Tales From Down Under: War stories

The flight from London to Melbourne, which seems interminable, at least stops after 14 hours in Singapore, where there is an opportunity to ward off deep-vein thrombosis by power-walking round the terminal at Changi airport. Changi! The very name evokes images of incarceration, pain and disgusting food rations, and I don't mean of the sort suffered by those of us who have endured 21 hours in the World Traveller section of a British Airways flight, as challenging as that can be to both body and spirit. No, Changi was also the site of the notorious prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, and, in the Fitzroy district of Melbourne the other day, I visited the home of one of Australia's foremost artists, Brian Seidel, who told me an interesting Changi tale.

Seidel's cousin Lyle survived the camp, although not for long – the treatment that he received there crushed his health and he died young. However, he used to enjoy telling Seidel about the prisoners' small but satisfying gestures of defiance. There were some Japanese guards who spoke English, and some had a smattering of French and German, so anyone posting rude notices in those languages risked terrible punishment. But the Japanese knew no Latin, hence the abundance around the camp of the exhortation, Non illegitimi te carborundum. Seidel has it written in large letters on a card on his sideboard. The translation? Don't let the bastards grind you down.

Actually, that's the second-best war story I've heard over here. The best was related to me just inside the main entrance to the venerable Melbourne Cricket Ground, where there is a roll of honour listing the members of Melbourne Cricket Club who made "the supreme sacrifice" in the Second World War.

On the list is a certain CGD Butler, who was reported lost in action in New Guinea. From time to time, I'm told, a still-strapping octogenarian, wearing a black eye-patch, can be seen in front of the board looking up at the name of CGD Butler. His name – you've guessed – is CGD Butler. Apparently, he was captured by the Japanese, but somehow escaped, and hid in the jungle until long after the war was finished. Eventually, he made his way home to Melbourne, where he was highly delighted to find his name on the roll of honour at the MCG. The club has offered to remove it, but he likes it up there.

Australia, the land where nobody's a gooseberry

There is an engaging young man of 26 in my party, who is as enraptured as I am by Australia and Australians, and is wondering whether to move out here. I have done my best to persuade him that he should give it a whirl, if only for a few years. There does seem to be a joie de vivre that on the whole is lacking back home, and not entirely because it's summer here and winter there.

Moreover, those immigrants I have met from the northern hemisphere are all smugly certain that they made the right choice, although I did hear about a couple from the UK who emigrated to Perth in Western Australia yet, utterly unimpressed by the heat, the people and the landscape, only stayed for a weekend – a weekend! – before heading back to Stoke-on-Trent. By contrast, the taxi-driver from Helsinki who took me to St Kilda a few evenings ago has not been back to his native land in 35 years. There was a decidedly surreal quality to that taxi journey, actually. It wasn't just that the driver looked uncannily like Oliver Hardy, or just that in a heavy accent he told a rude joke or just that his Finnish accent was laced with Australianisms... but the whole package seemed pretty strange.

Becoming acquainted with Australianisms has been one of the pleasures of this trip. Sausages are snags, toilets are dunnies, and, a personal favourite, those foam-rubber things to keep cans of beer cold are stubby-holders. I have tried, too, to teach my new Aussie friends certain British words, and made the discovery, over a bottle of Yarra Valley sauvignon blanc that carried the unmistakeable whiff of gooseberry, that they haven't got clue what gooseberries are.

I tried to describe the gooseberry – round, greenish, veiny, tart – but that only seemed to confuse my audience further. Perhaps they wondered why I should suddenly be referring to a prostitute.

Anyway, I think we finally established that there is not another name for gooseberries in Australia; rather, there just ain't any gooseberries. Which propelled me on a further flight of fancy. If Australians aren't familiar with the word "gooseberry", what do they call a person who feels left out when the two people he or she is with start necking?

Peter, our excellent host, tried to insist that such a situation simply never arises in Australia, but I wasn't having that. Eventually he conceded that such an unfortunate might be referred to as "the fifth wheel on a car". I then turned to Ina, a German woman who has lived in Melbourne for 18 months, and asked her whether a German might complain about feeling like a gooseberry? "No," she said, "we would say ich fuhlte mich als funftes rad am wagen." Which of course means, I feel like the fifth wheel on a car. Isn't language fantastic?

Picture perfect

In Melbourne, there is a celebrated 19-year-old called Chloe, with dark hair and alabaster skin. She is known to stir the loins of even elderly men. They know where to find her, she rarely disappoints.

Chloe is a painting. A Parisienne actually called Marie, she was painted, nude, by Jules-Joseph Lefebvre in 1875. Not long after, haunted by unrequited passion, she killed herself. As Chloe, however, she is immortal. And it is tragically ironic that, for over a century, she has herself been the object of unrequited passion. Since 1909, she has stood in the Young and Jackson Hotel, opposite Flinders Street station, the last, and in many cases only, naked woman seen by hordes of young Australian soldiers going off to fight in faraway wars.

There is something disturbingly erotic about Chloe, as she looks barely pubescent. Our macho Aussie guide put it another way: "There's no grass on the wicket."