How to learn more about a country? Read a bit about it! In the process of writing up these ROW links, I plan to link to five articles (mostly random) about a country. The only thing that is common to them is that they’re all about one particular country.
And today’s country is Australia: I have not (yet) been to the country, but loved reading about it in Bill Bryson’s book, and loved hating the Australian cricket team (still do!). But on a more serious note, it is a country that I need to read more about.
In no particular order, or theme, five articles I read recently about Australia:
- “It’s on the matter of culture that Alan is most unconsciously revealing — unconsciously because Alan’s generation did not think of it as “culture” so much as of “character”. His upbringing was simple, in farming country near Gosford since swamped by housing. “I didn’t known what a steak was until I got to Sydney,” he recalls. “My mother knew how to cook rabbit 10 different ways.””
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How to not begin with an article on cricket? Alan Davidson, the original Wasim Akram – and a profile on him by Gideon Haigh. Please read, if you are a fan of cricket, Haigh’s book on Warne, called… “On Warne“.
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.. - “Australia loves larrikins, as long as they are white, and polite, and display no flamboyance and voice no controversial opinions. Australia laments there is no colour in public life anymore, complains that sports-people show no personality in their interviews, and then punishes them the moment they do. Australia is willing to embrace Nick Kyrgios, as long as he becomes someone else.”
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From Australian sportsmen then, to Australian sportsmen now. Nick Kyrgios.
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.. - “Australia will be a great nation, and a power for good in the world, when her head of state is a part-Aboriginal and her prime minister a poor man. Or vice versa.”
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Words written by Les Murray, who passed away recently. This article is via The Browser, and is worth reading for glimpses of Murray’s poetry, but also for an insight into Murray’s opinion about Australia.
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.. - “It is commonly reported that the colonisation of Australia was driven by the need to address overcrowding in the British prison system, and the fact of the British losing the Thirteen Colonies of America in the American Revolution; however, it was simply not economically viable to transport convicts halfway around the world for this reason alone.[4] Many convicts were either skilled tradesmen or farmers who had been convicted for trivial crimes and were sentenced to seven years’ transportation, the time required to set up the infrastructure for the new colony. Convicts were often given pardons prior to or on completion of their sentences and were allocated parcels of land to farm.”
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Almost everybody who has attended a class I’ve taught on Principles of Economics knows the story – well, the story stands on somewhat weakened foundations.
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.. - Finally, Professor Cowen picks his favorite things Australian. I am gloriously unaware of all of them.
EconForEverybody 