Greetings from Brisbane, Australia! Brisbane is the capital city of Queensland, the only Australian state with more farmers than city folk. This results in some curious salutations even more bizarre than the usual "g'day-mate-how-ya-goin".
One morning this past week as I was strolling through the suburbs, I passed an elderly woman in a sensible though perhaps well-worn jumpsuit, clutching an umbrella. This being October, it was too early to drag out the summer frocks.
"Bidod-dainnit," she muttered under her breath.
That was it. No "hello young man" or "morning handsome." She threw "Bidod-dainnit" right in my face and didn't wait for my reply.
Bidod-dainnit. That's Queensland for "It's a bit hot, isn't it?"
But I understood exactly what she was saying. I was born and bred in Brisbane, back when it was a dull old town run by fascists whose governance would have given Thai corruption a run for its money. The state's electoral borders were so gerrymandered there was no need for such crudities as military coups or martial law.
A fellow journalist, Matthew Condon, who did his cadetship the same time I did mine, has put out three best-selling books about the almost hedonistic corruption that permeated the police and politicians here in the 1970s and 1980s.
I see that in Thailand the banning of political parties and rallies has raised its head yet again. In Queensland it was illegal to walk three abreast because that constituted a political rally. We really do have a lot in common.
Brisbane has completely changed now. We have gone from a backward, corrupt country town to an intensely liveable tropical city, an alternative to the rat races of Sydney and Melbourne.
Andrew Biggs Nov 5 PHOTOS: Andrew Biggs
Don't get me wrong; we are still quirky and bizarre. We no longer "spread" avocado on bread and toast, for instance. Now we "smash" it. "Smashed avocado" is on every single restaurant menu, a word that must win this year's Pretentious Vocabulary Award, stripping "mixologist" of its crown from last year.
It's been a wonderful week catching up with family and friends, almost exclusively in pubs around the city since it appears Queenslanders are unable to do anything without clutching a "woit woin" or slamming down the local beer known as "XXXX".
On my first day in Brisbane I went to an inner-city pub which was fun until I needed to visit the bathroom. Despite large signs with arrows saying "TOILETS", I couldn't locate them. I'm so used to toilet doors being wide open, as they are in Thailand, I'd forgotten that toilet doors remained shut in allegedly civilised countries.
But look at what I found in the very first public toilet I went into in Queensland! There was a dispenser next to the wash basin, and I was intrigued by the sign on the machine: Pheremone Wipes.
Not just any old pheremone wipe either … Australia's leading pheremone wipes! Like we have a whole industry of them? "HARNESS THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE OF NATURES PHEREMONE SOURCE," the cover screamed. It wasn't just the missing apostrophe in NATURES that worried me. How does Australia's leading "pheremone" wipe spell its basic commodity incorrectly? Or are they just too sexually charged to worry about spellcheck? It's "pheromone"!
It seems pheromone wipes can boost your sex appeal for the price of a two-dollar coin. This being Australia, the world's biggest nanny state, it has to be true because you're not allowed to tell fibs in ads. Also, I don't know about you, but when I'm all alone in front of a machine that claims to boost my sex appeal for the price of two bucks, my hand goes straight into that trouser pocket quicker than a Catholic priest's does at choir practice. I bought a box.
I read somewhere that pheromones are secreted from our armpits. They have the chief purpose of attracting the opposite sex for procreation purposes. Only in Australia does one rely on the smell of some horny guy's armpits to get lucky.
On the back of the box it explained that I'd be able to rely upon this aroma to "achieve unfair social advantages". It also claimed that the product had not been tested on animals. How irresponsible is that and how can I ensure stray dogs or racehorses aren't going to jump me?
But look. In the space of a minute, two bucks left my pocket and I had a box containing a sachet in my hand. I ripped open the sachet and wiped the towel across my neck and wrists as instructed. A strong smell of alcohol hit my nostrils -- now there's an ingredient that makes people attractive -- then walked back outside and asked my drinking mate if he noticed anything different about me.
"You're fatter than the last time you visited," he said in earnest.
The pheromone wipe was a bit of a dud -- certainly I wasn't attracting any lurid stares when I hit the Queen Street Mall half an hour later -- but the product is relevant to the mood of Australia at present.
The country is engaging in what it calls a "plebiscite", which is a question sent out to all members of an electorate. The subject of the question is the legalisation of gay marriage.
The general consensus is that the ruling Liberal Party was too frightened to go ahead and legalise it, so it had this plebiscite, which is referendum's mousy little cousin who gets invited to all the family lunches but next to whom nobody wants to sit.
This little plebiscite has cost the country $122 million. From the outset opinion polls showed "yes" was going to win, so why spend all that money in the first place? Welcome to Australia.
"Yes" may only win marginally thanks to a monumental media scare campaign launched by Australia's staunch conservatives, who are as vocal as they are lunatic.
"It's OK to vote no" was a big canvas sign I spotted on the way to that pub. There standing by the sign was a group of young Australians dressed like they'd just come from a suburban church folk mass of the 1970s. They may say no to gay marriage but surely they would say yes to a pheromone wipe. Beggars can't be choosers.
I resisted the urge to wind down my window and shout obscenities at these young people. It was my old drinking mate who was driving who reminded me that the Islamic State and the Catholic Church have a lot in common, and it starts with recruiting and brainwashing their youth to do their dirty work. By the time we had both agreed on that, it was too late to tell those lacklustre youngsters where they could stick their canvas sign.
Australian churches are against gay marriage. Of course they are. I heard a news bite from one reverend, a celibate elderly man in a bright red frock and pointy silver hat, explaining how gay unions were "just not natural", unlike his get-up. As the cities of Boston and Ballarat know well, men of such cloth frocks are the last ones to be talking about what constitutes decency.
Oh, it wasn't all sexual doom and gloom. The entire country stopped for a TV show. It was the final night of The Bachelorette, in which 37-year-old Sophie Monk, a local celebrity, whittled her 18 suitors down to one. This may come as a shock, dear reader, but our ageing botoxed Sophie chose a man with a 500-million-dollar fortune made from owning pubs.
"It's all about love," Sophie announced to her man and Australia's population, "And I love you."
Of course you do, Sophie. Stu didn't need a pheromone wipe to snare you. n
