SOUTHERN
HEMISPHERE
Daily Telegraph - April 2007
The other day a building under construction in western Sydney was described
by its developers as the “largest pre-fabricated concrete residential
tower in the southern hemisphere”.
This is some boast, and hearing it I was struck by two thoughts: firstly, our
claims to regional supremacy seem to be growing increasingly desperate and,
secondly, images of disappointed construction magnates in Bolivia and Angola
cursing themselves after been beaten to this holy grail of engineering technology.
Just what is it about the southern hemisphere and our claims over it that inspires
such orgies of national self-congratulation? Why does beating world powers in
the league of Vanuatu and Chile seem to fill Australians with such a sense of
satisfaction?
No claim to hemispherical superiority is, it seems, too trivial when our national
pride is at stake, no town free of its own half-world records. Junee, for instance,
in south-western NSW, has the largest railway roundhouse in the southern hemisphere,
while Busselton, Western Australia, boasts the “longest wooden-planked
jetty”.
Membership to the prestigious “southern club” is jealously guarded,
and rightly so - I'd like to see New Zealand or Zambia try to take on Logan,
Queensland, and its claim to the “largest single level shopping centre”.
As it stands, however, I fear the current system is still too unregulated. After
all, it's not just anybody who should be able to claim, as does one Sydney company,
that they are the “largest timber door manufacturer in the southern hemisphere”.
The potential pitfalls are obvious. Where is the International Timber Door Accreditation
Body based? How can we be sure that it's making the appropriate checks on the
size of the timber door industry in far-flung territories such as Botswana and
Paraguay? Or is the wording of the company's slogan deliberately ambiguous and
do they merely manufacture really big doors for medieval castles and the like?
It is not only our nation's manufacturers and tourism industry who benefit from
being the best of a really mediocre lot. It is comforting to know that in this
era of global educational competition many departments of our nation's universities
are, according to almost all their websites, proud to be the “best in
the southern hemisphere”. It's a standard of education the likes of which
Papua New Guinea might only dream. As they taught me at the Australian National
University – “number one for chemistry citations in the southern
hemisphere” - keep reaching for the stars.
Years ago these displays of Australian parochialism would have driven me to
the brink of uncontrollable rage. These days, I find them almost charming -
like a relative you love who can't stop talking about the time he was picked
to play under-21s for the Roosters in the mid-70s.
Australia might not be the best at everything in the world, but when it comes
to self-congratulation all hemispheres bow before us.
© Brendan Shanahan 2008