Tramp Royale (41 page)

Of course, any decent person will prefer the unionism-gone-wild of Australia to the serfdom existing in Russia and South Africa. But there can be a golden mean, fair to everyone-and we are much closer to it than is Australia.

But most Australians seem more than content with their own ways in these matters. I learned from a reporter on one of the Sydney daily papers that a reporter was not permitted to drive his own car nor even a company car while on duty; while out on his news gathering rounds he must be driven by a union chauffeur in a company car. I told him that this struck me as a silly waste of manpower. He informed me quite stiffly that I did not know what I was talking about and that any other rule would be the "-thin entering wedge" which would destroy their rights. The quoted phrase is one that they are fond of and use to justify their most ridiculously non-productive practices. I suppose that the cited practice could be justified in the fierce traffic of Manhattan, but Sydney is not Manhattan; its traffic is not as dense as it is in any American city of comparable size. Carried to its logical extreme, this so-called principle would require every man who moves around in the course of his day's work to be accompanied by a driver who did nothing else-plumber, real estate agent, milk man, police officer, traveling salesman, building inspector, and so forth. Such a rule would reduce the working force of the United States by several millions without any gain of any sort.

But I have no doubt that this is just what they are trying to achieve in Australia. Remember the waiter who could not pour a glass of water.

This is not the way to increase a country's standard of living.

We made our usual effort to see the slums in Sydney. Sydney's slums are much like our own, neither worse nor better-to the shame of both countries. But I noticed two interesting and depressing variations from our pattern. We saw dwellings, or human lairs, that were entirely underground save for air holes-you could not call them windows-on the downhill side only. We saw also the narrowest row houses imaginable, eight feet wide and five stories tall. It was hard to imagine how a staircase was fitted inside such a building, or why such uneconomic structures would be built in the first place, even as tenements with Scrooge himself as proprietor; the ratio of parasitic structure to rentable space in such a building is all out of proportion.

But on the whole there was not too much to criticize in Australia. Ticky reported to me that ladies' rooms were the worst she had ever seen-not merely primitive but uniformly filthy. I found the men's room much the same sort, but I have seen some bad ones in the United States. Housing in general is old-fashioned and dreary, more of that 1910 feeling. Public transportation in Sydney is almost as bad as it is in Los Angeles. But faults of this caliber can be found in any country; our own beloved country has some dillies.

We never did encounter the intentional rudeness which we had been warned to expect, even warnings from Australians. But we did experience rather frequently a naive, almost childlike way of speaking one's whole mind without thought to how it might sound to the listener, a trait which would have been considered rudeness were it not so ingenuous. For example, our closest friends in Australia informed us that they hoped that, in this coming war, the United States would be bombed rather than England-since it was our "turn." I admit that the wish had a certain bleak logic to it, but it never occurred to them that we, as one of the targets, might not relish the role they had chosen for us.

Another time our host at dinner expressed his admiration for the United States and said that he wished Australia would join up as a forty-ninth state. "Only," he added, "I suppose that if we did, we would have a flood of American tourists and there would be no way to keep them out." He knew, of course, that we were American tourists.

But these remarks were utterly without malice; the speakers would have been shocked and mortified had their unintentional rudeness been pointed out. There were many such remarks, but never a one intended to hurt.

Another custom struck me as naive though not at all rude. In introducing a university graduate to a stranger in Australia it seems to be quite the usual thing to mention the fact that this person is a graduate; the possession of a college degree of any sort seems to be sufficiently unusual to warrant mentioning it, just as we tack "doctor" on the name of anyone possessing a doctor's degree. They do have a rather small number of degree-granting institutions for the size of the population, by our standards, but I have not been able to track down comparative statistics as to college graduates. However, it is evident that the privilege of going to college is more highly regarded by them than it is by us.

American books and magazines are forbidden entrance to Australia, which is commonly the case throughout the Commonwealth. The excuse is dollar exchange, although the printed word is no important fraction of foreign trade. The result is not really harmful to us
as trade
(and I make my living by just such trade), but it is, I think, quite harmful to both countries in that it cuts us off from each other; it is an important and ugly barrier to free communication.

