Coronavirus: Sound advice from NSW Premier on visiting Melbourne

Maybe you heard Gladys Berejiklian calling on NSW ‘not to interact with citizens from Melbourne’. Is it because they’re so peculiar?

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian may have noticed how peculiar people from Melbourne are. Picture: AAP

So, you maybe heard NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian calling on citizens of her state “not to interact with citizens from Melbourne”. Quite right, too. Everyone assumed it was to do with COVID-19, but when you listened carefully, you realised that she did not in fact say that. Maybe she’s just realised how peculiar they are down there?

This is not the corner of Collins and Bourke. Picture: AAP

One example: Melburnians have this thing where they like to tell visitors to “meet on the corner of Collins and Bourke”. But of course these two streets run parallel, so they never actually meet. For reasons that leave everyone else in the country perplexed, the people of Melbourne think this joke is absolutely hilarious, much like eating your meals off pieces of roof slate in dingy laneways instead of from plates.

But anyway, Berejiklian’s denunciation of the puffer people did come just as Victoria was declared the COVID capital of the country. She went on to say the owners of ski lodges at Thredbo and Perisher, just two hours from the border, “should be at liberty to accept or reject any traveller” during these school holidays, which have already started for posh kids who attend the many, many private schools across the famously egalitarian People’s Republic of Victoria.

Berejiklian also urged visitors to Victoria to avoid visiting COVID-19 hot spots, one of which is the shire of Brimbank, which might be difficult given how it covers the tourist-magnet suburbs of Melbourne’s west, like Deer Park and St Albans. Now, I’m from Melbourne’s west — yes, from a place so close to Sunshine, it’s Melton — so I’m allowed to repeat the many jokes now being made on Facebook about the kind of people you won’t be able to meet were you to head down south. For example:

Q: What do you call a Melton girl in a white tracksuit? A: The bride.

Q: What do you call a Melton girl who has reached the age of 30? A: Nana.

‘The Watergardens hotel will be feeling the loss,” said one wag. “You’ve obviously never been to the Deer Park Hotel! Interstate AND international visitors,” said another.

Also on the list of hot spots you can’t visit in Victoria is the shire of Cardinia, which includes the world-famous suburb of Pakenham Upper, about which we will refrain from making any jokes, all of them having being made before.

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Hooked by a mullet

Speaking of the premiers, did you catch Mr 89 per cent — Western Australia’s Mark McGowan — at his latest press conference? He was asked about “a bloke refused entry to a pub on the weekend for having a mullet”. To which he cautiously replied: “Hairstyle or fish?” Fair question! Because maybe in WA you do get people lobbing up to the pub with a fish under their arm? But no, it was the hairstyle, and so the reporters wanted to know: is this discriminatory? Maybe even un-Australian McGowan insisted he needed more detail. Was the man wearing shoes? Yes, he had his “double pluggers” on (they are thongs but not the cheap kind, apparently.) OK, well, was he was wearing a shirt? Yes! A Bush Chook T-shirt. (I had to look that up. Apparently, it’s an emu. Also a beer.) Well then, McGowan said, mullet wearers of WA should “rise up and rebel”. “OK, some of my best friends have mullets,” he said, before urging everyone from the mullet-headed bogan to the banker with a comb-over to get out and “spend their money”. In WA, of course. 

“I just encourage people with mullets to rise up, and rebel.” WA Premier Mark McGowan’s press conferences are my deadset favourite. I’m in awe. pic.twitter.com/AB62VPzIP7

— Eliza Barr (@ElizaJBarr) June 22, 2020

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Why Sophie loves Julia

Further to Monday’s item about the terrific photograph of Julia Gillard taken by 12-year-old Sophie Deane, it turns out the apple doesn’t fall far from the media tree. She is the daughter of Joel Deane, who started out as a copykid with the old Sun News-Pictorial. He’s now a poet, novelist and speechwriter. Gillard saw the item and sent a Twitter message out to Sophie’s dad, saying: “One of the highlights of my time as PM was meeting Sophie. This photo will always be treasured.” Joel showed the message to Sophie, who has Down syndrome. He replied to Gillard: “You’ve made her year. Thank you!” Gillard uses the image — truly one of the best, most spontaneous and joyful portraits of a PM ever taken — as her Twitter avatar. Sophie’s dad says: “Sophie has a radar for people who treat her as a person with a disability, rather than as an individual. Julia just treated her as Sophie. That’s why Sophie loves Julia.”

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Vale the maker of Kangaroo Jack

We end on a sad note: the death on Tuesday of American businessman and film producer Steve Bing, who has Australian connections. At age 18 Bing inherited a $600m fortune from his grandfather. He ploughed some of that money into making the film Kangaroo Jack, a reworking of an old Aussie yarns told around the campfire: two young men run over a kangaroo, they think it’s dead, and they dress it in a jacket to take a photograph, and it comes back to life, and takes off into the bush, with money in the jacket pocket.

Actor Anthony Anderson in scene from film Kangaroo Jack.

Bing turned the idea into a film, which was panned by critics but made close to $100m. He is the father of Elizabeth Hurley’s son, Damian, who came out to Australia a few times when his mum was engaged to Shane Warne. A sad day for both families. Vale.

Actor Jerry O'Connell with Anthony Anderson in scene from Kangaroo Jack.

The causes of suicide are varied and complex. Lifeline Australia offers support and assistance at 13 11 14 or lifeline.org.au. [e-mail]