Robert Drewe says he’s a dog lover, but there’s limits.  And they’re being stretched…

In my day I’ve owned intelligent, obedient, affectionate and adventurous dogs. I’ve also known lolloping, disobedient, crazy dogs that were as dumb as a bag of hammers. Once I even wrote a book about a beloved dog. So before your hackles rise, let me say that I’m a dog lover.

Nevertheless, we’re stretching a friendship these days, we humans and dogs. Have there ever been so many dogs in public places and underfoot – their leashes entwined around café table and chair legs — in spots meant for human activities? Even for food consumption?

On that point, when did “walking the dog” change from one or two kilometres of exercise at the park or beach to 50 metres through a crowd of shoppers on the footpath on Saturday morning — from the car to the cafe?

Another question. Why the fascination with weirdly-designed genetic experiments that are cutesy variations on the poodle? To look at, some of these doodle dogs remind me of the alien bar scene in Star Wars. And don’t get me started on women with fashion-accessory dogs (doglets, really). How degrading for the wolf’s first cousin to be carried in a handbag!

But creepiest question of all: Why do so many people want a fur baby anyway?

Designer dogs are comparatively recent. In my childhood, back when dogs were animals, the only exotic ones were Old English Sheepdogs, Afghans and Dalmatians. Fox Terriers, usually fat and threadbare, belonged to old codgers in pubs. Old ladies had Silky Terriers and an occasional Pekinese or Corgi. German Shepherds (we called them Alsatians) were feared for their alleged savagery. Cattle dogs were mistrusted because they ran from behind to nip you as you walked to school. (Those were the days of walking to school, too. How yesteryear can you get?)

Family dogs always had a dash of Kelpie and assorted bits and pieces. They were allowed on the street without a leash. You’d see them on TV displaying their lovable personalities by running onto the pitch and disrupting a Test match or football game or Royal visit. They enjoyed a solemn ceremony and were hard to catch. For some reason they were always black dogs.

Black dogs were the only ones to disrupt important events, but we kids had another scientific rule that applied to all dogs’ behaviour: Pointy ears, bites. Floppy ears, stupid.

Faithful companions, family dogs followed you on your bike, and waited outside the school till home time. They roamed the suburbs with doggy friends and chased cars if they felt like a run, and defecated at will. (Doggy-poo bags? Are you kidding?) Until 2012, however, dogs weren’t allowed into shops or cafes, which displayed signs forbidding them.

Somewhere along the line, perhaps when local councils tightened up rules about stray and unfenced dogs, the average suburban dog ceased to be just another outdoor knockabout kid and turned into a feminised indoor doll-animal. (This caused macho chaps of the biker persuasion to react by breeding dogs they thought captured the essence of their complex personalities. Hence the pit bull.)

If there was any doubt about how much Australians love pets, consider this statistic: more of us live with a dog or cat than with a child; 50 per cent of Australians share a house with at least one dog and/or cat (of those pets, 38 per cent are dogs and 23 per cent cats.) Whereas only 35 per cent of us live with one child or more aged under 16, most of them eventually house-trained.

Australians spend $12 billion a year on pet food, grooming, vet fees and insurance for their animals, making the pet care industry a major growth area.

Interestingly, the fascination with poodle mixes doesn’t extent to pure poodles. Presumably, if the poodle mix is chosen because poodles are intelligent and don’t shed hair, a pure-bred poodle should have it all over the Labradoodle or whatever for smartness and hair retention. But, no, everyone wants one of the 150 doodle dog variations (at $2000 a pup) on the market.

Who can resist a Daisy Dog? Robert Drewe apparently…

So we now have such appallingly named dogs as the Jack-a-Poo (Jack Russell and poodle); Schnoodle (schnauzer and poodle); Pooghan (Afghan and poodle); Cocker-Poo (Cocker spaniel and poodle); Bossy-Poo (Boston terrier and poodle); Irish Doodle (Irish setter and poodle); Golden Doodle; (Golden Retriever and poodle), Rottle (Rottweiler and poodle); Poogle (Beagle and poodle); and, my least favourite, the Daisy Dog (Bichon Frise, ShihTzu and poodle).

So what to do if your naughty Bossy-Poo or Cocker-Poo or Jack-a-Poo or Pooghan poos on the carpet? I don’t think the old tap with a rolled-up newspaper would work as punishment. I suggest a delicately furled Vogue or Gourmet Traveller magazine.

For more information on Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird, and his other books go here: penguin.com.au/authors/robert-drewe

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After only six months of Vegemite deprivation overseas in the eighties I began thinking of it constantly. I badly needed a fix. Intending visitors from Australia were begged (eventually commanded) to bring jars with them. No one took my pleas seriously. The Vegemite-less weeks and months ticked on.

At last! From a friend’s luggage appeared the cheery red and yellow label of my childhood! That whiff of yeast! The familiar surface sheen! The strong odour, the salty taste! With my urging, bemused French acquaintances were soon gamely trying Vegemite on their baguettes; wary but polite Californians and Canadians were spreading Vegemite on their rolls. They all said it was disgusting.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t get terribly keen on Vegemite – they thought it the most revolting foodstuff they’d ever encountered. It failed at every level: looks, smell, texture, taste. To them it resembled glistening dark stuff not fit for repeating in a family newspaper much less human consumption.

I felt hurt on Vegemite’s behalf. And Australia’s, too. It was like they’d scorned our beaches, wines, weather, Don Bradman, Sidney Nolan, Patrick White and Phar Lap. I was defensive. I disparaged their stupid foreign breakfast spreads: Marmite and Cenovis, peanut butter and jelly. Chocolate, for goodness sake. Nutella. Any more British derision and I would’ve brought up breakfast black pudding.

