A day in the bush, a night at home

I’ve been to Australia twice so far, but according to my father I’ve never actually seen it. He made this observation at the home of my cousin Joan, whom he and I visited just before Christmas last year, and it came on the heels of an equally aggressive comment. “Well, ” he said, “David’s a better reader than he is a writer. ” This from someone who hasn’t opened a book since “Dave Stockton’s Putt to Win, ” in 1996. He’s never been to Australia, either. Never even come close. “No matter, ” he told me. “In order to see the country, you have to see the country_side_, and you’ve only been to Sydney. ” “And Melbourne. And Brisbane, ” I said. “And I have too gone into the country. ” “Like hell you have. ” “All right, ” I said. “Let’s get Hugh on the phone. He’ll tell you. He’ll even send you pictures. ” Joan and her family live in Binghamton, New York. They don’t see my father and me that often, so it was pretty lousy to sit at their table, he and I bickering like an old married couple. Ashamed by the bad impression we were making, I dropped the countryside business, and as my dad moved on to other people’s shortcomings I thought back to the previous summer, and my twenty-three-hour flight from London to Sydney. I was in Australia on business, and because someone else was paying for the ticket, and it would be possible to stop in Japan on the way home, Hugh joined me. This is not to put Australia down, but he’d already gone once before. Then, too, spend that much time on a plane and you’re entitled to a whole new world when you step off at the other end—the planet Mercury, say, or, at the very least, Mexico City. For an American, though, Australia seems pretty familiar: same wide streets, same office towers. It’s Canada in a thong, or that’s the initial impression. I hate to admit it, but my dad was right about the countryside. Hugh and I didn’t see much of it, but we wouldn’t have seen anything were it not for a woman named Pat, who was born in Melbourne and has lived there for most of her life. We’d met her a few years earlier, in Paris, where she’d come to spend a mid-July vacation. Over drinks in our living room, her face dewed with sweat, she taught us the term “shout, ” as in “I’m shouting lunch. ” This means that you’re treating, and that you don’t want any lip about it. “You can also say, ‘It’s my shout, ’ or, ‘I’ll shout the next round, ’ ” she told us. We kept in touch after her visit, and when my work was done, and I was given a day and a half to spend as I liked, Pat offered herself as a guide. On that first afternoon, she showed us around Melbourne, and shouted coffee. The following morning, she picked us up at our hotel, and drove us into what she called “the bush. ” I expected a wasteland of dust and human bones, but it was nothing like that. When Australians say “the bush, ” they mean the woods. The forest. First, though, we had to get out of Melbourne, and drive beyond the seemingly endless suburbs. It was August, the dead of winter, and so we had the windows rolled up. The homes we passed were made of wood, many with high fences around the back yards. They didn’t look exactly like American houses, but I couldn’t quite identify the difference. Was it the roofs? I wondered. The siding? Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove. “Gas or electric? ” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter. This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work. ” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two. Pat has her own business, a good one that’s allowing her to retire at fifty-five. She owns three houses, and two cars, but, even without the stuff, she seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success. I asked which two burners she had cut off, and she said that the first to go had been family. After that, she switched off her health. “How about you? ”