By Dominic Cadden
So what’s your favourite state? If you answered ‘intoxication’, then you’re well on the way to becoming an Aussie but no closer to figuring out the best place to live or work. This guide will help fill you in.
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is Australia’s real Wild West, home to Crocodile Dundee, Aboriginal spiritual centres such as Arnhem Land and Uluru, and cattle stations as large and desolate as Wales. It’s a man’s land, with 112 men to every 100 women, compared to the national ratio of 99:100. The Territory also has the youngest population of any state or territory, thanks to an over-65 group that makes up only 4.6% of the population (it’s 12-15% elsewhere in the country). Cirrhosis and other alcohol-related disease plays a part in this, but it’s also because many young people come to the NT to make quick money, then get the hell out – the Territory has a 7.8% gain from interstate migration, but also a 7.3% loss. At the same time, people in the Territory have more disposable income than anywhere else in Australia except the ACT, where income figures are distorted due to the high rate of politicians and pornographers. The capital, Darwin, is a humid, hot tropical city where all signage, transport and advertising attempts to direct you to outback wonders such as Kakadu National Park, the Devil’s Marbles and the Katherine region – anywhere but Darwin, really. In 1942 the Japanese bombed Darwin for no other reason other than the fact the place was an offence to Nature. On Christmas Day 1974, God sent a crushing cyclone for much the same reason. Third time round, Darwin remains a neat and modern city, at least until the Indonesians invade.
A look at Darwin’s many beaches, parks and wide open spaces clearly shows what the city’s favourite local activity is: public drinking. Statistics may show that Western Australia is by far the most alcoholic state in the nation, with 19% of people over 15 considered ‘high risk drinkers’, but the Australian Bureau of Statistics has no figures for the Northern Territory – ever. It’s a safe bet to assume that the Territory drinks WA under the table. This is the home of the ‘Darwin Stubbie’, a take-away beer bottle that can be as large as two litres.
In response to rampant sexual and child abuse, alcoholism and many other problems in remote Aboriginal communities you’ll probably never, ever visit, the Howard government implemented the Northern Territory Intervention. By Federal law, alcohol and pornography are banned here. We are not making this up.
Queensland
Queensland is a massive state full of contrasts. On the one hand it’s known for a separatist conservatism that sees a dearth of Sunday trading and any mention of daylights savings time either north or west of Rockhampton will certainly get you shot. On the other hand, its glorious coastline and Great Barrier Reef islands thrive on tourism, while the Gold Coast in the South is a mecca for bling boys and glamour girls, where the sex and underage drinking of ‘Schoolies’ season fills just a few weeks of a calendar full of tackiness.
The brochures tell you that Queensland is ‘Beautiful one day, perfect the next’, but unfortunately, no-one knows when either of those days will be. Save for the odd cyclone or flood and humidity you can drink through a straw, the weather’s great.
The state has an abundance of sporting heroes, but for a long time it was also known for its terrible education system. To compensate, the government put its faith in the power of positive thinking by having ‘The Smart State’ written on car numberplates. Historically, Queenslanders haven’t been too smart picking their elected officials. If politicians define their electorate, then Queensland, a spawning pool for right-wing crackpots, might have lived up to its popular portrait as axenophobic redneck wonderland. For example, more recently Senator Pauline Hanson bleated about the terrible plight of the oppressed minority of ‘White People’ who were rapidly losing their culture in the Asianisation and Aboriginalisation of Queensland.
The Queensland psyche is often aggressively parochial, with locals talking in terms of Us and Them, with them being southerners, outsiders, Mexicans, cockroaches and mincing botty bandits. Despite this, a huge number of ‘Mexicans’ move to Queensland, which is miles ahead of any other state in terms of net population increase from interstate migration. Consequently, the general level of xenophobia seems to have subsided in ‘Godzone’ (i.e. God’s own country) to the point that immigrants are no longer required to identify themselves with little blue arm bands, except perhaps in western regions of the state.
