In the hometown of Mel Gibson and the fantastic pie floater

ADELAIDE, South Australia – Since so few in the Philippines (who know only Sydney, Melbourne, and, perhaps the Gold Coast) have any idea of the importance of Adelaide – a.k.a. The City of Churches – I’m compelled to be simplistic. It’s the hometown of one of the world’s most famous movie stars – Mel Gibson.

Ever since Gibson produced The Passion of The Christ – which critics thought would bomb at the box office, but instead became one of the biggest hits outside of Harry Potter, Titanic, and The Return of the King – he’s become the maverick icon of Hollywood. Yet, when he comes "home" to recharge his batteries in that suburb of Adelaide where he was born, now called Mitcham City – near where he still owns large tracts of property – he’s just one of the boys.

The star of BraveHeart, The Patriot, and We Were Soldiers grew up in a fiercely Catholic district here, which explains his devotion to The Greatest Story Ever Retold.

Indeed, Adelaide – which was founded in 1836, and named after an obscure English queen by Colonel William Light, just before the first wave of settlers was "sent" to South Australia to populate the environs of the Murray River – is full of Church steeples, of every Christian denomination.

People here, however, are less than prayerful in the main. Blessed with a Mediterranean climate, wonderful food, and terrific wine (it’s the heartland of Australia’s wine country), it’s full of fine restaurants around Rundle Street and Gorges street, and moreover has its calendar studded with vivacious festivals. (Not to mention two husky "Aussie Rules" football teams which make the nationals.)

Renowned for its University of Adelaide, and numerous private and Catholic schools and colleges, it is very much a university town, noisy at times with student frolics, but very sedate in the main.

Which is why we’re here. Not for the frolics, but to visit my wife ‘Precious’ doctoral dissertation mentor, Professor J.J. George Smolicz, of the university’s Center for Intercultural Studies and Multicultural Education.

George had been ill recently, and we wanted to remind him that his friends in Manila hadn’t forgotten him. Among them, of curse, is our Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Domingo Albert, who was, by the way, our Ambassador to Canberra (Australia) for several years.

Precious flew to Sydney from Wellington, New Zealand, where she had been participating in a week-long planning session of Asia’s UNESCO Secretary Generals (she’s our Ambassador to UNESCO, and they were drawing up the agenda for the next worldwide Biennial Congress in Paris).

Her sad report was that near Wellington, at the site where the blockbuster trilogy of The Lord of the Rings movies (the last segment, having copped the coveted Oscars at the Academy awards), the New Zealand government had short-sightedly ordered the place "cleaned up", with all the movie-makers’ castles, fortresses, battlegrounds, and all traces of "Middle Earth" removed. Gee whiz? Did those over-zealous New Zealand politicians and leaders never hear of Disney Land, Disney Sea, and the other theme parks around the world, which attract millions of tourists annually (22 million to Tokyo Disney Land alone, per annum)?

Sanamagan: If that Lord of the Rings theme park had been advertised instead of torn down, so many Ring-wranglers and Tolkien-lovers would have arrived to relive those box office busting sagas that South island might have sunk under their weight, into the Pacific deep sleepy New Zealand, to the disgust of the Maoris (their tongues sticking out in resentment) might have become known as the Home of Hobbits, Elves, Kings, Magic Swords, Monsters and Magic. Oh, well. As the magic fades, I guess, it’s back to the sheep farms, for our friends, the Kiwis. Perhaps in their majestic, green-grassed isolation (smack in the middle of Nowhere in the Pacific) they prefer it that way.

* * *

George took us to lunch in the Adelaide Club, one of the last remaining bastions of The Establishment, where England’s tradition of upper-caste membership clubs (horrors, no women please in The Library) is rigidly maintained. There’s a mournful stuffed lion in the foyer, the King of Beasts reduced to impotence by the taxidermist. On each wall are the cuirasses and helmets and swords of the Egyptian Cavalry.

Dr. Smolicz also invited us to tea and Russian cake in his charming suburban home, full of relics of his travels plus inherited treasures of his royal Belarussian heritage (their princely estates had been seized by the Germans, then confiscated by the Soviets), and George had spent years in The Gulag, then in exile in London and Inverness, Scotland.

We reminisced about old times, including the weeks we spent together in Warsaw and Krakow, but he tired easily and needed his rest. George’s message to his numerous friends in Manila and as far south as Leyte is that he greets them all affectionately, but, reluctantly he admitted, "George is not well."

We hugged him fondly, and I promised to come get him next October, for a sentimental journey to his native Poland. (He’s distantly related, if it must be told, to the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, papa Wotyla).

