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Australian life and culture, so afterwards, as late afternoon gave way to the pale blush of evening, we drove out through the glittering sprawl of Sydney’s western suburbs almost to the edge of the Blue Mountains to a place called Penrith. Our destination was an enormous sleek building, surrounded by an even more enormous, very full car park. An illuminated sign announced this as the Penrith Panthers World of Entertainment. The Panthers, Glenn explained, were a rugby league club.
    Australia is a country of clubs – sporting clubs, workingmen’s clubs, Returned Servicemen’s League clubs, clubs affiliated to various political parties – each nominally, and sometimes no doubt actively, devoted to the well-being of a particular segment of society. What they are really there for, however, is to generate extremely large volumes of money from drinking and gambling.
    I had read in the paper that Australians are the biggest gamblers on the planet – one of the more arresting statistics I saw was that the country has less than 1 per cent of the world’s population but more than 20 per cent of its slot machines – and that between them Australians spend $11 billion *2 a year, or $2,000 per person, on various games of chance. But I had seen nothing to suggest such risky gusto until I stepped inside the World of Entertainment. It was vast and dazzling and immensely well appointed. The club movement in Australia is huge. In New South Wales alone, clubs employ 65,000 people, more than any other industry, and create an additional 250,000 jobs indirectly. They pay over $2 billion in wages and $500 million in gaming taxes. This is huge business and it is nearly all based on a type of slot machine popularly called a pokie.
    I had assumed that we would have to bend the rules to get admitted – it was a club, after all – but in fact I learned that all Australian clubs allow instant membership to anyone, so keen are they to share the diverting pleasures of the poker machine. You just sign a temporary members’ book by the door and in you go.
    Surveying the crowds with a benign and cheerful eye was a man whose badge identified him as Peter Hutton, Duty Manager. In the manner of nearly all Australians, he was an easygoing and approachable sort. I quickly learned from him that this particular club has 60,000 members, of whom 20,000 will turn up on busy nights, like New Year’s eve. Tonight the figure would be more like 2,000. The club contained bars and restaurants almost beyond counting,sports facilities, a children’s play area, and nightclubs and theatres. They were just about to build a thirteen-screen cinema and a crèche big enough to hold 400 infants.
    ‘Wow,’ I said, for I was impressed. ‘So is this the biggest club in Sydney?’
    ‘Biggest in the southern hemisphere,’ Mr Hutton said proudly.
    We wandered into the vast and tinkling interior. Hundreds of pokies stood in long straight lines, and at nearly every one sat an intent figure feeding in the mortgage money. They are essentially slot machines, but with a bewildering array of illuminated buttons and flashing lights that let you exercise a variety of options – whether to hold a particular line, double your stake, take a portion of your winnings, and goodness knows what else. I studied from a discreet distance several people at play, but couldn’t begin to understand what they were doing, other than feeding a succession of coins into a glowing box and looking grim. Deirdre and Glenn were similarly unacquainted with the intricacies of pokies. We put in a $2 coin, just to see what would happen, and got an instant payout of $17. This made us immensely joyful.
    I returned to the hotel like a kid who had had a very full day at the county fair – exhausted but deeply happy. I had survived the perils of the sea, been to a palatial club, helped to win $15 and made two new friends. I can’t say I was a great deal closer to feeling that I had actually seen Sydney than I