New South Wales
Let’s get something straight – there’s Sydney, and then there’s New South Wales. Sydney is Australia’s largest city, a global centre with incredible natural beauty and cosmopolitan vibe, but it needs to stop trying to convince the world it really matters because it’s just embarrassing the rest of the state. Honestly, to hear some Sydney wankers talk, you’d think they actually want Al Qaeda to bomb the place just to prove the city’s international significance. However if you are looking for a city with the pace of London, the modernity and diversity of Hong Kong, and the rudeness of New York, Sydney could be the place for you. Like LA, the city sprawls forever, takes all-comers and either makes or breaks dreams.
New South Wales is more than just Sydney, though. Australia’s most populous state actually has several sizeable and very pleasant commercial centres full of genuine people, from the surfing paradises of Newcastle and Wollongong to the New England charm of Armidale, the riverside rural charm of Wagga Wagga and the relaxed subtropical buzz of Tweed Heads. But most people you meet will be from Sydney, because Sydney lives large, fast and wild, kind of like a randy, coked-up Dawn French, then tosses out the crushed and spent bodies. NSW – largely thanks to Sydney – is the state with the largest net loss of residents to other states (41% of leavers go to the more relaxed Queensland). At the same time, NSW is the number one destination for overseas migrants because of more urban centres, plus the massive Villawood Immigration Detention Centre funnels a steady stream of cheap labour into nearby Sydney (be careful with the taxi drivers there).
Victoria
Victoria is ‘Australia mild’, a compact state the size of the UK that contains a themepark variety of riverlands, mountains, vineyards, quaint outback towns and urban sophistication, but without being separated by vast expanses of jungle, desert, cattle stations or beaches as big and featureless as Belgium. It’s the one state you could drive across without risking slow death by starvation or the elements if your radiator packs it in – how civilised. The capital, Melbourne, is a very European city, complete with turd-brown river trickling through the middle of it. Despite rumours of an aggressive underground breeding program, Melbourne remains Australia’s second-largest city after Sydney, yet it promotes itself as the fashion, shopping and culture capital of Australia and the sports capital of the universe. Melbourne constantly pushes itself as better than Sydney, although Sydney tends to ignore the claims and resentment because it feels it should only compare itself to the cool urban kids, like LA and Paris. Melbourne itself has a huge cultural diversity, although you can’t escape the influence of the predominant Italian and Greek migrant population – in fact, Melbourne has the third highest Greek population of any city after Athens and Thessaloniki. Melbourne is consistently ranked among the world’s most liveable cities. The only scary part is when you get up somewhere above it all (like a bridge, or a ladder) and look down on the grey, flat expanse and ask yourself if you didn’t escape the UK to get away from places that looked like this.
South Australia
Although the Poms nuked the hell out of South Australia in the 1950s, it’s really not so bad. Mind you, the vast bulk of the state is made up of desert mining towns where the women are hard as quartz and the men are as charming as ingrown toenails. The city of Adelaide and the surrounding regions of farmlands and vineyards are very different. Historically, the area is different to the rest of Australia because it was settled with large groups of Lutheran Germans and a complete absence of convicts. This appears to give the region some sort of cultural superiority over the rest of the country, despite the fact it’s all just one big swing of a whale’s tail from being washed away to Antarctica. This combination of unique history and geographic isolation has led to the parallel development of a robust bogan horde and a prominent society artistic and gourmet cognoscenti. Outsiders may tell you stories of bizarre group-conducted mass murders, but death here comes no more often than anywhere else in the country – just with more artistic flair and communal cooperation. Until then, Adelaide and the surrounding picturesque farm country provides a comfortable and diverse state of living that’s full of opportunity, largely thanks to a government that’s desperately trying to lure business and immigrants for fear that the region’s population will be reduced to trawling the sea for tuna while planning to invade WA. It’s a long way from that – if nothing else, South Australia floats along on the best wines and beers in the country.
