Australia. Not that it was wholly terrible. It just wasn’t what I expected and I overcooked it by staying for 2 years.
To be fair, it could never have lived up to the super-positive stereotype it has here in the UK.
We think of Aussies as fun-living, friendly, witty, laid-back beautiful people who are down to earth yet somehow savvy and open-minded. They love a drink and a BBQ and have a ‘live and let live’, inclusive attitude. Basically everything we Brits would love to be if we weren’t so repressed.
I think this cliche comes from a cross between Crocodile Dundee and through meeting the thousands of charming Aussies who end up working behind bars when they visit the UK in their youth.
Also, with the British weather being what it is, we imagine anywhere with a sunny climate would encourage people with a similarly sunny disposition.
Anyway, I’ll spare you the details, but having travelled extensively throughout Australia - well beyond Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane - I found little of the stereotype I’d expected and quite a lot of the opposite.
I did meet some great people, but they were mainly Irish 🤣
Yeah I mean, we’ve been heavily influenced by the US and UK historically, so we have a deeply racist disposition. Our treatment of Indigenous Australians is as much of a blight on our history as it is for other English-speaking nations like the US, Canada and South Africa. I do still strongly believe we’re doing better in a lot of ways, for example we’ve started using indigenous place names, acknowledging traditional land ownership and other steps. But we’re far from perfect, and if you come here with that conceptualisation then you’ll definitely be disappointed.
Australia. Not that it was wholly terrible. It just wasn’t what I expected and I overcooked it by staying for 2 years.
To be fair, it could never have lived up to the super-positive stereotype it has here in the UK.
We think of Aussies as fun-living, friendly, witty, laid-back beautiful people who are down to earth yet somehow savvy and open-minded. They love a drink and a BBQ and have a ‘live and let live’, inclusive attitude. Basically everything we Brits would love to be if we weren’t so repressed.
I think this cliche comes from a cross between Crocodile Dundee and through meeting the thousands of charming Aussies who end up working behind bars when they visit the UK in their youth.
Also, with the British weather being what it is, we imagine anywhere with a sunny climate would encourage people with a similarly sunny disposition.
Anyway, I’ll spare you the details, but having travelled extensively throughout Australia - well beyond Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane - I found little of the stereotype I’d expected and quite a lot of the opposite.
I did meet some great people, but they were mainly Irish 🤣
Yeah I mean, we’ve been heavily influenced by the US and UK historically, so we have a deeply racist disposition. Our treatment of Indigenous Australians is as much of a blight on our history as it is for other English-speaking nations like the US, Canada and South Africa. I do still strongly believe we’re doing better in a lot of ways, for example we’ve started using indigenous place names, acknowledging traditional land ownership and other steps. But we’re far from perfect, and if you come here with that conceptualisation then you’ll definitely be disappointed.
Understandable.
I know a few Australians and they are racist and nasty.
I know one who is kind, though.