THE WISDOM OF A CABBIE

I was in Sydney a year or two back, talking to a Manchurian taxi driver from Harbin. I usually talk to cab drivers when I can - they have an interesting outlook on life. Some don't make it easy - the taciturn, ill tempered bums behind the wheels of the famed Yellow Cabs in New York certainly belie the myth of the cabbie's pithy wit and the London cabbies, isolated behind their sliding glass window are almost incomprehensible even when they open the glass, as Cockney accent strives against the rattle of their diesel engines.

But riding in an Australian cab makes it a good deal more simple. Real men, including women, are expected to sit up front emphasising the egalitarianism of this socialist country. Mind you, it is another thing finding a cabbie who speaks English - especially in Sydney. My Manchurian's English was pretty good, so we got to chatting about this and that - the weather, what wankers the forecasters were - I didn't discuss the cricket with him - as a warm up to what really interested me which is to say, how did he get into Australia. Turns out he was a student here at the time of the Tienamen Square fiasco - a mature age student by the looks of him.

What was it like, I wanted to know, having to leave your family behind when you flee as a refugee? No problem was his response - they are all here with me, mother, father wife and child. But people back home - to never see them? Only until next year he said, then I have permanent residence here in Australia, like my family, but cannot go to China until then. Why? What is the punishment for political defectors? Oh no - this as we pass the Chinese Embassy, where, he says, most of the guys are good except they have to work within the rules, something a lot of Australians do not understand - the problem is not getting in and out of China, but getting back in to Australia. Any other country OK to visit, but not China - if he get in and out there, he not refugee.

And so talk turns to living in Australia and what a great country it is despite the fact that no one wants to work very hard and cannot understand why an educated Manchurian would want to knock himself out to earn more than just enough to pay for bed and beer and if the young people honoured the old and had more sense of responsibility, how much better the country would be. And we move on to the pain of leaving your home, how you miss the familiar sights and smells and the feeling of belonging and the fact that you will always be an alien in this foreign land - even if you are white like me, and speak a language closer to Australian than the Manchurian cabbie.