Then I tried a calmer, more educational approach. The secret, I tried to explain to them, one passed on from generation to generation of Australians over the breakfast table, was to appreciate the subtlety and delicacy of Vegemite.

This will come as no surprise to those of you who are reading this at breakfast with a trusty jar of Vegemite close at hand. “For a start,” I informed my foreign friends, “Butter first.”

“Then what you do is dab a little bit here and there over the buttered bread or toast,” I instructed. “You never smear it on thickly. That’s a Vegemite no-no. Stifle the natural urge to cover the entire slice up to the edges. Use a light hand, and only the tip of the knife, and just speckle the Vegemite gently and randomly over the toast.”

Like this….

Casually, even with a touch of devil-may-care, but serious intent, I demonstrated the approved method. “Like this,” I said. “You mustn’t coat the bread. (My goodness, you’re not painting a wall or laying cement with a trowel!) Try for the desired stippled effect. The acid test is this: if you have correctly applied your Vegemite in sporadic flecks the buttery surface of the bread or toast should still be intermittently visible underneath.”

NOT like this…

Of course, I went on to remind them they were dealing with an actual foodstuff and, all appearances aside, not changing the oil filter on their car. I explained après-Vegemite etiquette, passed on sternly from mother and grandmother. To never put a Vegemite-encrusted knife back into the butter (or margarine, if you insist) container.

A question arose and was answered. “Yes, it’s permitted for the various Vegemite dabs and the previously spread butter to run together on a warm slice of toast, to even recklessly swirl and intermingle, as on an artist’s palate. But never allow them to intermix in the butter dish.” Even Australians disliked the look of that, I told them.

Did they take any notice? Not at all. Especially the Americans. They were so used to lavishing peanut butter over everything that they smothered Vegemite on the test slice I provided. Well, they deserved what they always get, a yeasty slap in the face.

Well, we got Vegemite back from them earlier this year when the dairy company Bega bought Mondelez International’s Australia and New Zealand grocery and cheese business.

Nostalgia aside, the reason Vegemite is on my mind this week is that Bega is now attempting to take Vegemite upmarket with a new, more expensive version, Vegemite Blend 17, sold in precious artisanal packaging that includes an unnecessary cardboard box, a gold-coloured lid and a price tag of double that of a traditional jar.

Vegemite Gold – twice the price, but is it twice as nice?

Asked what happened to Blends one to 16, Vegemite’s marketing director, Ben Hill, explained: “The name Blend 17 simply refers to the year 2017 we have released it in.”

Oh, dear. Remember Vegemite Singles, iSnack 2.0, Cheesybites, My First Vegemite, Chocolate-and-Vegemite. All recent Vegemite marketing failures. Tamper with it at your peril. You don’t need a more affluent demographic. Everyone likes it as it is.

Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird is published by Penguin and is available here: penguin.com.au/books/whipbird

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The other day I heard a hospital administrator on the radio talking knowledgeably about hard-working health professionals who were “speechies”, “occies” and “respos”. These jobs were new to me. It turned out she was referring to speech, occupational and respiratory therapists.

So the Australian partiality for baby talk has now entered the fields of physical and mental health. Mind you, the national love of diminutives was already present in medical circles. For example, we’d always called physiotherapists “physios” and gynaecologists “gynos”. But I hadn’t realised how widely the habit was spreading.

We’ve long used diminutives for such jobs as ambulance driver (ambo), book maker (bookie), bricklayer (brickie), carpenter (chippie), farmer (cocky), garbage collector (garbo), journalist (journo), milkman (milko), musician (muso), politician (pollie), postman (postie), sub-contractor (subbie), tradesman (tradie), truck driver (truckie), wharf labourer (wharfie), and prostitute (prozzie),

Injured at work? Even at “smoko”. Better apply for “compo” (compensation). Or you won’t be able to afford your “reggo” (car registration). Careful you don’t become a “dero” (homeless person).

Interestingly, while everyone knows “chalkie” is the nickname for teacher, it has never really caught on in Australia. For some reason teachers remain teachers. (Until computerisation, “chalkie” also applied to the stock exchange employees who wrote stock prices on chalk boards.)

Until a decade ago I’d never heard “boilie” (for boiler-maker) and “firey” (for fire fighter). Or, until more recently, “cranie” (crane driver); “crownie” (not just Crown lager, but crown prosecutor); “shoppie” (retail shop assistant); and “towie” (tow-truck driver).

Or, for that matter, “Cento”, for the Centrelink office, responsible for unemployment pensions; “povvo”, a poor person; and “deso”, a designated (and abstaining) driver of drinkers.

For reasons known only to Australians, a biker and a surfer anywhere else are a “bikie” and “surfie” here (but never in actual biker or surfer circles).

In Melbourne, you’d know Broady was Broadmeadows, and in Sydney that Parra was Parramatta. In Perth you’d be au fait with Cott, Subi, Freo and Rotto. If you follow AFL or the two rugby codes, you’re a “footy” fan. The other code, known here and in the US as soccer, however, insists on “football”.

Why do we indulge in such baby language (talking about bickies and choccies – and choccy bickies!) long after our third birthday? Why do we eat at Macca’s and buy fuel at the servo? And give prezzies at Chrissie, and drink cuppas and tinnies and coldies, and cook snaggers at barbies (unless we’re veggos and prefer avos), and support the Salvos and Vinnies, and wear trackies or boardies in the arvo?

