Every culture has one class of citizen that are derided and subject to sensationalist paper headlines, the group of society that everyone would rather didn’t have as neighbours. For the English it’s Chavs, for the Irish it’s Pikeys and Chinese people really do not like pig farmers. In Australia they have a sub-social sect called the Bogan.
What is a Bogan I hear you cry? Well this is the Aussie equivalent of the American Redneck. Bogans are working class people from the sticks, although the term originated in Melbourne, it is used to describe the backwards cousin loving folks who inhabit the outback. They are generally regarded as being stupid, lazy and essentially uncultured, this by a country who voted the Meat Pie as it’s national dish!
The bogan bloke is atypically Aussie, drinking beer round a BBQ followed by watching footy (AFL) or cricket before going to bed for a root (please don’t ask) and sleep. In his yard (no gardens in this world) he keeps a collection of rusted car engines and various whitegoods in states of disrepair, he probably keeps a hunting rifle in the back of his ute. For bogan girls, just think Essex girl with foul mouth and fouler temper, usually pushing round a child buggy containing more passengers than it was designed for.
Bogans are typified by certain credentials such as acid washed jeans, flannel shirts, mullet hairstyles and a love of 80’s hair rock. The term was made popular in the suburbs of Melbourne by metal fans who called themselves bogans, probably to differentiate themselves from wimpy rockers/U2 fans. However the term has changed in meaning over the years. Now there is a sub-culture of people who are glad to be bogan, the term has a certain charm around it and as this video shows they can be the source of such great fun:
Now I was introduced to the whole Bogan phenomenon when we decided to partake in the local pub’s bogan bingo. It’s bingo, with bogans. Two guys dress as bogans and read out a selection of numbers which are marked off on playing forms, called cards. This sounds like normal bingo I hear, played by old people in homes, people with old balls and greying wrinkled cards. Well yes it is actually, and how do Bogans change the game. Basically they introduce really crappy prizes, so bad in fact that when offered the chance of swapping said price (old car freshener anyone) people inevitably decide to swap their winnings for the offered free drink. The hosts are constantly offering jokes and playing a selection of music from the 80’s, all rock played by bands with really big hair. Bon Jovi (in the hair days – no new stuff), motley crue and def leopard all feature. At half time they have an air guitar competition, three girls randomly picked to simulate a sex act with an inflatable guitar, well that’s what won it anyway. The overall result is quite an enjoyable night out although one that should be treated as a one off. I would seriously be worried should I want to make the event a weekly item on my busy schedule.
Bogans are renowned for driving clapped out old commodore’s or ford falcon’s and basically being mad drivers (hoons). They are inevitably on welfare and spend their time drinking beers all day and watching sport. I guess bogan women must all work or produce many more bogans. If anyone has seen the comedy program called “Kath & Kim” then I can say that this is the latest incarnation of Bogan, moneyed bogans. Bogans who for some reason or other (inheritance, lottery, fraud) have become well off and have decided to move into the suburbs and live with the normal populace, These new Aussies are still essentially bogans, stupid, uncultured and ultimately looked down upon although they can afford the nice things in life, like low carb beer and non carbolic washing soaps.
Although when I really think about it I quite admire the lifestyle perpetuated by the Bogan culture. Sitting around watching sport, drinking beer and listening to bad American rock music whilst waiting for the next welfare check to arrive so I can spend it on more beer. No pressure to go to work and most of all, no worries.
Now I wonder if I brought any flannel shirts with me?
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Monday, 10 August 2009
Roo’s 13 – Foxes 11
This may look like some sports result for local Australian teams but in actual fact it has a darker and more grisly message.
Brisbane to Melbourne, the concept is easy, I fly to Brisbane where I meet with my friend Duncan and we both proceed to drive his car back down through the outback to Melbourne. The trip will take two days of constant driving and will be the outback adventure I have been longing for since arriving. Two guys, the open road and lots of wildlife and interesting views to watch.
I flew up Friday night and despite there being plenty of drinking time left, it wasn’t even light on the horizon yet, was sent to bed with no beer. The reason behind this tactic was simple, we had a 5am start. Yes I did just say that 5AM! My god what have I gotten myself into! The only people who should be up at 5AM are people who haven’t gone to bed yet.
