New Zealand, Australia and Canada

Sunday, July 17, 2011
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
 Physically, Australia and New Zealand could hardly be more different. One is red, dry, sun-baked, worn and ancient, with gnarled and thorny vegetation, the other is young, green, moist, ferny and mossy. Of course that is a gross oversimplification. For a start it makes Tasmania part of New Zealand, and it ignores huge parts of mainland Australia -- the tropical part (which we didn't visit) and the mountains and southeast coast. 

One thing the two countries have in common, though, is a profusion of used-book stores . This in itself is almost a reason to emigrate. Browsing online is just not the same. In the small town of Goulburn there was a big old house right in the centre of town, every room stacked to the ceiling with books. I felt as though I was in a literary ghost town, until I found a man sitting in the corner of one room, like a spider.

For some reason I had had the impression that Australia was culturally conservative, but that changed during our visit. One of the major issues was the recent revelation that Australian cattle shipped to Indonesia were being slaughtered inhumanely there. This didn't strike me as the most astonishing thing I had heard in the past year, but it was taken so seriously by all, that cattle exports were suspended, at great cost to Australia.

Australia has introduced a carbon tax, a bold step which is well beyond the imaginative reach of the leaders of most developed nations. Admittedly, it's going to be a hard sell, but the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, seems to be willing to allow history to judge her on this, and if she loses her job as a result, so be it . Opponents of the tax say that it won't significantly improve the state of the planet, and there are a billion Chinese waiting to take our jobs. Supporters say it won't be as bad as you think, but they also argue that someone has to show the way, even if there is a cost attached, an argument that would just brand you as a laughable philosopher-king in Canada.

As a sidebar to this, the carbon tax suffered a bit of a blow when Cate Blanchett supported it. Opponents said a person that wealthy has no right to be weighing in on a tax which she can easily afford. This played on and on for days, and seemed to be considered as an argument against the tax itself. As though Hitler saying he enjoyed football would make basketball a superior game. (No I'm not comparing Cate to Adolf, just saying even his endorsement doesn't invalidate a proposal). The depressing thing is that politicians can't all be that stupid, but they seem to think that the average citizen is, and instead of trying to help people think more clearly they lower the discussion to that level .

In terms of national identity, Australia and Canada make an interesting comparison. How are we seen by others? Australia has developed a strong "brand," while Canada is near the opposite end of the spectrum. There are probaly many reasons for the difference. The unique wildlife helps a lot, as does the physical separation (being an island, oops I mean a continent apart). Being geographically attached to the world's leading superpower and speaking the same language puts you at a disadvantage in trying to stand out from the crowd.

How do we see ourselves? Although both countries are huge, I think Canada in "huger" in a couple of ways. As a result it's easier for an Australian to feel like a citizen of the country as a whole, while Canadians tend to be more regional. The two languages are a potential advantage that Canada has squandered, resulting in a social deficit instead.

From the populous states of Australia, one's mind naturally turns north and west, in the direction of the rest of the country as well as the rest of the world.  From the most populous parts of Canada, Ontario and Quebec, Canadians tend to look south and east to the rest of the world, while the country lies to the north and west. We tend to travel south to visit our larger neighbour, rather than east or west to get to know our own country (and we even retire there) -- something that is not possible in the island continent. Australians still have regular train service connecting all four coasts; we only have two coasts that are connectible by train, and I don't think there is any effective service any more.

From the various state capitals and Darwin, most parts of Australia are accessible by good roads within a day's drive. For a comparison, try driving to Inuvik. From Edmonton it's a long day's drive to Whitehorse, then most of another day to Dawson. After that it's still 900 km to Inuvik on unsealed road that is so rough that no one in their right mind would do it in an ordinary motorcar. You are still a couple of thousand kilometres from the utmost northern reaches of the country, in those amorphous islands that few of us can name.  The only way to get farther east is by air, and the only practical way to do that is to go back to Edmonton and start over. Half of the countries in the world are more visited by Canadians than are our own northern regions.

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