Bendigo’s infatuation with yellow as part of the I Believe in Bendigo campaign is fascinating for a range of reasons. Firstly – and most to the point today – is the way it is being used to highlight all that is good to try to counteract any other nasty-pasty negative things going on.
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But Bendigo is not the first place to use yellow to shout out the good stuff. In fact, that’s one of the original meanings of the word “yellow”. Surveys in Europe and the United States show most people psychologically associate the colour with amusement, optimism, gentleness, and spontaneity. In Asian culture, particularly in China, it is seen as the color of happiness, glory, wisdom, harmony and culture.
(We will ignore for the sake of argument and the fact that DTM is writing this, that it has been linked with duplicity, envy, jealousy, avarice and cowardice. Details details.) One website says it is a colour often noted with butter, lemons … and gold. One ancient definition for the word is to “cry out, to seek attention”. As in Yell – ow.
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We note the City of Greater Bendigo is running a survey to find whether people think Bendigo is “the most liveable regional city”. Sorry, Ballarat, put a finger and your ears and chant: “Yah Yah Not listening.”
But we have a couple of issues with that. “Liveable” is such a modest target. Strictly speaking, it means suitable for living, or able to be lived with. Hardly a place you’d die for? We have the same issues with the buzz-word “sustainable” which is a target to keep things at their present level. Why not shoot for “excellent, much better or pretty damn good.”?
And the final one in this mediocre word series is (a bit sensitive today, I know) tolerance. While “tolerance” is the ability to tolerate the opinions or existence of others, “tolerate” means to put up with things or people we don’t like or we disagree with. None of those words – liveable, sustainable, tolerance – really mean what we think.
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A lot of people are mightily miffed at the popular Bendigo Heritage Uncorked not being held this weekend because of a bit of a gathering of some grumpy people. But we’ve been watching a lot of chatter about how good Bendigo people should react to the protest and mostly the advice seems to be to go about your business as usual and be nice. If that’s the case, don’t fear, because just up the McIvor Highway at Heathcote, this weekend sees the Heathcote Wine and Food Festival., featuring the laughing liquids from about 40 regional wineries. Heathcote is billed on the festival literature as Shiraz Heaven. Many believe shiraz’s origins were in Iran, but don’t mention that too loudly in case it encourages an anti-moscato protest.
