My brother Eric forwarded me the link to this article and asked for my views as an Aussie living abroad. Seems as though us Australians are not as well regarded as we might have thought. Some of the comments posted in response to the article make for some interesting reading.
There’s nowhere near as much novelty at being an Australian in Europe as I’d thought/hoped. It’s dismissed pretty quickly so you’ve got to come up with your next trick/line quick smart.
Personally I’ve not seen to much of the idiot behaviour they describe, here in the UK the locals and aussies can act as bad as each other so I don’t see the differentiation. When travelling there are always idiots, but they’re from everywhere.. Also, as a general rule we tend not to hang out with too many Aussies over here so I’m pleased to not be a part of the Aussie-themed pub culture that unfortunately seems to thrive over here. So in my day to day life I tend to see more Brits than Australians carrying on like idiots – given that I’m living in the UK that’s not unreasonable or unexpected.
If anything I face a fair degree of suspicion from both British and continental Europeans alike. Their thoughts are along the lines of “why would you leave a paradise like Australia and live in a hole like the UK? Are you stupid or something?” It’s as though they think I have some ulterior motive for being here. Experiencing Europe for both work and travel doesn’t seem to be justification in itself. If one day I simply didn’t turn up to work and a week later I was the news having been arrested for being a spy, I suspect that a few of those gathering around the water cooler would say “…knew it all along, now it makes sense.”
Europeans tend to have an image of Australia all being like the Great Barrier Reef, with beer. “My dream is to go to Australia” is something I hear alot. But when I ask them why they don’t actually go the chorus of “too far, too expensive” is sung in unison. Shame really.
All in all, I don’t think that for me there’s any particular disadvantage to being an Aussie in the UK. But I don’t think that there’s much of an advantage either. Particularly in the work setting, comments like “Why are you here?” or “You’ll be heading back soon anyway so why should I/we bother” ” are openly expressed or at best thinly veiled. My particular branch of the company covers all of Europe, the Middle East and Africa – so cultural diversity is nothing new to the people here. And yet a guy moving to the UK from Australia is considered a little odd. Perhaps that’s more reflective of my particular company where cross-continental movement such as mine is definitely the exception.
Referring back to the article though, d!ckheads will be d!ckheads, regardless of their origin. I don’t think Australians lay any particular claim to fame on that front.
