How independent bookshops are still thriving, even in the age of Amazon
Remember the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks vehicle You've Got Mail? The one that's less irritating than Sleepless In Seattle?
Meg plays the delightful owner of a beloved local children's bookshop in NYC — the kind of place where it's always story time and the staff gush endearingly about Goodnight Moon. While Tom plays the cynical heir to a book megastore chain that's opening nearby.
As the megastore crushes the charming local retailer, Tom and Meg start corresponding anonymously via email, and fall for one another — when she finds out, it gets awkward, until of course they end up together.
The twist (sorry for the spoiler, but it came out in 1998) is that the book plutocrat doesn't swoop in and save Meg's store out of love. Not even a Hollywood suspension of disbelief could save small shops from megastores that are cheaper, sell everything — and serve coffee.
Fortunately, consumer tastes untwisted that twist. In reality, Hanks' Fox Books chain would likely have gone under more than a decade ago, eviscerated by ebooks and internet delivery, while Meg's Shop Around The Corner would likely be thriving.
Our love of friendly, knowledgeable, local booksellers has turned out to be more enduring than our love of a cut-price James Patterson.
The big bookshop boom
Every book-lover loves great independent bookshops — the sort where you can wander around for hours, torn because you want to purchase every book you see.
You'll find books you forgot you wanted to buy next to fabulous newcomers whose work you can't resist. And if you can't decide, or, due to your own personal good taste, are stuck for a gift for, say, the vampire-romance lover in your life, the staff will recommend something they've read personally.
My local megastore was the massive Collins Booksellers at Sydney's Broadway, which opened with the centre in 1998 — the same year as You've Got Mail. It closed in 2005 and was purchased by Dymocks, which then had 86 shops around Australia. But that didn't last — it's been a JB Hi-Fi for years.
Dymocks relocated to a smaller shop in the mall — but that closed last month. I can only count 46 shops on their website today — a major decline for one of our best-known booksellers. The venerable Angus & Robertson chain had 170 stores in 2006. Now it's a website, owned by Booktopia.
Then there was Borders, the now-defunct American chain that opened huge outlets across Australia. I remember my visit to the one at Melbourne's Jam Factory in 1999. Not only did it seem to have every book currently in print, along with a massive magazine section and a cafe, but people could linger reading for hours, and buying seemed optional. It blew my mind.
Even then, I vaguely understood that Borders' trademark deal of selling three bestsellers for the price of two had to mean someone somewhere was getting paid less, and that the local booksellers I've gotten to know growing up might not be able to match those retailers' scale, range or prices.
Even though I enjoyed Borders, I was uneasy when one opened opposite the iconic Readings in Melbourne's Lygon St. The local David, it seemed, would surely be crushed by the American deep-discounting Goliath.
But it was Borders whose 26 stores went under.
"When Borders came in, they said quite publicly that they wanted to put us out of business, and our customers took it personally," says Joe Rubbo, managing director of Readings.
"It was scary for a moment there, but we owe our customers a great debt. They stood by us."
Why the book megastore declined
While the American chain that inspired You've Got Mail, Barnes & Noble, still has more than 500 stores, there simply isn't a book megastore chain here anymore. If you want a vast book emporium, only a few CBD flagships have survived.
"You need to genuinely be in touch with the communities that you're serving, and that's pretty hard in a megastore and it's pretty hard in a shopping mall," Gleebooks co-owner and director David Gaunt says.
During their nearly five decades in business, the independent bookshop has seen many chain-store competitors come and go around its location in Glebe, Sydney,
The business has since expanded to outlets in Dulwich Hill and Blackheath, in the Blue Mountains.
"People were astonished when we, as a city bookshop, opened in Blackheath," Gaunt says.
"It works because there was a community ready to welcome a bookshop and happy to support it for the long-term.
"There's a love of books at the core of every child that's ever had their imagination spiked, fed and nourished by books.