* * *

Adelaide is not far from Sydney. We were flown there efficiently by Qantas on a Boeing 737 – a very smooth one-hour-and-40-minute journey.

At the Sydney airport, I had paid a courtesy call to the Men’s Room. Above you, as you stand at the pissoir, you’ll find a sign which greets you: "HI, BIG FELLA – HOW’S YOUR LITTLE FELLA?"

Underneath, a blurb informs you that you can be helped if you’re experiencing "erection problems". The advert cheekily advised, giving you a telephone number: "Just ask for a Performance Pack." "Disabled Toilet"? Nope. That advice was meant for the supposedly healthy, but possibly undergoing . . . uh, personal disability problems, or plagued by lack of confidence and performance. Now, what was that number?

In Australia, I must say, there’s never a dull moment.

We were met at the airport by my niece, Ms. Amelia Tagorda Apolinario, dance guru and confidante in the past to many of our movie and singing greats, like Pilita Corrales, Nora Aunor, and a host of others. She’s active in Filipino affairs here, but operates a dance studio, among other enterprises. (She’s remarried, but was once married to Romy Jalosjos, and their son Romy here has become an outstanding Australian chef – in fact, he’s preparing a kangaroo steak for Uncle Max tonight.) That’s the advantage of us Saluyots – Ilocanos have cousins everywhere – we’re classified as the Kamag-anak ng Bayan.

In fact, when we checked into the posh Hyatt Regency Hotel here, which has the "Casino" and is beside the Adelaide Railway station (although soundproof to the noise of trains), we found that the gentleman in charge of room service originally came from Bacarra, Ilocos Norte. This was Mr. Francisco Nakar. Our room attendant, Mrs. Priscilla de Jesus Staltari (she’s married to an Italian) comes from Valenzuela, Bulacan, and graduated, incidentally, from Philippine Normal College.

Pinoys and Pinays are everywhere on this planet, including in endangered Saudi Arabia. Last year, when we were in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Bahrain (just across the King Fuad Causeway from just-attacked Khobar City), we met hundreds of Filipino in private bull-sessions, with our women OFWs, including doctors and nurses, forced to wear those all-enveloping black gowns, the Abaya, and covering their heads with scarves and veils.

In Australia, where we have about 60,000 Filipino-Australians, everybody’s free to do what he or she chooses – just be sure to pay taxes. The Taxman reigns supreme here, but you can see exactly where your money is going.

As for Sydney, where most of our Filipinos live, our compatriots have brought over the good and the bad. The "bad" including the crab mentality. But what the heck. Australians complain that they have it, too, sometimes.

It’s known as the "Tall Poppies Syndrome".

* * *

In any event, it’s a delight to be back in Adelaide, which is a charming city of 1.4 million population.

They’re more laid back, comfortably "rural", easy-going and hospitable here. And I can get my favorite from the days long gone of my youthful wanderings here in Oz, the mouth-watering "pie floater!" (No vegemite for me, Mate – it’s a Balfours, if y’please).

Starting at 6 p.m. in front of our Hyatt hotel on the North Terrace, I was happily surprised to still find, as traditionally parked, "The Great South Australian Pie" cart – you know, one of those little eateries on wheels that are pulled out at four o’clock in the morning. For a mere Australian $4.80, the young man at the counter will whip you up a "floater". South Australians have developed their own version of the national dish, the humble meat pie. They float the meat pie in a bowl of hot pea soup, then add tomato sauce, pungently called "dead horse". South Australians refer to "pie floaters" as food fit for the gods. You can bet, it’s fit for me!

The everyday version of the Aussie meat pie has the pie served up in a paper-bag, squirted with ketchup (tomato sauce). Down Under, dinkum Aussies consume 260 million of these meat pies per year.

Yeah, and one million of them daily eat Big Macs and other fattening burgers daily at McDonald’s.

In Adelaide, too, you can slake your thirst with the best wines from the Adelaide Hills.

In my reckless younger days, this journeyman journalist once spent almost a week in the nearby Barossa Valley settled by German pioneers, cheerfully sampling Rieslings, Mosels, and their formidable Reds.

Now, of course, the Barossa’s supremacy is challenged by the nearby Southern Vales, Coonaware, the Clare Valley, the Murray River Valley – and, fast coming up in the wine list, the Eyre Peninsula near Port Lincoln.

Most of the best Cabernet Sauvignons now come from Coonawara – where, by the way, Australia’s first "saint" may soon come from. This is Mother Mary MacKilop of Penola, who worked among the poor and disadvantaged in her lifetime, and whose miracles have already led to her beatification. It’s Catholic country out here, God bless the Irish!