Not that Australia Day is exactly a Big Deal to us Aussies. It is usually a chance for a long weekend or a looooong weekend, depending on what day of the week it falls on. Still, it is a time for me to reflect on what I like about being Australian.
Hmm, well, let me see.
After our last prime minister's efforts, I feel our country has degraded its international goodwill (but to nowhere near the same extent as the current US administration). We are not as tolerant as we used to be (fancy having race riots in Australia! Godsakes!). I could go on, but well what is the point?
To me, being Australian means:
- Living and letting live
- Being tolerant
- Giving others a "fair go" (which is pretty much the opposite of "never give a sucker an even break," a very American attitude)
- Being able to kick back and have fun
- Dissing anyone who is not Australian, particularly our Kiwi neighbours (cos we do actually like them - just look at how we congregate with them and Canadians when we are overseas)
- Being able to ask where the toilet is without people curling up and dying of shame
- Having our own lingo (though it is on the move itself)
- Laughing at fart, gutter and other crude jokes
- Giving a mate, or anyone else for that matter, a hand when they need it or even better before they need it
- Forming deep, if unspoken, friendships, or what we call mateship
- Not speaking like any other peoples on the planet
and lots more.
Living in the US has given me a fierce faith in my own Australianness, so to speak. This may be the land of freedom and opportunity but y'know it really doesn't always seem that way. I look at the people sleeping on park benches and the people hanging around a local Home Depot hoping to be picked up for some menial job and I wonder. I see people buying cheap and nasty because that is all they can afford. I see ads on the tv offering people cheap health cover. I hear people whinging because they have to pay state sales and other taxes (and why? because without those taxes the roads don't get mended and the hospitals close). I am told I am free but I am invisible to the government here. I am not free to do as I please - I am not allowed to work and if I did work illegally I could get kicked out of the country along with DH. OK, it might take them a while to catch me but the risks are just not worth it. I am not allowed to get a social security number which means I can never get a credit card in my own right, nor open a bank account, nor get a credit rating or buy anything based on that credit rating, we have to pay double security bond on an apartment, etc, etc.
Living in the US has given me an appreciation for what I had Back 'Ome - friends, family, understanding of the culture around me, a feeling of a deep connection with where I lived. During my one month trip to the US and England in 1999 (nearly 10 years ago!!!!) I felt like a rubber band was pulling me back home. This time the rubber band is pulling harder but I am not going. Not yet. There is too much to experience here and DH is less than a month into his new job. Homesickness is pretty much a constant, like a dull toothache but there are distractions here.
I leave you with a favourite Monty Python poem:
"This 'ere's the waddle,
Symbol of our land
You can stick it in a boddle
You can 'old it in yer 'and.
Amen. Crackatube."
(Pictures taken along the Los Gatos bike trail in San Jose. I've chosen these because they could be around any lake or trail in Melbourne.)
4 comments:
I know exactly what you mean: the last decade or so I have been ashamed sometimes to be Australian, but I went to the Citizenship ceremony this year and it has certainly renewed my 'Australian-ness', though I do have issues with the 'mateship' word. I'm not the USA the home of the brave and the land of the free anymore, maybe that will change next year!!!
Happy Australia Day, did you ahve a barbie??!!!!
you didnt mention the blowies or the mozzies. they are particularly out and about this australia day weekend. i got bitten on the hand in two places and my ear while alseep last night!
Hugs!
a
Happy Australia Day!
I know what you mean - I missed wet cold England when I lived in Italy for a year.
Well, this year they're all running round madly following some TV ads saying "Happy Australia Day"; that is, except for the indigines, who refer to it as Invasion Day. Not sure that I like this "Happy ..." whatever - tends to be mindless and pointless. It was when some moron wished me "Happy Good Friday" last year that I nearly had a apoplexy, and wondered seriously about multiculturalism. Although I think rank ignorance was more to the point ... Speaking of which, you get some you-beaut answers when you ask people carrying pumpkins, dressed as witches etc etc what the significance of Hallowe'en is. Specially if you ask them about it's relationship to All Saints' Day, or All Hallows. Whaaatt??
What really gives me the irrits is that while they're all wishing each other "Happy Australia Day', a certain country north of here is doing it's best to buy not just the products of our mines, but the bloody mines themselves, and most people seem to either not know, or not care if they do know!!! Bah, humbug, I spose that's what they get for 10 years of The Rodent speaking of nothing but the bloody economy. Which was seriously un-Australian! And now there's a whole generation of people under 30 who don't know how government should work, or what it is to be Australian, or what it is to give someone a fair go, or what it is to give a mate a hand or any of those things which sticks society together. Which is why Aussie society is coming apart at the seams. The 'I, me, my, mine' ethos, and the idea that if you want anything, you have to pay for it, is rotting this country and debasing its citizens. ... enough ... thank god for Howard's End, although Kev is having his work cut out trying to reverse any of it!!
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