Lament

I read in today’s Sunday Telegraph that 500 people are leaving Britain every day and most of them are coming to Australia. The most common reasons they give include rising house prices, fear of crime and the weather, and many of them are so convinced they’re doing the right thing that they emigrate without ever having set foot in the country before.

I’m not completely convinced about the research – I mean, after the summer of 2007, I think you’d find plenty of poms chucking their toys out of their cot and threatening to go to Australia, but it’s sobering to read it all the same.

After we left the Chopperdocs hangar this afternoon, (where I suspected Darren had designs on a sneaky forty winks in one of the bedrooms, much as he denied it), Ella and I went down to Cook Park in the town centre for a mooch about, which got me thinking about what I’d read.

The park was planted in the 1870s, and because of the cool European-style climate up here on the Great Dividing Range, they were able to plant all sorts of trees and flowers that wouldn’t normally survive in the Australian heat, including Scottish elm trees, English oaks and the beautiful magnolia tree in the first photo, which came from France. The overall effect is very familiar; the park looks like something you’d have found in any English town thirty years ago.

So there’s an aviary and a duckpond, the aviary home to a variety of parrots including a sulphur-crested cockatoo which says “Cocky want a biscuit?” in an accent Dame Edna would be proud of. And there’s a bandstand, which is completely free of any graffiti, a set of swings and a fernery, where I’m assuming they grow ferns, though I didn’t go inside and check.

At the north end of the park, there’s a little house selling arts and crafts, including shelf upon shelf of woolly cardigans, babies’ matinee jackets and home-made lamington cakes; three old ladies click-clacking away in various corners of the building, one eye on their knitting and one eye on the customers.

The sound of the knitting needles reminded me immediately of my nana, who used to knit cardigans just like the ones on the shelves (though she wore bifocals, which meant she could keep her eyes on four things at the same time, not two). I was so struck by all of the knitting that I wrote in the visitors’ book how much it reminded me of my nana, followed by her name, as it’s just the sort of place I’d like to see her name written for posterity and anyway, as she seems to follow me about sending message from the other side, I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough whether she agrees.

But the most revealing thing about the park was the conservatory, which was built in 1934 for the purpose of growing begonias, and though the caretaker tells me they do get the odd broken window (kids round here are bloody baggers), the place is otherwise intact and beautifully maintained and still open to the public for the viewing of those begonias as and when they fancy.

Now I knew Orange was a nice country town, but it was the begonias that did it because not only are they growing untouched in this lovely ornate glass house, but they’re growing in rows and rows of plant pots as you can see, and nobody’s thought to nick them.

We used to have parks like this in Britain.

When I was a little girl, Bank Park in Warrington was a bit like this, except there was the lovely town hall building in the grounds, better than anything they’ve got here in Orange. And we had an aviary full of parrots and a glasshouse full of exotic plants as well, but somehow they both fell into disrepair and these days they’re completely derelict. The sad thing about this is that nobody seems to care. They’ve just spent millions building a swanky shopping centre so we can keep whacking Christmas onto the credit card, when just up the road there’s a park that could be almost exactly like this one if only people had a much interest in feeding the ducks as they had in shopping, as much interest in areas of communal use as they have in feathering their own nests in IKEA. I realise this makes me sound a bit old-fashioned, but is that such a bad thing?

The reason I’m telling you this is because when I think about Bank Park, I think the 500 people leaving Britain every day are right (and brave) to do so, though what a pity they feel there’s no hope left. It’s like they’ve accepted nobody will ever care about restoring the aviary and they want to live somewhere better for the kids, somewhere more like Britain used to be.

I’ve always felt Australia was thirty years behind Britain, but what I’m struggling to understand is whether this country will ever feel so similarly hopeless that 500 people a day will be leaving for other shores. And if it does go that way, where will they go?

Back at the craft shop I gathered up an arm full of knitting; a jumper for Ella, a matinee jacket for Dan and Cathy’s new baby back in Bolton, a couple of scarves.

“Sorry love, it’s cash only” said the old lady on the till. “We don’t accept plastic”.