A collection of short stories about Australia and Australians. EXIT STAGE LEFT is a collection of short stories that illuminate the difficulties encountered by new arrivals and visitors to Australia and which also illuminate the typical Australianness of those who work with or otherwise connect with them. The seemingly natural and pervading Australian tendency to “take the mickey” can be the source of much misunderstanding, leading to many who ‘exit stage left’! … on the other hand it is perhaps one way to really understand Australia and its ways.
The author also includes stories that illuminate the difficulties and sometimes strange situations faced by the many Australians who depart the country in search of a more worldly experience.These stories are limited to fragments experienced by the author and friends in the less developed lands where their activities brought them into closer contact with ‘the locals’, where traditions still govern the way of doing things and where people live at other levels of existence.
Australia offers a completely different experience to that which can be found elsewhere. The landscape is huge with vast and brilliantly clear blue skies offering endless vistas of apparent emptiness and the monotony of limitless horizons. The clarity of the air can be painful to the eyes while the drab olive-green eucalypts present a dull, even boring landscape. The rawness and beauty of these characteristics are beyond the knowledge and vision of the visitors … their eyes and attitudes are unprepared for what they experience on and after arrival.
Stories involving the new arrivals are mostly set in remote Australia ... The Outback, which is even more unlike other places on Earth. It is even remote from Modern Australia, sparsely populated and untouched … mostly … by modern development and especially remains largely untouched by ‘us’… modern man. Conditions are often primitive as well as distant from the Big Smoke where law and order generally prevails.
Many of those who work in The Outback do so because it is remote and where a different level of law applies. Some are ‘on the run’ from the law, others from damaged relationships, and yet others because the Big Smoke is just Too Big. In the deep Outback there are no entertainments to speak of; there are very few women and those who choose to, or have to, live and work here find other ‘entertainments’ … thus certain character traits find expression … one being that trait known as ‘taking the Mickey’ ... mostly out of new arrivals, especially Americans.
Those Americans who do find themselves working here, sent to support the Australian workforce because of superior know-how and worldly experience, have generally not been adequately prepared for the Australian experience, especially not for the kind of experience they will encounter working in The Outback. Many ‘exit stage left’, bemused, confused, alienated and often with a totally false impression of the Australia they thought they had visited.
These are all hoop-snake stories. That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with them … just that they fit the classification of ‘stories that you can believe, or not believe’. It doesn’t even mean that they might not be true, but they might not be. In this collection at least, almost all of them are true stories, some may not be believable but do give it a shot to believe!
Australians, at least those that live outside the Big Smoke, are the people most likely to tell you a hoop-snake story. You know the type, likeable, happy to buy you a drink. The Where‘re ya from? kind of person. Quite likely wearing a large but very strangely shaped hat …. Elastic-sided boots. Shorts and no socks, probably not a tee shirt, unless it’s a company one. Probably has a couple of mates nearby, to back up his stories … that is, to corroborate or confirm what he’s just told you.
So, if you are planning to visit Australia WATCH OUT for this person, and for hoop snakes.
advertisement