As a lonely Year 9-er, between friendship groups at a horrible girls’ school, I naturally spent a lot of time in the library at recess and lunch, trying to stay under the radar and avoid attention. I remember one of my many book companions at this time was “They’re a Weird Mob”, purportedly written by Nino Culotta a “new Australian”, but in actual fact the pen name of a bloke called John O’Grady. I found this book so screamingly funny that my efforts at invisibility were foiled, as I was shooshed and tutted at from all directions (by the grown ups, because the actual kids were out in the yard hanging out with real people.) Anyway, I hadn’t thought about that book for years, and whilst I am mostly grateful for the solace it provided for me at the time, lately I have been thinking more about the content and purpose of the book.
The novel, set in 1950’s Sydney describes the experiences of Nino Culotta, an Italian migrant who starts working with an ocker bricklaying team, Joe, Dennis, Pat and Jimmy, who he finds to be ‘strangely profane and cynical and abusive, but basically such good men, delighting in simple pleasures’. In keeping with the era, the book is sexist, racist and inappropriate, but the overall “vibe” is one of such affection and tolerance between these two sides that it really gave me a particular view about the value of migrants in general at a formative time of my life.
I remember feeling proud of how rude and funny and insensitive the Aussie blokes were, and feeling warm and fuzzy and satisfied when everybody had ultimately got a solid cross-culturally enriching experience by the end of the book. I identified with the Aussies but also with Nino, because the book kind of made it seem that there was nothing too weird about anyone, that couldn’t be embraced and absorbed and celebrated in Australia, this special place where really, everyone is welcome as long as someone brings the beer.
I guess that’s actually why, in today’s Border Force Australia, I’m not just feeling lefty-luvvy-latte-sipping outrage at the way things are going, what with the concentration camps and allowing young fellas to die of neglect on hot tarmacs and state-sanctioned abuse of kiddies and the like, but fear, real fear that the Australian identity, of which I was once so proud, has gone.
I think I am probably more baffled, puzzled and disappointed than anything else that the funny, irreverent, take-the-piss Australian character that I took as a part of my own identity has been replaced by this thin-lipped, snide, avaricious, insular, I’m-right-Jack person masquerading as my fellow countryman.
Come back Joe, Dennis, Pat and Jimmy-your country needs you.
Gay Taylor 