Someone recently asked
me via LinkedIn what it was like to live in ’Strahlia, er, Australia. This is a
very difficult question to answer. It’s ‘like’ one thing for me, but ‘like’
something else for someone else. It is undoubtedly different living in
Melbourne or Sydney than it is living in Cairns. It is different living here,
than living one suburb over. There is no single way of living in Australia that
sets it off from other parts of the world.
There are, of course,
images from TV and cinema. I haven’t watched Home and Away since my children were quite young, but the fact that
it is set in ‘Summer Bay’, and that in fact it always seems to be summer there,
is bound to give a somewhat skewed impression to the rest of the world. Not
everyone, young or old, spends every available moment at the beach, surfing.
Personally, I hate the beach. It’s one of the last places I would ever want to
be.
Then there are the
‘Crocodile Dundee’ (Paul Hogan) and ‘Croc Hunter’ (Steve Irwin) caricatures
that seem to have such broad appeal overseas. I may be wrong about this, but my
impression is that Steve and Bindy Irwin are far more popular overseas than
here in Australia. Just to set the record straight, most of us don’t go around
wrestling crocodiles or capturing highly venomous snakes.
Another image of
Australia is that we are heavy drinkers, and perhaps we are. But so are people
in many other western nations. According to World Health Organisation data, based
on per capita drinking Australia is ranked eighteenth in the world, although we
are ranked well above other countries that might be considered culturally similar
to us, such as the UK, New Zealand, the USA and Canada.
Another image is of
our sporting prowess. I think it is probably fair to say that in many sports we
rank much higher than our population would predict. Our medal tally at the
Olympics (let’s pretend the 2012 Olympics didn’t happen) is usually disproportionately
high. So yes, sport has a very important place in our culture.
In other areas we have
been very fortunate in the past—areas such as health care, education, personal
freedom, economic prosperity, national security. My impression is, though, that
in many of these areas we are rapidly falling back towards the field. While
many other nations may continue to look with envy on Australia, I think
overseas perceptions are lagging somewhat behind the reality. Perhaps our own
perceptions too. A nation often clings desperately to its own self-image, long
after that image has ceased to be reflected in reality.
Most of the time day
to day life—even in Tropical Cairns, nestled between World Heritage Rainforest
and the Great Barrier Reef—is pretty much the same as in most other western
nations. Most of us live in cities or suburbs. We work, we eat, we sleep and
then we work again. Despite ‘Summer Bay’, life here is not a perpetual holiday.
As you say, Philip, there is a multitude of answers to the question: What is it like to live in Australia? I think it is impossible to give a general answer; each person confronted with the question would, of course, have to look at it from his/her own very individual perspective. Also, is it possible to give a balanced answer if one is not able to step outside of all that the question implies and look at it from the experience of having lived somewhere else other than Australia?
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