History

I drove to see my new patient in Double Bay today, you know, the place they call Double Pay because of the rental prices.

In the event I was twenty minutes late because I'd driven across the city from south west to north east, negotiating five pages of the UBD. The UBD, or the bloody sodding UBD as I've come to call it, doesn't give you any clues about which junctions will and will not allow you to turn right, so the journey from my patient in Canterbury took fifty minutes in total, of which roughly fifteen were spent over-shooting the junction I wanted and doubling back.

"Sorry I'm late" I said as I arrived. I'm Sarah, pleased to meet you"

"No dramas" said Heidi's mum, who was cradling Heidi in one arm and the phone in the crook of the other. "Look Mum, I'll have to go, the woman is here about Heidi".

"It took me longer than I thought to drive from my last appointment" I continued

"Where was it?" She asked

"Canterbury, well, no, Earlwood to be exact"

"Ah, Wogsville"

"Sorry?"

"Wogsville, where all the wogs live"

"And what do you class as a wog?"

"Lebanese, Greeks, Italians. Foreigners. They all cause trouble, the sons are treated as gods so they do as they please. I grew up in Bondi and they caused so much trouble cruising and speeding in their customised cars all night long. Little shits, the lot of them"

I wasn't sure how to react really. I mean, what can you say to that? She's right about the Lebanese treating the boys in the family as gods; I have two Lebanese kids on my caseload, both boys, both allowed to get away with murder, but I found her description of "wogs" offensive, especially as she was applying it to people I know, families who've invited me into their homes and made me coffee and offered me their Lebanese bread.

I recounted the story to Jim, our CEO, when I got back to the office.

"Is wog an offensive word in Australia?"

"Yes, it is. Some people still use it though, especially older people, and they don't stop to check whether they'll offend you. Thirty years ago this was a much more racist country and I think outside the cities or up north it probably still is, to a greater degree than here in Sydney anyway"

"Your country fascinates me. If it were possible to do a degree in Australian Studies I'd sign up tomorrow, I just have to content myself with reading books and trying to soak in the culture by living here"

"Culture? Ha! We don't have any. It's not what you'd call a complex society, it's raw. We're still pioneers to a degree, we're still settling the land and we have the rough edge that goes with it"

"You do, but I've never heard an Australian say that".

He smiled. Jim's a retired headmaster, he's been there and done that and he doesn't feel the need to justify anything now, least of all his country's place in the world.

"So what have you been learning about Australia?" he asked.

"Well I've read some books, some of them I bought on the internet over the last few years, some I bought in Australia on past visits. I've just got a new one about Queenlander houses and how and why they were designed the way they were"

"And what else?"

"Well I read "Platypus" on a plane from Sydney to London once, you know, about the battle between all those botanists and other scientists trying to classify what they found when they came here, especially the monotremes, which really puzzled them"

"Indeed they did"

"And I've got a book called "Sydney Takes Shape" about how the city grew around the water source in the tank stream and how it was planned after that"

"It was planned? You surprise me - the place is a shocking mess of roads"

"And one I got on the internet called "The Origins of Australia's Capital Cities", which is a geography textbook really"

"Boy, you're dedicated aren't you?" He laughed and looked at me sideways, a bit taken aback. "I mean, why does it fascinate you when you come from England and you have all that history of your own?"

"Well that's the thing I suppose, you don't appreciate your own history until you come somewhere like this. And anyway, I think history is badly taught in schools, it's dry and nebulous, they don't link it together in a way that makes sense"

He smiled and nodded. "I taught in Australian schools for thirty years. It's the same here, they teach more about British history than Australian history, it was the same when I was at school, all this stuff about the home country"

"Do you still think of Britain as the home country? I mean, British history is your history in a way"

"I suppose I do. When I was a kid, people didn't say they were going overseas to Britain, they said they were going to the home country because that was where almost everyone had come from. But things have changed since we put an end to the white Australia policy, you know, where you had to be white-skinned to emigrate here. Nowadays British history is less relevant to the kids because their parents are just as likely to have come from Italy or the Lebanon or Thailand, in the cities at least"

Kath came in with her lunch and a coffee and sat down to join us. She's a bit younger than Jim, but not much. She'd been listening to our conversation.

"Though if they'd taught us Australian history, well that would have taken up all of ten minutes wouldn't it?"

"I don't agree" I said. "There's so much to say. Jim just said your society isn't very sophisticated and I know what he means but that's got to be a result of the place having been settled and developed over the course of two hundred years. It took us much, much longer to get where we are today. So no, it's not sophisticated, but there are things that contributed to that situation and it's reflected in the psyche of the people and even in the language and the AQI. I have lots of theories about it"

I'd lost them now, I could see that.

"Quite an anthropologist, aren't you?" said Jim. "I'll talk to you some more when I've got the time".