So 5AM and I am stirring an extra strong coffee wondering why I volunteered for this, but the excitement of the drive is growing and I am slowly waking up. The first stint of the drive is to go and get breakfast, a couple of hundred kilometres to a small café in Towoomba (honestly all the place names in this article are real), a café recommended by Duncan’s father who has made the trip several times. As it turns out breakfast was delightful and, fully refreshed, it was my turn to drive. The next leg of the drive would take us to Goondiwindi a mere 250Km-is away. As we approached the main highway we passed a Service station and having half a tank of fuel promptly ignored it. After all Duncan has been getting 600kms per tank so we would be fine.
Now I would like to say that driving in Australia is like a huge off road course, exciting terrain within a magnificent wilderness. I would like to say that but unfortunately I would be lying to you. The roads are twin lane, tarmac strips annoyingly straight, although the surrounding wilderness can be beautiful. If you really want to know what driving in the outback is like then have a look at this picture:
Enjoyed that did you, then stare at it again, look harder. Continue looking at the picture. Now stay looking at that picture for a couple of hours. That is driving in the Australian outback, for a more realistic experience turn the heat up in your room and occasionally lean left and right as if the car were turning a gentle bend in the road. Sometimes there appears a pub and couple of houses, this is what constitutes civilisation in the untamed wilderness, but for the most part it is endless nothing.
In fact the only interesting thing to do when in this situation is make up games to employ your mind. With this in mind we decided to do a spontaneous experiment into the mental health of the Australian Fauna. Obviously some animals get so bored by their surroundings that they find all they can do with themselves is throw their body in front of the first passing vehicle. This sign of manic depression can be measured by simply counting the amount of corpses by the road side.
There are rules though, as there should be, animals only count if they are recognisable and not too much of a road-kill pizza. After only an hour we had already counted 3 wallabies and 5 foxes. It seems that foxes are a depressed bunch of animals. Soon a sign showed that we were about 100 kms from Goondiwindi, our next stop and change over point. Around this time a small red light appeared on the dashboard. A light in the shape of a fuel pump. I asked how many kms were in the tank when this indicator came on and Duncan thoughtfully announced he wasn’t sure as he had rarely seen this happen. Great! As kilometres slowly clicked down we both began to get a little nervous about our predicament. I really did not fancy walking 80kms to a service station to pick up some gas and then back again. I’ve seen Wolf Creek and know what kind of mad people live out in the bush, plus there are snakes and spiders and all manner of things that can easily kill you by accident. As driver I also had the unfortunate view of watching the fuel needle sink slowly beyond the end of fuel gauge, we were now running on nothing according to our instruments. We slowed down to a more fuel efficient speed. This annoyed all those people coming up behind us at the speed limit then having to slow down as we trundled on at 80km/h desperately trying to conserve fuel. Now the kilometres took forever to tick themselves off and it was looking more and more like there would be a definite walk involved in this stretch of the journey. Apparently Duncan’s fuel efficiency was gained in a car running round town, with one passenger, and without a back full of personal possessions. We certainly had not packed for an outback excursion, barely a bottle of water between us. If we broke down we would be in a world of nothing., only a pack of jelly beans to maintain our reserves. The signs started telling us we were less than fifty kilometres from civilisation, I started checking the road for signs of civilisation, maybe a farm we could beg some fuel from. But nothing presented itself, at this point something terrifying happened…
No we didn’t stop! The light on the dashboard started flashing. Now I know warning lights and when one is on constantly this means you are close to be in the shit, when one starts flashing then this means hide the fan!
“What does it mean when this light flashes?” I asked trying not to show my nerves.
“Dunno, never happened before” replies Duncan.
“Shit!”
Slowly buildings began to appear by the side of the road, industrial type buildings, faceless and devoid of character. However this meant there must be some fuel close by, a small garage down a side street maybe, but again our search was fruitless. Not wanting to leave the main road we simply craned our necks and tried to spy signs of a garage down the streets we passed with no discernable luck. I could swear the flashing was getting faster. Then as we pulled round a corner around one impressively boring building there was a sign from above, “Town Centre”. So we turned and followed the sign hopefully into the centre and hopefully into a garage. We were not disappointed, as we pulled the car into the forecourt of the local garage we both breathed a great sigh of relief, the kind of sigh given when you reverse over a bump in the drive and upon getting out discover it to be your child’s toy truck and not the family pet.
Once the car was full we both phoned the wife and told them we were fine and nothing had happened so far. Nice safe trip. We love you Goondiwindi, despite the fact you really appear to be a high street, 150 houses and a shed load of industrial buildings. In their favour they do have the first pub in Queensland; unfortunately we were heading in the opposite direction so for us it was the last pub in Queensland. Ah well. Back on the road and back to counting those dead animals.
