The Australian Enigma

The other day I was thinking about what I might say when we return home and someone asks me, “So, what is Australia really like?” And I realized that in that brief, maybe awkward moment, I wasn’t really sure what I might really want to say. There are the obvious quips and quick generalizations which keep the conversations light and short but they would also betray the truth – or at least, my version of the truth that I had lived. Of course, in general the commentary will be complimentary and cordial. That is the truth. This country and its culture have fit us like a new glove, comfortable, exciting, but maybe with a slight pinch or two due to its “newness”. However, in a slightly longer, slightly more in depth conversation – say, like in a blog entry - I might be tempted to try to explain some of the more interesting, puzzling, and maybe even frustrating parts of Australian society that a “man of leisure” like myself has had the opportunity to notice as I strolled from café to library and back again. Perhaps, by laying out my muddled facts, like the dregs of a latte in my well worn coffee cup, I might see new and clearer reason for some of those things “Aussie” which continue to perplex.

I would like to begin by saying that I really know very little about this country . For some, that admission alone should give me pause before going on and revealing just how ignorant I am. On the other hand, I would also propose that the majority of us base a lot of what we believe on a few sketchy facts that represent the sum total of “jack” – in the big picture and vulgar vernacular. She looks thin, she must be obsessive. He smokes, he must be a jerk. That kid’s a brat, his parents must not care. We all do it every day. Assuming we know something about which we know nothing. However, I have lived in Australia for almost nine months, we have travelled and read extensively, the newspaper gets dissected daily, the news comes into our home nightly, we can begin to count some Australians as friends…I think we are at least allowed and maybe even qualified to have an opinion about the country and its citizens. It is an outsider’s opinion granted, which, for many reasons may be totally irrelevant or perhaps, the most relevant of all. So, if I am in fact asked the question, “What are Australians really like? What will I say…

Let me begin by saying that I have found parts of Australian society quite conflicted. By that I mean that there seems to be so much and so many in this country that stand in direct counterpoint to another. Let me start with attitudes toward Britain. There is an obvious love-hate conversation going on here. The Governor-General seems to be an office that is given great regard and is currently held by a bit of a stuffy, older white woman. Fine. Yet, there is also a fairly serious conversation going on about Australia doing away with its ties to England and truly going it alone as a republic. In general, history has imbued this country with colonial ties in language, government, food, what side of the road to drive on, etc. and yet to listen to the average Aussie, anything to do with “the Poms” is to be ridiculed and beaten like a medal count at the Olympics. But to say the same kind of thing about "their princess" Mary, a commoner from Tassie who married into the Danish throne, would probably not be "cricket". I say, if you truly want to get rid of something like the monarchy, you should do what we do in Canada and simply ignore it altogether. And while on the topic of government, I do find it quite “cool”, in a slightly teeny-bopper way, that the current Minister of the Environment is the former lead singer of Midnight Oil. Now, if we could just get Gord Downie to run for office back home.

And then there’s the fashion. Apparently, Australia has some of the most sought after clothes designers in the world – Wayne Cooper is huge - practically forcing fashionistas like Paris Hilton to travel all the way to Melbourne just to buy a dress or ten. And yet, whilst walking down Swanston Street, I have never seen more strangely dressed people in my life. I know, I am mostly referring to the under 30 set here and in great danger of sounding as out of step as I think they are; however, the style is a sort of grungy Goodwill meets faded surf shop for the guys and a Barbie meets tacky vintage lingerie store for the girls. And make sure it’s tight! I exaggerate to a point, but there is still nothing remotely good looking about 4 piercings, 5 tattoos, greasy hair cut and gelled to look like an electrified mop top, skin tight black jeans, a fading Billabong singlet and a pair of $5 thongs. On the arm of this GQ wannabe are often women with a similar number of tatts, some bizarre form of restrictive leather footwear travelling halfway up their leg, in a pouffy dress that might just cover the fact that they are wearing underwear while pushing up and out all or what little bust there is making sure that the brightly coloured bra straps are defiantly displayed. Did I mention that both of these paragons of appearance often accentuate their distinctive look with a well-placed ciggy and a can of Jack Daniels? I create a caricature of the extremes but not by much on some Saturday night tram rides.

