It just so happens that comedian and political commentator Jordan Shanks just got back from his first American tour, and he has just released a video about his impressions of the various cities he visited. One comment that I found interesting was that in his mind the major reason why Australia lacks a lot of the issues common to America, such as rampant homelessness, is that the Australian government goes to great lengths to ensure wages are reasonably high so people are ensured a decent living standard.
"Both have a national dream, or a vision of success, which are minor variations of the same thing — which is to be justly rewarded for all of your hard work with a house of your own, personal safety, a plethora of free time to explore your hobbies, and a better life for your children. It is an entrepreneurial understanding of success that binds the otherwise disparate citizens together, along with a moral code descended from the Old Testament." => Which of course makes me wonder what national dreams and visions of success we non-UK (and probably non-Eastern) Europeans have, what dreams we have baked into our cultural DNA. I don't see a lot of ambitious, happy dreaming going on here - the chattering classes (of which I am a demi-denizen) seem to have a few dreams (which I mostly don't share, since they seem to be culturally and economically suicidal), but how about my friends? Their dreams seem mostly to be along the lines of "I hope that the government won't hurt us too much and won't worsen our situation too much and won't entirely ruin the lives of our children". What are your national dreams, fellow Europeans? Am I being too pessimistic and dark?
I appreciate your candor about feeling lonely. I wonder if you thought or meditated on the irony, however, of the way you travel and how you get around, which is in itself a bit of a loner lifestyle and becoming lonely as you do so in Australia. You go for long walks, you sit in McDonalds and while you speak with people along the way, you're essentially doing it solo. I'm asking because most of my profund trips over the last three years have been while traveling alone. Hanoi, Tokyo, exploring Beijing, Belgrade, Dublin, Krakow, Sarajevo, and while I did meet folks there and while it was certainly true that I peeled back a few layers of a place there was a loneliness that comes with not being able to share it with someone I'm closer to than the folks I meet along the way.
And I would slightly push back on the idea that the Outback has had a bigger impact than "Out West" has had on the US. I think both have driven the way we view our national identity, always rushing out into the unknown in search of something new--land, resources, people, whatever.
Interesting when you talk about suburbia in the comparison between the USA and Australia. You say we have it because we want it which I don’t disagree that it’s created the car centric society that it’s developed along with the big box schools, big box retail big box grocery stores. I do think we’re learning that it’s very expensive infrastructure that we are having a hard time supporting.
Also with the housing crisis, we are experiencing with not only single-family homes on a quarter acre lot is dragging many cities down, even though there is more urban and density options. I do wonder if Americans will be able to afford the current lifestyle or will be forced back to closer quarters and more dense city living
I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but there are many many many many weird little class things you notice in Australia but you will only notice them if you stay for some substantive period of time and work.
I’ve done that twice and as a Canadian wannabe American (my naturalization process should be wrapping up soon) I’d never go back to Australia again knowing what I know about their crushing nanny state and the divide between blue collar people and the managerial folks.
There are similar dynamics at play in Canada and the US but the Ozzy inheritance of the Prison Guard mentality has really done their fucking heads in, and you’ll never experience that until you live and work there.
Your comment would have more engagement if there were an obvious place we could form a queue while commenting and some rules around what appropriate engagement looks like
Seems as if there are many parallels between Australia and Canada, but perhaps I don't know enough about either. On the surface--similar population, most of which lives along a border/coastline, energy is a major export, much of the country too remote to be developed, and history of maltreatment of indigenous peoples.
A friend of mine (native Kiwi, had lived in Australia most of his adult life) called Australia his "sunburned country."
I didn't visit enough of the country to get a feel for that; both my long visits centered on working in Sydney and commuting nightly to the Central Coast.
But you can see it from the maps - the crescent of green around the coasts and the sunburned interior outside of it.
Thank you for this richly informative post. As someone who values the lessons and insights travel provides, I have been thinking that I “need to” visit Australia. Your observations make me “want to” go.
The material living conditions of many Aboriginal people is an open wound for people of good conscience in this country. We seemed to have worked out only two ways to deal with our history - either blame Aboriginal people for all of their problems, or write the country off as tainted forever. Feels like there are few people in between.
America, which similarly brutalised its native people, seems to be much less troubled by it. Why is that?
Probably Americans don't really SEE native Americans a lot and consequently relegate them to their exciting frontier past (where they live on forever, romantically gazing into the sunset with their feather headdresses blowing in the wind). If they saw groups of them getting drunk in the park every day of the week, they might realize they're still here among us, and that might trouble them more. On the whole, historical navel-gazing and self-reproach doesn't seem to be The American Way at all.
