A Letter To Australia, I Am So Sorry, But It’s Time To Sever The Ties.

To my beloved Oz,

I am writing this furtive letter to you from outside the country while residing in a charming hostelry in the heart of the Arab quarter of Singapore. I know you will think me cowardly doing it this way but really I couldn’t face the prospect of a face-to-face confrontation, which in a way I know you would have triumphed.

You see, I am finally leaving you.

Believe you me, this was no easy decision to make for, had we sat down and discussed this distressing state of affairs face to face you would have, as usual rolled out your cunning temptations to persuade me to stay. The wonderful beaches, the jaw droppingly beautiful countryside of Northern New South Wales, our dear Aussie friends and the glorious weather that you lay on so liberally.

After our trial separation over the last three years I know you thought that there was a chance, albeit slim, that we could reconcile our differences and put them aside and once again have a close union of mind and body.

I realized soon after briefly 'getting back together' that not even the barbeques and parties you so liberally laid on, the magnificent weather that you so cleverly arranged, even in the wet season and the revival of the Australian cricket team's fortunes were sadly not enough.

You see, after all of this time  apart I came to realize that your shortcomings were too firmly entrenched in my psyche for me to once again adapt to the thought of living together. I feel that this letter should be a little brutal in laying out the reasons why we can no longer be bedfellows so to speak.

Perhaps now is the time to lay bare a few home truths about your attitude that often borders on arrogance. Yes, I know that over the years you have treated me kindly. You accepted me as an immigrant and allowed me to flourish in business as well as building a platform for both my daughter’s excellent education. You laid out the wonders of the entire country for me to explore and savor but in the end, even that was not enough.

My disillusionment began when, late last year I arrived back to what I hoped would be a loving and trusting relationship. On Arrival, my dreams were shattered when you treated me, after my brief liaison with another county like a scorned and jilted lover and seemed  determined to punish me for my dalliance with an Asian beauty.

That gentlemen you so cunningly planted at immigration treated me with such contempt that I felt like something akin to a piece of detritus that had attached itself to the sole of his shoe. Once the exhausting rigors of explaining my appalling lapse in judgment for fraternizing with one of our Asian neighbours, I was finally allowed entry to tread the soil of the big brown land. I celebrated with a coffee at a mediocre barista within the confines of the airport, "served' by a woman who I  believe hates her current profession with a passion

A slap in the face was handing over $6.20 for a mug of something that almost resembled coffee and turned out to be a mug of disapointment. Next, it was off to the car park, stopping on the way to deposit a king’s ransom into the ticket machine to retrieve a friend’s vehicle. $47.00 for 55 minutes must surely border on highway robbery! $55 out of pocket, even before I left the airport was hardly the loving welcome I expected after travelling halfway around the world to rekindle our love affair.

Once again your underhanded financial trickery was already in evidence! Driving past infrastructure projects still under construction now years overdue, I decided to distract my prevailing sense of dread by tuning into the national broadcasting corporation to try and catch up on what has been happening in my absence.

Politicians seem to be in full voice slinging insults at the opposition and the opposition slinging them back with vitriolic vigour. The voices remain the same only the deckchairs seemed to have changed in Canberra. I listen as the government tells of foolhardy schemes that will cost billions, flinging taxpayers money about like drunken guests scattering confetti at a wedding.

I slip into despair. In a fit of pique late last year we sold the family home and even then you attempted to trip us up with a host of fees and charges for registering the sale that were, quite frankly crippling. The same applied to the fees for selling my car after religiously paying such charges for the last five years. More lashes for my infidelity it seems.

You ‘detain’ thousands of poor souls in remote detention centres in hostile environments for years simply for having the audacity to attempt to come by boat to a country that might just offer sanctuary from their war torn homelands.

You seem incapable of forming a cohesive government with the sitting government now having to do ‘deals’ with xenophobic minor senators whose sole aim is to keep Australia ‘white.’

The final straw was perhaps the signs that cling like limpets to poles lining the streets all bearing the same message.... Don’t! Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other etc. All threatening huge fines, imprisonment and I suspect even the death sentence.

The print media too has slipped from mediocre to just plain bad and would now be worthy of a Marvel comic. And so you see my love, I can no longer abide the way you treat me, even after luring me back with what turned out to be false promises. Yes, I will miss you from time to time but then I shall remember that the Wallabies rugby team has not won a Bledisloe Cup for fourteen long years and, after a few days discover that you have surreptitiously introduced another lucrative and crippling tax into the mix without me even knowing.

So, sadly I bid you farewell and you will hear from my lawyers in due course. Much love as always.

Paul v Walters is a best selling author of several novels and while not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali he scribbles for several international travel and vox pop journals. His next offering Asset will be released in late 2017 . ( barring procrastination of course )