Because we want to be liked. As pathetic as that sounds, Dr Nenagh Kemp, a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Tasmania, says “Australians have an intuitive feeling that these words make social interaction more informal, more friendly and relaxed.”

Dr Kemp’s work on spoken Australian English is helping to build up a more complete picture of what it means to be Australian today, and how choosing to use certain Australian words such as “arvo” and “footy” signals national identity. As she told the Australian Geographic Society which sponsored some of her research, “It sounds obvious: we make words shorter to save us a bit of time and effort. But some diminutives actually make words longer, like Tommo for Tom. And we don’t really save a lot of time by saying barbie instead of barbecue.”

With more than 4300 recorded in our lexicon, Australians use more abbreviated words than any other English speakers. Word lists collected in the past few years show that older Australians are more likely to think of slang with “o” endings (muso, smoko). Young people use these less frequently. Modern trends are to affix an ‘s’ to the first syllable (think “awks” for awkward — which it is).

“If you’re someone who speaks to groups – say, a politician – it could be interesting to know whether these kinds of words make you seem friendlier, or perhaps more condescending,” said Dr Kemp. (Too late, Kevin Rudd.)

“Some people accuse younger generations of spoiling our language with all these diminutives. But the earliest examples are from the 1800s. It’s a long tradition, not a modern laziness.”

Despite that, she can’t see herself adopting some current language trends. “I’m kind of bemused by the trend of saying “mobes” for mobiles, or “totes” for totally. I use some shortened words, but those just sound silly to me.”

For myself, I draw the line at the current words “lappy” for laptop, “Facey” for Facebook, “petty” for petrol, and “devo” for devastated. Anyway, in my teenage daughter’s case, “devo” actually translates as “mildly upset”.

“Deffo”, as she says. “Definitely.”

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Three times this week my household has been woken at two a.m. by phone calls from Burundi. We’ve never been to Burundi. Nor do we know anyone from Burundi. To be honest — and I hope Burundians don’t take this the wrong way — I’m determined never to step foot there.

It’s not just being woken up three times at two a.m. by Burundian callers, who then swiftly hang up, that has influenced my decision not to visit Burundi. The Department of Foreign Affairs doesn’t want me — or any other Australians — to go to Burundi. They not only strongly warn against it, they say that if I’m in Burundi already to get the hell out.

Why? My Burundi knowledge was sketchy, limited to grim news reports of 300,00 Tutsis and Hutus slaughtering each other there and in neighbouring Rwanda in the 90s. So eventually I did what anyone does when Burundi phones them three times a week in the middle of the night: I Googled Burundi.

The news wasn’t favourable. The former German and then Belgian colony is a landlocked country in Central Africa, one of the world’s poorest and most violent nations, struggling to emerge from 50-years of ethnic-based civil war, ongoing conflict with Rwanda, assassinations and genocide.

It’s also beset by widespread disease (yellow fever, malaria, HIV/Aids, cholera, filariasis, plague, sleeping sickness, meningococcal, TB and — for anyone attempting to swim in Lake Tanganyika — schistosomiasis). Also malnutrition, banditry, Al Shabaab terrorists, armed rebels, carjackings, kidnappings, drought, floods, landslides, landmines, road blocks, over-population and almost complete de-forestation. Think of something really bad, anything at all, and Burundi’s got it.

Anything pleasant to offset this dire state of affairs? Well, without the unspeakably brave ministrations of Doctors Without Borders, and foreign aid, which provides nearly half the nation’s income, average life expectancy would doubtless be lower than the present 50 for both sexes.

Unlucky Last – in black (or red as the case maybe) and white.

On a United Nations index called the World Happiness Report, which considers such variables as real GDP per capita, social support, health, life expectancy, personal freedom, and perceptions of corruption, Burundi comes equal last (154^th) – the equal unhappiest country on earth — with its neighbour, the Central African Republic.

Even beleaguered, war-torn Iraq (117^th), Afghanistan (141^st) and Syria (152^nd) are happier places than Burundi. (By way of contrast, Norway comes first in happiness and, counting one’s blessings, Australia is ninth. America is 14^th and Britain 19^th.)

The Burundi media is heavily censored and any criticism is regarded as treason. You can’t go for a jog in Bujumbura, the capital, unless you register with the government and join a jogging club. Then you must jog in one of nine approved venues. The police may have some questions about your jogging: “How many people will be jogging with you? At what time? Give us their names.”

In their dire circumstances, perhaps you can’t blame the Burundians for talking a leaf out of Nigeria’s infamous book and joining the scamming industry. Because that’s what their dead-of-night international phone calls are about.

The scam, originating in Japan, is called Wangiri, meaning “one ring and cut”. Mostly you receive a call deliberately in the middle of the night when the recipient is disoriented: the phone gives a single ring or two before the caller disconnects.

The scammer will have hired an international premium rate number (IPRN) from a local phone company. The trick is to get you to call back on the same premium-rate number. You’re probably thinking you missed an important call (from overseas — it must be important!). When you call back the unfamiliar foreign number (Burundi’s prefix is +257) your call is taken but the person on the line doesn’t talk to you.

You’re sitting there in your pyjamas, blinking at your mobile, saying, “Hello, hello, hello, is anybody there?“ Eventually, receiving no answer, you get frustrated and hang up. By then you’ve lost quite a bit of money. You’ve been charged higher than regular calling rates, and the revenue earned is then shared between the telecom operator and the owner of the number from Burundi. Or maybe from Malawi (+265), Nigeria (+234), Tunisia (+216), Russia (+7), Belarus (+375) or Pakistan (+92).

