Hell's Bell?

[Brisbane, 6/4/24]

I’ve reentered the Anglosphere. My fellow passengers out of Saigon were mostly Indians. Claiming three seats each, several dozed at Tân Sơn Nhất. It was just after 10AM. Since India has Wellington, Dalhousie, Canning, Landsdowne and Port Blair, perhaps there’s a Brisbane, India, so fine, I’ve booked a wrong flight. Lots of biryani and samosas for the next three weeks then. Pie floaters will have to wait.

During boarding, the Indian man behind me said to one of his two girls, “Stand behind that line!”

“It’s not easy to travel with children!” I said.

“They’re fine,” he smiled.

“Have they traveled before?”

“Yes, they’ve been on planes.”

“It’s good to have children travel early. Let them see places.” Nodding towards the first girl, I asked, “How old is she?”

“Three.”

“She’s big! And so well behaved.”

“She slept a lot last night. She should be OK on the plane.”

It was eight hours on a packed flight. Having stopped drinking, I couldn’t make it more relaxing with two or three beers. I sat next to a Vietnamese in his 60’s. This was his second visit to a son studying nursing in Oz. With zero English, he couldn’t decipher the most basic signs on his first trip. This time, too, he would stay the full length of his three-month visa. It’s a tremendous break from Vietnam. Besides Australia, he had only been to Cambodia and Laos. His Huế accent was so thick, I couldn’t catch everything he said. His other son is an army colonel.

Before deplaning, we were sternly warned at length to not bring in banned food. Visitors, including Vietnamese, have been fined and turned back at Aussie airports. Once in, your visa can be revoked if you’ve committed a crime, of course. In this category, New Zealanders rank highest by far. That’s no surprise since so many are here. Brits come in second, then Vietnamese!

Expecting a vigilant welcome, I was surprised to find all customs officers to be remarkably relaxed, pleasant and cheerful. My online visa application had also been approved instantaneously. No one combed through those many questions. Had I carried a Sudanese, Vietnamese or Cambodian passport, it would have been different.

Travel entails glitches. The train to Fortitude Valley had stopped running after 10:04PM, so my prebought ticket was useless. Fine, I’ll take a bus, except those, too, had retired for the night. A $33 taxi ride it’d have to be.

It was 54 degrees in Brisbane, so pleasantly cool, but I had left Saigon at 95 degrees. A 40 degree drop was no joke.

“How are you doing, man?” I said to the driver.

“I’m good, Sir. How are you?”

He turned out to be a Somali who had lived 12 years here. Though his English was fine, he spoke softly in a Somali Aussie accent, and my hearing isn’t what it used to be.

“Do you miss home?”

“Yes, I do.”

“How often do you go back?”

“Every five, six years.”

“So you’ve only been back twice!”

His wife and kids are here, though. Most interestingly, he wanted to send his two girls, aged five and three, back to Africa. In Brisbane, they risked turning into iPad zombies. Once in school, they’d still be staring at screens too much.

“So they’re going back to Somalia?”

“No, I’m thinking Kenya. The schools there still use books and paper.”

In 1973, Lewis Mumford said, “At one point in my life I realized I was the victim of the typewriter. If I didn’t have it at hand, I wouldn’t be able to write a long book, because my handwriting was illegible […]” Abstaining from this machine, Mumford recovered a key part of himself. “I’m not the victim of the typewriter. I could do without it. If all the typewriters in the world were destroyed, I could still go on writing books.” Hooked to so many machines, many want to be merged into them.

As for troubles in his homeland, the driver said there are no religious, ethnic or linguistic divisions there, only clans and political factions fighting.

“That’s enough!” I exclaimed.

“Unlike in Australia. There are Chinese, Indians, but we’re all Australians. I’m Somali, you’re Vietnamese, but we’re just Australian.”

“Actually, I’m only visiting!” My fluent English had confused him.

Getting off Kingsford Smith Drive, I had expected to see bright shops and restaurants, but all was quiet. The houses were mostly detached, with front lawns, so didn’t seem that different from those in a US suburb. There were no pedestrians.

I had come because my friend, Mark, had a free room for three weeks. His boarder had just moved out. Mark even paid for my one-way ticket. We had traveled from Thailand to Laos together. Sixty-eight-years-old, Mark is a retired truck and taxi driver. As a young man, he spent two decades trading securities.

He bought his two-bedroom flat for $371,418 just 16 months ago. The Brisbane River, lively downtown and gorgeously landscaped New Farm Park are all near. Within a ten minute walk there are Nepalese, Indian, Tibetan and Persian restaurants.

Mark has just sold his car. Each morning, he’s paid $6.67 to drive a Kenyan neighbor to work in hers. This saves her parking fees. In the evening, she walks back. Mark’s empty garage he may discreetly convert into another room.

His last boarder was a half Okinawan, half black woman who had arrived on a Working Holiday visa. Available only to those aged 18 to 30, they can stay a year but must work three months at a farm, construction site, mine or on a fishing boat. This helps “to address the current labour shortages in Australia,” as stated at a government website. They get paid around $17 an hour. If requirements are met, this visa can be extended at least twice.

A 26-year-old Chinese who bartends at a mine earns $48,000 a year after taxes. She has taken brief trips home, plus holidays to Bali and Thailand. At university in China, she read in translation Maugham, Orwell, Shelly, Keats, Thoreau and others. That’s more than your average Aussie her age. Here, her English has improved dramatically, though still quirky. Most importantly, she has managed to save.

