- [Announcer] A production of the South Carolin Educational Television Network.

- [Rick] Okay, you need to know that when Australians use this word to describe something Australian they don't say Aussie.

They say Aussie, like Ozzie and Harriet.

And when they talk about a docum they often shorten the word to j And since this documentary cover a lot of things Australian, but none too seriously, we thought it might best be call A Slightly Wacky Aussie Doco.

♪ All together now ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down, sport ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down, sport ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down ♪ - Kangaroos.

Australians think that Americans imagine kangaroos all over Australia, hopping up and down the streets taking children to school in Bri probably eating out of the America's Cup over in Perth.

And we Americans like to imagine this exotic land of strange anim as a weird and wonderful place, which it can be.

But actually, Australia is a lot like America, especially in its urban areas.

It's September of 1986, it's spring here in the Southern Hemisphere.

And I've come to Melbourne to cover the first Spoleto Arts Festival here.

And at the same time, I wanted to tell you about some of the little things and some of the big things that let you know you're in Australia and not in America.

The first thing is the driving.

The Australians, like the Englis drive on the left, or the wrong side of the road.

And that sounds terrifying at fi but you get used to it remarkabl What you don't get used to are these crazy right-hand turns you have to take in Downtown Mel If you look overhead, at every intersection, there's a sign that says right turn from left ahead.

That means in the city center of Melbourne, when you want to turn right, you have to get into the left ha move up into the middle of the intersection, staying on the left, and then when the light turns green for the cross traffic, you make your right-hand turn with the traffic that's flowing in the direction you want to go.

It's a little bit crazy, and I'm not sure I understand the logic of it, but it seems to work.

Only three or four cars seem to get through.

Here, we're gonna try it right n So we sit here even though the light is green, and the rest of the traffic is passing us by, and we wait until the light turns the other way.

Now, here we go.

The light has turned yellow.

It's red for us, but we're turning right across all lanes of traffic, straight up Bourke Street, which is one of the mai streets of Downtown Melbourne.

The city itself actually looks like most big American cities.

(upbeat music) - Melbourne's a city of about two and a half million very dull people, but it's a good town to live in.

I mean, if you wanna get stuck i you live in Melbourne, and you enjoy it.

- In some ways it's a funny city Weather-wise, the weather change about every two days.

It's sort of windy, it's sunny, it's raining, it's sunny again.

it's impossible to predict.

A flat sort of place geographica It's a good place to be, it's easy to get around.

We've got our famous trams here which are very fondly loved, and people trickle over the place on those.

- The favorite adjective for Melbourne is conservative, people always like to use it.

Rather that Manchester or Pittsb I imagine to be, that sort of gray place under gr And it's always raining somewher even in the middle of summer.

It's that sort of feeling that you get with Melbourne, It's an interesting place, but it's worthy, it's a sort of merchant city, it's a banker city, it's a businessman city.

- A lot of people talk about how conservative a city Melbourn but when you go to the Melbourne Tourist Agency, they tell you that the fines view of the city is from here: the men's room on the 35th floor of The Regent Hotel.

(graceful music) A great place to take a leak.

From high up in The Regent Hotel you can also get a good look at the Victorian Arts Centre.

This is where they held most of in Melbourne's first Spoleto Arts Festival.

As in Spoleto, Italy and in Charleston, South Carolin the festival here featured some Menotti operas as well as various performers an from around the world.

(graceful music) (graceful music continues) What was most different about the festival here was the accompanying Spoleto Fringe Festival, where young, mostly Australian a offered an incredible range of arts happenings, many of them very experimental, in various odd locations around (upbeat rock music) (performer singing) ♪ One ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one ♪ ♪ I'm only one in a million ♪ ♪ One in a million ♪ ♪ One in a million, one in a mil ♪ One in a million, one in a mil ♪ One in a million, one in a mil ♪ One ♪ (audience applauding) - [Rick] While some of this fringe stuff was what Australians might call a bit of a wank, one night at the Anthill Theatre in South Melbourne, we saw five guys from Sydney who call themselves Funny Storie Their show titled "Tablepiece" was unforgettable.

(audience laughing) - We really do have, I suppose, by most people's methods, a strange method of working.

We don't, we're serious about our work, but as I said, it's like what I said about the show, we laugh of it.

You keep a distance from it too, you have a bit of a laugh.

It's not sacred.

It's important, but it's not sac It's not a religion.

