Legal alien

I was in the supermarket the other night paying for my broccoli, capsicum, bananas, bread & milk the other night and the checkout chick does her usual "How's your day been?" bit and I say fine and mention the weather and we're both happy for being so polite to one another. Then I get out my card to pay and she says "So, you're a Victorian". At first I thought my accent had given it away but no, my credit card has the name of my Victorian banking establishment on it. I said "Yes, I am from Victoria," and she did some kind of head-shaking thing and said "You're lucky... we don't hate Victorians as much as we used to." What a relief, I thought... she might have got all nasty and packed the bread under the milk or something. But I just sighed to myself because it's getting really tired. It's like South Australians (or maybe it's just Adelaideans) all have this inferiority complex about Victoria. And I don't know why she had to say anything anyway. She was about 17 so must have been brought up to believe there's some rivalry between our states. And it's not like she was having a go at me but why bring it up in the first place? I obviously live here now; if I'd been here for a party or a mad state-trashing holiday I would have been buying plastic cups, corn chips and condoms, not stuff for my stir fry. There is a real attitude presented in the media here about SA being as good as the eastern states. It seems to be a type of manufactured identity. I remember when I first spent time over here in the mid 90s there was this 'Spirit of South Australia' campaign on one of the commercial TV networks. I really noticed that there was all this huffing and puffing about how great this state was. And I knew that while I identified myself as a Victorian, I didn't need to be, or didn't ever remember being told that I should be really really proud of this by a TV newsreader. A few years later, when the Grand Prix moved from Adelaide to Melbourne, South Australians were incensed, and the 'Kick a Vic' campaign was born. My timing may be out of course, it may have had to do with State of Origin Football, and the premise that it was sport-related makes a lot of sense (I think car racing is more spectacle than sport) but South Australians are still really bitter about the Grand Prix thing. South Australians are fiercely parochial and seem to think that parochialism is a really good thing. Well, it's not. It's another way of saying you have narrow views, that you don't or won't look outside your own little world. There is a perception that this is a bit of rivalry between SA and Vic but here they act with surprise or disbelief when you tell them that it doesn't really exist in Victoria. The only rivalry I remember growing up was whether Sydney or Melbourne had the better arts community. (Melbourne had Barry Humphries, Sydney had Ken Done paintings of the Sydney Opera House/Harbour Bridge.) I used to think SA was kind of cool with its different-colored number plates and curious road markings. To illustrate this, check out this poll at the Footy SA site. I'm not saying that a majority of people want to keep the Kick-a-Vic thing alive, they may just want the games to continue but the fact that the question was even worded that way connotes that there is a will to keep a campaign of hostility alive, all in the name of state pride. (If you do follow the link, the second comment kind of makes my point). Now, I chose to come and live here. I like it here. Adelaide is a fine city. I have great memories here. I went to Uni here; I fell in love & got married here. Sure, it's a bit sleepy sometimes (okay... most of the time) but that's all part of its charm. By comparison to Melbourne or Sydney it probably is boring. Why can't South Australians just accept this and move on? This is not the most exciting city in the world. It has problems. It only just liberalised its shopping hours but even then looks like being a ghost town this Christmas. (When I moved here it was Easter. I had to wait till my fourth day here before I could buy food from a supermarket.) But it is what it is. It's not any better than it is but it's not any worse. Yet it seems to want to compare itself to the eastern states and get one up here and there as a way of justifying its own propaganda. And I'm sorry, I just don't get it. So if anyone has a problem with the fact that I'm a Victorian, it's all yours.