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We heart Australia

“How come you have so many things from Australia?“ asked Zoe (click). “Oh, I’ll translate it for you“ said us.

So, some time ago we saw the film Australia. We recommend it to all with extra time to spare because it is really long. Luckily, we liked it so we made it through the end.
But while at the cinema we were thinking how deeply our life is connected with Australia. You know, Australia is our spiritual homeland, our holy mountain is Uluru (click), and the Southern Cross is shining at our skies. And if you thought that the colour of this blog is randomly picked just remember the colour of the ring representing Australia on the Olympic flag.

But really, all of us from our island (and many other Croatian islands) grew up with Australia. Everybody has at least half of the family there and there isn’t one house without the Australian traces: T-shirts with the map of West Australia, calendars, tea towels/calendars, clocks, watches, plates, pencils, tablecloths, caps, wallets, pillows… The list is endless, and we have to point out that the Australian fauna is the main motive of these souvenirs. Among the fauna the most frequent are kangaroos and koalas. The other motive is the Sidney Bridge and Opera house (when we were a child we thought that is the most important and the largest opera in the whole wide world).

A colleague, who also has experience with the Australian Diaspora and an incredible souvenirs supplies, told us that he think there is a huge souvenir well at the Australian airports and everybody leaving the country grab as much as they can from that well.

So, let’s see how Australia materialised in our residence, and we also asked the Sister back on the Island to photograph what is there (actually, we asked her to photograph just one thing we thought off, but in the process 4 other things emerged.)


Coasters: kangaroos, koalas and some birds. What I miss is the kookaburra, a rather plain bird (klik), but very important for us because the Grandfather told the story of catching a kookaburra at least three times a year. Back in the times the Grandfather also immigrated to Australia, and to get there he travelled by ship for two months because some war was on and the Suez channel was closed. In Australia he worked on a farm, and once he caught a kookaburra. The bosses son then said, and the Grandfather always quoted: "Father, father, Tony caught kookaburra!"
The Grandfather brought some English back with him, mostly curses, and since the Grandmother hated curses, she let him curse in English because she couldn’t understand him. Grandfather’s favourite was bloody fucking bastard and we were so used to it that the Grandmother used to say: “The Grandfather is angry, he’s been bastering the whole day.“


The Grandfather came back from Australia, but many others haven’t. They sent them letters like this. This one came by post but more often the letters were brought by someone visiting the Old country. Those couriers usually distributed letters the first two weeks of they visit, and collect the fresh ones the last two weeks. That practice was ideal for meeting old friends and relatives, but the real reason was that our people are sceptical, trusting more to one of their own than to the postal service. Another reason were dollars sent in these letter that one couldn’t send through the regular mail. The Grandfather didn’t need money, but he lent money for the ticket to Australia to many and they always thanked him with little something although they payed their debts already. The letters that came by post usually had cheques and they helped us learn about the capitalist banking in our socialistic childhood.


This is an old Australian dollar from one of those letters. We think that the Australian dollars and former Dutch guilders are the most beautiful money in the whole world – all warm and colourful.


These are new Australian dollars from our own treasury. Our family always had dollars from the above-mentioned letters so our mother always gave us some whenever we were going abroad. These 50 AUD are actually the only cash we have with us.
The new dollars are even more beautiful then the old one, and we especially like the little window in the corner (see how transparent is it, there where the Southern cross is). Australian dollars rule!


Let’s return to the animal kingdom. This is the official address-book of our family.


This is an interactive souvenir. Kangaroo pencil, that shines when one uses it, and its arms/paws are movable. Brilliant.


Another kangaroo, this time on a bookmark.


This bookmark has a long story behind. Our Grandmother had a brother and the three sisters. The brother left for Australia and never contacted the sisters again. There he got a son and gave him a Croatian name Tomislav and taught him Croatian, but he never told him there is family back in the Old Country. What happened is that the old guy had a traffic accident and just before he died he told the son about the 4 aunts. When that Cousin finally came to a visit he brought 3 bookmarks. One for our Mother, one for the Sister, and one for us. Aren’t we lucky!
But that is not important. The important is that the Cousin is actually an Australian Aborigine. How? Simple, the Cousin is a doctor and he works a lot with Aborigines and helps them so much that they accepted him into a tribe. He was supposed to get the tattoo of his tribal name on his chest, but he said he rather wouldn’t so they made him a picture with the same motive and it is in his office now.
If our Cousin is an Aborigine, so are we and that’s why we could connect even more with the film Australia.
By the way, the Australia keeps turning to its Aboriginal roots and the souvenirs too. We’re getting less of the kangaroos and the koalas, and more of the aboriginal motives. The trend started with the Cousins bookmarks.


When the Diaspora invites family from the Old Country to a visit the family returns full of the abovementioned souvenirs. But before that they send a postcard. Ufff, we can’t wait when we’ll be able to send a postcard from Australia. And we promise everybody will get something from that airport well.

In what other ways Australia touched our life and that isn’t in this post:
• Our first and only Barbie doll came from Australia, together with loads of clothes. Other friends had Barbies too, but none of them had such huge wardrobe. Of course, Australian Barbie had lots of beach clothes.
During the course of time Barbie lost all her clothes, and finally we lost her too. But we have another toy from Australia. These monkeys. We were the only one with this toy in the whole town and other than that the toy isn’t really interesting.


• The two trays: one had Sidney bridge and opera house by day, the other Sidney bridge and opera house by night. For years our family used them for serving watermelons.
• An apron with aboriginal motives that arrived together with the bookmarks. The apron is at our summerhouse, far from the reach of camera at this moment, but it is beautiful. We are always combining how we could make a top or a T-shirt out of it, anything that we could wear more often then an apron.
• A boomerang that arrived together with the apron and the bookmarks. The boomerang also had the aboriginal motives painted on it but at the end it turned out to be malfunctioning: our father tested it, and threw it away but it never returned.
• A clock in the shape of the Australian continent that had a koala on 12, a kangaroo on 3, a platypus on 6 and an emu on 9. Recently the clock fell apart and was tossed away before it was photo documented. Our greatest regret is that clock is not among these photos because it was a quintessence of Australian souvenirs.

Finally, this is an advertisement for the Australian tourism. By the director of the film Australia and with the boy from the film. If nothing you have to see that film because of him.


And we can’t wait to go walkabouts

Post je objavljen 03.04.2009. u 13:35 sati.