And so on...

The school I’m working for (the Australian School of Advanced Medicine) was in need of cover for one of our educationalists currently on maternity leave. Knowing that Ros was looking for work she’s been interviewed and has secured the job. So we’re now working together! At least for the next few months. We’re less than 10 minutes walk from the campus so we walk in together, usually in warm sunshine with cockatoos and the like singing from the trees. All very cosy! We don’t see too much of one another during the day but we do hope we don’t get on top of one another in all of this.

I’ve been making a few observations on how Australia seems to fit with the wider world.

The media seems very inward looking. The focus of the main evening news on TV is not even Australia wide it’s concentrated down to New South Wales i.e. Sydney! On the one hand it’s reassuring to know that not much crime happens here but on the other it doesn’t half make for boring news, it’s like Local Radio on the TV. When an international item is run it’s very much in the context of Australia and how it might affect things here. (maybe it’s the same at home and it’s just that I’m more tuned in due to being new here?) I’m reading Bill Bryson’s travelogue on Australia and he makes the observation that perhaps this inward looking aspect springs from the fact that the outside world pretty much ignores Australia. So Aussies think ‘if they’re ignoring us we’ll ignore them’ kind of thing.

That said, the city is very cosmopolitan, I’m working with a multitude of nationalities and the University seems very international - more so than I’ve ever felt at Leeds Uni. (or perhaps working in a foreign country opens up your eyes and I’m now more aware of how ‘small’ the world is) We have more commercial partnerships than would be tolerated in a UK University and so we’re surrounded by big multinationals placed strategically on the periphery of the campus and that adds to the sense of globalisation. So it probably depends on where you’re looking the new is colloquial but business certainly isn’t.