Gerard Oosterman

Mention the word ‘table’ (tavola) to an Italian and the implications are clear: family, food, laughter and above all, the excitement of conversation. The word ‘tavola’ could easily bring tears to any red blooded Italian, having been away too long from home.

But, mentioning the word ‘table’ to an Australian and someone might ask: Ikea, or have you inherited a “Parker Table”?

(This of course is not the only difference between Aussies and the European or other nationals. But, as they say in Russia, Viva La Difference!)

A curious form of isolating oneself, at times, from the outside world persists here more than anywhere else that I know of.

Perhaps the words ‘Own Home’ demonstrate this difference. Am I right in thinking that those two little words would conjure up for Australians what the word ‘tavola’ does for the Italian?

The words ‘Own Home’ for us Australians is the need for the world of absolute ‘privacy’. Perhaps, to our Anglo forbearers, their ‘Own Home’ was their castle – up with the drawbridge and just in case of anything or anyone unwanted, they had the back up of a moat to keep out intruders, including any unannounced visitors.

While the drawbridge and moat have gone, we have substituted them with the paling fence, and now the impenetrable colour bond aluminium partition fence, blocking even the remotest chance of seeing a neighbour, or worse, a neighbour seeing us.

Some ‘own homes’ now have total block-out metal electric window shutters. Perhaps in the future they will do away with the need to have any windows at all.

We used to run a self contained farm cottage that we let to anyone at weekends. It iwas miles from neighbours and we lived also well away.

When the Europeans came to stay, they kept everything open – doors, curtains, and weree quickly outside, keen to strike up a conversation. The Aussies drew curtains as soon as they arrives.

The need for ‘privacy’ seems to overwhelm everything, even when it means blocking the glorious country views and light. Perhaps they were impatiently waiting to jump into bed for a bit of an old fashioned quickie, but so would the red blooded Europeans, would they not?

We  had a couple celebrating 40 years of marriage. Surely they would want to relax, unpack and watch cricket, go to the loo, or do something decent first? No, the curtains closed soon after arrival.

With the culture of one’s ‘Own Home’ comes another curious phenomenon. You rarely actually see anyone outside in their gardens and I am buggered if I know how Aussies maintain their gardens so spotlessly. The petunia borders are all weed free. The lawn is in absolute submission and not a leaf is allowed a minute’s rest in the guttering.

Back about fifty years ago, we lived in a new Sydney suburb called Revesby, near Bankstown in NSW. A neighbour would, at weekends only, climb on his roof and sweep the shiny ‘Wunderlich’ glazed tiles clean of bird shit, deposited generously by my brother’s pigeons. It was the only time we actually saw him outside, ever.

These days, if you want to see people enjoying their outside garden areas, one has to go to the suburbs of mainly Italian or Greek inhabitants. In Sydney, the Middle Eastern areas are probably the best place to see outdoor activity – people hanging over the fence, kids playing on the streets, the burning of rubber by over-excited youths, and a general feeling of excitement or ‘things happening’.

Now we come to the tricky ‘Unleashed contributors’ bit. Is it also this ‘privacy’ thing that sees so many people writing under nick names, often even changing their names as they go along? Is it safer to write something a bit controversial under the guise of a nick name?

What is the answer to all this nonsense?

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So, that was it then. With having survived yet again another Christmas and Boxing day, we took advantage of the lull in festivities for an outing to our Shire’s tip and with our noses pinched because of prawn shells seeping out of their wrapping and with rank wine bottles still leaking at the back of the Astra wagon, Helvi and I drove with a full load and arrived at the tip after a 15 kilometre trip.

We had our weekly Rubbish Permit card duly clipped at week 52 by the Rubbish Tip Man standing at the entrance. With civil duty riding high and intact, we put the bottles in the 40 gallon recycling bins, colour-by-colour followed by the plastic milk and drink bottles also in drums and all the wrapping papers and other bits and pieces into the paper containers. Finally two black bags of real rubbish for filling the hole in the ground.

This Rubbish Tip Man is no ordinary man. We have watched with delight how he transformed the entrance of the tip into a piece of garden that would win prices at any Garden show. He built the garden around the theme of an open cut mine. Not that silly, considering that the rubbish tip is situated at Marulan. Most of our building and agricultural lime used to come or perhaps still comes from the lime quarry at Marulan.

Many of the rural residents know his passion for the mine and garden and have donated all sorts of disused tipping and bulldozer toy trucks which are arranged on top of a ridge of rubbish covered over with white sand. In between the different layers of soil and the trucks he has planted roses, agapanthus, day and tiger lilies and so many other varieties, even some magnificent cacti, one of which happened to flower today. In winter all the tulips, hyacinths, daffodils always pop up as well.

The tip itself is over an exhausted and disused open blue-metal quarry and it can’t be easy in the heat and stench to deal with the never ending stream of residents off loading their odiferous rubbish. The Tip Man has a shed and an electric cord from the car’s battery goes inside the shed. I suppose he has a telly and might watch the cricket in between customers and gardening.

The tip has a special section for discarded electronics and the heap of computers and printers and all the paraphernalia that come with it, is growing fast and getting mountainous. All that plastic and electronics, all gone and now waste. The contrasts between the Rubbish Tip Man’s garden at the entrance and the surreal mountain of computers and gleaming television screens, looking like a Jeffrey Smart painting, could not be any starker.

Watching the post Christmas sales in full flight on TV, with the David Jones’ sales manager proudly announcing that people started arriving the evening before but that they would be opening the doors, as a special goodwill gesture for the hoped for shopping orgy, at 6am instead of 9 o’clock, gave great insight in the addiction of shopping.

How else to explain or understand the motive behind why people would be camping outside a store in order to get a t-shirt or handbag at 40% discount. Apparently, this orgy of spending has the full support of our governments and indeed, with baited breath, our treasurer Swan must be sweating at the edge of his desk hoping the figures will come in showing that hundreds of thousands of t-shirts and handbags have saved the pudding for the time being and that K.Rudd’s cheques in the post have weaved their magic.

I wish that I could get Swan and other believers in the now badly or mortally wounded world of Growth Graphs and Stats to come out and admire the Rubbish Tip Man’s garden, perhaps peep around the corner afterwards, and see the mountain of the previous year’s post-Christmas sales, and the booty of decades of spending and wasting and rubbish tip-chucking, wasting and spending.

No matter what the guru conjurers will pull out of the hat for us to consume, sooner or later, most of it will pass the Rubbish Tip Man. At an ever faster pace, the ever shrinking lifespan of consumables means we either go to the tip more often or our trailers are getting bigger.

Or, and this is the real question and answer; we stop consuming in the future.

Many with a conscience will at least donate to Vinnie’s or the Smith Family, and who knows, next time around we might all be wearing the Armani shirt discounted from $400 – first at DJ’s but then for $10 – from the Red Cross shop, or the $2000 Gucci bag for even less.

The Marulan Rubbish Tip Man has it all worked out though. He made the best of it: A Rubbish Tip made into a magic and delightful garden and an example to us of, how, at the most unexpected places we find a spirit of survival that has managed to overcome it all.

The Rubbish-Man stands tall.

It was a good Post Christmas day.