12-10-2017, 09:42 AM
There is no quintessential Australian. The bushman image of the 1800s is still lauded, but never truly existed except as a tool of Federation to distance us from the "lordly" English, much like the cowboy image that distracted the US from their nation's cowardly, predatory behaviour in both world wars.
To my mind, the most Australian character ever was written by Andrew McGahan in his novel Praise (1992):
"It was three days after my twenty-third birthday. I'd just quit work at the drive-through bottle shop of the Capital Hotel. I'd been there three years, working twenty hours a week at serving the cars and stacking beer in the fridges. I had no fondness for serving cars or stacking beer, but even so it took an ugly dispute between the staff and the management to get me out. They didn't sack me, but they sacked everyone else, people who'd been there for years longer than me. I showed up for the evening shift and my name was the only one left on the roster. They wanted me to work the next four days straight, twelve hours a day, until they made up the numbers. I'd never worked four days straight in my life. If I'd been a man of strength I would've walked out there and then, left the customers waiting, the manager screaming. I wasn't a man of strength. I waited until the end of the shift. I closed up the shop. Then I resigned. Quietly. The manager asked me why. He asked me if it was something personal. There wasn't much I could say. I was tired. I felt it was time to wind that part of my life down. Work wasn't the answer to anything."
To my mind, the most Australian character ever was written by Andrew McGahan in his novel Praise (1992):
"It was three days after my twenty-third birthday. I'd just quit work at the drive-through bottle shop of the Capital Hotel. I'd been there three years, working twenty hours a week at serving the cars and stacking beer in the fridges. I had no fondness for serving cars or stacking beer, but even so it took an ugly dispute between the staff and the management to get me out. They didn't sack me, but they sacked everyone else, people who'd been there for years longer than me. I showed up for the evening shift and my name was the only one left on the roster. They wanted me to work the next four days straight, twelve hours a day, until they made up the numbers. I'd never worked four days straight in my life. If I'd been a man of strength I would've walked out there and then, left the customers waiting, the manager screaming. I wasn't a man of strength. I waited until the end of the shift. I closed up the shop. Then I resigned. Quietly. The manager asked me why. He asked me if it was something personal. There wasn't much I could say. I was tired. I felt it was time to wind that part of my life down. Work wasn't the answer to anything."
It could be worse