Our own Waterloo

We’ve faced defeat at every turn – but we’re fighting the good fight

With each new tragedy over the past 18 months or so, we’d be quite within our rights to forget what’s come before. First, the drought knocked the farmers around almost like they’ve never been knocked. Then the bushfires ripped apart an enormous percentage of our nation. From the sublime to the ridiculous, flooding caused just as much damage as the fires and the drought did. Then, just because we seem to like a challenge, the global pandemic casually made its way to the Land Down Under.

Just like Napoleon back in 1815, we’ve faced our Waterloo many times over. But unlike him, so far we’ve come out on top three times so far. Even those not living in the drought/fire/flood affected areas have come out with scars, but we’re soldiering on and (apart from the small percentage who think their poo doesn’t stink) now we are all doing our part in what will hopefully be the last Battle of Waterloo for 2020.

Back to 1974. A young band featuring Annafrid, Benny Bjorn and Agnetha rolled the dice, singing about losing, then defeating all-comers to stand victorious at the Eurovision song contest of that year with ‘Waterloo’. It’ll go down as the greatest and most important melodious ‘victory’ of all time, and the rest is history, as they say. Not really my musical cup of tea, the ol’ Eurovision contest, but I have great respect for the event, the contestants, and I am in awe at the level of seriousness that the whole thing commands. Much of the Northern world stops for a few days whilst the semi-finals and finals take place, and to be the winner brings great prestige for your country. You may remember Dami Im came within an absolute whisker of stealing the trophy away from the north back in 2016, placing 2nd, a serious effort for an Aussie intruder.

Last weekend, in an attempt to put out of our heads all notions of Pandemics, Fires, Floods and Trumps, my lovely wife and I tuned in to Netflix after hearing that there was a newly released light-hearted tale about a downtrodden Icelandic man with an obsession to win Eurovision. (Spoiler alerts … careful, but I won’t give away the ending). With thoughts of the ‘Tiger King’ being recommended to us still clear in our heads, we snuggled up on the lounge, full of trepidation as to what cheesiness may lay ahead. How wrong we were. Paying full homage to ABBA and plenty of other past Eurovision participants, this flick was pure escapism, a hoot … certainly not requiring the concentration an English thriller. Old mate from Iceland faced plenty of Waterloo’s in his quest to win the ultimate prize – he’s kicked out of home, his dad disowns him, he sucks at fishing, he’s clumsy, bad with the ladies, and oblivious to the world around him. But, undeterred, he takes every hit square on the chin to keep his dream of being like ABBA alive. In classic cheesy comedy style, though, he realises the dream he was chasing wasn’t really the most important dream after all. I apologised a few columns back for making you get Wiggles music in your head – now you’ll have the song “Ya Ya Ding Dong” as an earworm if you take my recommendation and watch the Eurovision Song Contest movie.

Whilst the struggles in a comedy film pale into insignificance at the tragedies faced by hard working Australians over the past few years, the notion of facing your Waterloo and coming out on top rings true. We’ve come out swinging and are on top of three of the four battles, being much more like the Duke of Wellington than Napoleon. One battle to go this year … We’ll be going one step further than Dami Im, is my prediction.