Olympics: It's Australian crawl in pool
Most kiwis who visit Australia will appreciate that our media cousins across the Tasman have little interest in reporting New Zealand news.
The best we can hope for is a snippet here and there, and nothing much has changed with the London Olympics in full stride.
I was on holiday in Brisbane for the first week of the Games and my only hope of discovering how our competitors fared was to scan the small print of the results page in the Brisbane Courier Mail or find an internet cafe.
With typical Ozzie cockiness, the gold medal prediction was for at least 12, with the 45-strong swim team expected to deliver a sackful.
The men's 4x100m freestyle team were hot favourites, brash James Magnussen was labelled a superstar who would bring home gold in the 100m freestyle, so would backstroker Emily Seebohm, and others were tipped to stand on top of the dais.
While the Aussie swimmers were supposed to be showing off their gold medals in week one, so were world record-holding cyclist Anna Meares and No1-ranked long jumper Mitchell Watts.
We know now that Australia, after the first 10 days, had just one gold, won by the women's 4x100m freestyle relay team.
So for the first time in 36 years, Australia failed to win an individual swimming gold and the knives are out.
New Zealand's sporting public and commentators are often criticised for having a tall poppy syndrome, but the Aussies are possibly worse.
A former Australian swim coach, Ken Wood, said there were too many "fat cats'' in the ranks.
Incumbent head coach Leigh Nugent, hiding under a flak jacket, blamed the country's easy life society, while former pool heroine Susie O'Neill questioned the work ethic.
Another former swimming great, Nicole Livingstone, felt the culture had gone amiss and suggested a change to the US selection system, with trials a few weeks before the Games instead of months earlier.
She believed that would keep the swimmers focused and fit, rather than sacrificing training for film endorsements and photo shoots.
Blame, too, has been apportioned to the excessive time spent by the athletes twitting and tweeting and also that the swim team had no professional sports psychologist for the first time in 20 years.
I don't want to give the Australians borax, as Kazakhstan is already giving them Borat.
The nation famous for unveiling the bearded individual with his green mankini has four golds and little old New Zealand has three, courtesy of our champion rowers.
By week's end I'm sure Australia will have exceeded New Zealand's gold medal tally, but I must admit that though it was annoying to miss so much of the Kiwi action last week it was satisfying that the Kiwis had their heads above water while the Aussies stayed submerged.