According to Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), 155,035 Australians were scammed — by all methods — of $83,563,599 last year.

The biggest losers, mostly males, lost $32,278,469 to jobs and investment scams. The second biggest losers lost $25,480,351 to dating and romance scammers. The victims were mainly (presumably lonely) 55 to 64-year-old women.

Maybe we’re finally waking up to the dreaded Nigerian scammers. They only made $1,404,108 out of gullible Australians in 2016. No figures were available on the Burundians. But we didn’t call them back.

Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird is out now: penguin.com.au.whipbird

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Launching the new novel from Bangalow author Robert Drewe at the Byron Writers Festival recently, eminent critic Geordie Williamson noted that the pinot noir grape is known as the “heartbreak” grape – notoriously difficult to grow.

He did so because it’s the variety chosen for cultivation at Whipbird, the vineyard being developed by Hugh Cleary, the self-consciously aspirational protagonist of Drewe’s book of the same name.

Hugh’s choice suits Drewe’s satirical purpose: Whipbird is located near Ballarat, a region that has attracted investment in recent years for its suitability for the pinot noir grape. That suitability has been improved by the advent of climate change, a warming which Hugh welcomes with solipsistic complacency: “Now the adjusted climate… has made Whipbird uniquely suited to growing pinot noir grapes,” he tells guests – and potential Chinese investors.

That adjusted climate is sheer brilliance, the weasel words of the investment wanker.

“I foresee a deep crimson-purple wine, with the foresty-savoury density that’s the hallmark of the region, underpinning a long, black-cherry-filled palate,” continues Hugh, successful lawyer and wannabe vintner, “all smiles in his weekend rustic clothing”.

So, blend in wine snobbery to the food fads, mammalian meat allergies, private schoolboy rock bands with names like Wasted Promise and Malice Aforethought, doped up surfers seeing yowies in the night, Gold Coast cougars, “distressed” antiques – the ephemera of the age – that make up the comic feast of this novel.

Underlying all this is the more deeply felt satire, aimed at the era’s hubris, its narcissism and individualism, the breakdown of good old Aussie egalitarianism, fairness and decency.

Whipbird is the setting for the action in the story – a vastly scaled reunion of the descendants of Irishman Conor Cleary, who made his way to the new world within the British Army 160 years earlier.

There’s more than a thousand of them, their dress colour-coded to differentiate each familial line, come to imbibe and ingest the offerings from a dozen barbecues, (or, for the vegans, the blistered kale and quinoa pancakes fom Agrarian Revolution) and gossip and backbite.

Hugh’s immediate family comprises an irritable and distracted wife, vegetarian teenaged daughters, son in search of carnal knowledge, a brilliant but frustrated sister (carrying the Irish disease, haematomachrosis).

More graphically, a brother, Sly, former member and victim of the briefly blooming pop-rock band Spider Flower (whose hits included Tight Tight Jeans, Face First and You Want it So Bad), who is suffering from a disorder that makes him think he’s dead; and dad, Mick, an old school decent bloke, but a bitter reject from banking – once a service, now an industry, with no place for “customer-first” types like him.

Mick – Drewe’s most sympathetic character – and the man who chucked him, Doug, his cousin, don’t converse about football, they make bald statements of “fact” at each other, as men do, each hoping to sound the more authoritative.

Such passive-aggressive competitiveness – a function of gentrification, materialism and, surely, the Australian character – rears up in scene after scene: a sub-text to the reunion invitation was that “so many of them were doing so much better than they were in 2004”).

Author Robert Drewe’s latest novel Whipbird – ‘sheer brilliance…’

Other certainties – that toxin to conversation – are cleverly scripted: aunties in mobility scooters grumpily agree on the poor choice of the “dull” whipbird as viagra pas cher the estate’s name, but one-up each other over whether WA’s Splendid Fairy Wren or the Victorian specimen is the prettier bird.

There’s competition too, between the certainties of the past and the received correctness of the present – providing both a nostalgic undercurrent of some poignancy, and another opportunity to lampoon both contemporary fads and foibles, and the wrong-headedness of our forebears.

For instance, Whipbird estate is located near Ballarat, at Kungadgee – a Wathaurong word heard frequently, and misunderstood, by the region’s first Europeans; it means goodbye!.

Much of the story and history belong to Victoria. There’s Richmond, and its early settlement by the Irish, who moved effortlessly up the social scale, from Conor, like so many forced by poverty to take the king’s shilling and end up shooting at his own countrymen at the Eureka Stockade, through Tigers footballers, bankers and lawyers like Hugh, whose pretentious “homestead” is light years away from the old sod.

The Northern Rivers doesn’t escape the satirical examination either: “I think a bloody dolphin could be elected mayor here if they wanted the job,” yells one disillusioned sea-changer.” But while some of our behaviours are ridiculed, as with the Melbourne mob, it is gently done.

Ireland is treated sympathetically – this after all is the land of Drewe’s ancestors too, and the reunion’s randy raison d’etre, old Conor, is based upon his own great-grandfather, who sired 15 children, the last of them when he was 70. In a secondary story, County Tipperary provides the setting for the drunken catharsis of an army priest, burned out after pastoral duties in Afghanistan.

Conor’s descendants are now, like Drewe, deeply familiar with the footy field, the surf and the bush. This is an insider’s account. Although Drewe set out to put contemporary Australia “on the slab”, to highlight its absurdities and affectations, it is done more so in affection than in anger; the author admits to having had a lot of fun writing it, and that defines the over-arching tone.

However, while this is undoubtedly a comic novel, laugh out loud funny, it manages to also be a story of considerable depth: several story lines come to an end, there is revelation, redemption, closure.

