Outside the Melbourne Tennis Centre at the tram stop, packed tight among half-drunk Aussies who’d just poured out of a late Australian doubles win at the Australian Open, I heard the chant begin. Someone on our platform shouted out “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!”, and from the opposite platform the crowd took up the reply: “Oy! Oy! Oy!” Encouraged, the whole of our platform roared back “AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE!”, and we were off, belly laughing, our heads thrown back for better projection, screaming the words, our identity, our sea-girt selves, as if we’d all been in the sunburnt country a thousand years, rooted like the eucalypts. The platform trembled and we stamped harder, a pack, a people. I was Australian then.
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