So we cross into New South Wales and continue in the same vain for hours at a time, stopping off approximately every 200kms to change driver and, where appropriate refresh ourselves. It is testament to the outback that the scenery actually does change quite dramatically, but it does this so slowly that most of the times you hardly see a difference at all. We speed though small towns and villages, all noticeable by the standard pub building sitting by the side of the road. The scrub of Queensland gives way to farmland and grassy fields. I would like to point out that this grass is not the English green, green grass of home; no this is long, dry, yellowy, harsh grass. Australian grass, only eaten by roo’s. Occasionally there are signs warning about fruit flies and that there are severe fines for transporting fruit in your car through some areas of Australia, imagine being arrested for possession of a Banana??
Dusk began to fall and we reminded ourselves that this was when the roo’s would be on the move. With less then 100kms to go to our designated stop, a small town called Dubbo, (oddly enough MS word recognises this word) and I notices movement on the left hand side of the road. I gave a warning and Duncan slowed the car a little as a huge red kangaroo launched itself in front of the car. Whilst we were far enough away to be safe from ever hitting it, unless it was to change direction and jump down the road towards us, it was obvious that this was a very big roo! Standing easily six feet tall the thing was all legs with a tiny little head. Should we have been travelling at speed and hit this monster it would have come over the bonnet, through the windscreen and probably kicked us both to death. Still it was a magnificent sight bounding away to some roo gathering, probably to tell everyone how close it came to kill two reckless tourists.
And so we drove into Dubbo, the delightfully quiet town of Dubbo, but I think more of that later, I didn’t intend on writing war and peace here. By the time we had arrived the Foxes were out-suiciding the roo’s by 10 – 6.
To be continued…
Brisbane to Melbourne, the concept is easy, I fly to Brisbane where I meet with my friend Duncan and we both proceed to drive his car back down through the outback to Melbourne. The trip will take two days of constant driving and will be the outback adventure I have been longing for since arriving. Two guys, the open road and lots of wildlife and interesting views to watch.
I flew up Friday night and despite there being plenty of drinking time left, it wasn’t even light on the horizon yet, was sent to bed with no beer. The reason behind this tactic was simple, we had a 5am start. Yes I did just say that 5AM! My god what have I gotten myself into! The only people who should be up at 5AM are people who haven’t gone to bed yet.
So 5AM and I am stirring an extra strong coffee wondering why I volunteered for this, but the excitement of the drive is growing and I am slowly waking up. The first stint of the drive is to go and get breakfast, a couple of hundred kilometres to a small café in Towoomba (honestly all the place names in this article are real), a café recommended by Duncan’s father who has made the trip several times. As it turns out breakfast was delightful and, fully refreshed, it was my turn to drive. The next leg of the drive would take us to Goondiwindi a mere 250Km-is away. As we approached the main highway we passed a Service station and having half a tank of fuel promptly ignored it. After all Duncan has been getting 600kms per tank so we would be fine.
Now I would like to say that driving in Australia is like a huge off road course, exciting terrain within a magnificent wilderness. I would like to say that but unfortunately I would be lying to you. The roads are twin lane, tarmac strips annoyingly straight, although the surrounding wilderness can be beautiful. If you really want to know what driving in the outback is like then have a look at this picture:
Enjoyed that did you, then stare at it again, look harder. Continue looking at the picture. Now stay looking at that picture for a couple of hours. That is driving in the Australian outback, for a more realistic experience turn the heat up in your room and occasionally lean left and right as if the car were turning a gentle bend in the road. Sometimes there appears a pub and couple of houses, this is what constitutes civilisation in the untamed wilderness, but for the most part it is endless nothing.
In fact the only interesting thing to do when in this situation is make up games to employ your mind. With this in mind we decided to do a spontaneous experiment into the mental health of the Australian Fauna. Obviously some animals get so bored by their surroundings that they find all they can do with themselves is throw their body in front of the first passing vehicle. This sign of manic depression can be measured by simply counting the amount of corpses by the road side.
