Kalgoorlie Miner (21): Western Australia

I'm sick of Western Australia’s resources boom – in fact if I hear about it again, I tell you I shall spontaneously combust. Resources boom, resources boom, resources boom. Feeling uncomfortably hot. China, India, uranium. Ouch, it burns!

Sure, high commodity prices are putting the wine and goat’s cheese on my table, but I am beginning to resent all of these economic refugees coming into WA from other states to snaffle a piece of our pie. “My pie!” I cry, my face crinkled up and my lower lip protruding; and your pie too, my learned reader.

These eastern seaboard vultures covet our womenfolk, refuse to adopt Western Australian values and have the gall to prattle on about the superiority of their homelands. They mock us because we speak slowly and use two syllables to say beer like “beeya”, here like “heeya” and fear like “feeya”. Ooh, the nerve – I’ll show them feeya! Listen up now as I give them all a frightful literary spanking – take this, inferior scoundrels!

Queensland is only the second-biggest state. It’s full of lanky ginger-nuts who like to cover their ruddy, freckly faces with zinc and go surf-lifesaving with their bathers wedged between their buttock cheeks. They pronounce "pool" like "poo" but with an "l" on the end. They tackle, bludgeon and stab animals for fun, all the while rhythmically guffawing like a bunch of lobotomised Dr. Hibberts. Intolerable simpletons!

New South Wales bears no resemblance to the south of Wales. It’s people have spray-on tans, artificially-whitened teeth and those gym-formed Ken (of "Barbie and Ken" fame) muscles that have no practical value around the house or workplace – they’re just for show! They like shiny things and pastel colours and they cry easily. Pansies!

Victoria is cold and pointless. Why does it exist? There’s no industry. It’s bohemian residents just lounge about in trendy (read small) cafes, sipping mocha frappucinos and reading Franz Kafka essays or The Weekend Australian. They wear black-rimmed spectacles – even though their eyesight is fine – and produce art-house films that romanticise heroin addiction. Poseurs!

Tasmania is a rude shape and it’s inhabitants are strange. Jim Morrison once reasoned that "people are strange when you're a stranger" but he never visited Queenstown, where the people are strange even if you are Sigmund Bloody Freud. My brother and I spotted that banjo-playin' yokel from Deliverance there once. I tried to make a quick getaway, but was slowed by the tricky foot-operated handbrake in our rental Tarago. The boy almost got us. The horror!

South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory are... Sorry – I’ve got nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad. A blank. These places are black holes in the universe that is one’s mind!

The Northern Territory is OK with me, except for the crocodiles and poisonous jellyfish in the water – that’s just plain silly.

There is no doubt that Western Australia is the greatest state. We don’t build hideous monuments because our natural wonders are infinite; our arts scene is lagging only because it’s too pleasant outside to bother painting or sculpting or writing in some dampened studio; we are annoyingly casual because with a population density of one person per square kilometre, there’s really no need to stress; and Sunday trading won’t come in because we damn well don’t want it to.

It’s high time we seceded from the rest of Australia. It will be a glorious and, at times, bloody revolt led by me, your Supreme Commander. I‘ve already done the hard part and gained control over the media – I ordered the editors to call this column “WA: The Mighty State” and they did. Now grab your pitchforks and meet me at the border – I’ll go first, you follow!

I’ll just kick back and have another beer first though…