In that year, across the full range of possible interests - politics, sport, travel, the coming Olympics in Sydney, food and wine, the arts, obituaries and so on - the New York Times ran 20 articles that were predominantly on or about Australian affairs. I began with the 1997 volume for no other reason than that it was open on the table. Just before I set off on this trip I went to my local library in New Hampshire and looked up Australia in the New York Times Index to see how much it had engaged attention in my own country in recent years. As you might expect, this is particularly noticeable when you are resident in America. It doesn't have coups, recklessly overfish, arm disagreeable despots, grow coca in provocative quantities or throw its weight around in a brash and unseemly manner.īut even allowing for all this, our neglect of Australian affairs is curious. From time to time it sends us useful things - opals, merino wool, Errol Flynn, the boomerang - but nothing we can't actually do without. Its population, about 19 million, is small by world standards - China grows by a larger amount each year - and its place in the world economy is consequently peripheral as an economic entity, it is about the same size as Illinois. Australia is, after all, mostly empty and a long way away. The fact is, of course, we pay shamefully scant attention to our dear cousins Down Under - though not entirely without reason, I suppose.
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