It makes for a thoroughly satisfying read, on a number of levels.

To order Robert Drewe’s Whipbird go to: penguin.com.au/books/whipbird

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“No secret!” the oldsters would cackle, sitting there nodding in their party hats, thus rendering their life story down to a mere photo caption. But I noticed they were all small, thin women (of the 100 longest living people on the planet, only six have been men) who’d led busy, abstemious lives and often had large doting families.

These days, of course, turning 100 is not unusual. So far, Jeanne Caiment of France (1875-1997, or 122 years and six months) is the oldest person ever. Emma Morano of Italy was giving her a run for her money until she died three months ago aged 117 years and five months, the last person on earth to be born in the 19^th century.

Emma Morano credited her 117 years to her three-egg-a-day diet.

Centenarians have been on my family’s minds ever since the oldest member turned 90 eight years ago, and surreptitious arrangements are starting to be made for the celebration.

At 98, the woman in question, a former teacher and a widow for 30 years, still looks after herself (with a compulsory wine at dinner time), reads a novel a week, plays bridge, gardens, watches and listens avidly to the ABC news, does the cryptic crossword and sudoko puzzles each day, and, unless restrained, and despite two hip replacements, will mow the lawn and fix a broken roof tile.

It’s pretty obvious what her secret is. But I looked up details of five of the oldest people on earth to see if they also had the answer.

The oldest person in the U.S, Adele Dunlap (113 ), of New Jersey, is baffled by her age. “I’ve never led an overly healthy lifestyle, or jogged, or anything like that. I smoked until my father had his first heart attack, and I eat anything I want. But I swear by oatmeal.”

While Spain’s oldest living person, Ana Maria Vela Rubio (115 ) has, according to her daughter, been kept alive by “her compassion for others and her positive attitude,” Japan’s oldest person until recently, Misao Okawa (117) said the key to longevity was “eating delicious things”, ramen noodles, beef stew, rice and mackerel sushi.

The world’s current oldest living person, Violet Brown (117), of Jamaica, would agree. Last year her son, Harold, who recently pre-deceased her at the relatively youthful age of 97, said his Baptist church-going mother “likes fish and mutton and mangoes and sometimes she will have cow foot.”

Violet Brown at 115 – curently at 117, the oldest person in the world.

Back in the days when I was trying to interview centenarians, great excitement centred around their congratulatory telegrams from the Queen. “How wonderful of Her Majesty to keep up with Nanna’s life,” everyone said. Well, some of us thought our family’s 98-year-old, being of her generation’s royalist mindset, would appreciate regal recognition, too.

Inquiries discovered that the royal 100^th birthday telegrams, in force since George V in 1917, actually ceased in 1982, replaced by a laser-printed card featuring a smiling picture of the Queen, a copy of her signature and the message, “I am pleased to know that you are celebrating your 100^th birthday. I send my congratulations and best wishes to you on such a special occasion.”

Sadly, the Queen actually has no knowledge of your Nanna’s long existence. You have to apply to receive her good wishes. I’m quoting the Governor-General’s website here: “Congratulatory messages from Her Majesty The Queen and the Governor-General to those Australians celebrating the achievement of significant birthdays and wedding anniversaries are available on request.

“On request, Government House will arrange for a congratulatory message to be sent from both the Queen and the Governor-General to persons celebrating their 60th (Diamond) 65th and 70th (Platinum) and subsequent wedding anniversaries and 100th, 105th and subsequent birthdays.

“Requests for a message from The Queen and/or the Governor-General can be made through your local Federal Member’s electorate office or the Honours, Symbols and Territories Branch of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.” Strict application instructions follow.

Did the queen send a message to her mother, who lived to be 101? Will she send congratulations to herself in eight years time?

Incidentally, Emma Morano credited her long life to her daily diet of three eggs. Nothing else. “I don’t eat much because I have no teeth.”

At age 20, diagnosed with anaemia, she started eating two raw eggs and one cooked egg every day. She’d lived alone ever since leaving her husband in 1938. “I didn’t want to be dominated by anyone,” she said.

Tell us in 25 words or less why you would like to win a copy of Robert Drewe’s latest book, Whipbird, which is published this month by Penguin.  Leave your comments in the box below or go to Verandah Magazine’s Facebook page.

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As someone who these days has trouble understanding actual reality, I’m not the person to turn to for explanations – or sympathy — when virtual reality falls on its face.

General bewilderment, I can manage. In fact, my own computer problems aside, I can even raise a faint cheer when accidents befall any up-to-the-minute, state-of-the-art, mind-bending, must-have technology at all.

This is especially the case if it’s a gadget for which, encouraged by a greedy, Australian-tax dodging but internationally revered manufacturer, a young person has saved up their money and camped outside the store in order to be among the first purchasers of the gadget’s latest model — all in full expectation of this expensive, must-have thingamajig’s planned obsolescence in 12 months time.

Actual reality not enough for you at the moment? How about North Korea? Syria? Trump’s America? The ice drug problem? Governments everywhere who don’t know which side is up? Floods? The Barrier Reef? Being a parent of teenagers?

It was in this numb and semi-Luddite frame of mind that I appreciated hearing about Dean Smith, the man who’s taking legal action after losing a race against a virtual Cathy Freeman.

Visitors to Melbourne’s Scienceworks museum are urged to “Pit your skills against Australia’s best-known sportspeople and investigate your body’s abilities for particular sports.”