Mark, “She was taking all these photos in a park, so I asked her, ‘Will you send these to your parents?’ ‘No, no!’ she replied. ‘My parents would yell at me, “Why are you enjoying yourself?! Why aren’t you working?”’ Her mom even asked her, ‘Can you get me a job in Australia?’”

Sitting on a bench at Queen Street Mall, you’ll see just about every nationality walk by within half an hour. Most prominent are the Chinese, with just a fraction of them tourists. Three days ago, four youths attacked four Taiwanese at South Bank. With its ferris wheel, ecological park, manmade beach with lagoon, Nepalese Peace Pagoda, stylish restaurants and a colorful sign to take photos in front of, South Bank is a must-see for visitors.

A victim had her phone out, so there’s a footage showing bodies on the ground. You can hear hard thumps and, “Oh, please stop!” One man punched in the eye had his glasses broken. This incident first made the news in Taiwan. Wu Anting recounts to a Brisbane TV station, “We didn’t say anything, and then they start yelling at us, calling us Chinese names. When they were talking behind us, it sounded like devil!”

Though the size of the US minus Alaska and Hawaii, Australia has just 26 million people, so less than metropolitan Shanghai, with its 26.9 million. Vast Canada also has just 38.9 million. Both of these white, English speaking countries have seen significant immigration from China. If you were a rich Chinese, why wouldn’t you want a house in Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney or Brisbane? Your kids should also study in an English speaking country. Of these, Australia has the most Chinese students per capita, followed by Canada, the US and UK.

Australia has a much nicer climate than Canada and many fewer crimes than the USA. It has 0.8 murder per 100,000 people compared to America’s 6.4. As a Chinese promise land, Oz’ transformation has just begun.

Australia needs foreigners to perform many jobs. Few Aussies care to wipe old asses, so that’s left to Filippinas, but Mark met a Czech woman doing this. It was worth it, “Her pay was good and she lived rent free with her boss, a Jewish lady in her mid-90’s. She said to me, ‘Here, everyone is happier. Even the dogs and birds are happier!”

“How are birds happier?!”

“I don’t know, but that’s what she said.”

Strolling with Mark through New Farm Park, we did hear all sorts of birds shrieking, cackling and, yes, laughing. Not all Aussie birds are ecstatic. The native curlews are known as screaming woman birds. Often seen Australian white ibises are trash eating “bin chickens.”

At Queen Street Mall, I saw a shoplifter walk out of City Beach clothing store. Her face was marred by angry red sores, so she, too, was not a happy bird. Defiant, she marched on as the alarm sounded.

Compared to American cities, Brisbane’s homeless are nowhere nearly as visible. There is a tent city in Musgrave Park, a 50-minute walk from me.

Housing cost is rising rapidly. Mark’s son, James, is living in Weipa, a town of just 4,000 way up north. It’s practically a suburb of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea! He drives a truck for the bauxite mine. His wife teaches high school math. After five years in this Siberia, they can return to Brisbane with savings. Although Weipa has many idle Aborigines, Filipinos must be brought in to work the mine. With welfare and shares from the mine’s earnings, Aborigines can get by without sweating.

A decade ago, James went to Saigon, where he taught English and chess for nearly two years. He has also visited Japan twice. His last trip was to attend a relative’s wedding.

Gabriel is a lawyer with degrees in both Australia and Japan. He works for a Tokyo law firm and plays in an AC/DC tribute band. The other members are Japanese. I found a YouTube video of them playing at Club Edge in Roppongi in 2020. The drummer and lead singer wore Covid masks. Inexplicably, they also managed to perform in Perth that year.

The greatest Aussie ever is Angus Young, of course. Another Oz legend is Angry Anderson of Rose Tattoo. Both are just 5 feet 1 inch and a half tall. To maintain the stereotype of tall, rugged Australians, there’s still its national rugby team. A third of them, though, are Polynesians.

Before any major sporting event here, an Aborigine solemnly declares:

I begin today by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather today, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today [..]

On Mark’s TV, I witnessed my first “Welcome to Country” two days ago. The lady delivering it looked entirely white, however. Appearances, hearsay and news often deceive.

This article took longer to write than usual. With its cool weather and silence, New Farm is conducive to deep sleeps. I’m sleepy right now. If you’re a quiet, retiring type with only 10, 15 years left, Brisbane’s better neighborhoods are near ideal.

Nine months ago, a 56-year-old Chinese contacted Mark through a dating site. On their first encounter, she immediately asked about his income and wanted to see his car. Since she had no English, they had to communicate via WeChat and Google Translator.

“You should just marry the Kenyan lady!”

“She already has a partner, they’ve been together ten years, and she’s getting a little thick. She actually said to me, ‘It’s unfair to my partner I’ve gained so much weight.’”

To take a break from Australia, Mark will again travel to Asia. In August, he will head to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and maybe China, before flying to Dubai to see his daughter, his Indian son-in-law and his two-year-old grandson.

Like me, Mark knows everything can be imploded, exploded or shut down in a blink. In his cupboards are cans of sardines, jars of spaghetti sauce, pasta and bags of rice. Soon, he’ll get jars of sauerkraut and kimchi.

“How long will that last you?”

“Three months.”

“Then what?”

“Since I’ll be the only one left, I’ll go around to scavenge from the dead bodies.”

[Brisbane, 6/4/24]

[Brisbane, 6/4/24]

[shoplifter exiting store in Brisbane on 6/4/24]

[Brisbane, 6/4/24]