I don’t know how well this thread will go - I saw that there was a little bit of a demand for an “Ask the Australian” thread and I thought I might be able to give it a little bit of a twist because I’m 19. Maybe not, who knows!
Secretly I thought it might be a nice way to introduce myself to you all, I’ve been a looong time lurker and have decided to finally start posting here and there. I remember discovering the Straight Dope in primary school, so around 2002, and the earliest I remember reading the forums is about 2005. I feel like I know my way around here and know plenty of you more than I actually do - but I’ve read many of the classic threads (the “Very Vaguely Creepy” and historic “World Trade Center plane crash” threads being two that always stand out in my memory), and I promise I won’t “Hi Opal” too much.
I live in Brisbane, on Australia’s east coast, I’m studying for a Diploma of Music Business, amateur songwriting is my main hobby, and I’ll be 20 in June. It’s a bit of a long shot but some of you may have seen me around on the internet, I run a music blog (link on my profile) and I’m a moderator on the Popjustice music forums. I’m a fan of a really wide range of music, from country to hard rock, but my favourite artist is Michael Jackson and my favourite album of all time is Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush.
Hope this is appropriate and in the right place, and if you have any questions I’ll do my best to answer any question anyone might have about life as an Australian teenager/young adult! I know there are plenty of other Australians on here so if there’s a question I can’t answer or one that you’d like to answer feel free to chip in too!
At first I thought that was a reference to me being gay and then I realised I didn’t mention that in my opening post! “Oh dear, it’s so apparent that it radiates from my words!” etc.
After a quick google I remembered “banana bender” means Queenslander, and I can safely say it’s pretty fun. I’m not a big outdoors person but the weather is great and Brisbane is one of those not-too-big not-too-small cities. I’m mostly grateful to live in a state where most international acts play when they tour Australia!
I just checked and my toilet seemed to do some sort of weird, water-from-the-front-and-back superflush which resulted in all the water disappearing at once with minimal swirling action. I’m a little freaked out by it, to be honest. I will consult a non-freaky toilet and get back to you.
No. That isn’t to say I didn’t pay attention to his personal life, I followed his life closely, but nothing has ever put me off the music. In my opinion he was a great man, musically and as a person. I realise a lot of people, especially on these boards as I’ve seen, will disagree. I can’t argue about it (neither side can win) so I just say some copout like “Let’s agree to disagree” if someone brings it up!
Daylight saving time wouldn’t affect me, really. I suppose I don’t want it because they want to split our state into two time zones, which seems silly to me, and I don’t want to have to turn all my clocks back because I’m lazy.
AFL, as it’s the only one where I understand the rules! I’m not a sports follower but it’s a bit inescapable so I do know vaguely what’s going on in all the major sports, especially when there’s a scandal. Could never sit down and watch a game of any sport on TV but if I’m in a stadium watching it I get caught up in the excitement even if I don’t really know what’s going on.
‘Breathing’, with ‘Running Up That Hill’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ close behind.
They’re all like that (with the white-water rapid thing). In New Zealand, too. In fact, in my experience, it’s American toilets that are unusual in their “swirly-flush” action.
What are your thoughts on the music industry in Australia, and do you think “Local Content” rules are a good thing?
Oh dear, quite terrible. I got chucked out of my apartment for having glass bottles so moved in with another few friends which worked out okay but cost much more money than I wanted to spend. Drunken incident after drunken incident made it pretty crappy throughout, but strangely, I’m still glad I went. It’s worth it just to say that you’ve been and you survived. The people campaigning for it to be banned are being very silly - banning it would just mean taking away all the things that keep it under control now, meaning the drunkeness and violence would be a million times worse.
I think our industry is pretty great for a country with a relatively small population. The focus is, however, very much on rock and indie bands, while our pop music scene remains quite embarrassing. It’s very telling that while we keep big rock bands like Silverchair and Powderfinger focused on the Australian market, big pop acts like Kylie Minogue and Darren Hayes have focused their efforts on overseas countries where pop music is more accepted (while still being mildly successful here, and in the case of Kylie, still quite huge). This then leaves us with awful singers like “Cassie Davis” and Australian Idol contestants who sound cheap, look cheap and sing bad songs. It’s a vicious cycle because those singers aren’t successful, meaning less money to be invested by record companies in new, possibly more exciting, young artists.
Local content rules are essential, even if most commercial radio stations just play Australian stuff in the middle of the night to fill their quota. There are often very few Australians in the upper reaches of the country’s airplay charts.
Ideally, radio play would be judged on how good the song is, but that’s a dream for another time!
I’ll respectfully point out that the “The people campaigning for it to be banned” are pretty much the entire population of the Gold Coast. No-one who actually lives there supports Schoolies, exactly because of the sort of behaviour you admit to (not singling you out, pointing fingers, or making a personal attack, you understand). The people who live in Surfers Paradise really, really don’t like having drunken teenage yahoos descending on their suburb and causing chaos for nearly a month.
What they’d like (from what I gather) to see is the ability to refuse room letting to Schoolies- “Sorry, if you’re under 19 you can’t rent a room on the Gold Coast between October 15 and December 2nd”, for example. With nowhere to stay, the idea is that they’d go Somewhere Else, or better yet, not go anywhere at all and just get on with their lives without the drunken hooliganism.
I agree completely with you here… Thing is, I’m not sure what can be done. I’d like to see more Australian artists succeed in the mainstream market, but I’d also prefer they stop releasing and promoting crap music and expect people to like it just because it’s Australian.
Again, I think we disagree… I’d prefer to see local content rules abolished since all they do is encourage mediocre crap like Australian Idol.
Good bands like Powderfinger or Empire Of The Sun will succeed on their own without a “hand-up”, and since most radio stations play their “local content” stuff either in the form of things which are big successes anyway (AC/DC, Kylie Minogue, Powderfinger, Silverchair, etc) or in the middle of the night when no-one except university students and insomniacs will hear it, it seems silly (IMHO) to have a rule effectively forcing radio stations to play shit music for 10% of their airtime.
The reasons for that might make an interesting (if low-interest) Great Debate topic, actually.
I’d say the biggest problem is that it was ever allowed to become an “event” in the first place. Now it’s so huge and everyone in every high school looks forward to it for five years and all that, and it’s become a tradition, it seems too big to get rid of. If there was a workable solution to get rid of it I’d support it. Now that there is the Schoolies culture, however, I think it will live on in some form no matter where it’s held or how much people try to stop it, meaning the drunken hooliganism will just move from place to place.
I think it just seems strange to put on the event and then say “This event turned out exactly as we should have foreseen it would, now we want it to stop”. Not going to happen. Of course this isn’t the fault of the poor people who do live in Surfer’s Paradise.
I’m not sure that makes sense - basically I agree with you but I don’t know how a solution would come about.
I can understand that, because the Gold Coast would be the most popular destination for schoolies. My youngest son, however, went to Coffs Harbour with his friends – though I see that Coffs is not even mentioned in the Wiki article on schoolies week.
(And I don’t remember my older children taking part in schoolies at all).
OK, here’s a question I’ve wanted to ask an Aussie/Queenslander:
I’ve heard that Queensland is to Australia as the South is to the US (ie the more “rustic” (to be polite) / “backwards” (to be less polite) / “rural hicks and hayseeds” (to be blunt) area of the country). True? (Not asking if it is true that Queenland is like that, just asking if it’s true that it has the reputation (justified or no) from your fellow Aussies.
Yes, that’s a common stereotype. It’s even more common as a stereotype for Tasmania, which gets some jokes about inbreeding, etc., that would be used in the U.S. about Appalachia.