"So the idea is to remind adults to plant and nourish the seed, and make sure people stay in touch and gain from a love of reading."
We still love books
We haven't stopped buying books. The market is in surprisingly good health, given the explosion of streaming and gaming that vie for our leisure time. If we ignore lockdown sales, the Australian book market is up 18 per cent in value between 2019 and 2023 — and given that e-books cost less than print, it's clear that we are hardly dumping print for e-readers, either.
Admittedly, plenty of indies have gone under, and you can still buy the most popular books at far below RRP at the likes of Kmart and Big W. The retailer might not have written a little card saying how much they loved it, but it doesn't matter if you would have bought the new Jane Harper regardless.
Amazon has taken sales from bricks and mortar shops too, of course, as has Booktopia. But browsing a website is far less enjoyable than browsing physical aisles — and they don't have a lovely gift wrapping service that supports a local charity, like so many booksellers do these days.
So while the market has undergone considerable upheaval, many of our most beloved local bookshops trade on, undaunted by the rise and fall of megastores, the slow death of major chains, and the e-reader revolution.
Dom Knight is the author of eight books, very few of which are available in any bookshop.
Why Sydney's still Australia's best city
Sydney is finished. As my dear friend Andrew P Street told the ABC yesterday from his new base of Adelaide, Sydney is a cesspit of overpriced houses connected by hopeless public transport, where you can't get a drink anywhere at all and every single cultural centre has closed down. The only tourist attraction in my hometown these days is tumbleweeds.
Nobody wants to live here anymore, he says, so every single Sydneysider is currently scheming to move to Hobart, the Gold Coast or even Adelaide. Sydney is a city that "punishes you for living in it", Andrew has written, as often as our courts are punishing Salim Mehajer.
Well, I'm convinced. We should all leave immediately. Go ahead — I'll sacrifice myself by being the last one out.
Hobart is waiting for you, and it's sort of near the amazing MONA! And how about the Gold Coast, which now has its very own train line? Get to it!
Okay, so that was a blatant attempt to push down Sydney property prices. But it won't work, because the fact is that for many of us, this city is the only place we'd consider living. Well, maybe Melbourne.
Admittedly, Andrew isn't the only friend of mine who has left Sydney this year with the unreasonable demand for a house with a backyard that's less than a forty minute commute from where they work. He's not even the only one called Andrew.
A few years ago, I was drinking with a bunch of commercial lawyers who were all bemoaning the impossibility of buying a place where their kids could frolic in even a modest-sized patch of grass.
Gosh, I thought — if none of you high-salaried corporate workaholics can afford it, how on earth can someone making a crust as a writer?
More Australians leave Sydney than move to it. The Herald recently published a study saying that 129 of us leave Sydney each day, while only 85 move here. But instead, people move here from overseas, as happens in places like London and New York, too. The result is a more diverse, globalised city. And while we may not have backyards, we get to live in a city that's one hell of a playground.
This town is full of people who are determined to stick with Sydney's unique blend of almost obscene natural beauty, cultural and nightlife (which is in many ways better than ever, thanks to the small bar laws) and food culture (still terrific), and all the perks that come with being a big city.
So, we move to smaller homes — I've been an apartment-dweller for nearly 20 years because I prefer being in the centre of things to having space. We mortgage ourselves to the hilt to get a tiny foothold into the city's property market, because we know it'll almost certainly be a great investment.
And guess what — property prices are actually falling in many areas for the first time in years. Slightly. We'll soon be able to afford housing again, in only 80 or 90 years' time!
Just this past week, I watched one of my favourite bands play the Opera House, discovered a hidden underground cocktail bar, had truly excellent sushi and watched a seriously funny play written by a fellow Sydneysider that was all about the complexities of contemporary Aboriginal culture. I hardly spent any time in my apartment except to sleep.
