A beauty, rich and rare, attracts and sustains this migrant

People born in Australia often grossly underestimate its allure.

Flying the flag on Australia Day.

People born in Australia often grossly underestimate its allure.

I grew up in England, began my working life as a newspaper journalist there in the gritty but enchanting northeast, then found myself in Papua New Guinea, attracted in part by the simple spirit of adventure.

When I first responded to the advert for “the world’s worst paid journalistic job” I had thought PNG was in West Africa. I had no connection with Australia, or even a sense that it might hold any attraction for me whatsoever, when I did discover PNG’s true location, and began working there and staying for 11 wonderful years.

Sometimes, arriving in a former colony — and I landed in Moresby just months after independence, on Friday, February 13, 1976, which was to prove a lucky day — turns one against the coloniser.

Of course, Australia exhibited many failings in the way it ran, rather reluctantly and parsimoniously, its closest neighbour. But its exit came, for the most part, with a good grace, while the first generation of Papua New Guineans to take charge of their own development proved remarkably capable, and considerably less corrupt than many of their successors.

Inevitably, I began to meet a big variety of Australians as I settled into PNG life — many of them resourceful, devoted to PNG, and ready with a good story or witticism. You couldn’t then — or now — survive long in “the Territory”, as some still called it, if you had tickets on you: an Aussieism I soon picked up, among many, in encountering this new language.

This was just a part of a whole new culture, a new continent, that I encountered through PNG and through my occasional but always fun visits “down south”, usually camping in the homes of members of the Australian PNG “mafia”.

Moresby was a city where people drifted around easily in the heat, dropping in on friends at weekends with goodies picked up from markets or to grab mangoes from their gardens as they ripened.

At parties, everyone danced to — exotic, in my view — songs such as Eagle Rock, Original Sin, Friday on My Mind, All My Friends are Getting Married, Power & the Passion, and of course Down Under. Australian music was on constant rotation on the radio, chosen by PNG hosts pleasantly enslaved by this element of colonial culture.

That core social institution the Skyline Drive-In featured the new wave of Aussie films — Picnic at Hanging Rock, My Brilliant Career, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Newsfront, The Getting of Wisdom, Don’s Party and the rest.

The most telling cultural impact came from my weekly fix of Nation Review, about whose subject matter I was mostly completely ignorant, including the people and places, especially restaurants, it lambasted relentlessly and hilariously, but whose iconoclastic style I relished. It invoked the spirit of that treasure Private Eye, which remains my main source of accurate information about my original homeland.

In the spirit of excitement about Oz, I even joined the RSL club on Ela Beach, which showed movies on the beach and where chicken and chips could be had for a song, washed down by a South Pacific lager, as the Coral Sea lapped. The Ode — “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old …” — was read by a committee member over the loudspeaker at 4.55pm daily. Having an uncle in World War II, I was touched.

Lunch was sometimes grabbed at the South Pacific Motor Sports Club — “the car club” — whose Australian chef specialised in loudly insulting the customers, including their build and attire, as he announced that their orders awaited collection.

It was most importantly the Aussies I met in PNG who especially inspired me to come here after “localising” my job to a brilliantly capable Papua New Guinean who earlier had become the country’s first female editor.

There was larger-than-life historian, singer and raconteur Jim Griffin, who was to become my best man when I married in Melbourne, and who introduced me to many layers of Australian life that otherwise would have taken decades to discern.

There was the hugely successful but humble retailer Brian Bell, PNG’s Harvey Norman, originally a country Queensland pharmacist, who was among the few Aus­sies among a large crowd of Papua New Guineans who faithfully attended the same Anglican church and who never turned away someone who came asking for his help.

There were “refugees” such as Brian Brogan, the economist who had advised — not entirely successfully — Gough Whitlam and who had flown north after the Dismissal. He patiently taught me something about the crucial questions to ask of a developing country. The “refugees” also included, for some reason especially in the educational bureaucracy, gay Australians who found greater tolerance in the tropics, one or two of whom emerged as stars of the lively amateur theatrical scene.

Inevitably, given PNG’s huge — and continuing — dependence on aviation, and the challenges of its terrain and climate, I also got to know a couple of pilots who died shockingly and too young.

There were dedicated missionaries, living alongside the people they came to serve.

And there were some excellent Aussie geologists who had to be empathetic anthropologists, too, in a place such as PNG.

My best mate there, alongside my PNG “bro” Joe Koroma, was the funny, brilliant ABC journalist Sean Dorney, at the centre of so many good things happening in PNG’s first decade and beyond, and today tragically down — but a long way from out — having been hit by motor neurone disease.

I simply thought, if Australia can produce blokes like him, that’s the place for me — rather than returning to England.

Soon enough, I even began to support Australia in every code, to the horror of my sports-mad relatives back there.

And I haven’t for a minute felt let down. I came here because I very carefully chose to do so, to a young country still finding its way, to an exciting place open to newcomers, to find a bigger and more satisfying role than could be available in the more static, socially rigid places from which most of us have come.

This Christmas, spent in Geelong with my family — a typical Australian one, each of the four of us born in a different country — I walked along the beautiful main beach, packed with groups of Australians from every part of the world, enjoying themselves vastly, in a harmonious and friendly way.

It was marvellous.

On Australia Day, my own feelings that swirl around may be aberrant — though I suspect not strikingly so.

About a quarter of my fellow Australians were born overseas, and many of them appear to think quite positively about the place they’ve now made home — perhaps a higher proportion than among those born here.

Of course I’ve seen something of the dark side; I’m a journalist. As for making Australia my home — no regrets. Celebrating that too brazenly or boastfully, though, is positively un-Australian.

I can’t speak for indigenous Australians, and won’t. They can and do articulate clearly their own views on the nation, and on its symbols and celebrations. That’s something different, and commands respect.

But I find it valuable to recall what drew me to Australia and — given that, as with many immigrants, I now have two passports, and choices — what holds me here and commands my loyalty. Others who have chosen this country will be harbouring similar thoughts this long weekend.