Sydney

It’s A Tough Life In Old Sydney

• By Dorothea Baxter, Taking A Close Look At Sydney After Four Years In Suva.

Bananas at 3id each, papaws

at 3/9 —returning to Sydney to

live can be quite disconcerting at first. The prices!

AND one is immediately struck by the busy-ness of everyone. On leave you feel apart from the general earnestness and free to enjoy a holi day, but being back for good is dif ferent.

Everything seems a rush. Even on the children’s polio injection slips issued by the local councils (an ex cellent service) one is warned that the doctor leaves at 11 a.m.

“Sharp”.

The paradox is that in this much bigger city, life is much more parochial. People, particularly women, are more “international” in their outlook in the Pacific—at least in Fiji where we lived.

Perhaps because of all those over seas “leaves”, perhaps because of the pot pourri of races. Yet Australia has a medley of peoples now.

Searching for somewhere to live is the proverbial “eye-opener”. Without batting an eyelid, an otherwise pleasant housewife told me that she wanted £1,500 to vacate a tenanted house.

She had lived there (on a—by to day’s standard —nominal rental) long enough to rear six children, had done nothing towards upkeep of the house and now, having about worn it out, she wanted money so that her family could move to something grander.

Protected as she is by the NSW Landlord and Tenant Act, her de mand for £1,500 makes it hard for the owner to give any sort of price for that property.

Real estate agents are a fascinat ing race. Business seems to be boom ing for them everywhere in Sydney, yet in Suva they hardly exist.

Sydney’s ever-temperamental bus drivers still regale their passengers with their views on transient humanity. One woman didn’t signal the bus soon enough: “Too b—y lazy to raise her hand”, commented the driver to the bus in general.

Another inquired about a stop ping place: “Too b—y lazy to walk a few yards. They’re all too b—y

lazy”, the driver muttered while the rest of us string-bag “sloths” sat mute, not daring to disagree.

TV is not the time-consumer I feared. Some sessions, particularly on music and art, are excellent, but others, including the news, are disappointing.

Small incidents, such as a minor fire in a suburban home, are magnified into matters of great moment before hundreds of thousands of TV viewers.

The news-thirsty channels are competing, not only with each other, but with the newspapers, To absorb the mass of matter thrust at one through all these media would take one’s day away.

But people are generally selective and read and listen to what they like, This was proved when the radio stations cut out their soap operas, only to resume them—but fast — after a wave of protests, It’s almost a hopeless search to find knitting wool to match some you bought five years ago. Shop assistants regard you as a sort of freak—some of them were still in primary school then—and the explanation that you have been living in the tropics only results in a far away “Bali Hai” ex pression as inscrutable and exasperat mg as the Suva shop assistants’ perennial parry, “There may be some on the next boat!”