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"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."

Title: Cultural Dimensions of Living and Working in Australia
Author: Bill Drake
Edition: 2009
Pages: 116

Most Americans arrive in Australia with great anticipation. And on the whole they will not be disappointed. For most American expatriates 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 look up responsive services in the Yellow Pages. Yet for many expatriates, the first 6-12 months are very stressful.
Probably the more so because people have little expectation that there will be difficulties in a country which seems from a distance so much like the United States. In a community where the local population lived in mud huts, an American would recognize immediately that s/he was in for some very different experiences than at home.

As it is, the newcomer from America is lulled by the 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. You of course talk like an American, so it’s nice to be able to pronounce a few frequently used key words like the natives 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. But, more on all that later.

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 native peoples 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 diverse origins of the two countries. The early immigrants to America came to escape central authority and to shape their own social environment to suit their individual 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.

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 perceived as potentially tyrannous and certainly wrong-headed.

This is one difference which creates problems in mutual understanding to individuals from both countries. 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.

While there is no question of one being right and the other wrong, the difference permeates Australian society to a degree which is often unsettling to Americans reared to revere the work ethic. Also unsettling to Americans is the degree of governmental intrusion in the daily private life of its citizens. Government industrial tribunals set rates of pay and conditions of employment for most workers.

The wearing of seat belts by all passengers in cars in Australia is compulsory, the police may stop any driver at random and test for alcohol levels, and the mother of a new born baby will be visited regularly, uninvited, in her home by a public nurse. Whatever the objective value of these and other programs, they bespeak a readiness on the part of Australians to allow the government to make choices for the individual. Again it is a matter of degree since all governments define and impose unacceptable choices on the governed.

Most cultures display some degree of inconsistency, and the Australian is 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, most put savings in savings banks with low rates of returns. They have a high rate of home ownership. Those who do not own their own homes aspire to do so. They are prone to live for the day but most have life insurance. They mix humor with subjects that in America are approached with solemnity such as politics, death, or religion. And as we shall see with “Waltzing Matilda”, they mix 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 are not trusting that governmental action in their lives will be benign. 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 which moreover is one third Irish. 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.”
Widespread admiration for America, especially after the defense of Australia provided by the United States during World War II, was severely undermined by opposition to the war in Vietnam and has been pretty much destroyed by America’s latest adventure in Iraq.