Sydney's is headed towards the diversity and vibrancy, but also the population density, of Manhattan. That comes with innumerable benefits but some enormous challenges. We need to lift our game in all sorts of areas — public transport and affordable housing among them. But personally, I can't imagine living somewhere where I wasn't a cheap bus ride away from some of the world's best beaches.
Well, unless I got offered a great job in Melbourne.
Have we been wrong about Canberra all these years? Nah
What if Canberra became fabulous and the rest of the country didn't notice? What if the negative impressions formed when we were forced to meet our local MPs during that mandatory Year 6 visit to Parliament were wrong?
What if Canberra became fabulous and the rest of the country didn't notice? What if the negative impressions formed when we were forced to meet our local MPs during that mandatory Year 6 visit to Parliament were wrong?
Well, that's precisely what no less than the Lonely Planet guide reckons has happened.
Yes, it's Canberra's moment of recognition for something besides being the nation's most notorious compromise after the NBN.
A few years after recognising NSW's oft-overlooked second city of Newcastle's transformation to an artsy, hipster enclave of relaxed cool, the LP team has returned to lavish praise on NSW's third-biggest city.
Canberra takes third position in the list behind Seville, the Spanish city that tourists ignore because it's not Madrid or Barcelona, and Detroit, a place which it will be news to just about everyone isn't still a decaying hell-scape.
In other words, this is a list of cities that nobody currently visits. I hadn't even heard of several of the cities on the list (Matera? Guanajuato?) and they've included San Juan, Puerto Rico despite the hurricane. In other words, it's an incredibly contrarian list.
But even though it was clearly drawn up by the kind of people who bore us at dinner parties by raving about places we'll never visit or want to, Canberrans are understandably delighted by the fact that Lonely Planet has ranked them above such tourist Meccas as Antwerp, Oslo and Kaohsiung.
But before we all swallow our pride and, for the very first time in our lives, visit Canberra by choice, let's look at the list of reasons for LP's accolade, shall we?
'Packs a big punch for such a small city'
That's a pretty big qualifier, making Canberra sound like the little engine that could, in keeping with its extremely little railway station.
And sure, Canberra is incredible — for a city that's a 10th the size of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
It's a thriving metropolis, compared to, say, Dubbo. But is it must-visit in 2018? Let's look closer.
'National treasures are found round almost every corner'
This is undoubtedly true, because despite its size, Canberra is packed with national-level institutions — more galleries and museums than any child could stand being dragged around, and if you're especially nerdy or a negligent dual citizen, there's also the High Court.
Being a confirmed dork, I've always loved visiting these places, and the NGA is one of my favourite public buildings in the country.
And of course it should be noted that its oversize institutions are all courtesy of our tax dollars, including the Parliament, which was, at the time of construction, the most expensive building in the world.
Our politicians were typically generous to themselves when they built three parliaments (including the ACT's) within the city's first 100 years.
But does this mean Canberra's institutions are better than other Australian cities'?
Of course not. If I was advising an overseas visitor where to go for an amazing museum experience, I'd send them up the Derwent to MONA.
I will note though, because it still irritates me whenever I visit Melbourne, that Canberra's National Gallery is an awful lot more "national" than Victoria's.
'Exciting new boutique precincts have emerged, bulging with gastronomic highlights and cultural must-dos'
If you read further, you'll learn that this basically means that you can get good coffee in Braddon. LP is also into locavore dining and sampling wine from the local vineyards, just like several dozen other Australian regions.
As for the "cultural must-dos", I couldn't find much on their list beyond the folk festival and Floriade. (They've got a writer's festival now, but doesn't everyone?)
LP's editors are fans of the emerging regions like NewActon (note the lack of space), which is almost as dorkily Canberran a name as "Civic" — I haven't been there, so I'll take their word for it.
But LP's list of Canberra's best sights is almost exactly the same stuff we visited in school — the NGA, Portrait Gallery, Parliament, War Memorial, Questacon — and the Carillon, which I'm still not entirely sure why my Year Six class visited in 1988.
