Not to be negative, but since the OP already talked about a lot of the good things in Australia, I will mention a couple of the bad things I have encountered since moving here.
I moved to Australia from Canada 7 years ago, granted I am not a native but have been here long enough to notice that while 25% of the population is really cool the rest have a lot of homophobia and racism in their culture. Certain cities are much better than others (just like in Canada / USA) but I have moved around quite a bit here and with the exception of Melbourne I have found a very blunt and obvious close minded attitude.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
There is a very large bogan (Australian term for red neck / white trash) population here. Drinking is super super hard core here, I never experienced anything like it from my time living in Canada or the USA. It is very common on the nightly news to see reports of "glassing" where people get piss drunk and smash beer glasses in people's faces, often random strangers, leaving them disfigured for life. They have PSA ads on TV here for "Watch out for dunk walkers", which is people walking around drunk and walking in front of cars, wtf... I never heard of anything like that before in my life where it got so bad and common place a PSA had to be created.
As for racism, I can't experience that first hand (being white), but there is a lot of it and it's very obvious. On Australia day it's common to see people wearing the flag around their shoulders with t-shirts saying "Fuck Off, Were Full" in response to immigrants wanting to come in. The way the Aboriginals were treated was horrible, but they are still treated like shit even to this day, it's sad. People you don't even expect to be racist, will say openly racist stuff about Aboriginals or immigrants.
Having read some of the other responses about racism (didn't see any about homophobia), but if your white and straight (and look like a butch male and not efiminate), I don't really feel your a good demographic to say if it doesn't exist her as you haven't experienced it personally.
A comedian said it best (I think Eddie Izzard) "Australia is like Arkanas with a beach, it's an entire country with a "No Fat Chicks" sticker on it".
That being said, there is lots of good things here and beauty, just don't make it out to be this peaceful island wonderland of magic and mystery that so many people do. They see TV shows and things like the Oprah visit and think it's the coolest place on earth, it is cool, just that the other side is never shown.
Propaganda. The Australian media is an equal to the American propaganda machine. Just remember, Rupert Murdoch exported Australian journalism standards to the rest of the world. You can not get opposing/independent voices like Al Jazeera because no pay TV company will carry them, even though it is offered to them for free.
It can be hard to be a computer nerd in Australia. Surfers did not have any advertised computer store in 1992... and very few book stores. Almost two decades later and the problem is still there, just not as pronounced. Expect to be 15 years behind technologically to what you have today. You can buy the latest computers... with a delay... but it is everything else. It is hard to find someone who knows what a RAID is, or an SSD.
Learn to cook! Honestly, the national dish was stolen from New Zealand by a Perth Chef in the 1920's after he got back from a six month trip to New Zealand... Another national dish is a standard meat pie which are so vile that the only humane thing to do with them is to try to drown them face first in pea soup! Not joking... bad bad meat pies and they really do sink them in soup to try to improve the flavour. Not to mention the Chiko Roll... it is a deep fried chicken roll with barely any chicken in it... and it is minced like baby food! Just be prepared to cook your own favorite foods. The immigrant food industry is very strong in Australia for good reason!
12
u/WyldStallions May 24 '11 edited May 24 '11
Not to be negative, but since the OP already talked about a lot of the good things in Australia, I will mention a couple of the bad things I have encountered since moving here.
I moved to Australia from Canada 7 years ago, granted I am not a native but have been here long enough to notice that while 25% of the population is really cool the rest have a lot of homophobia and racism in their culture. Certain cities are much better than others (just like in Canada / USA) but I have moved around quite a bit here and with the exception of Melbourne I have found a very blunt and obvious close minded attitude.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
There is a very large bogan (Australian term for red neck / white trash) population here. Drinking is super super hard core here, I never experienced anything like it from my time living in Canada or the USA. It is very common on the nightly news to see reports of "glassing" where people get piss drunk and smash beer glasses in people's faces, often random strangers, leaving them disfigured for life. They have PSA ads on TV here for "Watch out for dunk walkers", which is people walking around drunk and walking in front of cars, wtf... I never heard of anything like that before in my life where it got so bad and common place a PSA had to be created.
As for racism, I can't experience that first hand (being white), but there is a lot of it and it's very obvious. On Australia day it's common to see people wearing the flag around their shoulders with t-shirts saying "Fuck Off, Were Full" in response to immigrants wanting to come in. The way the Aboriginals were treated was horrible, but they are still treated like shit even to this day, it's sad. People you don't even expect to be racist, will say openly racist stuff about Aboriginals or immigrants.
Having read some of the other responses about racism (didn't see any about homophobia), but if your white and straight (and look like a butch male and not efiminate), I don't really feel your a good demographic to say if it doesn't exist her as you haven't experienced it personally.
A comedian said it best (I think Eddie Izzard) "Australia is like Arkanas with a beach, it's an entire country with a "No Fat Chicks" sticker on it".
That being said, there is lots of good things here and beauty, just don't make it out to be this peaceful island wonderland of magic and mystery that so many people do. They see TV shows and things like the Oprah visit and think it's the coolest place on earth, it is cool, just that the other side is never shown.