Thus encouraged, Dean Smith decided to pit himself against a simulation of the Sydney Olympics 400 metres gold medallist. But when the 44-year-old pool-glass installer gave the interactive exhibit a go in June last year, and sprinted after Cathy on a 10 metre long, dual-lane track, he ran head first into a wall and broke his back. Mr Smith is now suing the Museums Board of Victoria for negligence.

Dean Smith is suing Melbourne’s museum, Scienworks. Photo: The Age

He says he fractured one vertebra and crushed another one; broke an occipital bone and a rib; and lost feeling in his arms, hands and fingers. He now has a psychiatric disorder and has subsequently suffered a stroke. He can no longer work.

“I got a bit competitive, thinking I could take on Cathy Freeman,” he told The Age. “They made me think I could beat her. But no one wants to run flat-out over 10 metres and smash their head into a wall.”

No, indeed. Nevertheless I imagine the Museum will argue that Mr Smith’s brain should have retained enough actual reality to reason that donning a virtual-reality headset wouldn’t automatically expand the museum floor to an actual 400 metre track.

The web is full of examples of virtual reality accidents. Not surprisingly, virtual cliff-scaling and mountain-climbing are particularly fraught with potential peril, both in-game and in real life. Such spills outline the danger for virtual reality: it can be too real.

That’s the whole point. To home enthusiasts of virtual zombies or virtual sporting events, or virtual porn for that matter, what virtual gamers call “an immersive experience” is what it’s all about. So the manufacturers are hardly likely to dial it back. Meanwhile, small pets, children, coffee tables, plate-glass windows and other household obstacles should keep clear.

Gamer safety manuals offer advice for first-time VR home users. They recommend playing alone, and seated — or at least standing still.

Just a tad too realistic – virtual reality can take its toll.

As one safety manual says: “Dumb accidents routinely happen. We don’t want people vomiting, having seizures, stepping on their pets, maiming their children, or smashing their hands through plate glass. In the real world if you cover up your eyes and ears and start wandering around, all bets are off, so take the full-motion VR hardware seriously.”

In the circumstances, it’s good to hear of virtual reality being used for something helpful. Steve Shelley, Information Management Officer for Parks Victoria, uses the technology to map sallow wattle, an invasive weed, in the Grampians National Park. Shelley came up with the novel approach through his love of virtual gaming. “Being a gamer I thought ‘Geez, I could apply this at work.’” Whereas ground surveys were time-consuming, labour intensive and not always safe in wild terrain, the technology can transform conservation, from assessing the health of native vegetation to monitoring wildlife.

It works by overlaying aerial photographs to construct three-dimensional images, which are displayed using computer software called PurVIEW and observed using 3D glasses.

“It’s incredible when you put the glasses on and everything comes to life,” says Mr Shelley. “The forest just leaps out at you.”

That sort of leaping hasn’t happened since 2010 when the Wonderbra company erected a giant 3D billboard in London displaying the semi-naked frontage of the Brazilian model Sabraine Banando as part of its Full Effect virtual reality brassiere campaign. And provided the requisite glasses.

Numerous traffic accidents immediately occurred. Actual accidents.

Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird (published by Penguin/Viking) will be available in August.

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It’s easy to forget that not too long ago breakfast was a meal eaten only at home, privately, without fuss or noise, in the vicinity of Weetbix, tea and Vegemite toast.

As anyone who has tried to find a weekend parking spot near the smell of coffee and bacon can attest, the breakfast boom changed all that. But the restaurant breakfast is only one change in Australian dining habits. Eating out and sophisticated food knowledge, as evidenced by the vast popularity of TV cooking shows and newspaper restaurant reviews, are now a central part of our cultural experience.

I wouldn’t dare step into that professional minefield, but I think I speak for restaurant diners of purely amateur status when I declare the subject is of great interest to us as well. And we notice annoying stuff, too.

Call me a philistine, but the big deal about the waiter holding the left arm behind the back when pouring wine, has always looked pompous and silly to me – like standing at attention on one leg in a supermarket queue — especially when undertaken not by a suave wine waiter but an awkward and self-conscious young waitperson.

On the other hand, the backhand service of a cup of coffee by a bored breakfast waiter in a local establishment is riveted in my memory forever.

It was my second cup (my re-order having been met by the response “Not another one!”) and his languid table delivery while gazing out to sea sloshed coffee into the saucer. In the circumstances I was unprepared, for his sneering reaction when removing the saucer of his own spillage: “You’re messy!”

Another quibble. Is anyone out there actually impressed by the glowing anonymous endorsements and huge number of stars a restaurant might have on TripAdvisor and its online ilk?

Especially when the applause can come from the restaurant itself? Or from the chef’s mother? Or, conversely, when a rotten review is possibly the work of a jealous competitor? Or someone refused service just because they arrived with four drunken mates from the pub and two Rottweilers?

Here’s a simple question for all chic restaurants: What’s wrong with plates all of a sudden? They’ve done a good job for thousands of years. Plates are great for holding food. Peas don’t roll off them, and sauce doesn’t dribble over the edge. They’re much easier for waiters to pick up, stack and carry. They’re not as heavy as wooden chopping boards, for example. They’re more hygienic.

Of course, it’s not just wooden boards, is it? It’s also lengths of slate (why?) and chips served in mini deep-fat fryers. And overnight every drink from cocktails to orange juice is suddenly served in jam jars. Jars wound around with string. String? Why on earth? Jam jars are for jam. Because jars are cute? Not really. Drinks should come in another container proven highly successful over the centuries – glasses.