Don’t forget about the poor black folks in the Mississippi Delta or the poor Mexicanos in the Rio Grande Valley. These people may not be as indigenous as the Aboriginals but many of them live in equally difficult situations.
Yankee in Oz here. Personally I think Americans are less troubled by our brutal history towards Native Americans bc most of us just don’t give a sh*t, oh I mean, don’t know the history or just don’t think about it. Whereas white Australians, despite their country’s abhorrent, repeated, and in some cases ridiculously recent horrific behavior towards aboriginal people, strike me as mostly actually caring to do better now.
I also think it would do a lot of Aussies who sit in these 2 camps (totally agreed with your view) a whole lot of good to get out to e.g. the NT and actually see some of what they’re so upset about. I just drove melbs to Darwin and absolutely fell in love with the whole dang territory, and met the most amazing people, lots of them aboriginal. There really is so much in between writing off white Australia and blaming everything on aboriginal people, and I suspect the people sitting in capital cities just don’t know this because they don’t see it
The way you described it (the two ways to deal with our history) is not so different than how we handle it in the USA.
Still, I think you are right. Chris is likely on to something with his description of how visually striking the Aboriginals are. Here, the vast majority of Native Americans I’ve known are multi-racial and there is much less of a sense (on average) that they’re a drastically distinct line of people. They also share some physical features with Hispanics who make up a very large % of Americans.
Hi Chris. Firstly, thanks for posting your interesting ground level experiences. They are honest and inspiring. I myself will grab my backpack soon, as I have hit the mid 60’s, and plan doing similar here in my home Oz and the States as well as Europe (where my ancestors originated). I asked Grok about your “British” focus as I found it was light on the European /Western influence/importance per se. Grok came up with -
“Arnade is right that Australia and the US share a strong British inheritance, especially the ideal of the private suburban home. But framing it almost solely as “the Englishman left to himself” underplays the deeper layer.
That preference for freehold property, individual competence, and ordered personal freedom belongs to a wider Germanic cultural continuum. Anglo-Saxon England itself carried those habits—household independence, customary law, and a moral economy of effort and reciprocity—shaped by related peoples across northwestern Europe. Britain was the most successful vehicle for transmitting them to the New World, not their sole inventor.
Both countries absorbed substantial non-English Germanic settlement that reinforced the same pattern: Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians in America, and parallel German, Dutch and Scandinavian contributions in Australia. The suburban manor for the masses is recognisably Germanic in deeper cultural DNA, not just English” (Grok)
So I personally learnt something new prompted by your post. Thanks
Going walkabout in your sixties, Stephen, that sounds lovely and is one of my plans when I hit retirement age. Hope you have a lovely time and enjoy yourself!
I'm so glad you're on your way back to Alice (or "Mparntwe", if you would like to accumulate brownie points from the locals). I lived there for a couple of years back in the COVID-era, and as much as it is a certified shithole in many ways, as an Australian, it was an eye-opening experience to see the disconnect between the life we lead on the East Coast (and the lip-service we pay to respecting Aboriginal people) and true, Outback Australia. I truly loved the place regardless, but getting mugged by 13-year-olds and having your house broken into on the regular is not a peaceful or fun way to live.
I think you've written about Aboriginal people as tactfully as possible, especially as someone with a foreign audience who will likely never meet an Aboriginal person in their life. It's a sticky position for everyone, and "fixing" the endemic problems in the community can seem hopeless the more you entrench yourself and learn about the layers of cultural clashes that exist particularly in Outback Australia.
There's a lot of cultural protocol that restricts talking openly about more in-depth elements of Aboriginal culture and tradition ("men's business", "initiation", "women's business", "sorry business" etc). Some of these cultural practices if you are lucky to be involved are beautiful, intricate, amazing in their longevity. Some are, I don't use the word lightly, barbaric. All these practices differ from 'country' to 'country' (in the Aboriginal sense, I guess in the Western mind we think of it as 'tribes' or language groups i.e. Arrente to Warlpiri).
If you talk with Aboriginal folks it's worth opening with "what's your country?" to get a better sense of their cultural identity. Most people are more than happy to talk and give you insight providing you have a surface level understanding of Aboriginal culture. Some might even invite to take you on their country. It's worth getting familiar with a couple country names: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia
Regardless of all that, I'm glad you're going back. I hope you get the opportunity to learn more about the region. I truly think it's the most unique places on Earth.
