Good Or Shit: Australia Day

She didn't roll my bloody Coopers. When I walk into an Australia-themed bar appropriately/inappropriately/ironically/amusingly named Walkabout, manned by Australians taking advantage of the UK's Tier 5 Youth Mobility Scheme, I expect them to remember that before popping the cap, a Coopers green should be lovingly rolled before handed over to an Australian who has not forgotten where they come from. 

It was the first disappointment of the day. Australia Day – Invasion Day – First Fleet Day – 1788 Day – Colonisation Day – call it what you will, the reality is that the 26th of January is, more than anything else, to contemporary Australians – Hottest 100 Day.

Oh how I wanted to be sitting in the sweltering heat knocking back Coopers with my ethnically hybridised friends and shouting “I knew this song would make it” or “I can't BELIEVE this song is on here” and eating a variety of introduced foods and a few native ones too. Alas, I was in London, and so, as the 26th drew nearer, a friend and I set about looking for an event that would replay the Hottest 100 in our time zone.  And this is how we ended up at the Shepherd's Bush Walkabout, a place we had avoided like an old school friend you never really liked and was now wandering around the same supermarket as you.

To find the place, all we had to do was follow the mullets. A sea of 10-90's (10 at the top, 90 at the back) flooded into a large open-plan venue where corrugated iron had been slapped over every surface except the bar-tops. We were practically choking on Australian clichés – hats with corks dangling from them, flannelette shirts, blue chesty bonds singlets and hairy armpits, roos, koalas, flags, flags, flags, wallabies jerseys, waratahs jerseys, Bintang apparel (haha...hahaha), and more green and gold than you'd find in Leprechaun Land. Basically, if I'd had a sheep, I would have sheared it.

What wasn't to be seen or heard was the Triple J Hottest 100 which I thought was just fucking un-Australian. But I guess I can see where they were going with their all-Australian playlist. All-Australian being defined as 'popular Australian-band tunes and anything by the Finn brothers' (as thousands of people sang 'everywhere you go, you always take the weather' I had to have a little chuckle. None of us had brought the weather to England). The Living End, Wolfmother and Jet got more plays here than they have back home in years. Paul Kelly and Hunters and Collectors would appear to have some of the best known choruses and least known verses in the current 18-35-year-old age bracket. And a cover band turned Estelle's American Boy into Australian Boy – 'take me to Kings Cross, I want to see Cockle Bay' and something about bushwalking.

Instead of shouting “I knew this song would make it”, I found myself dryly enquiring how long it would be before they played Hilltop Hood's Nose Bleed Section (it was within the first hour).  

I'm not gonna' lie, we walked in to the Walkabout expecting to hate on it. And we did. But when Johnny Farnham played, when that voice sang The Voice, we threw our fists in the air, we got our air-mic's out, we raised our collective voices, and we stopped walking up and down the stairs on the right-hand side because in that moment, this tiny little piece of England became Australia, and Australians STAND TO THE LEFT.

At one point, Hunters and Collectors Holy Grail played. I turned to one of the girls in our party and said “who sings this again?” She looked at me suspiciously and said “Are you sure you're Australian?” It's pretty much what I wanted to say to the bar chick who didn't roll my Coopers.