Fish Up Your Skirt (travel)

“Excuse me, are those fish up your skirt?”

This was, I suspect, what was said after a customs official at the Melbourne airport heard “flipping” noises from underneath a woman’s dress. Upon further investigation it was discovered that, indeed, the woman was attempting to smuggle fifty-one live fish into Australia by stuffing them up her skirt.

This is the most recent news article I've received on Australia and it's only one of many that include, in a quick rundown: an arsonist caught working for a fire brigade, a casino blackmailed with chocolate bars, and an unfortunate incident that occurred when Sydney police accidentally sent images of child pornography to 1,800 local schools over the internet.

These are just the highlights, of course. Certainly the most famous news to come from Australia in the past two years is the confirmation that a dingo really ate someone’s baby back in the 1980s. This comes after the accused mother was jailed, divorced and made to suffer an onslaught of sitcoms that used her suffering cry (“a dingo ate my baby!”) to get a few good laughs when, it turns out, a dingo really did.

Such is the nature of Australia though: cruel, quirky, and consistently original. Sure, the country has its history and culture, its famous books and painters like every other nation, and for the most part I’ve tried to include all that in these pages, too, but if you’re just as interested in women who smuggle fish up their skirt, then this is the book for you.

Then there is New Zealand, whose history not only involves a hefty supply of cannibals and deadly geysers (the world’s most deadly at that), but a nice set of public toilets in the Northland that is, rather quaintly, the country’s most admired art piece to date. Of course, there are the glowworms, too, and a preposterous amount of sheep in New Zealand, and fewer countries in the world have done more to promote new uses for the bungee cord than this South Pacific nation, which alone makes it quite an interesting place to learn about.

I’ve included it all in here, as much as I could at least. All of the facts are factual, all the truths are truthful, and the opinions shared are just that. When it comes to absolute specifics with dates and names I’ve been as accurate as my research will let me be--though it seems that no one can agree on whether Melbourne’s first name was Batman or Batmania (including Melbournians) or whether the last Tasmanian Aborigine died in 1876 or 1888.

But that’s as far as my disclaimer will go. Anything else is entirely my fault, and that’s all right with me.

Enjoy.


(Preface to The Dingo, the Baby, and Other Misadventures)