Which brings me to another area of complete mystification - the Australian attitude toward drinking. It’s an area where I wonder if they are willfully trying not to connect the dots. The legal age to buy alcohol is 18 though there is seemingly nothing wrong with younger people drinking – in the park, on the train, on the street. While they’re at it graffiti, bar brawls, and general hooliganism seems also to be a requirement. A recent statistic in the paper announced that Australian kids are drinking 8 more litres per year per kid of coolers, (they call them alco-pops – no wonder!) than the next closest country, England. This would also put them at 12 more litres per year than Canadian kids. There are huge issues in the club areas of Melbourne with the clubs and drunken violence. There is a sense of entitlement surrounding high school kids and their breaks where the media-fuelled expectation is that the kids just need to blow off a little steam. Behaving like a “bogan”, “hoon” or “larrikin” is almost a condoned rite of passage. Public service ads in the media are some of the hardest hitting I have ever seen and but to little effect. There is a bottle shop in every pub and on every block – so alcohol can be more convenient. The pro sports teams and their athletes condone a lifestyle of play hard, party hard – so alcohol is more popular. I had no idea that cricketers were the life of the party. Not a week goes by where there isn’t another high profile athlete getting in a brawl, crashing a car, or doing something ridiculous after a few cocktails. Perhaps because the mainstream media is our main source of information and it tends to focus only on the negative angle, we are immune from hearing another side of the debate and yet, in my view, they are just paying cheap lip service to the issue and its increasingly ill effects will never go away in the land of “No worries” until alcohol is seen to be a privilege for adults and not a right for any and all who’ve had a hard day or just passed grade 12.

I have the same opinion about the popularity of sports betting here. Maybe I am willfully naïve to the amount Canadians drop at the casino, on Pro Line or around the poker table on a Saturday night; but again, I see Australia trying to be all things to all people and doing neither well. We will endorse gaming and betting and casinos, inheriting the inevitable crime that comes along with that, and then we will wring our hands when families are destroyed by gambling addictions. Hopefully a few billboards and PSAs on TV will convince the masses to do the right thing. Unfortunately, like Ontario, once the government gets hooked up to this seemingly endless supply of funds, can you ever pull the plug? Better to just stop being so uptight, let the people govern themselves, and pay the addicted gamblers back with a better road to drive home on, right?

Indeed, there seems to be a deeply entrenched concern for retaining an Australian’s freedom to be themselves - individuals choosing to live well and prosper with the land – strong and independent all the way. I think they model themselves more after the Americans in this way. However, as in the states, this attitude does not easily lend itself to developing a few more caring and egads(!) socialist policies. Abortion laws are years behind Canada while paid maternity leave is something they are just starting to consider. They say no to nuclear power but are willing to sell all of their uranium to the Chinese. They are a nation of 22 million and yet they have the 10th largest military in the world! They have lost 10 soldiers in Afghanistan to our 110. They are in a 12 year period of drought with some of the most sun days of anywhere in the world, and yet the government is having trouble creating any comprehensible incentive plan for people to convert to solar power. The area, as we have so tragically seen, is prone to bushfires and yet people are allowed to build and live in homes without any insurance! The reservoirs are at 30% capacity and yet no one wants to take on the responsibility of paying for alternatives like a desalination plant. There is this frustrating dichotomy of life views “down under” that has created some bizarre and untenable extremes. While the media chases champion surfers at Bondi under the shadow of the Opera House – drunk kids fight outside strip clubs fuelled by designer drinks made by the companies their heroes play for. Can Australians have it both ways?

Please don’t get me wrong. Coming from a Canadian society that seemed to make me tense just walking out the door, Melbourne is a breath of fresh air. There is none of the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses feel to living where we do and I think it continues to get easier to meet people and talk to people than in Canada – though maybe that’s because we are the foreigners with the strange accent. Or maybe it just feels more relaxed because we are. Whatever the reason, it remains an interesting study in societies when you are allowed to compare the two. If anything, I might even chock it all up to the differences between our geography and climate. Thus, even if we or they wanted to adopt some of each other’s attitudes or mores, the weather or land might somehow have something to say about it. I can imagine how hard it might be to utter “no worries, mate” when it’s dark and 20 below in the middle of February. In light of all of this, Canada becomes an enigma as well. No more perfect or balanced about many of the same issues. I guess what is really frustrating for this cold Canadian, so ready to embrace a new, better and warmer culture is that when the sun, sand, and water are so perfect all the time – one wonders naively why the people part can’t be as well.