2015-03-25
Alex Schlotzer
It's more than just which football code you follow. And it isn't what you'd expect.
We started out in Queensland. It became clear after speaking to a few people in Queen St Mall that if it was something New South Wales or Victoria were doing, they didn't want anything to do with it. One gentleman insisted, “This is another one of those crazy ideas from down south like daylight savings, hey. The sooner we become our own country the better, hey.”
A couple walking past said, “Why would we need to go south? It's beautiful one day, perfect the next,” without the slightest hint of irony or sarcasm. (Interviews scheduled on the Gold Coast had to be abandoned with the locals chasing me out with peroxide-fuelled torches chanting “no more schoolies”, “the beaches are full” and “rail ruins rainforests”.)
The coffee question
As I moved down the coast, the rift seemed to grow more bitter with signals pointing me to the hipster hang outs throughout Sydney. With only a 60 minute trip proposed between Sydney and Melbourne, in café after café, the owners were up in arms.
Each café owner I spoke to insisted that High Speed Rail would kill Sydney's café scene and therefore result in Australia's economic ruin. One café owner, no matter the question I asked, just repeated, “High Speed Rail… it'll ruin us… simply ruin us all. How can we compete with the superior coffee in Melbourne?”
But one café owner said she was taking a stand. “High Speed Rail might see our coffee snobs head south but we don't have to take that lying down. I've already spoken to potential suppliers — if we can't stop the train line going ahead, we'll just bring the Melbourne cafés to Sydney.”
Leaving Sydney, I headed for Canberra to find out how such reports would be received by Green Party strategists. “Look, we are deeply worried about these reports," said one. "It'll be no good if our Sydney activists are drinking smooth delicious coffee in Melbourne. But right now we're having sushi.“ Another said, “Can we do this later over some chardonnay?”
But since time was short and with a deadline looming, I headed across the border and onto Victoria's capital Melbourne. Expectations were high that here High Speed Rail would be embraced with rejoicing for a more sustainable mass transport system.
Alas these expectations were dashed.
After visiting the many coffee hang outs in Melbourne it was clear, the State's hipsters were unhappy with High Speed Rail. Laneway after laneway, hipsters and coffee snobs bemoaned that their beloved java spots would be overrun by Sydney-siders.
One hipster, whose moustache was strangely not waxed, claimed, “Look if we have High Speed Rail all these Sydney people will be like flooding into our cafes — I won't be able to get my single origin short black.”
A woman nearby said, “Melbourne is fuelled on coffee. If we can't get our soy chai latte, productivity is going to plummet.”
A prominent academic, who wished to remain anonymous, agreed, telling me, “It's true. Melbourne really is fuelled on coffee and more importantly coffee snobbery. It's a delicate balance and if it's upset by High Speed Rail bringing Sydney hipsters to Melbourne for superior coffee, it will result in a collapse of Melbourne's productivity, and ruin Australia's economy.”
But the café owners I spoke to thought it'd lead to a boom for Melbourne. One owner said, “High Speed Rail will bring more customers and it'll be a relief to serve Sydney coffee snobs. They don't have the same taste for quality coffee like Melbourne coffee snobs.”
Farmers' fury
Meanwhile, throughout rural parts of the country, farmers bemoaned that High Speed Rail would do irreparable damage, especially for dairy cattle. One farmer tracked me down at the local to tell me, “This High Speed Rail thing is crap. It'll make my cattle dizzy watching that thing whizz by at high speeds. And if my cows are dizzy the milk will be sour. You can't take curdled milk and sour cheese to the market!”
Thinking that this story had been told I was alerted to rumblings in the nation's west.
Across South Australia and Western Australia the story was the same but not because of coffee snobbery. Town after town came out telling me that once again they'd been left out and forgotten because they weren't living on the East Coast. One person said firmly, “We don't care about the coffee. It's about the East Coast getting more infrastructure. The only infrastructure we build around here is for the mines — hardly helping us little people.”
In Perth, by contrast, the concern was beaches and tourism. "Melburnians generally come to Perth for decent beaches, primarily to avoid having to deal with Sydney coffee snobs," said an ice-cream vendor from Fremantle. "There's not much difference between a two-hour flight and a four-hour flight. But if they can just jump on a train to Sydney's beaches, we're stuffed. Even if our beaches are superior."
And in South Australia, the situation was even more dire. One disgruntled voter confessed, “It's disgusting. We can't get a decent cup of coffee now, we still can't if High Speed Rail doesn't come through South Australia and there won't be any hot Melburnians on the WA beaches any more during the holidays. it's a disaster all round."
Unfortunately High Speed Rail has become a victim of its own success. While we may think it's just a sensible policy for a more sustainable mass transport system, clearly the country's tourism operators, hipsters, coffee snobs and café owners know better and are rising up against the policy. Who knows what sensible policy will be next?
This story was commissioned especially for our April 1, 2015 Green magazine. Any issues with factual accuracy should be taken up with our Fool's Day Coordinator.