It just so happens that comedian and political commentator Jordan Shanks just got back from his first American tour, and he has just released a video about his impressions of the various cities he visited. One comment that I found interesting was that in his mind the major reason why Australia lacks a lot of the issues common to America, such as rampant homelessness, is that the Australian government goes to great lengths to ensure wages are reasonably high so people are ensured a decent living standard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umbS3ZNtajc
"Both have a national dream, or a vision of success, which are minor variations of the same thing — which is to be justly rewarded for all of your hard work with a house of your own, personal safety, a plethora of free time to explore your hobbies, and a better life for your children. It is an entrepreneurial understanding of success that binds the otherwise disparate citizens together, along with a moral code descended from the Old Testament." => Which of course makes me wonder what national dreams and visions of success we non-UK (and probably non-Eastern) Europeans have, what dreams we have baked into our cultural DNA. I don't see a lot of ambitious, happy dreaming going on here - the chattering classes (of which I am a demi-denizen) seem to have a few dreams (which I mostly don't share, since they seem to be culturally and economically suicidal), but how about my friends? Their dreams seem mostly to be along the lines of "I hope that the government won't hurt us too much and won't worsen our situation too much and won't entirely ruin the lives of our children". What are your national dreams, fellow Europeans? Am I being too pessimistic and dark?
I appreciate your candor about feeling lonely. I wonder if you thought or meditated on the irony, however, of the way you travel and how you get around, which is in itself a bit of a loner lifestyle and becoming lonely as you do so in Australia. You go for long walks, you sit in McDonalds and while you speak with people along the way, you're essentially doing it solo. I'm asking because most of my profund trips over the last three years have been while traveling alone. Hanoi, Tokyo, exploring Beijing, Belgrade, Dublin, Krakow, Sarajevo, and while I did meet folks there and while it was certainly true that I peeled back a few layers of a place there was a loneliness that comes with not being able to share it with someone I'm closer to than the folks I meet along the way.
And I would slightly push back on the idea that the Outback has had a bigger impact than "Out West" has had on the US. I think both have driven the way we view our national identity, always rushing out into the unknown in search of something new--land, resources, people, whatever.
Interesting when you talk about suburbia in the comparison between the USA and Australia. You say we have it because we want it which I don’t disagree that it’s created the car centric society that it’s developed along with the big box schools, big box retail big box grocery stores. I do think we’re learning that it’s very expensive infrastructure that we are having a hard time supporting.
Also with the housing crisis, we are experiencing with not only single-family homes on a quarter acre lot is dragging many cities down, even though there is more urban and density options. I do wonder if Americans will be able to afford the current lifestyle or will be forced back to closer quarters and more dense city living
Very interesting, sounds like a more isolated Canada in some ways - I wonder how Canada and Australia compare?
I think I’ve mentioned this to you before, but there are many many many many weird little class things you notice in Australia but you will only notice them if you stay for some substantive period of time and work.
I’ve done that twice and as a Canadian wannabe American (my naturalization process should be wrapping up soon) I’d never go back to Australia again knowing what I know about their crushing nanny state and the divide between blue collar people and the managerial folks.
There are similar dynamics at play in Canada and the US but the Ozzy inheritance of the Prison Guard mentality has really done their fucking heads in, and you’ll never experience that until you live and work there.
There's an old joke here that Australia is the way it is because half the population came here as convicts, and the other half as prison guards.
‘The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts but that so many are descended from prison officers.’
A quote attributed to Clive James, but is argued by some to be a paraphrase of something said by Peter Ustinov.
Your comment would have more engagement if there were an obvious place we could form a queue while commenting and some rules around what appropriate engagement looks like
The fish do not understand water, it is clear.
Maybe they forgot their hi viz and were denied comment.
Seems as if there are many parallels between Australia and Canada, but perhaps I don't know enough about either. On the surface--similar population, most of which lives along a border/coastline, energy is a major export, much of the country too remote to be developed, and history of maltreatment of indigenous peoples.
Im curious what makes you want to go back to Alice Springs, instead of exploring a different city?
No values. Lousy manners.
A friend of mine (native Kiwi, had lived in Australia most of his adult life) called Australia his "sunburned country."
I didn't visit enough of the country to get a feel for that; both my long visits centered on working in Sydney and commuting nightly to the Central Coast.
But you can see it from the maps - the crescent of green around the coasts and the sunburned interior outside of it.
Thank you for this richly informative post. As someone who values the lessons and insights travel provides, I have been thinking that I “need to” visit Australia. Your observations make me “want to” go.
Maybe talk about Aboriginal spirituality - what you feel makes it different.
The material living conditions of many Aboriginal people is an open wound for people of good conscience in this country. We seemed to have worked out only two ways to deal with our history - either blame Aboriginal people for all of their problems, or write the country off as tainted forever. Feels like there are few people in between.
America, which similarly brutalised its native people, seems to be much less troubled by it. Why is that?
Probably Americans don't really SEE native Americans a lot and consequently relegate them to their exciting frontier past (where they live on forever, romantically gazing into the sunset with their feather headdresses blowing in the wind). If they saw groups of them getting drunk in the park every day of the week, they might realize they're still here among us, and that might trouble them more. On the whole, historical navel-gazing and self-reproach doesn't seem to be The American Way at all.