'This is the first year that Canberra will host a Test cricket match at the picturesque Manuka Oval'
Yep, Australia takes on Sri Lanka in 2018, and that's a genuine reason to visit — unless you're from Hobart, in which case you're bitter that Canberra stole your Test.
It seems churlish to note that this hardly makes Canberra a must-visit destination as opposed to any of the cities that get Tests every year, so I wouldn't dream of pointing it out.
'The Australian War Memorial will take centre stage as it hosts the 100th anniversary of the WWI Armistice'
I don't want to belittle the great job the War Memorial does each and every year.
But as it's hosted several compelling centenaries recently, including Gallipoli, this feels a little bit like they were already running out of reasons why one must visit Canberra in 2018 after, um, the second one.
'Significantly, Canberra is establishing a permanent Reconciliation Day'
And the third and final reason to visit in 2018 is a day off for non-visitors — from next year the state's public holiday calendar includes Reconciliation Day "to symbolise commitment to tolerance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians".
Sure, it's a nice idea, especially as it replaces the incredibly ephemeral "Family and Community Day", which sounded like a day designed by, well, public servants, but it's as yet unclear what there will be for visitors to do in Canberra on this day.
'Criminally overlooked Canberra…'
Now, c'mon. I know that they have to come up with new places to visit every year, but every Australian is forced to visit Canberra at some point, so we aren't exactly overlooking it.
Canberra is grand boulevards leading to roundabouts which accidentally return you back onto the exact same boulevard you just drove down — Burley Griffin designed it that way so visitors couldn't escape.
Sure, it's leafy, and packed with major institutions, but if you go hunting for buzz or soul in Canberra, the closest you'll find is a rabid Kingston bar during a sitting week.
I'm fonder of Canberra than most — I find it genuinely pleasant, I love the modernist architecture and the "bush capital" vibe, and unlike almost everyone, I'm actually interested in politics.
I understand why people enjoy living there, and especially raising kids in Australia's only city designed for bikes.
Last time I went, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of new, cool bars serving craft beer and great cocktails, and terrific eateries of the sort you now find in every other Australian city or major town.
But anyone who heads to Canberra next year expecting it to be vastly different from the place we toured by bus at the age of 11— or even transformed the way that Newcastle has been in recent years — risks being as frustrated as an out-of-town motorist who can't figure out where the roundabout exit is.
The five worst arguments for voting 'No'
Today, the High Court is hearing arguments about the same-sex marriage plebisurveythingummy, which, in the opinion of constitutional guru George Williams, is likely to be struck down. But while the silks slug it out, what better time to look at the arguments that have been playing out in the public space?
The curious thing about the No campaign is that the arguments advanced rarely have much to do with the central question of whether two people of the same sex should be allowed to enter a secular marriage.
So let's take a look at some of the things the No campaign has been talking about instead of the question being posed in the ABS one-question questionnaire — "should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?"
1. When a man loves a bridge
A slippery slope argument is when you argue that allowing one thing will inexorably lead to a far worse thing. Eric Abetz suggested that marriage equality could subsequently lead to people marrying the Harbour Bridge because "why not?" And full credit to him — I've never previously seen a slippery slope argument involving an actual slope.
But let's answer his question. Bridges, at least as far as I know, are not sentient beings able to consent to marriage. Besides, last time I checked, the Harbour Bridge was very much a pay-to-play operation, if you get what I mean.
The broader problem with slippery slope arguments is that defining precise limits on things is essentially what governments do. The Medicare schedule, for instance, precisely delineates what the Government will pay for, and what it will not.
Sometimes these lines can move over time — but again, that is what government is supposed to do. Australian governments once prevented Aboriginal people from marrying non-Aboriginal people. Now, they don't, because we know better. Ending dowries, changing ages of consent, no-fault divorce — all evolutions in marriage.
