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    Understanding Australian Culture Through American Eyes
    Understanding Australian Culture Through American Eyes
    Understanding Australian Culture Through American Eyes
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    Understanding Australian Culture Through American Eyes

    By William Drake

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    Most cultures display some degree of internal inconsistency, and Australians are no exception. Australians are both prudent and rash. Despite the national fixation with gambling, Australians have a high rate of personal savings. But while they save, there are relatively few "investors" and most put savings in savings banks with low rates of return. They have a high rate of home ownership and a wanderlust that finds Australians around every bend of the trail in the world. 


    They are prone to live for the day but most have life insurance. They make good-natured fun of subjects that in America are approached with great seriousness like death, accidents, religion and anything deemed even a little pompous. And as we shall see with “Waltzing Matilda”, Australian humor mixes the grim into the playful.


    They admire the “bush” ethos, but choose overwhelmingly to live in cities. They have disdain for those in authority, but have laws to protect officials from defamation which are much more restrictive than in America.


    The Australian attitude toward authority is ambivalent. While depending on the government to provide for many needs, Australians are simultaneously skeptical of authority figures and don't trust the government.


    The ambivalence about authority figures in relations between Australians and the English, and latterly the Americans. “Poms”, a name of disputed origin for the English, have long been derided as effete, decadent and even treacherous. This is not surprising in a country with a population of that England’s outcasts and Irish political prisoners. On the other hand, for years, the middle and upper classes emulated all things English, often disdaining Australian ways. This is known now as the “cultural cringe.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBill Drake
    Release dateDec 25, 2018
    Understanding Australian Culture Through American Eyes

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      Book preview

      Understanding Australian Culture Through American Eyes - William Drake

      Introduction

      Dear Reader: As you read this book, please keep in mind that it was originally written by an American professor of cross-cultural studies for American business people going on assignment to live in Australia. It is based on interviews with hundreds of Australian and American business people, professionals, students and travelers. The value of this book to a careful, interested reader, whether you are a student, business person, or traveler and whatever your home culture, is that examining the Australian culture from an American point of view will give you valuable insights into both cultures.

      The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth. He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludgers on no one, and acknowledges no master. Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed.

      Nino Culotta – They're A Weird Mob, 1957

      Most Americans arrive in Australia with great anticipation, and on the whole they will not be disappointed. For most Americas and their families, it is a treat to be able to drink the water, to breathe the air, to walk the streets at night in reasonable security, and to find responsive services in person and online.

      Americans who are new to Australia have few immediately obvious reasons to expect that there will be difficulties in a country which seems from a distance so much like the United States. As it is, the newcomer from America is lulled by obvious similarities.

      We speak the same.... well, almost, the same language. Well, actually, it isn’t the same language at all – it just appears that way on first glance.

      It’s nice to be able to pronounce a few frequently used key words like the Australians do. For example, Melbourne is pronounced Mel-burn, not Mel-born. Canberra is not Can-bear-ah, it’s Can-bra. And Brisbane is Briz-bun, not Bris-bane. You can easily learn Australian English pronunciation online.

      We do come from a similar cultural heritage with a society based on British legal and political institutions. We both enjoy the same basic freedoms, and both agree that the individual must be protected against the arbitrary exercise of the inherent powers of the state and institutions. We are both settler nations, proud of our pioneering heritage. Both our countries were settled by those who were outcasts from their own societies in Europe, and both lands were occupied by traditional owners who were badly treated by our ancestors and whose lives today are far less attractive than before the white race came.

      Yet despite many similarities there are important differences of priority, motivation and attitude which may only become noticeable gradually. A newcomer may frequently have a sense of being in one of those puzzles that ask, What’s wrong with this picture?

      Some of these differences spring from the very different origins of the two countries. The early immigrants to America came to escape corrupt central authority and to shape their new social environment to concepts of a political or religious Utopia. In Australia on the contrary, the earliest arrivals were convicts and their jailers sent in punishment to a harsh and pitiless land who had no control over their lives or fates.

      The hard realities of North America may have been no less than the Australian ones, but the disparity in motivation made all the difference. Early communications from the governing group in Australia to the mother country are filled with pitiful cries for help from London for all manner of goods and services. Self-reliance, although surely present among many in the community, seems not to have had the same place as in early America. In colonial America, to ask for aid was to invite scrutiny and interference from a central authority, the English King, perceived as potentially dangerous and always wrong-headed.

      This is an historical difference that continues to create problems in mutual understanding between people from both countries today.

      Most Americans are appalled with the large disincentives to productive activity imposed by the Australian government, the Liberal Party only slightly less than the welfare-minded Labor Party. Australians on the other hand are equally appalled by the lack of concern for the unfortunate evident in America. Australia has been a pioneer in public welfare beginning with an old age pension in 1909, and spends about a third of the federal budget on a wide variety of programs to help the elderly, the single parent, the sick, the unemployed, to provide allowances for all families with children, to furnish free or low-cost (concessional) health care and to assist families with buying their first home.

      This difference should not be overstated. Certainly, many Americans who think of themselves as self-reliant use all kinds of governmental programs, from land grant colleges to farm subsidies, from the G.I. Bill to low-interest college loans. On the other hand, many Australians fend for themselves very vigorously. In general, however, the inclination of Americans to see the solution to a local difficulty in some concerted action by concerned individuals is a palpable contrast to the attitude in Australia that the authorities really should do something about it.

      Most cultures display some degree of internal inconsistency, and Australians are no exception. Australians are both prudent and rash. Despite the national fixation with gambling, Australians have a high rate of personal savings. But while they save, there are relatively few investors and most put savings in savings banks with low rates of return. They have a high rate of home ownership and a wanderlust that finds Australians around every bend of the trail in the world. 

      They are

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