One other thing: at what moment in time did everyone decide that burgers had to be a metre high? So tall they needed to be kept together with a skewer. Too tall to get your mouth around, thus requiring demolition with a knife and fork, and negating the whole casual-dining point of the burger. (And served on a bloody board, of course.)

Not a plate in sight…

Another matter, however unwelcome to wait-staff. Please don’t interrupt an intense or intimate conversation among customers to ask how everything is. “Fine,” we say. “Very nice.” But sad to relate, we really don’t want to talk to you at all. The reason we’re sitting here might be in order to say important things to each other. And it sounds like you’re too eager for a tip.

Listen, I don’t like starchy waiters. Restaurants aren’t cathedrals and diners aren’t archbishops. However, “And what are you having, mate? The same as the missus?” or “I’d go for something with less calories if I were you,” doesn’t pass muster.

In this age of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp, this next gripe is directed more at my fellow diners. Just as you want to share pictures of your new shoes and the daily artistic arrangement of your cappuccino froth, I know you’re obsessed with photographing your restaurant meal and sending it to me.

A word in your ear: the picture didn’t come out well. The food looks disgusting. And you shouldn’t have taken the waitperson away from their job to take your photograph with it. Something else, brutal I know: I don’t care what you had for dinner. Never have, never will.

And a final pronouncement to all waiters out there. I don’t need you to place my napkin on my lap, thanks. Since the age of four I’ve managed it myself. If I want to spill gravy on my groin it’s my business. In the memorable words of the London Observer’s food critic Jay Rayner, “I don’t want you ferreting about down there.” It doesn’t look good for either of us.

Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird (published by Penguin/Viking), will be available in August.

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Don’t you love complex scientific research that spends time and money to come up with results that everyone knows already? Like the recent buttered toast study, where several scientific investigations found that grandma was right: toast dropped from a table falls butter-or-jam-side down at least 62 per cent of the time.

Then there was my favourite research study of 2016: the finding by St Andrew’s and Glasgow universities that the opposite sex becomes more than 25 per cent more attractive to people drinking alcohol.

A corresponding study at Bristol University went even further, discovering that students of both sexes found people 10 per cent sexier after just a measly 15 minutes of drinking and two beers. (Also proving that British universities have no trouble signing up willing students as research subjects.)Now, on a different tack, a major study involving hundreds of participants and researchers in France, Israel and the US, and just published by the American Psychological Association, has discovered that people often look like their names; specifically that men named Bob mostly look like men named Bob, and that Tims actually look like chaps called Tim.

The next possible research study?

Putting aside the question of why an international Bob and Tim research study should be conducted in the first place, the investigation found that participants shown a photograph and given a list of five names, matched photographs of the Tims and Bobs to their names with 40 per cent accuracy. Furthermore, a computer using a learning algorithm matched 94,000 facial images to their correct names 64 per cent of the time.According to the chief researcher, Dr Yonat Zwebner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this was because of the cultural stereotypes we attach to names. People subconsciously altered their appearance to conform to the cultural norms and cues associated with their names: “Those areas of the face controlled by the individual, such as hairstyle,were sufficient to produce the effect,” said Dr Zwebner.

Dr Yonat Zwebnar from the University of Jerusalem.

Dr Ruth Mayo, co-author of the Bob and Tim study, says we’re subject to social structuring from the minute we’re born, not only by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status but by the simple choice our parents made in giving us our name. “These findings suggest that facial appearance represents social expectations of how a person with a particular name should look. A social tag may influence one’s facial appearance and our facial features may change over the years to eventually represent the expectations of how we should look.”

And why were people able to differentiate a Bob from a Tim? Because, the study found, Bob was “a round-sounding name” so Bobs were thought to have round faces, while Tim “sounded thin”, with a narrow face. ‘

Hmm. Speaking as a Robert or Rob (not a Bob, thanks), it seems to me the study missed an important point. The parents who apparently laid down these rules when naming their boy babies, would actually have called them Robert and Timothy, not Bob and Tim, maybe with quite different cultural and social expectations.According to the Behind the Name website published simultaneously in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the “popularity ratings” given by hundreds of respondents to Bob and Robert, and Tim and Timothy, vary considerably.

Robert scores magnificently for Masculine, Strong, Classic, Mature, Wholesome, Refined, Serious and (oh, oh) Nerdy. Bob, alas, while also getting a Masculine, Strong and Wholesome rating, features mainly in the Informal, Common, Rough, Boring, Comedic, Simple and Unintellectual departments.

Of course this is unfair and very, very wrong. Especially the fat-faced, Boring, levitra and alcohol Common, Simple, Rough and Unintellectual slurs. Amongst many other fabulous exemplars of the name, let me hasten to present Bob Dylan, Bob Hawke, Bob Marley, Bob Hope, Bob Carr, Bob Ellis and Bob Woodward.

Similarly, although Tim scores well in the Youthful, Masculine, Strong, Informal, Wholesome, Comedic and (oh, oh) Nerdy polls, Timothy’s ratings in the Mature, Classic, Refined and Intellectual departments beat Tim’s and Robert’s names (and, of course, poor Bob’s) hands down.

All of which should be taken with a pinch of salt when you consider that perhaps Australia’s two favourite sons, intellectual and otherwise, are the Tims Minchin and Winton.

Incidentally, the Behind the Name site has some interesting respondents’ ratings for the name Donald. Published two years before the US election, the areas in which Donald dominated are Bad Name, Feminine, Modern, Informal, Common, Urban, Devious, Rough, Simple, Comedic, Unintellectual and Strange.

(Sincere apologies to the Dons Bradman, Corleone, Quixote, Draper, Pleasence, Chipp, Sutherland, O’Connor and Duck.)