Nobody thinks you can marry a road, and I know this because I've been trying to make an honest span of Brisbane's Go-Between Bridge for years. Besides, Sydney Harbour Bridge fans know that the Bradfield Highway already is very much hitched to the Cahill Expressway.
In recent days, Cory Bernardi has made his own version of this argument via a "pink rainbow Trojan horse", which looks so much like a My Little Pony that he may well accidentally convince impressionable young girls that marriage equality involves rainbows, sparkles and magic friendship. Which, to be fair, it does.
2. Kevin Andrews' cycling buddies
Our politicians love arguing via analogies, which is where you try to make a point about something controversial by pointing out something uncontroversial. This rhetorical device is known as the straw man.
In the early days of this debate, Coalition backbencher Kevin Andrews made an analogy between same-sex couples and his cycling buddies.
"I have an affectionate relationship with my cycling mates, we go cycling on the weekend," he said, invoking an image of middle-aged men in cycling garb that many of us are still frantically trying to purge from their retinas. "But that's not marriage."
Well, no, unless the Pollie Pedal regularly transitions into a Polyamory Pedal — but Andrews' point seems a better justification for a ban on Lycra than a ban on gay marriage.
Not all "friendly" relationships should be recognised via marriage — well, yes.
As Wizard of Oz fans know, straw men generally display more logical acumen than this.
Perhaps the most generous thing that can be said here is that in such a heated debate, it's lovely to have at least one thing on which we can all agree.
Which is not to say that if the law changes, two male cycling mates shouldn't be able to get hitched if they so desire. And if they do, Kevin Andrews would no doubt recommend that they have some marriage counselling beforehand.
3. Political correctness gone mad!
Tony Abbott, who has a particular genius for opposing things, claims that people should oppose same-sex marriage if they don't like political correctness — which is of course, well beyond the bounds of the very limited question being asked by the ABS.
"I say to you, if you don't like same-sex marriage, vote no," he said, which is indisputably sensible advice, as that's the question on the table.
But then he went on. "If you're worried about religious freedom, and freedom of speech, vote no. If you don't like political correctness, vote no — because voting no will help to stop political correctness in its tracks."
This feels a bit like tone policing, fittingly for a Tony who used to live in a police college. Tone policing is a kind of "genetic fallacy", where you look at where an argument came from instead of what it says.
Here, Abbott is discrediting an argument by focussing on the way people express it — so instead of judging marriage equality on its merits, you reject it because it's just another instance of how namby-pamby lefties are always whining on about some vegan intersex poetry, or some other equally crude stereotype.
You reduce an argument to just more "blah blah blah" from the usual suspects. But even though many of those on the left can admittedly be incredibly annoying, it doesn't mean they're wrong.
Similarly, Tony Abbott isn't necessarily wrong on occasions when he's sober just because he sometimes enjoys the company of Kevin Andrews and Peter Costello more than most people would imagine possible.
4. Won't someone think of the children?
This is a favourite of Lyle Shelton from the Australian Christian Lobby, and is what's known in formal logic as an appeal to tradition — the view that because something has long been the case, it must therefore remain so.
But even though some of Australia's social mores are derived from Christian societies in Europe, our Parliament is constitutionally barred from imposing one religion on all of us, and the current debate is about secular marriage of the sort already performed by celebrants for those seeking to avoid the involvement of the church.
Of course, the Anglican Church itself was created so Henry VIII could get divorced — and let's not forget that Jesus was raised by a man who was not his biological father, which might suggest the virtue of sympathy for blended families.
The idea that kids need the active involvement of a father and a mother to be "normal" is not borne out by data, or in the many same-sex and single-parent families we already have, but it remains powerful after centuries of being the social norm.
Of course, this has very little to do with the question at hand. Lyle Shelton is making a case for non-straight couples to be prevented from having children.
But they already can, and nobody appears to contemplate preventing them, so the proponents of this argument instead uses their concern to justify his opposition to same-sex marriage.
