Well, after 37 days and around 10.000 km, that was Australia.
And what a country. There were times when it was easy to forget that I was abroad – the shop names were familiar, the cars were on the proper side of the road, the signs were in English (and spelt correctly!), the weather could easily have been British, society was ordered in a familiar way, transport worked the way I'd expect, the television and radio sounded vaguely like they should, they even have the Queen on the coins and the Union Jack on their flag. So, yes, Australia is not an entirely new experience for a Brit.
A good (American) friend of mine suggested that Australia was just like America but upside down. Now, he was being flippant, but the idea that Australia is just a cross between the US and the UK is not uncommon, it seems to me. I really wasn't sure what to expect in Australia, but that hybrid US/UK model probably wasn't far from the truth. My American friend was very wrong. I was less wrong but still way off the mark.
Australia is Australian. If you're going to make comparisons, then I would say it's closer to the UK than the US, but it's very much its own country. Historically it's been tied to the UK much more recently than the US has so of course there's a lot of British influence. But the Australians have taken that common heritage and gone in their own direction with it.
The country straddles international boundaries. It's very much a western country, the news from the US and from Europe is reported here, but geographically it's in Asia. Whichever way you look at it, it's a long way from pretty much anywhere to the major population centres in the south-east. Australians have had to come up with their own approach to life for most of their history.
So the UK and Australia may have much in common historically, but the two countries travelled down different paths, influenced by different factors. The UK is a small, crowded country with a heavy industrial past. We have historically played a major rôle in the world (pretty large chunks of it were under our direct control after all) and it's sometimes hard for us to let go of that influence. Australia is a very spacious place and hasn't any of the historical baggage that the UK has. They were free to evolve along a new path.
Life in Australia is pretty good, from what I've seen. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. If they could learn to drive and buy a few road signs, it'd be a lot better, but it's not at all bad as it is. It would be an easy place to emigrate to with only an enormous time-difference getting in the way. There would be no (serious) language barrier and few cultural problems. But it's easy enough to gloss over that time difference in writing; in reality, it's a seriously long way home – at least 24 hours assuming you left right now, which you probably can't.
Would I move here? Well, I'd have to have a pretty good reason, and that reason would have to come with a visa. It doesn't seem very likely but it's certainly a country I wouldn't mind visiting again.
But now, it's time to head east again. So, thank you Australia, it was great.
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I agree entirely with your surmise about the US/UK comparison's to Australia. Many Aussies would say to me 'it's better than England though isn't it?' (these are Aussies who had never left the state, let alone the country!!) and I would say that they weren't really comparable, they were like chalk and cheese. So many differences, in just climate and space alone!!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenAs I haven't been the US I couldn't honestly or fairly comment on it, but I didn't feel it was what I had seen on the TV of the US. I found it 'colonial' in parts, but as you say, it is also very much its own place - and that is how the Aussies would like it to be considered too!!
Is it better than England? Well, as a Scot, I'm tempted to take that cheap shot at the open goal, but let's try to rise above that!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenIt's different to the UK. Not hugely different at times, but definitely different. If you plonked me down in a Sydney suburb and told me it was a new town in the SE of England, I might believe you, but as soon as someone opened their mouth, you'd know, and not from the accent, just from the attitude.
Perhaps it's having all that space that makes the Aussies (and Americans and Kiwis) different. Dunno - it'd take a better social anthropologist than I to work it out (which is pretty much any anthropologist, I'd have thought).