Robert Drewe’s  long-awaited new novel WHIPBIRD will be published by Penguin/Viking on July 31: penguin.com.au/books/whipbird-9780670070619

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You might have read of the death the other month – at the nicely mature age of 103 — of one of Australia’s real sporting treasures, the champion jockey Edgar Britt.

You may have learned, as I did, that in a career spanning 30 years, Britt rode 2000 winners in Australia, the US, Britain, Ireland and India. And that leaving the Australian turf forever in 1935, he was feted abroad by British royalty and Indian maharajahs. At the height of his career in 1947 he was invited by George VI to become the dr. ed questionou homens e mulheres King’s Jockey, and he rode 970 winners in England.

At 150 centimetres (not quite five feet) and 45 kilos (seven stone), Britt was a character with, as he modestly said of himself, a reputation for “dash, reflexes, balance, judgement, pace and an unflustered manner”. In the tradition of successful jockeys everywhere, he married a glamorous showgirl, Tibby Geoghegan, a dancer at Sydney’s Tivioli Theatre who was 27 centimetres taller, and they had four daughters.

A painting of Edgar Britt riding Angelola for King George VI.

On retirement in 1959, he returned to Australia and became a racing commentator and a columnist for many years for Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph.

I learned all this from his obituary. In my childhood I knew nothing of his racing fame. But I certainly knew his name. In our household, thanks to my father’s penchant for Australian rhyming slang, “the Edgar Britts” was a euphemism for diarrhoea. All across the nation, it would turn out, Edgar Britt’s name made Australians smirk.

Since World War II at least, Australians – especially Dads – have been adept, like the Cockneys, at turning names, places, jobs and habits into often risqué rhyme. Especially cheeky, male, public-bar euphemisms — if not intentionally malicious then usually pretty rude – based on the names of celebrities of one sort or another, most often sportsmen.

Observing the linguistic niceties required of a family newspaper, I won’t spell all these out. But older readers might be familiar with the term “Adrian Quist”, meaning “drunk”. (Quist was a Wimbledon tennis doubles champion of the 1930s-40s. Nowadays the term has been replaced by “Olivers”, from Oliver Twist.)

Similarly, for AFL fans, a “Gary Ablett” is a tablet, a “James Hird” is faecal matter, and to have a “Stuey Dew” is to vomit. For rugby league followers, a “Gary Jack” is a back, a “Johnny Raper” is a newspaper and a “Ron Coote” is sexual intercourse. Meanwhile, “Germaine Greer” is an ear”, and “Reg Grundys”, as we all know, are underpants.

We also know, only too well, that a “Noah” or “Noah’s Ark” is a shark. Meanwhile, “to do a Harold Holt” or a “Harry” is to bolt, or disappear quickly, referring to the Prime Minister who vanished while swimming in 1967. Maybe he was taken by a Noah.

Traditionally Australian are the terms “Onkaparinga” (finger), based on the South Australian town and the well-known woollen blankets; “Dad and Dave” (shave), after Steele Rudd’s comic characters; and Charlie Wheeler (sheila), after the Australian painter, Charles Wheeler. If people are “Burke and Wills”, like the famously inept Australian explorers, they’re dills. But if they’re just doing a quick glance around, they’re having a “Captain’s” or a “Captain Cook”.

If you’re grabbed by the “Warwick Farm” (Sydney racecourse), someone has you by the arm. Possibly a “Westpac banker” or a “half-back flanker” (a wanker). Perhaps someone from “Steak and Kidney” (Sydney). Maybe it’s a “septic tank” or “seppo” (an American). Better close the “George Moore” (door).

Had a “Barry” of a day? (“Crocker”: shocker.) Perhaps a “Gregory Peck” (cheque) didn’t arrive with your “Zane Grey” (pay) or your “rock and roll” (dole). Maybe your “Malvern Star” (car) broke down and you had to catch the “Uncle Gus” or bus. Incidentally, Uncle Gus is not to be confused with “Uncle Merv”: a perv.

Got soreness in the “Ginger Meggs” (legs); “comics”, as in “comic cuts” (guts); “Barry Beath” (teeth); “Lionel Rose” (nose); “Jack Jones” (bones); or “Ned Kelly” (belly)? Or even worse, a pain in the “Jatz crackers” (testicles)?

Taking the ‘piss’ out of singer Jimmy Riddle’s name …we’re a cruel bunch.

Better put your hand in your “sky rocket” (pocket). It’s your “Wally Grout” (as in the former Test wicket-keeper): turn to buy drinks. At the “nuclear sub” (pub).

Many of these sayings have died out, some replaced by newer slang and contemporary personalities. But rarely these days do you hear my father’s favourite expressions, such as “rubbidy-dub” (pub); “Aristotle” (bottle); “billy lid“ (kid); “trouble and strife” (wife); “Johnny Horner” (corner); and “to have a Jimmy Riddle” (to urinate).

Nevertheless I’m still rather in awe of mischievous and imaginative rhyming slang. No surprises there, after spending my childhood fending off naughty schoolyard rhymes to our very own surname.

Robert Drewe’s  long-awaited new novel WHIPBIRD will be published by Penguin/Viking on July 31: penguin.com.au/books/whipbird-9780670070619

Whipbird | Penguin Books Australia
Kungadgee, Victoria, Australia. A weekend in late November, 2014. At Hugh and Christine Cleary’s new vineyard, Whipbird, six generations of the Cleary family are coming together from far and wide to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the arrival of their ancestor Conor Cleary from Ireland.
As the wine flows, it promises to be an eventful couple of days.

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