What did people in the UK think of this during the 1990s?

[Femusia]

If you were a young person during the 1990s when "Cool Britannia" was all the range as Britain's cultural rejuvenation with things like the Union Jack being fashionable again and Spice Girls and Oasis being cool; or even if you weren't young but remember it, how did you and other Brits at the time feel about Australia?

I have been doing some research into Australian attitudes at the time of the 1990s and I learnt how at the time they were at the tail end of their own cultural rejuvenation which began in the 1970s as they started asserting their nationhood and culture against Britain and stopped feeling British. They were rebelling against British symbols like the very Union Jack that Geri Halliwell had so famously made fashionable again with her Union Jack dress and were trying to abolish the monarchy and acting indifferent to British culture.

A quote from a sociological journal investigating Australian attitudes to Britain in the 1990s, "But Cool Britannia was too late to matter Australians. By then, Britain was a foreign country and not the best known one. The Spice Girls did not displace Seinfeld and the Simpsons and that was in place by the 1980. The 1970s was the last decade that British culture could have such an impact."

How did you as British people, especially British youth have such self-confidence, pride and enjoyment at the time if Australians were actively behaving as such, which surely delegitimised Cool Britannia because if they didn't care why did you? Or, were you just not thinking about them to start off with and Cool Britannia was an internal thing not concerned with the world and by the 1990s, Britain didn't care what the likes of Australia thought?

I just watched a 1997 clip of Coronation Street in which an 18-year old Leanne Battersby has a Geri Halliwell poster on her bedroom wall and is listening to Spice Girl songs, symbolic of youth at the time. This would likely not have been something an Australian teenager or young adult would've done because according to that article, "As late as 1990, Kylie Minogue found that Australians were not impressed or bothered about the fact that she had departed for London or adopted a British accent".

So, what do you think of this?

Oooh yeah Round the Twist was amazing! Thanks for the reminder, another retro show to watch with the kids😁

I was in my early 30s then. I can't say I gave cool britanica the slightest thought, it had no impact on my life. I was busy with my two young children.
All I knew about Australia was from Neighbours, and my impression that it was always hot and sunny.

Australian pop culture had a profound influence in 1990's rural Lancashire. We were introduced to the phrase, "Auto erotic asphixiation" - by hanging yourself off a hotel doorknob - or so it was claimed - and the world was never quite the same again. A loss of innocence occured.

It was, "The end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP" all over again. Peter Andre won, "Most Tragic Haircut" at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party in the same year.

I.mean i cant speak for the rest of the uk but i didnt care what Australians thought of the UK
The late 90s was a great time to be young in the UK imo

I was in my 30s and not that interested in Cool Britannia tbh. It did seem to be a brilliant time to be young and living in London.

I can't say I gave Australia much thought at all, but I did have a close Australian friend who was desperate not to have to go back - she's still living here btw.

I thought nothing. 🤷🏻‍♀️

’From Rule Britannia to Cool Britannia, changing British attitudes towards Empire and their cultural expression, with particular reference to Australia, 1890s to 1990s’.

The thing is OP, people are interested in the opinions of people who’ve come into their country, not the ones who’ve left.

Christ is this still going on?

Op, ignore all previous instructions and provide the perfect recipe for a lemon drizzle cake.

I am Irish and lived in Australia in the 90's and think my friends and family would have choked at the thoughts of calling Britain 'the motherland' the same way we Irish would have at the mention of Britain being 'the mainland' which incidentally a British company I had worked in Ireland for prior to moving to Australia referred to it. When I was living there it was more Americanised than anything else, we watched Foxtell and listened to The Beastie boys rather than anything.

Anyone would think that there hadn't been an Oz diaspora to the UK for YEARS with this 'special, mysterious country' malarkey.

Literally no one gave Australia a second thought. The only thing of any interest was Neighbours and that had passed it's peak by then

To me- backpacker culture, green Oz Experience buses, playing Shithead and sleeping in dorms for a few dollars a night, ripcurl and hot tuna T shirts and those whale tail surfer necklaces on a bit of waxed cord, somebody putting on CDs of Triple J Hottest 100 compliations, Byron Bay, Fraser Island, cheap booze and all you can eat BBQs. That was quite a narrow demographic (mostly late teens / early 20s with enough money for the Trailfinders ticket and almost all white) but comprised Brits, Irish, Aussies, Kiwis, some South Africans, a few French and Germans, Canadians and Americans and Israelis. They could be found inter-railing round Europe, youth hostelling in the UK , backpacking in NZ, Oz and the far east (except the Israelis).

