”
“Five.” The Aussies scoffed at this challenge. “AC/DC. INXS. Midnight Oil. Men at Work.”
A pause.
“And?”
A longer pause.
“The Bee Gees.” I like their music but they were more pop.
An even longer pause.
“The EasyBeats.” Their FRIDAY ON MY MIND had been covered by David Bowie. “Unfortunately they only had one hit. Let’s face it you can’t even come up with #5 and even AC/DC isn’t really Aussie. Two Scots and a Brit. It’s like saying Hitler was German.”
The surfers argued the nationality of AC/DC without ever saying the name of Aussie band # 5 and no one since that night has been able to complete the list.
Not unless they included Olivia Newton-John.
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