David Williamson seems to be becoming awesomely sensitive in his middle age – as is indicated in his response in Crikey to some of the critics of his “Cruise Ship Australia” piece in The Bulletin.

For
the record, I was not “wheeled out to pour scorn” on the playwright.
Rather, on my own initiative, I defended the “aspirational Australians”
who were ridiculed in The Bulletin piece.

Like David
Williamson, I grew up in Melbourne. As a youth I was advised that it
was impolite to mock those of lesser education. So, unlike DW, I have
never felt the need to make fun of “adults” who “didn’t seem to be
discussing Proust or George Eliot” or who are not engaged in “inquiry.”
But, then, I was brought up a Catholic and made aware – from an early
age – about The Fall and all that. It seems that, elsewhere in
Melbourne, a different ethos prevailed.

Who knows? David
Williamson might be correct. Maybe “the age of oil is coming to an
end.” And, maybe, we are “eating up the earth’s resources and leaving
our children and grandchildren a lot less well-off than we are…”.

However,
if I really believed this, I would not partake of an oil-guzzling
cruise to, say, Noumea and I would try to make do with just one luxury
abode.