The survey question does have one clear connection to children, as answering yes would allow the many same-sex couples who currently co-parent to get married and some conservatives — such as David Cameron — who believe marriage is a precious source of familial stability support same-sex marriage on that basis.
5. What if it teaches people it's okay to be gay?
"Kids in Year 7 were asked to role-play being a same-sex relationship", warned one of the women in the Coalition for Marriage's first ad. I remember studying Macbeth in school and being asked to role-play both the Scottish king and his wife, and somehow that hasn't turned me into a mass-murderer. I also acted out Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in a high school English class, and so far my marriage has yet to descend to anything like those depths, fortunately.
Many of these arguments display a discomfort for gay and lesbian people in general. While of course people are entitled to their private views, acting on that discomfort contravenes antidiscrimination laws, and tends to make people social pariahs — sorry, young lawyers.
I wish kids in my high school had been asked to role-play gay relationships in Year 7. "Gay" was used constantly as a slur in the playground. Some of my classmates have now come out, and I just hate to think how difficult we must've made things for them.
As opposed to the other arguments listed above, there is no rhetorical sleight of hand going on here. The two options are a society where many people are told that their sexuality is wrong and suffer as a result, or a society where consenting adults are allowed to love other adults as they please.
We've already resolved the legality question of homosexual sexual relationships. Nobody is seriously proposing recriminalising that, thank goodness.
But some of the arguments proposed by the No case betray discomfort with those relationships in general.
And while "you can say no" to marriage equality, as the Coalition for Marriage reminds us, we can't legally say no to homosexuality, not any more.
So it's now a question of whether we take the next step beyond legalisation, and treat gay and lesbian relationships as truly equal.
State of Origin is not a beauty contest. Fortunately
It's usual for a famous Origin victory to be sealed by crashing across an opponent's try line, not scurrying behind your own so the mean men in maroon can't have the ball. The Blues' fullback proved last night that while regular aeroplanes might not work in reverse, Hayne Planes certainly do.
But we NSW supporters will take the win that Jarryd Hayne's strategic retreat - and of course his try saving tackle on Sam Thaiday - secured.
In fact, the Blues would have taken pretty much anything that sealed Origin 2014 on home soil, and not required us to travel north for a decider at that cauldron of northern - well, I'm not going to say "hate", but only because it doesn't seem strong enough a word for tens of thousands of seething Queenslanders.
And take it we did after what was surely one of the most lacklustre games in the series for many years. Stole it, really, since neither team played like the champions of Origins past. For long periods, neither team managed to do much when they had the ball, simply mucking around for a bit and then yielding the ball via a handling error or lacklustre kick.
Many Origin games are packed with of moments of explosive brilliance - this one was a grind, and a coarse one at that. The NRL's recent (and welcome) crackdown on punching stopped the game turning into an out-and-out brawl, and instead things remained simmering throughout, almost arcing up with two minutes to spare.
But we'll take it, because after eighty minutes the series scoreboard said 2-0.
At half-time, this result was far from guaranteed. Queensland led by two penalties scored by the record-setting boot of JoHnatHon Thurston, a kicker so dependable that his parents included a pair of uprights in his name.
The usual feeling of dread set in as I waited for the second half to begin. Queenslanders, whether footballers or prime ministers, are somehow born with a congenital belief in their ability to make a comeback, and the Maroons have done it time and extra time again.
But still, I kept consoling myself with the maths. A converted try would do it. And it did; oh, how it did. One burst of ingenuity from Trent Hodkinson who crossed the line and then somehow nervelessly converted his own try.
And somehow, the Blues held on, helped by Queensland obligingly turning the ball over on several key occasions. Had to happen eventually.
At the end of the game, I didn't feel jubilation. You couldn't, really, after a win like that. I didn't want to send abusive texts to every Queenslanders I know, as I confess I may have done in the past. After all, it's still eight-two in the past decade.
