QUESTIONS FOR THE OZTRALIANS

Gonville and Caius Cambridge. The Gonville bit is OK, but Keys follows its own rules.

Jesus wept, it was a typo . . . relax, will ya?

I guessed it was Suvvk, Set. There's nowhere else in London that sounds similar. That was where my Dad was a fireman during the Blitz, all along that bank of the Thames! bang smack opposite the Tower of London.

I've just had time to read your brummagem link thoroughly. I'm now going to pass it on to my brummie neighbour, who doesn't know one end of a hammer from the other, and ask him where he went wrong.

That's if I can remove a greyhound who is snoring across my lap at this moment.

It's not your lap, it's dog's lap . . . you just carry it around . . .

When is this book set?

Wowsers are people who are anti drink, anti dancing etc.

I have no idea what the brumm potato is.

Out west probably refers to beyond the blue mountains.

Don't know what pies they refer to but very likely steak pies.....the pie floater that FS describes was, as far s I know, a South Australian thing. Looks awful but great for the munchies at 3.00 am.


Magpies are native.

Pikelets are small, thicker, pancake like things.

I've never heard of brumm tatas.

Depending on where in Sydney the novel was set, out west could mean anything from west of the Harbour Bridge to Back o' Burke. Some of those snobby eastern suburbs types won't travel west of the Bridge - or north, either. South is a bit doubtful, too. Bloody insular lot!

Yes indeedy! I was thinking it was set a lot further back than it is.

The fruit of my loins is just about to move out to Coogee Bay. Will he still be accepted in society?

The novel, The Great World, by David Malouf, is set between about 1920 and 1975 or a few years after. That allows the author to introduce the parents of the principal characters--Digger and Vic. Digger, Albert Keen, is born to a flamboyant and unreliable Australian who lied about his age so he could go to France in the Great War, William Keen, and to Margie, an Englishwoman who fled service in her home country by emigrating. Both are disillusioned by their marriage. Margie was raised in a foundling home with her brother, Albert, who was sent off to be apprenticed in Liverpool at age 11, never to be heard from again. Her son Albert is named for him. They have about eight children, but only Albert and Jenny survive. Jenny is a few years older than Albert, but she is, as they said in those days, simple. When he returns from the war, he will care for her for the rest of their lives. When Albert was about two, he began following his father about the yard and imitating everything he did, and his father, with his false front, veteran of the Great War routine, begins calling him Digger, and it sticks with him. Eventually, even his mother, who always tries to call him Bert or Bertie in memory of her brother, calls him Digger.

The yard surrounds their house, on the banks of the Hawkesbury, where Digger's grandfather made a ferry landing, and operating the ferry keeps the wolf from the door, especially as his father is otherwise a rather shiftless character. It was when the other principal character, Vic, was describing his personal peregrinations when he spoke of "out west," although until the 1950s, he has hardly seen the rest of the country. That's why i though it must refer to the Blue Mountains or just beyond, because otherwise, Vic has only known a dirty little coal town up Townsville way, and relative affluence in Sidney.

Vic Curran's parents were rather ordinary, but not badly off. His father did so well that he took early retirement from the mines. Unfortunately, he took to drink, and his wife, with whom he had enjoyed a loving relationship all their married life, sickens and dies in very short order. Vic's father loses the house, and they move into a shack near the sea, and Vic, who had theretofore lead a relatively normal life, is now put to his shifts to continue in school, and to deal with his increasingly drunken father. The father is killed in a fight in a pub, and Vic's godfather, whom he had only met once and does not remember, shows up to collect him. That man, "Pa" Warrender, was an officer in France, and Vic's father had been his batman. Vic, then, goes from grinding poverty and constant humiliation to upper middle class comfort and respectability.

Digger joins up early on, but is not sent to Africa, but is eventually sent to Singapore. There he meets Vic, whom he instantly dislikes, but who enjoys the patronage of Mac, Digger's best friend. Digger and Mac and Doug, a threesome with some combat experience who have fought Japanese are now uncomfortably a foursome. Vic had joined up just before Pearl Harbor, has no military experience, and arrives just in time for Percival's surrender.

It may seem that i've told the whole story of the novel, but that's just enough to launch the narrative. Digger and Vic become uneasy friends by the necessities of survival in POW camps in Thailand where they were engaged in building the notorious railway, and they each kept the other alive. The novel follows them for 30 years after they are repatriated. I highly recommend it as one of the best novels i've read.

The Great World is critically acclaimed, but you'd need to be as flash as a rat with a gold tooth to know that.

The only time I can recall anyone refer to something as brumm was in a pejorative sense so rotten potatoes would fit.

Intriguingly, the word pikelet is etymologically linked to the Midlands according to one reference.

The Western suburbs (westies) refers to east of the Great Dividing Range. Out west is well beyond the western slopes of the Blue Mountains and refers to the outback, "beyond the Black Stump, the "back a beyond", the "back a Bourke".

The mystery bags (beef pies) sold from street stands are truly offal and other less salubrious cuts. Perhaps the most famous remaining stand is Harry's Cafe de Wheel's .

Maggies are indigenes, and the piping shrike is on South Australia's flag (one of cherrie's and margo's 6 fave states and 3 fave mainland territories) .

The novel extends to the stock market crash in 1987.

Not in polite society...but, as your offspring, he'd be used to that! They're trying to gentrify that rough pub and area, but....

We of the western suburbs won't accept him....

He does need to be a bit careful - his university is on the main road leading west!

Set

From the Hawkesbury, north west of Sydney, out west would certainly mean west of the Blue Mountains, perhaps even as far as the mines of Western Australia. The bulk of the country is west from there.

I'll add the book to my travel reading list. I may need a reminder of home among those furriners!

Thanks for the heads up, margo.

I shall now be looking out for any Western type behaviour, although I fear it's already started as he has purchased a motorbike.

I suppose bush band music will be next. Gumtree canoe, etc.

Oh the shame.

you can tell by his breakfast

Of course!

I have seen him demolish a western breakfast in no time.

I now have the urge to seek out a Sydney forum and ask questions about eastern breakfasts.

This Oztralian is "hungry" at 7.20am.....................

That'll do me!

Apart from the little glass of washing up liquid in the background.

haha didn't see that .

These "green shots" are going crazy in Aussie Land.

Is that an egg and pepperoni pizza for breakfast? I think I may have some Australian in my family tree.