There are rules though, as there should be, animals only count if they are recognisable and not too much of a road-kill pizza. After only an hour we had already counted 3 wallabies and 5 foxes. It seems that foxes are a depressed bunch of animals. Soon a sign showed that we were about 100 kms from Goondiwindi, our next stop and change over point. Around this time a small red light appeared on the dashboard. A light in the shape of a fuel pump. I asked how many kms were in the tank when this indicator came on and Duncan thoughtfully announced he wasn’t sure as he had rarely seen this happen. Great! As kilometres slowly clicked down we both began to get a little nervous about our predicament. I really did not fancy walking 80kms to a service station to pick up some gas and then back again. I’ve seen Wolf Creek and know what kind of mad people live out in the bush, plus there are snakes and spiders and all manner of things that can easily kill you by accident. As driver I also had the unfortunate view of watching the fuel needle sink slowly beyond the end of fuel gauge, we were now running on nothing according to our instruments. We slowed down to a more fuel efficient speed. This annoyed all those people coming up behind us at the speed limit then having to slow down as we trundled on at 80km/h desperately trying to conserve fuel. Now the kilometres took forever to tick themselves off and it was looking more and more like there would be a definite walk involved in this stretch of the journey. Apparently Duncan’s fuel efficiency was gained in a car running round town, with one passenger, and without a back full of personal possessions. We certainly had not packed for an outback excursion, barely a bottle of water between us. If we broke down we would be in a world of nothing., only a pack of jelly beans to maintain our reserves. The signs started telling us we were less than fifty kilometres from civilisation, I started checking the road for signs of civilisation, maybe a farm we could beg some fuel from. But nothing presented itself, at this point something terrifying happened…
No we didn’t stop! The light on the dashboard started flashing. Now I know warning lights and when one is on constantly this means you are close to be in the shit, when one starts flashing then this means hide the fan!
“What does it mean when this light flashes?” I asked trying not to show my nerves.
“Dunno, never happened before” replies Duncan.
“Shit!”
Slowly buildings began to appear by the side of the road, industrial type buildings, faceless and devoid of character. However this meant there must be some fuel close by, a small garage down a side street maybe, but again our search was fruitless. Not wanting to leave the main road we simply craned our necks and tried to spy signs of a garage down the streets we passed with no discernable luck. I could swear the flashing was getting faster. Then as we pulled round a corner around one impressively boring building there was a sign from above, “Town Centre”. So we turned and followed the sign hopefully into the centre and hopefully into a garage. We were not disappointed, as we pulled the car into the forecourt of the local garage we both breathed a great sigh of relief, the kind of sigh given when you reverse over a bump in the drive and upon getting out discover it to be your child’s toy truck and not the family pet.
Once the car was full we both phoned the wife and told them we were fine and nothing had happened so far. Nice safe trip. We love you Goondiwindi, despite the fact you really appear to be a high street, 150 houses and a shed load of industrial buildings. In their favour they do have the first pub in Queensland; unfortunately we were heading in the opposite direction so for us it was the last pub in Queensland. Ah well. Back on the road and back to counting those dead animals.
So we cross into New South Wales and continue in the same vain for hours at a time, stopping off approximately every 200kms to change driver and, where appropriate refresh ourselves. It is testament to the outback that the scenery actually does change quite dramatically, but it does this so slowly that most of the times you hardly see a difference at all. We speed though small towns and villages, all noticeable by the standard pub building sitting by the side of the road. The scrub of Queensland gives way to farmland and grassy fields. I would like to point out that this grass is not the English green, green grass of home; no this is long, dry, yellowy, harsh grass. Australian grass, only eaten by roo’s. Occasionally there are signs warning about fruit flies and that there are severe fines for transporting fruit in your car through some areas of Australia, imagine being arrested for possession of a Banana??
Dusk began to fall and we reminded ourselves that this was when the roo’s would be on the move. With less then 100kms to go to our designated stop, a small town called Dubbo, (oddly enough MS word recognises this word) and I notices movement on the left hand side of the road. I gave a warning and Duncan slowed the car a little as a huge red kangaroo launched itself in front of the car. Whilst we were far enough away to be safe from ever hitting it, unless it was to change direction and jump down the road towards us, it was obvious that this was a very big roo! Standing easily six feet tall the thing was all legs with a tiny little head. Should we have been travelling at speed and hit this monster it would have come over the bonnet, through the windscreen and probably kicked us both to death. Still it was a magnificent sight bounding away to some roo gathering, probably to tell everyone how close it came to kill two reckless tourists.
And so we drove into Dubbo, the delightfully quiet town of Dubbo, but I think more of that later, I didn’t intend on writing war and peace here. By the time we had arrived the Foxes were out-suiciding the roo’s by 10 – 6.
To be continued…
Friday, 7 August 2009
This is a typically Australian song, The Angels "Am I ever going to see your face again".
Audience participation is mandatory, and every Australian knows the response to the question - Am I ever going to see you face again? Test any you find on your travels.
Incidently this was filmed at a TV quiz show which is produced in the Espy, our local pub!
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