ACT
The ACT is a federal territory that acts more like a self-governing cit y-state on the Greek model, especially as it’s so Spartan. It is composed of Canberra, a bunch of far-flung suburbs and sheep, and this tiny region known best for the ‘Five Ps’ – politicians, public servants, pyrotechnics, pot (marijuana) and porn. The latter three Ps are a result of the ACT’s odd and unique set of laws, the first two Ps are the reason for Canberra’s existence. You see, Canberra, the seat of national government, is a made-up place filled with overly verbose drama, much like Middle Earth. It’s the love child of a dummy spit between Melbourne and Sydney, as both cities wanted to be the capital of the new nation. In a King Solomon-like decision, a new Federal capital was built in between the cities in a dustbowl that’s arid and hot in summer and freezing and bleak in winter. Now it’s a city of ostentatious monoliths surrounded by open bushland and hordes of kangaroos that have to be rounded up, cornered and mown down by Defence Force contractors every other year. The good thing is that its remoteness and lack of attractions make it extremely uninviting for protest groups and terrorists, so it’s one of the safest capital cities in the world. Fortunately, it’s only a quick flight or a same-day drive to real cities like Sydney or Melbourne.
Western Australia
American astronauts have said that the capital of Western Australia, Perth, stands out as the brightest spot on the planet. This is largely because it is a city of energy-guzzlers surrounded by thousands of miles of nothingness (and black holes, such as Bunbury), yet many people in Perth have mistaken this to mean that Perth is the centre of the universe.
WA is gargantuan, more than ten times the size of the UK. Most of this area is complete rubbish for building houses, cottage gardens or football pitches, but underneath the sand and rocks and snakes there’s a fortune in mineral wealth that has made China WA’s bitch. In fact, with just 10% of the national population, WA generates 30% of Australia’s exports. Much of this wealth has drained into a few of the habitable places in the state, such as Perth, which has more millionaires than any other Australian city. Like Dubai, it’s a very remote place where an uncomplicated people have, over a short period of time, come into vast sums of money and have little class to show for it. Of course, as with Dubai, this hasn’t dissuaded UK migrants from flooding here. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see some cashed-up sons of Methodist Lancashire coal miners snorting their crushed-up crisps with a $100 bill in the bars of Northbridge as they build their own legend to rival that of The Scarlett Pimpernel, when the reality is that they’ve just spent the last six months sweating away in a uranium mine. In 2006 WA’s proportion of UK-born residents (11.3%) was nearly twice that of the national average – and the gap has no doubt widened more in the last three years.
While Perth and much of the south-western coastline of WA offers an idyllic climate, fantastic beaches and a comfortable lifestyle, the go-getter businessman may tear out hair over the locals’ complete abhorrence for all things Eastern (anything East of Kalgoorlie) and a work ethic to rival that of a fat housecat. They’ve got it good here, but unfortunately, they know it.
Tasmania
Tasmania is like Australia’s afterbirth – often discarded, despite being full of goodness. On the surface, Australia’s smallest state has some factors against it. First there’s the cold sea isolating it from the mainland (although some people will see this as a good thing) and it has an older average population than any other state, thanks to so many young people leaving before they succumb to stereotype by commencing sexual relationships with blood relatives out of sheer boredom and lack of opportunity. On the other hand, Tasmania has several of the country’s most astonishing wilderness areas, but without the crocodiles, water buffalo or cane toads that you get further north.
Tasmanians often talk about their state like it’s a separate country and commonly refer to people from anywhere else in Australia as “mainlanders”. There’s an ‘outsider’ complex, and although these isolated people are often accused of having two heads, that second skull-shaped lump is just the chip on their shoulder. Their current whinge is that the state should have its own team in the AFL, a proposal that no-one other than Tasmanians seem to take seriously.
Tasmania has a higher rate of Australian-born residents than any other states because many immigrants still think the place is all still a British prison, and consequently population growth and infrastructure development has been slow. Only early in 2009 the population for the entire state passed the half million mark for the first time, but many roads often go for miles then stop dead in the middle of a forest rather than actually linking towns.
Apart from a healthy tourism trade, Tasmania’s economy relies heavily on the more bucolic industries of logging, apples, dairy and opium (the world’s largest commercially grown crop). Some of the cheapest housing in the country, even in the rather sophisticated and pretty little capital of Hobart, helps create the feel of a down-market, cool-climate Bahamas for people who want to escape something.