Another result is (since their numbers are not large enough to support writing as a profession to any extent) their magazine stands and bookstores are filled with some of the most amazing trash to be found anywhere. It is as if our stands contained only confession magazines and comic books-no
Harper's,
no
Time,
no
Saturday Evening Post,
no
Scientific American.

But let us speak of the good things about Australia, for we did like it a lot. First, the people themselves are remarkably likable, even when blurting out some opinion better left unstated. Second, the culture as a whole is a good one, filled with a generous amount of social justice, founded on human dignity, and honed with a determination to live and fight for freedom. Even the frustrations engendered by silly union practices (and they
are
confoundedly annoying!) derive from good intentions toward the common man.

And finally, the land itself, what we saw of it, is grand and beautiful, worthy of love-and their birds and animals are simply wonderful!

The Sydney Zoo is one of the best in the world. To reach it you cross the harbor in a busy little ferry boat which takes only passengers, no cars. I commented on this, since their proud bridge is relatively new, and was met with stares; it seems that the notion of automobile-carrying ferries is one which never reached Australia. Until the bridge was built it was taken for granted that a car could be used on one side or the other, but not on both. It is, possibly, a weakness in the Australian temperament that they are too prone to take shortcomings and inconveniences for granted. Their far-from-docile spirit is quick to resent the loss of an expected privilege, but annoyances they are used to they seem to regard as natural phenomena like the weather. Perhaps the government knew what it was doing in forbidding American magazines, as it might cause Australian housewives to be unwilling to put up with what they call "kitchens."

From the ferry boat landing a tram runs up to the top of a high hill to the main gate of the zoo; you may then plan your tour downhill all the way, ending up at the ferry landing. The zoo is beautifully gardened and rich in specimens from all over the world, but our interest was in the Australian fauna not often seen elsewhere. There were lots of koalas but they could not be touched nor even seen from close up, which made us glad indeed that we had visited Lone Pine Sanctuary. We had the good luck to see a platypus. They are not easily seen even at the zoo, as they spend most of the daylight hours in their burrows. But we saw one come out and forage on the bottom of its tank for worms.

A platypus in the flesh is even more unbelievable than one pictured in a book; he looks as if he had been assembled by a taxidermist with a warped sense of humor. Duckbilled, egg laying, fur bearing, and it suckles its young-it seems to have been created for the express purpose of giving nervous breakdowns to taxonomists.

The platypussy does not seem to have good eyesight nor a keen sense of smell. The bottom of the tank was liberally carpeted with worms but the duckbill had a terrible time finding them. He went blundering along, missing nine by millimeters and gobbling greedily the tenth, while Ticky frantically coached him from the sidelines. The coaching had no effect, but she does not speak fluent Platypussian at best.

Australian birds are as freewheeling as Australian animals. The emu, cassowary, and black swan, the bower bird, budgie, and kookaburra or "laughing jackass"-all of these are exotic enough for anyone. The whole continent has been a bird sanctuary, cut off from the rest of the planet and lacking natural enemies, for many eons-during which the feathered kingdom ran wild. Ticky and I loved them all but our favorites were the birds of paradise. Describing a bird of paradise is ordinarily about as useful as parsing a poem; the color plates of them in any good encyclopedia are much more rewarding. But I want to mention one fellow.

We had been easing slowly past their cages, admiring their kaleidoscope patterns and colors, struck almost breathless by their flamboyant beauty, and reading the names of each-the Great Bird of Paradise, Crown Prince Rudolph's Bird of Paradise, the King of Saxony's Bird of Paradise. Then we came to a cage labeled simply: "The Magnificent Bird of Paradise."

There was a little fellow in there no bigger than a robin, not brightly colored and not conspicuously plumed; we felt that there had been some mistake-no doubt he was just being kept in there temporarily and they had not bothered to change the sign, for he certainly was not "Magnificent" and it seemed unlikely that he was a bird of paradise at all.

