OPINION

ADELAIDE is Australia’s most sneered at city. As I travel the country doing stand up comedy, all too often I hear my native home mocked.

Frequently, and much to my ire, this is done just before I am introduced on stage. For the hoity-toity snobs on the east coast, Adelaide is a byword for backwardness and boredom.

“Adelaide runs on a different timezone to Melbourne. Right now in Melbourne it’s 9:30, but in Adelaide it’s still 1975.”

“South Australia had a massive blackout recently. Luckily, it was in South Australia, so nobody noticed.”

This sort of thing goes on at comedy clubs ad nauseam. It should go without saying, of course, that the stereotype isn’t true.

The proof, if you need it, is that South Australia was recently named as one of the top five must see travel locations in the world by Lonely Planet. The WORLD.

Adelaide also boasts a massive Fringe Festival — the second largest such event in the world, after the crowded and unpleasant Edinburgh Fringe. What’s more, now that Kings Cross has shrivelled up, Hindley Street is perhaps the most vibrant nightclub strip in the nation (it may, indeed, be rather too vibrant).

Still, Adelaide has fallen on hard times. As well as the cruel jibes of our neighbours, in recent years Adelaideans have endured a slew of gross indignities. The globalist policies which have enriched the country’s eastern elites have gutted Adelaide’s manufacturing industry, and mired our outer suburbs in wretched unemployment.

The dire economic situation has seen many of our best and brightest abandon Adelaide. We’re one of the fastest ageing places in the country, thanks to the diaspora of our talented youngsters.

We’ve even had terrible fortune with our sports teams. As one rabid crows fan pointed out, the top four AFL teams last year respectively boasted the league’s 1# ruckman, the 1# player, the 1# goal kicker, and a captain, all of whom had originally been stolen away after being drafted by the Adelaide Football Club. Just as free trade has maimed our economy, so too has free agency hobbled our premiership ambitions.

While we endure these wretched woes, the east coast continues to walk all over us.

Many in Adelaide were rightly incensed by 2016’s ‘Halal Snack Pack’ hullabaloo. The HSP, a meal consisting of meat and sauce on chips, was championed by the disgraced and disgraceful Sydney Senator Sam Dastyari as a symbol of multicultural acceptance. After an appearance on Q & A, the meal even became an internet phenomenon, celebrated by PC diversity mongers nation wide.

What you may not know is that the HSP was, actually, invented in Adelaide. Here, it is known as the AB, and its history and prevalence has been well documented.

There’s nothing especially halal or multicultural about the dish, which was invented by drunken Uni students in North Adelaide many years ago. The east coast PC press, in their haste to celebrate multiculturalism, totally erased a piece of South Australian history. Talk about cultural appropriation!

And yet, maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that Adelaide is ridiculed and ignored. As a result of our “boring” reputation, Adelaide has remained pleasant in a way that other major cities have not.

Our skyline has been spared the vulgar, modern skyscrapers which blight all the other mainland capital cities. Our house prices have not inflated to insane east coast levels. Despite our rudimentary public transport system, our roads are uncontested. Annoying tourists are non-existent, because there’s not much here for them to tour.

As the perversion of the old adage goes, Adelaide is a nice place to live but I wouldn’t want to visit. Enduring the mockery of our nasal neighbours is, perhaps, a small price to pay to live in the finest city in the country.

James McCann is a writer and comedian. Find him at jamesdonaldforbesmccann.com or follow him on Twitter @jdfmccann.