So here I am back down under. (The map is from TAIPEI 101. There's one for each cardinal direction, making Taipei seem the axis mundi. They are nice enough to show all of Australia, but somehow forget to mark Melbourne!!)Taiwan isn't that far above the Equator, but Australia disappeared almost completely from view while I was there. A few people said "I hear you are coming from Australia" but none went on to ask why, or indeed anything about Australia at all - even as Melbourne was in the papers, for the G20 summit (and protests) and also a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Melbourne Olympics.
So I had no chance to remark that Australia and Taiwan have similarly sized populations (about 20 million), let alone to say "Melbourne is among the world's most livable cities"! It's full of "world class" culture and institutions! We have "four seasons in one day"!
Instead, I found myself thinking unfilial thoughts: If Taiwan's located in a place where rather too many people have passed through it over the years, Australia - especially its south shore - gets no passers-through. It really is indecently far away from the rest of the world! And, most disloyal of all, I thought, Melbourne's so "livable" because it isn't really a city, lacking the hustle and bustle and heat and bother of a place like Taipei: Australian urbia is really suburbia.
And yet it's nice to be back, in a land people from all over have made a home, where you don't need urban stress to have "world class" experiences, where the rivers meander, occasionally liberating a loop as a billabong, and sometimes never making it to the sea at all...
