Fare play

As with many of the best relationships, it didn’t start well. Having stepped off a 23-hour flight from Britain – on which all substances that might make you smell of something other than soggy airline food and endlessly recycled body odour were banned – I was keen to get to a shower quickly. It wasn’t far to Erskineville, the suburb where I was going to be staying, so I broke one of my cardinal rules and decided to get a taxi that I wouldn’t be able to claim back on expenses.

Here the problems started. After waiting at Sydney Airport’s taxi rank for a few minutes I got to the front and was directed to a cab. Unsure how well known my road in Erskineville was, I asked the driver if he knew Railway Parade. He instantly lost the ability to speak English and, muttering something in an incomprehensible dialect, waved me on to the next cab. The same thing happened again, and then again, and again. Nobody else seemed to be having any problems getting a taxi; I was starting to worry that Erskineville was rather more dangerous than I had been told.

Fortunately the next cab driver, a very upbeat Somalian guy, agreed to take me to Erskineville. He filled me in on all the places in Sydney I could meet British people (any bar, essentially), cheerily gave a run-down of the latest atrocities committed by Somalia’s militant Islamists, and explained that my mistake in the taxi queue had been to give my destination before getting in the car. A schoolboy error, I realise: Sydney taxi drivers are just as annoyed at the prospect of a piddly $20 fare from the airport as a London cabbie would be at Heathrow if you asked to go to Hounslow.

But since this awkward beginning I’ve come to realise that Sydney’s cab drivers are one of the city’s hidden treasures. Unlike London taxi drivers, who are likely either to deliver a ten-minute monologue about foreigners sponsored by the British National Party or to sit in threatening silence, here cabbies will ask how your day’s going and then either shut up or keep talking depending on your mood.

Last week I was on early shifts, which here start at an eye-rubbingly antisocial 5.30am, and one of the few things that made this bearable was the banter I invariably got from the cabbies who drove me into work. The best was a hyperactive Turkish driver who, before I had even put my seatbelt on, had said to me: “You are Christian, I am Muslim! We are brothers, we worship the same God! Don’t worry, I won’t kill you! Ha! I am only joking!” Given that it was still 5am, I think I’m forgiven for not coming up with a witty retort. He also assured me that Australia wasn’t actually a cultural desert, although you had to look hard for the culture, and told me where in Sydney I could meet British people (a recurring theme). Two mornings later I had a stereotypically Australian cab driver – broad-rimmed hat, khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, beetroot-red complexion; I was disappointed he wasn’t whistling ‘Waltzing Matilda’ – who somehow managed to turn the fact that I wasn’t too bothered about exactly where he dropped me off into a blazing row. When I finally got out, he asked me, “Are you happy now?” before driving off looking like I’d just spilt his Fosters.

Perhaps it’s because I’m not from round these parts, perhaps it’s because most of Sydney’s taxi drivers are immigrants who like talking about soccer, perhaps it’s because the image of itself that Australia generally projects doesn’t do justice to the country’s racial complexity. (A side note: current TV advertisements about Australia’s citizenship requirements feature only white new citizens. I’m not always convinced by arguments about the need to “display diversity” but this just feels misleading.) But I’ve found cabbies here have a refreshingly different take on Australia’s optimism.