the biggies

So for ages now I've been meaning to write about what I see as the biggest cultural differences between Australia and the U.S. Obviously there are more than these (see my previous 500 entries), but my extensive academic essay writing experience leads me to select three major contenders (and describe them before proceeding): city life, university life, relational life and vacation.

First off, city life. I'm not sure if this is really the best way to put it, but what I mean is that most Australians live in the major cities here: Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart. Some live in other cities, such as Coff's Harbour, Cairns, Geelong, Wollongong or Newcastle, but the vast majority of these cities are located on the coast and the vast interior of Australia is entirely unpopulated. We're talking huge farms the size of American states, and not really anybody in between. If you fly over the U.S. at night, you see lots of little lights all across the country. Not so in Australia; lots of little lights all along the coast, but very few in the middle.

To give you more of an idea, Australia has approximately 21 million people (the U.S. has more like 304 million). Of these, roughly 4.2 million are in Sydney, 3.8 million are in Melbourne, 1.8 million are in Brisbane and 1.6 million are in Perth (the national capital of Canberra, I was shocked to find, has less than 350,000), which means roughly 54% of Australians live in one of the four biggest cities, and most of the others aren't too terribly far away. Imagine if over half of Americans lived in New York, LA, Chicago and Houston and the other half was scattered down the eastern seaboard, with one big city in California (i.e., Perth).

It does bear mentioning, of course, that the biggest city, Sydney, is still smaller than the U.S.'s fourth biggest, Houston, so the idea of big city life is significantly different than what, say, a New Yorker might imagine. However, it is still true that the majority of Australians live in a big city, and they therefore approach life in a different way to, say, many Midwesterners.

Like many big cities, Australia's are quite cosmopolitan in terms of both their residents and their mindsets. There is a huge Asian population in Australia, and by Asian I don't just mean Chinese, Japanese and Korean. There are lots of people from Korea and Japan especially, but also from Malaysia, Indonesia (it's actually one of Australia's closest neighbors), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Nepal, India and many others. There are also lots of people from the Pacific Islands -- Samoa, Fiji and the Philippines spring to mind. Moving farther afield, though, many Australian residents come from Brazil, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Germany and nearly any nation you can name. Closer to home, Australia also has a substantial Aboriginal community. And then there's the native English-speaking ex-pats: Kiwis, South Africans, Americans, Canadians and Brits. There are so many Brits here they've acquired their own, semi-derogatory nickname: Poms.

But not only is Australia a huge melting pot, it is also quite globally minded. Things like foreign policy (Australian and U.S.), Fair Trade products, recycling, the environment, global warming, saving energy, saving water and human rights are hot topics that get a lot of press and conversation time. Of course, many Americans are also very concerned about these matters, but the scope of concern is more widespread in Australia.

Secondly, university life is, especially for a 20something, one of the most significant differences between the U.S. and Australia. To be American about it, I'd say we have it and they don't. This isn't strictly, true, of course, but it's not too far off the mark. Before I proceed, let me point out that I do recognize the statistic that only 25% of Americans go to college (they call it university here), but, to compare apples to apples, let's just think about middle-class, suburban America, where the vast majority of my classmates all attended college, and middle-class, urban Australia, where a lot of high school students left to attend college.

And that's the first difference: a lot of Australian high school students attend college, but a lot don't. A lot go to TAFE, which clearly stands for something important, though I don't know what. From what I can tell, it's a bit like a vocation school at the level of a community college. It's where you go to learn trades, but it's completely acceptable and parents are quite happy if their children decide to go there. Some others presumably enter the workforce straightaway, which is also a happy alternative for everyone.

But of those who do go to university, very few actually move away from home. There's four pretty major universities in Sydney (Sydney University, Macquarie University, University of New South Wales and University of Technology, Sydney) and, unless you have particular career aspirations not supported by one of these, most students will continue living with their parents until they graduate, and, even then, they are likely to stay in the same city. By that point, most are getting antsy to move out, but it'd still be common to stay another year or two until you get your feet on the ground, financially.

Some students do live on campus, but residential housing is primarily for the country kids (ones who quite possibly have been attending a boarding school in one of the major cities for all of high school anyway) or those few who have ventured from their home city.
Americans, on the other hand, move out at 18 and immediately bond with a floor full of other 18 year olds who are similarly simultaneously thrilled to be living in freedom and utterly terrified. This very regularly leads to the very fast development of several very close, lasting friendships, and very many not-as-close and not-as-lasting-but-still significant friendships. It also leads to a tremendous amount of school spirit and pride. Americans are fanatical about their schools -- they're a huge part of our identity and we tend to be quite proud of them, even long after we graduate. We wear the appropriate sweatshirts, scour the alumni magazines for news of acquaintances' marriages, bring them up in conversation, give large sums of money to them, visit on homecoming days and encourage our children to attend what is clearly the best school in the country. Australians don't really go in for all this. Sure, they usually remember which school (excuse me, university) they attended, but they don't spend too much time trying to network with their professor's friends or looking up other alum when they move to foreign countries.

By differing relational life, I'm sure I could expand in any number of directions, but primarily what I meant was that Australians don't mind getting to what most Americans to be fairly deep territory pretty fast when it comes to Those Topics We Don't Discuss, i.e., politics and religion. Americans can be the fastest of friends for years and never broach the subject of politics -- quite possibly because they fear they may have differing viewpoints, but quite possibly because they just see it as a personal thing, and they don't want to make anyone, much less their friend, feel uncomfortable. Not so with Australians. Pretty much as soon as they spot my accent, they assume it's fair game to ask who I voted for (you are old enough to vote, right?). I've literally had conversations where people have asked my voting preferences before finding out my name. But if strangers can ask, so much can acquaintances and friends, often in public, and often in the midst of an anti-American conversation.

Regarding religion, I'm actually referring to other Christians. In American churches, things tend to be rather surface-y for quite some time, until you've been around long enough to go on a retreat. A retreat is sacred among American Christians. A retreat is where you bond. A retreat is where everything comes out. A retreat is where you bring the Kleenex, the life stories and the testimonies. Australian churches are different. Here you get asked your testimony before your name. Don't fall asleep during the sermon; you're likely to be asked just how you found it afterwards. You'd better be ready to give an account; it's not God asking, yet, but the other Christians!

Finally, vacation (holiday, here) is another distinguishing factor between Americans and Australians. Americans take a very bad rap abroad for their lack of travel and culture, particularly in Australia, a country where everyone travels immensely. I was talking to a friend yesterday who casually mentioned that her family always went on vacation to Fiji each year. When I expressed surprised, she was confused: it was only a four hour flight. Similarly, I recently heard a sermon where the speaker was talking about cutting back: maybe instead of taking that dream vacation to Europe, families should content themselves with a mere three weeks in Queensland (a state in northern Australia) instead.

The main reason Australians can afford to travel so much is that all employees get 20 days of paid annual leave each year. It's just what they do. They are shocked and appalled (I can tell half of them just plain don't believe me) to learn that Americans only get 2 weeks a year to begin with. They then understand that a week in the summer and a week at Christmas might make sense, but they still can't shake the idea that that's really just plain torture, and surely another first world country wouldn't be indulging in it. They're sure there's some mistake, some catch or glitch, but can't quite pinpoint what it is, so they just go back to ranting against the uncultured American.

Those, then, are the biggest differences I see between Americans and Australians. It's hard to stay out of the fray sometimes, and I tend to defend Australians when talking to Americans and Americans when talking to Australians. I can see both sides of lots of things, though happen to prefer certain aspects of each. Particularly those 20 days off.