And we come up with an idea, someone thinks it's funny, it's We laugh, we work on it, we chan forget about it, drag it out aga And that's how ideas sort of come to the front.

(left performer speaking gibberi - No doubt about it!

(knuckles cracking) (audience laughing) - Scum!

Scum.

(grunts) Scum!

Scum.

Scum!

- Scum.

- Stand, Scum.

(left performer whimpering) (right performer laughing) Sit!

Stand.

(left performer whimpering) Sit down!

Stand.

(cackles) Sit.

Scum!

(right performer grunts) (left performer laughs) - Now piss off!

(laughs) (audience laughing) - [Rick] No matter what you're doing in Australia, going to the festival, hanging out at parties, or just wandering around, you've got to deal with the way the Australians speak English.

Often their accents and their odd choice of words can be just as interesting as what they're saying.

Tell us about Melbourne.

If someone hadn't been here, how would you describe this city - English, really.

In one word, it's rather Victorian English.

It was built sort of gold rush t it's very...

It's like sort of Brighton in En if anyone's been there, Sussex.

It's green, it's solid, it has lovely bookshops, lovely beautiful restaurants.

A reasonably multicultural socie a lot of Greek community, a lot of Italians, a lot of Chinese.

Apart from that, rather waspish.

- I have a couple of American friends who were, being a native, I really wasn't sort of as au fa with this perhaps as I should've But one tells me that she had just got used to the fact that shorts are called here Stub it's an actual brand name.

She just got used to that when some friends invited her on And they said, "We'll bring the Esky of stubbies."

And they were, this absolutely phased her because first of all she didn't know what an Esky was, which is a cooler.

And secondly, stubbies is also a small bottle of beer.

So she couldn't work out at all why they were bringing a cooler of shorts to a picnic, she couldn't cope with that one - [Rick] All over town, you notice odd but familiar sigh and find plenty of small differences in language.

Food that we'd call to-go is take-away here.

Breakfast is breaky.

Australians love to make silly w by adding E or O onto part of a - I mean, the prime minister, his name is Robert Hawke.

He's called Bob often enough, but he's also called Hawkey some Now, again, if his name was Hawk he would probably be called Hawk It's just a habit of changing people's names to possibly to give them a bit of character they wouldn't otherwise have.

- [Rick] Lots of words change.

Barbecue becomes barbie, and football is footy.

- What is footy?

It's not footy, footy.

Australian rules football.

Well, it's the best game ever in Australia.

It's all about two teams battle out all day to see who's gonna win.

(people laughing) What, do you wanna know more?

It's four posts, right?

The blokes, man in white, he bounces the bal He's knocked down by a big fella The big fella kicks the ball down to the bigger fella.

That pack flies, and the crowd, "Wow!

Fitzroy, dun-dun-dun!"

And then little man picks up, little man kicks down the goal!

Quinlan!

Wow!

The crowd roars, "Dun-dun-dun, F Yeah, that's it, the Lions, the Lions.

And then the man goes back, he lines up the big sticks.

It's two little sticks, two big He lines 'em up, bang.

It's a goal.

And that's footy.

The more goals you kick, you win - [Rick] So who do you root for?

- Who do I root for?

Fitzroy, the mighty Lions.

The flag.

- Next year's Premiers.

- Next year's Premiers, yeah, we lost today, but next year.

You always got next year - [Rick] Somebody told us you weren't supposed to say root, you're supposed to say barrack.

- Yeah, yeah, in Australia, you don't root for a team, you know, root, you barrack for a side, you know, you give your best, you barrack for a side.

You pick a side you barrack for, you don't root for any side.

- [Rick] Why not?

- You root for yourself.

- Football is, I suppose, the dominant sort of cultural th If you drove into Melbourne on any winter's day, you might see the billboards for the papers saying Pies eat D or Kangaroos slay Magpies, and you'd think, what a weird co And you won't find anybody in Me that hasn't got an opinion about the football.

Whether they love it or they hat they'll relate to it.

(spectators chattering) - The final match of the footbal is called the Grand Final.

It was held on September 27th.

We had to get out of our hotel because it had been booked solid for months.

We headed west out of Melbourne, got to the Great Ocean Road.

We came along to this little town of Lorne, or as they say here, Lorne.

This is the surfing capital of this part of the state.

And we were interested in this little hotel called the Lorne Hotel.

