Bill Bryson's games: Sydney barely a blip on stateside radar

By BILL BRYSON

An Australian friend of mine, who has lived in America for many years, once told me that when she was newly arrived in the country and working at a school in the Midwest, the headmaster came up to her with a curiously flummoxed expression.

He was clutching some papers to do with a student exchange programme for which he needed to send a letter to Melbourne.

"I hope this isn't a dumb question," he said, "but what month is it in Australia?"

At that moment, she told me, she realised just how far off the radar Australia is for most Americans.

Even the most basic matters of Australian life are terra nullius, as it were, for the most of my countrymen.

I would hate to guess what proportion of them could identify the Australian capital, point to Queensland on a map, name a single living Australian novelist or even correctly pronounce Brisbane.

But in my experience it is not terribly many.

Indeed, my experience includes recently meeting an American couple who had just been to Brisbane and still didn't know how to pronounce it. I have before me a travel article from Newsday, one of the nation's largest newspapers, cheerfully identifying Sydney as "the Australian capital."

I could go on and on.

So the Olympics obviously represent a golden opportunity for some of America's most gifted and thoughtful commentators to rectify this regrettable shortfall in our knowledge.

Unfortunately, they've sent sportswriters instead.

I'm sorry. That was a terrible joke, in extremely poor taste. Let me say at once that my father was a sportswriter and a man of intelligence and discernment, and I have no doubt that there are many like him.

But sportswriters, as a rule, are not the most sensitive and appreciative of world travellers. These are people who like their comforts reliable and uncomplicated, for whom the words "stylish" and "nylon" are not necessarily incompatible.

Anything foreign is bound to unsettle their cautious sensibilities.

Even so, some of their recent observations on the nature and quality of antipodean life do bring the dedicated Australophile up short.

In this respect, I believe Mr Frank Fitzpatrick, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, may be without peer.

After noting that Australians are friendly and likeable, he warns his readers: "Just don't ask for coffee. The stuff brewed here tastes as if it were scraped off the Great Barrier Reef."

The problem, it transpires, is that Australian coffee is too strong - even too flavourful - for Mr Fitzpatrick's careful palate. Alas, most matters gastronomic down under seem to be a disappointment to him.

"Food in general seems to be a problem," he writes with a touch of sadness. "The sandwiches are thin and inedible. Worst of all, bagels are virtually nonexistent."

It had never occurred to me that any human being could possibly regard eating in Sydney as an ordeal, but there you are. As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go round, though perhaps some shouldn't go quite so far round it as others.

And Sally Jenkins, of the Washington Post, was not at all captivated by the opening ceremonies - "an Ice Capades without the ice" was her cogent assessment.

This I could just about bear, (I like the Ice Capades), but when she rounded on that sweet and beloved goldilocks, little Nikki Webster, I fear she lost my vote for the Pulitzer, particularly when she wrote: "after an hour and 40 minutes of this, I wouldn't have minded one bit if her mother had screamed like Meryl Streep, 'The dingo ate my baby'."

Kangaroo jokes have become something of a motif in many reports, nowhere more notably, or indeed bewilderingly, than in a weekend report from the Houston Chronicle, which began with this arresting passage: "This morning I saw a kangaroo in my pyjamas. How he got there I'll never know. But the place is teeming with them. The streets are literally jumping. Never mind taking a taxi in from the airport, mate. Just toss your luggage into the pouch, hang onto the ears and, well, hop a ride into town."

And what does any of that mean exactly?

It means that jet lag can sometimes be a terrible thing. As you would expect, many correspondents have found Australia's rich and colourful lexicon a source of both entertainment and mystery.

Several have provided glossaries in which they explain such puzzling terms as "larrikin," "jillaroo," and even "bloke." I particularly treasure the carefully phrased assertion in the Los Angeles Times that "Women in some parts of the country are known as sheilas."

However, my most cherished find was a breathtakingly innocent explanation in the Detroit Free Press of what a nameless Australian basketball player meant when he reportedly called American Vince Carter a word that rhymes with banker.

The correspondent was not closely enough acquainted with the term to provide a full and literal interpretation, but proposed instead that the expression appeared to mean "jerk," which is a close enough translation for me.

What amazes me is how few correspondents have perceived Sydney as a special place. Of the coverage I have seen, only Bob Kravitz, of the Indianapolis Star, seemed to be smitten with the city.

"There could not be a better stage for the first Olympics of the new millennium," he wrote. "Sydney today is spit and polished, a blithe spirit of a city, almost impossibly beautiful, poised to show itself off for the world."

But elsewhere you would scarcely guess that there are grounds to suppose that Sydney has a certain enviable attractiveness.

Perhaps these working visitors are just too busy to notice, but it does seem as if there is a curious reluctance to engage with the city any more than is strictly necessary.

Possibly the most extraordinary fact I have seen so far in these Games was the mention in the Bulletin last week that American TV network NBC had shipped-in a huge supply of Starbucks coffee to keep its staff caffeinated in the American style.

I wonder if they might spare poor Mr Fitzpatrick a cup, and possibly a Hostess Twinkie or some processed cheese if anyone remembered to pack any.

It's going to be a long dozen or so days till we all get home and can get some real food again.

Win Bill Bryson Down Under

For more on what Bill Bryson really thinks of the Aussies, readers have the chance to win his acerbic and entertaining book on our transtasman cousins.

Bill Bryson Down Under is the latest international bestseller from the American author.

It was released in June to international acclaim.

The Herald, in conjunction with Random House, is offering a total of eight hardback copies, worth $49.95 each, to readers.

Readers must write in identifying Bryson's nationality, along with their name and address, on the back of an envelope to:

Bill Bryson competition, Editorial Features Department, PO Box 3290, Auckland, by Friday September 29.

*Bill Bryson Down Under (Doubleday/Random House), $49.95, available now