'If So-and-So Wins... I'm Moving to Australia,' Part I
By P.J. O'Rourke
"If [reviled candidate] wins, I'm moving to Australia" is a phrase we've all heard a lot during this presidential campaign.
With the two most-hated presidential candidates in history facing off against each other... is it a crazy response to the 2016 U.S. election? Well, my family and I just came back from nearly a month in Australia. And we've decided we're crazy, too!
This was my fourth extended visit and my second with my wife and three kids. I polled the household. We all love Australia. (The polling included two teenagers, at least one of whom, at any given moment, hates everything.)
"G'day, mate!" is Australia's unofficial motto. Everybody who passes by salutes you that way. I swear the Aussies say it to inanimate objects. (I was an inanimate object for a couple of days after the 15-hour plane flight from Los Angeles.)
Australians are so friendly that cab drivers will get out of the taxi and open your door for you. They accept a tip of any size (or none at all) with heartfelt gratitude. Bartenders go through their list of beers like jewelers helping you select the absolutely perfect engagement ring. Waiters are more concerned about how you liked your meal than your mom is. (But they're never bossy if you don't finish all your vegetables.)
A jet-lagged American, speeding through Australia's polite and affable customs inspection, worries about the nation's mental health. Is the whole of Australia on a manic jag? And is there an epidemic of obsessive compulsive disorder? The entire country seems neat and clean.
Then, when an American – who is finally relaxed and cheerful – leaves one of Australia's sparkling, uncrowded airports to arrive back in the "bus stations of the sky" we have here in the States, the American feels like Oscar the Grouch crawling back into his garbage can.
Australia is wonderfully spacious, only 23 million people in a country that's 95% the size of the continental U.S. That's like America with 296 million fewer people stepping on your toes. And it has 16,000 miles of coastline. If every one of Australia's 8.4 million families went to the beach at the same time, they would each have a 22-foot-wide space for a picnic. Your kid would have to be an Olympics-quality beach volleyball player to be able to kick sand on anybody else's kid.
It's even a pleasure to hear the residents of Sydney complain (with a smile, of course) about their rush-hour traffic. During morning drive time, Sydney looks like Los Angeles at 2 a.m.
Australia has a great climate and plenty of it. There's every kind of weather that nature can cook up. You can roast in the sun on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, bake in Western Australia's 500-mile-wide Great Victoria Desert, chill (and ski) in the snowy mountains of New South Wales, or stew in the Daintree tropical rainforest on Australia's northern tip. But mostly you'll be enjoying a refreshing cocktail of mild winters and breezy summers as if you're in San Francisco without the fog (or the political correctness).
Australia's scenery is so spectacular that it makes liars out of the people who write the country's tourism brochures. You want to take those brochure writers and give them a shake and shout, "Put in more superlatives! Add more exclamation points!!!!!"
And the best part of the scenery is the part that can barely be seen. Only little bits of the Great Barrier Reef are visible at low tide. But grab a snorkel and you'll feel like you're jumping off your couch and swimming right into your flat-screen TV playing Finding Nemo on Netflix.
... Except without the scary parts. Well, without most of the scary parts. Watching your kids make their first scuba dive is scary... although the kids thought it was wonderful. And their scuba instructor was a true Aussie, much calmer and more pulled together than Nemo's dad.
Australia's famously odd animals do not disappoint in their famous oddities. The web-footed, duck-billed, egg-laying platypus is all that and more. The males also have poisonous spurs on their hind legs. (Maybe to keep normal mammals from making fun of them.)
An echidna looks like a porcupine using a soda straw after getting a haircut from the barber at Parris Island. There really is something called a wombat – a sort of yard-long gerbil with a bad attitude. If a cat married a rat and their offspring mated with a pit bull, you'd have a Tasmanian devil. Now release it into the wild. It's endangered. And you will be, too, if you try holding on to it.
My guess is that God created the animals of Australia on the last day of His workweek – during cocktail hour.
The birds of Australia are just as fabulous. They're flamboyantly varied in size and shape and utterly uninhibited in the colors of their plumage. Walking through Sydney, there seems to be something wrong with the flock of pigeons. That's because what you're looking at is a flock of cockatoos.
The birds are also utterly uninhibited – to put it politely – in the noise they make. It sounds more like garbage men emptying trashcans in the morning than larks at dawn.
In bird school, when the subject of "birdsong" was being taught, Australia's birds were at the back of the classroom, giving each other noogies and throwing spitballs.
But no country is perfect. Australians also insist on driving on the wrong side of the road. Do not try to teach them the error of their ways by setting an example like I did. Good-natured as Australians are, I got honked at a good bit for being in the same lane as oncoming traffic.
Here's a secret for driving in places like Australia, New Zealand, England, and Ireland: Pretend you're a fashion model who supports Bernie Sanders. Think to yourself, "Look right! Keep left! Look right! Keep left!"
Speaking of such, you won't be able to completely escape nutty politics by moving to Australia. Nutty politics are everywhere these days. Australia has a parliamentary system. Who's in charge can change quickly. And does it ever. Australia has had five prime ministers in the past six years.
But it won't bother you as much. Australian political parties are hard to tell apart. To begin with, the conservative party is called the Liberal Party. It's in a coalition with the National Party, which represents rural and small-town voters and should be called the Local Party. The liberals who are opposed to the Liberals vote for the Labor Party, even though most people who do actual physical labor are pretty conservative and vote Liberal.
Meanwhile, instead of Canada geese, Australian golf courses have kangaroos. A large male can be more than six feet tall and weigh 200 pounds. I'm told they can be aggressive. You'll want your driver, not your sand wedge.
Furthermore, although Australians love to watch sports, they love to watch go-on-get-outta-here-you're-kidding-me sports. Aussie-rules football is like American football if nobody who played football had ever heard of helmets, shoulder pads, or the forward pass. The rules are hard to figure out because, as far as I can tell, there aren't any.
I don't mind. I'm a diehard New England Patriots fan. We're famous for our "no rules" attitude. Plus, with Tom Brady benched for the first four games and key defensive end Rob Ninkovich suspended, I've not only given up on American politics, I'm about to give up on the NFL, too.
So if whichever candidate you revile the most wins the election in November, I'll be right there in the stands wildly cheering for the Sydney Swans and loudly yelling at the guy who's playing the "half-forward flank" position (whatever that is) to do... whatever the guy who plays the half-forward flank position is supposed to do.
Or that's what I say.
We love Australia, but should we move there? And could we move there?
I've done my due diligence. I've studied the pros and cons. And next week, in the second installment of my column, I'll fill you in about what a move to Australia would really mean.
Regards,
P.J. O'Rourke