We were surprised to find that they had fully S.C. family Well, being a couple of guys from South Carolina, we were interested.

We later found out that that meant self-contained.

♪ Down on the beach ♪ (relaxing rock music) ♪ Saluting Captain Benbow ♪ ♪ Always out of reach ♪ ♪ It's quiet when the tide's low ♪ Climbing up the cliffs ♪ ♪ You can see for miles far ♪ ♪ The boat that ran adrift to th ♪ Is sitting on the sandbar ♪ ♪ Laughing at the waves ♪ ♪ Storm the river mouth ♪ ♪ The ice is on the move now ♪ ♪ Creeping north and south ♪ - As we drove along the Great Ocean Road the next day, we stopped often to see what we These sheep were grazing in fields that ended in cliffs that towered over the ocean.

(sheep baaing) We talked with other tourists, and eventually after Port Campbe we came to these offshore sand and limestone stacks known as The Twelve Apostles.

(relaxing music) (relaxing music continues) We watched the sun go down from a place called London Bridg Then after a night in a motel in the tiny town of Peterborough we saw some more incredible coas All along we were amazed at the total lack of commerciali No souvenir stands, no refreshme just the cliffs, the ocean, and the countryside.

(cheerful music) Still heading west after the town of Warnnambool, we came to Tower Hill, a nature preserve in the crater of an extinct volcano.

Here at Tower Hill, we came face to face with true A (cheerful music) This is an emu.

This is a moment ever crossword puzzle fan waits for, meeting an emu.

(cheerful music) - [Cameraman] Geez!

(laughs) - Emu poop.

(cheerful music) The emus were happy to stay at T but we moved on, stopping next in this homely little fishing village of Port Ferry, once the second largest port in There was no doubt that the post was the most beautiful building Not long after that, we turned n passing through Hamilton, the wool capital of the world.

Whenever you're out of the cities like this, Australians say you're in the bu (cheerful music) There are lots of farms and flat open fields in Victoria.

A lot of sheep too.

We spent our third night in Hami then drove on here, to the Grampian Mountains.

That's the small town of Halls G down there in the valley.

And we've spent our time here looking for koala bears.

They tend to sit with their bum in the crook of a tree, and it often helps to hav someone point them out to you.

(cheerful music) Later at a campground there in the Grampians, we met kangaroos.

The place is called Zumsteins, and semi-tame kangaroos come in late every afternoon to meet human beings, who always seem to have food.

(cheerful music) After those three days on the ro we had to get back to Melbourne for the last week of the Spoleto We interviewed Gian Carlo Menott the artistic director of the who And we kept busy videotaping plays and performances.

Mealtime seemed to be our only t (people chattering) The food in Australia is good, but it's hard to describe simply As in America, immigrants have influenced the cuisine here in a thousand different ways.

One day in North Melbourne we came upon this restaurant called The Great Australian Bite Our director and cameraman, Buck said this was the first restaurant we've been in that felt truly Australian.

Ron Hewitt is the proprietor.

- I've eaten kangaroo, yes.

I found it dry and uninteresting I think most food that's branded Australian is bastardized something else.

If I was to honestly describe the food here, it's Australian produce, but we use French methods in pre and things like that, but we don't carry anything to the nth degree here.

I still like, say, duckling to look and taste like I don't want it to look like it's been prepared by a Japanese and served sushi-style or something like that.

Morton Bay bugs were found originally in Morton Bay, in Sydney, or in New South Wales They're ugly.

They're one of the ugliest-looki things I've ever seen.

This is one that's been peeled, and fortunately that's off a fairly big one.

Now, before that was peeled, it would have a body about this and it's sort of flat, and then the tail comes out at t It looks like something from "St or something like that.

And they look like they'd stay on the bottom of the ground and sort of like a pool sweeper or a creepy-crawly.

Do you have creepy-crawly?

They look like that.

Eating out has become one of the of Melbourne people, 'cause there really isn't a lot of other things to do if there isn't a festival on.

(c (hypnotic music) - [Rick] But there was a festival going on.

Several festivals, in fact.

And the Fringe especially took a of Melbourne's many parks.

Angela Burke helped organize The - I really love Melbourne's park And I think they're quite, they're growing to be of more importance to people.

They were taken for granted for quite some time, I think.

But people are just starting to what an asset they are and to use them more fully.

