Westies

Just when I thought the Australian news had abandoned any thoughts of a world outside their window, news of the British floods turns up on the ABC nightly bulletin; images of people being winched out of upstairs windows, stranded cars and Gordon Brown making statements about the whole thing, though bugger only knows what he said because every time he opens his mouth he does that thing when he takes a breath and I can't concentrate on a word he's saying. He could send us into war with Russia and I'd be none the wiser.

It's funny how we report each other's freaky weather but hear little else about the other country for months on end between bushfires and floods and storms. The weather is a common obsession both sides of the world, especially recently, as everyone's talking about climate change here as well. A whopping great hole in the ozone layer hangs over Australia like an open velux window, the sun is so intense you burn in four or five minutes in the height of summer which never fails to catch the poms by surprise, especially the one who think they know about the sun because they take foreign holidays in Europe.

Today was Darren's last shift at the hospital so Ella and I went over to Featherdale to hand-feed some more kangaroos. Featherdale is out west, out woop-woop, along the motorway towards the Blue Mountains. Because of it's location (and the faff involved in getting to Taronga Zoo), it attracts its fair share of "Westies", the closest word they have to Chavs. I parked up with a load of them today, huge great families arriving in minibuses; massively overweight children, four year-olds in hoop earrings, mothers in Nylon slacks, their hair piled on the exact top of their head with a scrunchie. They have a completely different accent, like something from Kath and Kim and they're probably ten times more representative of the real Australians, not like these Sydneysiders with their flashy sunglasses and big watches.

I had a good look at them today, even the ones walking at the side of the road, one man looking almost exactly like Homer Simpson (minus the Giant Man of Cerne), dragging a shopping trolley behind him. From the look of them they can trace their Australian origins right back to the first fleet because they look uncannily like the portraits of the east-end crims I saw in the Hyde Park Museum.