My girlfriend and I spent the past week in the hot, damp armpit of Australia: Queensland.
I’ve always had a curious disdain for Queensland. I’ve spent countless summers there, frolicking on its pristine, deadly beaches, flouncing around Movie World, snorkelling on the reef, hanging out at Airlie’s famed lagoon, et cetera. I’ve had a good time, so it shouldn’t follow that all of my experiences have been underscored with a very mild sense of disenchantment – but that seems to be the reality of it for me.
After my most recent visit, I’m unsurprised by Pauline Hanson’s triumphant return to mainstream politics in Australia.
I’ve jokingly referred to Queensland as Australia’s Florida while maintaining a strange affection for the state, despite my near-constant disappointment in it. I think it’s because I’m always deflated by the inexhaustible stream of bigotry and ignorance that I’m guaranteed to witness and experience during my visits there. I’m also peeved that a place so beautiful can be full of so much shit.
Upon boarding the airport shuttle in Proserpine on my way to Airlie, I noticed the woman collecting bus tickets took an unusually long time sorting out the travel details for people who weren’t white. The ones who especially attracted her ire were the Asian couple in front of me who couldn’t speak much English. Sensing their vulnerability, she zeroed in on them immediately. She stomped her way through the bus before pausing at their seats.
She sucked in a huge lungful of air. “Excuuuuuse meeeee!” she began, wide-eyed. “Do you speak English? Any English at all?! Do you even know where you are?!” and without bothering to wait for their response, she leaned in and continued barking at full volume, “YOU’RE MAKING THIS VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME NOW GIVE ME YOUR TICKETS.”
As the man, utterly confused by this Shar-Pei of a woman screeching at him, handed his ticket over, she continued muttering under her breath, jowls quivering. She snatched the ticket away without so much as glancing at it, and continued hunting for other non-English speakers to terrorise.
My girlfriend was sitting next to me with her jaw hanging open. “Can you believe that just happened?” she said.
“Welcome to Australia,” I replied.
The rest of our trip was dotted with interactions like these, ranging from waitresses flinging bills at Asian people, to our tour guide’s proclamation that “Koreans are fucking useless,” to our boat’s captain grumbling about “learning English”. The racism was manifold.
On one of our last evenings at Airlie, we headed out to dinner at a lounge bar that was famed for its cocktails. We had a great dinner and our waitress was amazing. While eating, I stared out at the table of Swedish tourists laughing with the waitress at the table across from us. They couldn’t speak much English, but this didn’t seem to deter her or make her irritated. I dimly wondered whether or not she’d be treating us differently had we not been passably white. I wondered if she’d be laughing along with them had they been Asian or of some other demonised ethnicity. Maybe I was just being cynical. I turned to my partner and said, “At least we haven’t copped much for being gay.” She agreed that we’d been lucky.
There were occasions where I felt uncomfortable holding her hand. At the same time I shamefully felt thankful for being lucky enough not to attract racism.
When it came time to pay we noticed a fishbowl sitting on the counter with a couple of goldfish swimming around. I asked the waitress about them and we were told that she’d named them after herself and her friend. My partner then jokingly asked if the pair of fish were lesbians – to which the suddenly less friendly waitress said, “No, they aren’t.” My partner, deciding to push this further, said, “Oh, so you and your friend aren’t lesbians?” To which the waitress replied shoutily, “NO BUT OUR BOYFRIENDS SURE WOULD LOVE THAT.”
Calm down lady, we weren’t hitting on you. My girlfriend was just being cheeky. It didn’t take much to break through that veneer of friendliness. The waitress wasn’t mean, but she was definitely of Queensland.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about progressives existing in echo chambers, and it’s true. Sydney is not representative of Australia. I’ve travelled extensively through Australia, and Sydney and Melbourne by comparison are beacons of progress and harmony.
Certain parts of the rest of the country are culturally stagnant with a racism problem so deeply engrained that it’s just a fact of life that Koreans are always useless, the same way that the sky is always blue.
Being openly gay, my girlfriend and I were sometimes given cooler welcomes than our straight pals during our holiday. I shudder to imagine what our experience would have been like had we not been read as white too.
This Week:
On Wednesday December 14, head on down to Slyfox in Enmore for Birdcage’s Roller Disco. The Sydney Roller Derby League will be on the floor, along with waitresses on skates and roller rink tunes supplied by Barfly, Cunningpants and Nicholas Birdcage. Free entry.
On Saturday December 17, The Shift Club is hosting the year’s final high NRG Decadence party, featuring Alex K, KCB, Rata, Cadell, Steve S and Lately. Tickets are available now.
And for those homos and their pals still left in Sydney over the New Year’s break, here’s one for the diary: Heaps Gay is hosting an epic New Year’s Eve party on Saturday December 31, boasting short bar lines and cheap tickets. With three stages and 20 acts including drag and performance, this one is set to be big. From 9pm to 4am, projections, dancers and DJs will take over all levels of the Imperial Hotel in Erskineville.
[Main Image:Queensland – beautiful on the outside, but what about the inside – Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons]