What I felt was beautiful relief. We hadn't choked or stuffed up or yielded yet another Queensland comeback. And we had kept the Maroon stars who had tormented us for so long tryless.
The history books - or, nowadays, the history Wikis - won't record the exact nature of the game, probably because all existing copies of the first 70 minutes will be locked in a vault marked "FOR INSOMNIAC USE ONLY".
What they will record is that NSW have won an Origin series for the first time since 2005. To put it in perspective, Bob Carr was premier then, and we've had five others since.
Five.
Which is one more point than Queensland scored.
A decisive victory is a wonderful thing, and so is an elegant one. But an ugly victory is still a victory. And after eight painful years, we'll take it.
Twelve ways to celebrate Lunar New Year
It's the Year of the Horse, of course, of course, and Lunar New Year is always a wonderful time to celebrate the many delightful elements of Asian culture that have made their way to Australia. Lunar New Year is celebrated in Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and of course China (including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau), as well as across the region where migrants originating from these countries have settled in other places like Singapore and Malaysia.
So, in honour of the twelve different animals that lend their identities to the years on the lunar calendar, I've come up with twelve fun things you might want to do in honour of this equine lunar season.
Admittedly, many of them involve eating, but after all, what better way to see in the Lunar New Year?
1) Yum cha
2) Bubble tea takes iced tea to a whole other level, and mass-produces it in heat-sealed containers of milky goodness that are full of taro balls and other delights. If you don't have a sweet tooth, steer well clear of Easyway, Chatime and the other increasingly ubiquitous vendors, but if you don't mind a sugary, milky tea hit, get into it.
3) Watch Asian movies, especially those from Hong Kong and Korea, which have two of the world's most vibrant, exciting film industries. If you liked Scorcese's The Departed, you would do very well to check out the original, which is called Infernal Affairs. Combining the ubercharismatic Andy Lau with the intense Tony Leung makes for a partnership every bit as good as that of Matt Damon and Leonardo di Caprio in the Hollywood version. Comedian Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle), auteur Wong Kar-Wai (In The Mood for Love) and gangster supremo Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy) are also very reliable.
4) Eating late is easy in Sydney's Chinatown, where the Chinese, Thai and Korean restaurants are buzzing well past midnight. Somehow Peking Duck feels even more decadent at 3am.
5) Banh mi are those delicious crusty bread rolls which betray Vietnam's French heritage, infused with delicious flavours that could only come from the Mekong Delta. Try the original with pork, paté and chili, or the lemongrass chicken and beef.
6) Korean BBQ is sweeping the world, and it's just a matter of time until your local pub copies the genius idea of putting a grill plate on every table. You're given a plate of raw meat, generally marinated, and you grill it yourself. Not only is it fun, but it saves on labour costs and keeps the price down. If you don't know what you're doing, one of the staff can show you the ropes.
7) Fireworks are no longer legal, even in the ACT, but hey – big public displays are always fun, no matter how many times you've seen them before. Most cities have a number of firework displays at this time of year.
8) Lion dancing is great fun, especially for kids. It brings good luck to businesses (and bad luck to your eardrums if you're too close to the instruments).
9) Watching horse racing is a popular pastime in places Hong Kong, home of the famous Happy Valley racecourse, and what better way to see in the Year of the Horse? Just don't bet your shirt, because, well, the house always wins.
10) New Year Cake is a bit of an acquired taste, at least in my experience, but well worth trying.
11) Red packets containing money are traditionally exchanged during new year as part of Chinese culture. It's customary to include notes rather than coins, though, so it can get expensive if you follow tradition and give the packets to everybody! With luck you'll get a few packets back and break even...
12) Spending time with your family is what Lunar New Year is all about. In China, travelling to your home town to spend time with your family is pretty much mandatory, especially seeing as there are a number of public holidays in honour of the Lunar New Year. So if you get together with your loved ones, perhaps over a dumpling or two, you'll be celebrating what's ultimately the most important thing about the festival.