Don’t forget about the poor black folks in the Mississippi Delta or the poor Mexicanos in the Rio Grande Valley. These people may not be as indigenous as the Aboriginals but many of them live in equally difficult situations.
Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.
Yankee in Oz here. Personally I think Americans are less troubled by our brutal history towards Native Americans bc most of us just don’t give a sh*t, oh I mean, don’t know the history or just don’t think about it. Whereas white Australians, despite their country’s abhorrent, repeated, and in some cases ridiculously recent horrific behavior towards aboriginal people, strike me as mostly actually caring to do better now.
I also think it would do a lot of Aussies who sit in these 2 camps (totally agreed with your view) a whole lot of good to get out to e.g. the NT and actually see some of what they’re so upset about. I just drove melbs to Darwin and absolutely fell in love with the whole dang territory, and met the most amazing people, lots of them aboriginal. There really is so much in between writing off white Australia and blaming everything on aboriginal people, and I suspect the people sitting in capital cities just don’t know this because they don’t see it
The way you described it (the two ways to deal with our history) is not so different than how we handle it in the USA.
Still, I think you are right. Chris is likely on to something with his description of how visually striking the Aboriginals are. Here, the vast majority of Native Americans I’ve known are multi-racial and there is much less of a sense (on average) that they’re a drastically distinct line of people. They also share some physical features with Hispanics who make up a very large % of Americans.
I hope you make it to Cape Town one day. Quite a few similarities with Australia but oh so many differences. Enough good things to keep you happy!
Hi Chris. Firstly, thanks for posting your interesting ground level experiences. They are honest and inspiring. I myself will grab my backpack soon, as I have hit the mid 60’s, and plan doing similar here in my home Oz and the States as well as Europe (where my ancestors originated). I asked Grok about your “British” focus as I found it was light on the European /Western influence/importance per se. Grok came up with -
“Arnade is right that Australia and the US share a strong British inheritance, especially the ideal of the private suburban home. But framing it almost solely as “the Englishman left to himself” underplays the deeper layer.
That preference for freehold property, individual competence, and ordered personal freedom belongs to a wider Germanic cultural continuum. Anglo-Saxon England itself carried those habits—household independence, customary law, and a moral economy of effort and reciprocity—shaped by related peoples across northwestern Europe. Britain was the most successful vehicle for transmitting them to the New World, not their sole inventor.
Both countries absorbed substantial non-English Germanic settlement that reinforced the same pattern: Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians in America, and parallel German, Dutch and Scandinavian contributions in Australia. The suburban manor for the masses is recognisably Germanic in deeper cultural DNA, not just English” (Grok)
So I personally learnt something new prompted by your post. Thanks
Going walkabout in your sixties, Stephen, that sounds lovely and is one of my plans when I hit retirement age. Hope you have a lovely time and enjoy yourself!
🙂 thank you. Take care.
I'm so glad you're on your way back to Alice (or "Mparntwe", if you would like to accumulate brownie points from the locals). I lived there for a couple of years back in the COVID-era, and as much as it is a certified shithole in many ways, as an Australian, it was an eye-opening experience to see the disconnect between the life we lead on the East Coast (and the lip-service we pay to respecting Aboriginal people) and true, Outback Australia. I truly loved the place regardless, but getting mugged by 13-year-olds and having your house broken into on the regular is not a peaceful or fun way to live.
I think you've written about Aboriginal people as tactfully as possible, especially as someone with a foreign audience who will likely never meet an Aboriginal person in their life. It's a sticky position for everyone, and "fixing" the endemic problems in the community can seem hopeless the more you entrench yourself and learn about the layers of cultural clashes that exist particularly in Outback Australia.
There's a lot of cultural protocol that restricts talking openly about more in-depth elements of Aboriginal culture and tradition ("men's business", "initiation", "women's business", "sorry business" etc). Some of these cultural practices if you are lucky to be involved are beautiful, intricate, amazing in their longevity. Some are, I don't use the word lightly, barbaric. All these practices differ from 'country' to 'country' (in the Aboriginal sense, I guess in the Western mind we think of it as 'tribes' or language groups i.e. Arrente to Warlpiri).
If you talk with Aboriginal folks it's worth opening with "what's your country?" to get a better sense of their cultural identity. Most people are more than happy to talk and give you insight providing you have a surface level understanding of Aboriginal culture. Some might even invite to take you on their country. It's worth getting familiar with a couple country names: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia
Regardless of all that, I'm glad you're going back. I hope you get the opportunity to learn more about the region. I truly think it's the most unique places on Earth.