I like Australians and I like Australia. Very much. It is, however, socially British-colonially stuffy. You can taste that in the air even over in WA, Perth and Fremantle -- I got over there by submarine once, about 1983. While Australia and America are much alike in that they have a fundamentally English/British culture laid upon a larger, drier, hotter place than the UK is, America has a freewheeling quality that Australia lacks -- a quality I found that I missed in the otherwise delightful Australian experience.

I imagine Australians coming up here, and being ritually shown the Big Dipper and the Pole Star on the first clear night just as Americans tend to ask to see the Southern Cross, wouldn't find it too difficult to adapt, though.

UG...I can only guess from your post that you spent time with the wrong people over here. There's very few Australians who I would describe as stuffy or british-colonial.

Maybe you missed the heart of Australia and only scratched the surface.

You should come again some time and try out the real australia (east coast) instead of those stuffy WAers (who're mostly from South Africa and other off continent sites). Did you at least make it to Freo when you were in WA?

I've only been to Caaaaaayanes (Cairns) and Port Douglas, but that's enough for me... I'm in love. I honestly want to move to Austrailia when I grow up, though mah girl wants to go to New Zealand...

Both are very nice. I'd rather vacation in New Zealand and work in Australia.

Well... there was the Leading WREN that invited a couple of us over for spaghetti one evening... and the elderly lady who asked me to show her what a US penny looked like, saying, "I'm sure you must think this terribly ignorant of me..." (the sort of behavior inveighed against as "the Australian cultural cringe" in books of the time), and the schoolboys who asked us what we thought of Australian beer (it's darn good). It was my first exposure to Australian table wines -- the Monty Python sketch was later for me.

The social stuffiness seems less a thing of individual Australians than of something in the atmosphere. Singapore has the identical feel -- and it too was a British colony. I didn't pick this up in Kenya, perhaps because the social effect of the strongman rulership of Daniel Arap Moi overlaid it too much.

The WA'ers told us the people from The Big Smoke were the stuffy ones. At this point an American might lift an eyebrow and wonder aloud about "a failure to communicate (broad Cool Hand Luke reference)."

Fremantle (was that "Freo?") struck me as a small navy town, most notable for its port facilities and underused submarine base, which is handy for US nuke boats making a port call during operations in the IO, as our submariners abbreviate the Indian Ocean. Come to think of it, I spent most of my at-sea time in the Navy somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

I know what we don't want. We don't want a bent copper.

When a collectivist starts using first person plural, be very, very careful...:-)

:borg:

I've known a few bent coppers in my time.

UG...I just don't know what sort of blinders you must have had on when you came here, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Sorry you missed the best part of the country here.

Maybe the people he met there didn't like him? :whip:

Sounds like the old birds did. :)

Yes.:thumb2:
Probably because he's a throwback to the Teddy Roosevelt era.

They liked me fine. What you two are doing is known to psychology as "projection," which has a way of seldom being valid.

Don't indulge in it myself.

What's up your klacker today UG?