Australia Ruminations #1

In Sydney they say wonderfully cool things like “No Worries, Mate!” Even when they throw you out of a pub for falling asleep sitting straight up while you are supposed to be guarding $2,000.00 worth of your own photo equipment and your wife is engaged in a drunken conversation with a heartbroken bloke from Queensland in a part of the pub you can’t see, they are kind. They don’t shake the shit out of you and say “Hey, shithead. No sleeping in the pub. Get the fuck out!” Nope. They gently tap your shoulder and say something along the lines of “Time to move on, Mate!” And when you apologize and shake off the jetlag and booze and look around genuinely shocked that your wife isn’t sleeping across the hightop from you, they repeat what has since become my mantra: “No worries, Mate!” And they seem to mean it. Simply delightful people. Take me back. I’ve only begun to doze.