Then he caught sight of us, chirped excitedly, and hurried up to the front of the cage. There was a little perch there, about a foot in front of our noses; he settled on it, shook himself, and started to run through his act.

He was magnificent. It had been precisely the right word for him. He was the most applause-hungry ham I have ever seen and his routine had everything but "Shuffle Off to Buffalo." First he threw his neck feathers up into a ruff which framed his head. He paused for us to admire him, then dropped it and puffed out all his feathers until he was four times normal size. He deflated and opened a zipper all the way down his belly. That is what it looked like-a zipper. The feathers moved aside in a straight line about a quarter of an inch wide and disclosed bright iridescent down underneath.

He waited for the laugh with true Barrymore timing, then closed the zipper and opened his mouth. All the inside of his mouth was bright Paris green.

He closed it, braced himself, and gave the climax of his act: he sang for us.

It was unbelievably, hysterically bad. I can perch on a stick and sing better than that, and I have been chucked out of some very inferior quartets. But he was as cockily sure of himself as Mario Lanza. So we clapped and screamed bravos.

He looked smug, took a bow and an encore, running through the whole routine again without variation. We applauded again and were about to move on reluctantly, when we learned that he had a special encore with which to wow 'em. He hopped into the air, turned a hundred and eighty degrees and landed with his back to us-whereupon he ran through exactly the same routine, including the rusty-iron song, with his back to the audience. This time we discovered that the lining of his ruff was bright yellow. I think he did not want us to miss it.

He ran through his act twice with his back to us, finishing with that awful song, then flew away; the show was over and we could not entice him back. We crept away from there quietly, realizing that we had been in the presence of genius.

The aquarium at the Sydney Zoo is one of the best and may possibly be the best in the world. In addition to all the usual small exhibits and many not usual it has sharks up to eight feet long in a pool large enough to hold them comfortably. In another immense pool they have a giant ray about fifteen feet square. They grow much larger than that, but this specimen is quite large enough to inspire terror and disgust. The aquarium has many octopi and we saw two large ones fighting. No, I really do mean fighting; in this breed lovemaking cannot be mistaken for fighting-the means by which octopi get little octopussies is even more preposterous than what fish do. Look it up sometime; you will be amazed.

That zoo merits at least a week of careful study, but we had to hurry to catch the last ferry.

We prowled downtown Sydney by ourselves, were driven all around Greater Sydney by Vol and Laura Molesworth, and were driven for hundreds of miles through the surrounding countryside by Brian Foley. Vol teaches at the University of Sydney; Brian is a partner in a literary agency. This was typical of the hospitality we enjoyed there. Although we knew no one in Australia when we left home, nevertheless I do not recall that we ever ate dinner alone in Sydney, except on the day of our arrival. Australians are not cold and stand-offish.

The trips around town included ones to Botany Bay, symbol in song and story of the convict system. It is a wide, shallow unattractive bay which never was the site of a convict settlement; it was the destination of the 1788 First Fleet but the actual settlement was made six miles to the north in what is now Sydney. Botany Bay is now a place of yacht basins, boat yards, light industry, second-hand car lots, and suburban homes.

The trips out into the country were an endless succession of prize vistas and musical aborigine place names, names like Yerranderie, Burragorang, Wollondilly, Woronora, Wollongong. North and south from Sydney are endless haughty cliffs and fine beaches; inland are hills and low mountains and canyons. We saw the famed tree ferns, living fossils of the carboniferous era.

Despite the not-inconsiderable inconveniences, when the time came we were reluctant to leave. But Australia had one more magnificent piece of red tape to speed the parting guest. Attached to our ticket, when at last they deigned to issue it, was a notice that we must apply for an export license from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (equivalent to our Federal Reserve Bank) for any monies we wished to take out, whether in cash or in traveler's cheques. I had been aware of the limits placed on cash and had planned our spending accordingly, but the second category was so worded as to include American traveler's cheques.