I live over that way, and I actually work over this wa So whenever I come to work or whenever I ride to work, I actually have to go through all the parks of Melbourne, which is fantastic 'cause it's a really nice, soothing way to get to work.

Stroll through a park or wander through a park, and it's great.

(birds chirping) - When the festivals were over, we started for home but stopped for a day in Sydney.

(playful music) Now, some Australians will tell that Sydney is what Australia is all about.

It is the largest city here and maybe the most exciting.

It has a wonderful harbor bridge and an incredible natural settin with lots of coves and bays and and has an ease and an elegance that might be considered truly A And, of course, it does have the Opera House.

(playful music) Well, anyway, this so-called ope actually encloses several theaters, restaurants, and a movie house, among other t It's unquestionably the mos famous structure in Australia.

And sitting there on Bennelong P looking as though it might sail into the harbor itself, it makes that Victorian Arts Cen in Melbourne look meager.

We obviously compared Sydney to and there's a lot of rivalry bet Australians love to compare the two cities constantly.

- [Ron] If you're coming from overseas to Australia, come to Melbourne first because after Sydney, it's a bit of a le I hate to say that.

Sydney, I've lived in Sydney, and Sydney's just got, as far as I'm concerned, more going for it as far as visu I'm talking about scenery now, not so much buildings, except they've got the Opera Hou - [Interviewee] Melbourne is known as the cultural city.

It's known to be conservative, which is different to Sydney, which is much more upfront, much Great place for a holiday.

- Well, our last hours there in it started to rain.

So we stopped in a grocery store for some last-minute provisions for the trip home.

And we found that candy here is called lollies.

And there's lots of unusual cand Lollies is just the tip of the i as far as adding I-E-S on the end of a word is concerned.

We found Smarties, Minties, and for a little cough, Throatie We also found that some items, similar though different, do it the other way.

In America we have Rice Krispies Here they have Rice Bubbles.

We also found some familiar-looking soda, Tab, only here it's not called low-calorie soda, it's called low joule cola, joule being another term for cal And we also had to buy a jar of this mysterious substance that's so popular here in Australia called Vegemite.

Australians have a love-hate relationship with this stuff, and nobody seems to know what exactly it's made from.

- Vegemite.

Actually, it's not made from vegetables, I believe.

It's made from beef bones and ma It's supposed to be very good fo I was brought up on it.

- Vegemite.

Well, it's considered one of Australia's national dishes.

I think it's really horrible stu Rumor has it, it's made from the of the Kraft factory floor, and I can believe it.

Now, I think it's terrible.

And I myself use something calle which is a terribly healthy version of Vegemite.

- It's good to spread on toast, and it's good for sandwiches, and we all like it in Australia.

We, you know, take it to school on a sandwich and have it for lunch and all th We have it for in the morning on 'cause spread it on the toast wi And then you have it kinda like a sandwich, and it's all right.

Yeah, I reckon it's real good.

- Vegemite is the worst stuff, it's terrible.

Do you wanna know what it's made It's made from the leftover of b That's what it comes from.

And I hate it, it's too salty, u - There's too much salt in it.

- [Rick] And what is it made fro - I don't know, really.

I just eat and hope for the best just 'cause it's real good.

(bright music) ♪ They're happy little Vegemites ♪ As bright as bright can be ♪ ♪ They all enjoy their Vegemite ♪ For Breakfast, Lunch and Tea ♪ ♪ Because they love their Vegemi ♪ They all adore their Vegemite ♪ It puts a rose in every cheek - [Announcer] After 60 years, Vegemite is still one of the world's richest sources of vitamin B.

♪ It puts a rose in every cheek - [Rick] Somewhere between the grocery store and the airport, I lost that jar of Vegemite, but we got back to South Carolina with 87 videotapes full of these electronic picture and you've just seen bits of mos I keep saying we, but I'm just Rick Sebak, and I need to say that me mates on this trip down under were Buc the director and cameraman, responsible for all the slightly wacky images here.

We also worked together editing this rambling half-hour.

Carroll Senn was our engineer and audio man for the 26 days in Australia.

And we've got lots of unused ima that we couldn't squeeze into this program.

So now before it's over, we wanna thank Tom Fowler, our executive producer, Suzie Howie Publicity in Melbour WWGO Radio and Papa Jazz Records here in Columbia, as well as lots of great new friends in Australia and marsupials everywhere.

♪ All together now ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down, sport ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down, sport ♪ ♪ Tie me kangaroo down ♪