My favourite gag about Sydney-Melbourne rivalries goes like this: "If someone in Sydney has an idea, they throw a party; in Melbourne, they start a journal."
Further grist to this particular mill is provided with UNESCO's announcement that Melbourne is to be the new City of Literature, following up on Edinburgh's achievement in 2004.
Of course this is all falling into the background behind the Olympics, and especially behind Sally ("Oh my God, is this real? You've got to be kidding me, right? Did you see me? Did you see how pumped I was? I was more pumped than I've ever been in my life. Shit, I could see a girl passing me but kept running my own race. Amazing. I can't believe it.") McLellan's unexpected (she was supposed just to be getting some experience) silver medal in the hurdles, but how these things do chase each other around the world.
England and Australia have always had tremendous sporting rivalries, most notably in cricket, and our sports minister, Kate Ellis, was foolish enough to bet we would do better than the UK in Beijing, vowing she would wear the union jack colours to the next sporting event if the Brits did better than we did. They are creaming us! But of course, our coaches have been poached by China and the UK, paying them more than Australia can or will afford for their expertise. I gather, too, that the UK has been diverting lottery money away from the arts and into their sporting programmes. Yeah, but we've got a city of literature now!
Amid all the talk of international rivalries, and the new country of Phelpsville (which on the medal-per-head-of-population chart would look pretty incredible), a number of commentators here are talking about the brilliant success of Australian women, compared to our men. It's also the case that most of them come from Queensland. So I'm proposing a new state of Femenye (I'm teaching The Knight's Tale this morning). They don't even have to change the name: just enter women from the northern state in their own right. Problem solved!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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2 comments:
Pish-tush, how 1950s of them. Are people still making claims like 'Cutural centre of Australia'? Oh, how the Sydney people will roar to be sure.
If somebody in Adelaide has an idea, we set up a new festival. Either that or forget about it and go out to a flash lunch in the wine regions instead, depending on how much money there is.
Somebody should tell Steve Carroll nicely that Melbourne has bugger-all to do with Miles Franklin. She was a Sydney girl, a Bush girl, and a Spent-many-years-overseas girl, but as far as I know, she hardly ever even set foot in Melbourne. And him the current holder of her Award, too. Tch.
All that said, of course, the 'City of literature' tag for Melb is fair enough. It is. What's so tahsome is all those people saying that everywhere else isn't.
"... set up a new festival or go out to a flash lunch" Brilliant!
Yeah, I take the point about Miles and Sydney, too.
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