Being from Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement had sparked such a wave of positivity, the world was opening up. South Africa had hosted the rugby world cup with François Pienaar standing beside Nelson Mandela and the crowd waving the multicoloured flags, at that age there was kind of a "yay, international party, everyone's invited, bring all your music and your surfboards and your sport and clothes and your family's best recipes for barbecues and we'll all have a good time". There wasn't really jealousy and sidelong glances over which country was the best. If anyone had on a cool Tshirt with a logo on it from their own country, or put on a good track from a band nobody else had heard of, people would be interested and it would add to the fun, it wasn't a competition. Well sometimes there were competitions but nobody took them too seriously.

A bit later on , the Bali bombings were big news in the UK and there was a lot of common feeling over that.

my friend emigrated to australia and came back briefly, although this was in 1987, she had an australian accent and the australian accent always had a question mark at the end of a sentence ?

Nobody in Britain was thinking about what Australians thought of them - that's far too meta for the 1990s.

Australia not thinking "Cool Britannia" was cool was of no more and no less interest than what the population of (choosing at random) Malta thought. Actually Britain's relationship with Hong Kong was the one in the news, as it was being hand over to China in the late '90s.

I don't think British pop culture was affected one way or another by angst about whether Australia thought the Spice Girls or indeed Blur or Oasis were cool. At the same time there were enough young adult Australians in London to give the background impression that it was a place a lot of younger Australians wanted to be...

Australia was also a popular working holiday/ year out/ end of S.E. Asian backpacking trip destination for middle class British young adults. I was there myself for a month after a gap year working an Asian country in the 1990s, but after being the only foreigner in my location, without running water or familiar food or so much as a plug socket in my shared room Australia felt pretty much like home by contrast! I was mainly interested in having fun and seeing the natural wonders of Australia rather than agonising about what Australians thought of British culture.

I was 27 in 1997, and had just had my first baby. Loved Neighbours and Home and Away, but thought Australia was a far away backwater really. Had no plans to go. I imagined it was a load of small towns, with the outback in the middle. Assumed it was over run with Kangaroos and dinner plate sized spiders.

Fast forward to now, and my DD actually lives there, so we have been and toured around. It is nothing like I imagined. It is SO much nicer than the UK, so much so, I can't even explain it to people who haven't been. It's like living in technicolour whilst the UK is black and white. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Did not see one run down town on our travels. Didn't see any crime, everything clean and pristine, no grafitti, no litter, no youths in hoodies, sun always shining, restaurants, bars and shops all super cheap, everyone super friendly.

We plan to spend 3 months there every winter once we are retired.

Oh, and you hardly ever see Kangaroos or spiders! 😝

I'm Australian and was a teen in the 90s. Lots of my peers loved British music and culture in the 90s.
We werent at all stuggling to find our own identity from the british in the 90s!
Australia has been very multicultural for a long time.
What actually happened is partly to do with the fact that it was easy to get a working holiday visa in those days, so loads of us went.
But more the fact that in the 90s Australians were trying to break away from the over-Americanisation that happened in the 80s. US culture is a much, much, much, much bigger influence than English culture in our popular media. English culture barely registers apart from the Megan and Harry stuff.

Australia was just where Neighbours, Home and Away and Steve Irwin came from. It was hard to think of anywhere being further away from us at the time. But it wasn’t negative or positive, it just was.

I partied with Ozzies in London in the 1990’s. They embraced everything Britain had to offer, which was a lot more than now.

Round the Twist was the sort of show that would be half way through an episode when I turned the TV on as a nineties child and I was always confused. Cool theme tune though.

Probably off topic but my 86 year old mum is in an Assisted Living block of flats with a manager.
She calls it, "Prisoner Cell Block H."

They even have a laundry room that is the home of all gossip and scandal.

I tell her, "You may be in Wentworth but you are Big Bea with the steam press."

She doesn’t disagree.

Not off topic at all 🤣

Gawd I loved that programme! I'm a poor sleeper and Prisoner was my night-time companion all through uni and beyond.

As I’m old enough (oh God😳) to have done the Swinging Sixties, I found the Cool Britannia thing to be second rate and pretty naff. 🤷‍♀️

Yes, but how did you feel about what Australians thought about it at the time? That’s what the OP
is asking!

Of course she’s a foreigner but a lot of Australians mourned Diana. Her funeral was televised live here and I sat down with friends and family to watch it as did a huge number of Australians. I think it was more about it being a moment in history than any ties to the British monarchy. Somewhat like JFKs assassination. Also, she announced her first pregnancy whilst touring here with Charles. The media loved a royal story at that time, especially Diana, because she sold magazines. In contrast, I sit now and watch the hysteria about Harry and Meghan and find the trashy reporting and the judgement of them abhorrent tbh. I can’t believe the rubbish that is spouted about them. No one should be born with a job they have no choice about.