I suppose you can't blame people who haven't been to oz, haven't looked into what it's like, and just seen a film or two and watched soaps to have much idea what it's all about nowadays. We always have 2 dimensional views of what countries we've not been to are like. We just think we know Oz better and that it's almost part of "us".
But this is rapidly fading into the distance. Comparisons with the Oz of 50 or even 20 years ago of the popular imagination of quiet sleepy places are way off the mark for the reality of most Aussies lives. 80 percent of Aussies live in the major 5 cities.
I don't think people realise how large Aussie cities have become.
Melbourne is now an incredibly diverse successful and multicultural city of 5 million people of a 100 different nationalities, as is Sydney. Melb has put on nearly a million people alone in the last 7 years.
Most of these people who have immigrated in the last 20 years aren't British. They are from all over.
Most Aussies live a highly urbanised life with commuting and stress and long hours of work, with a fast paced lifestyle just like in most other major cities in the world.
This myth that has grown up that an average Brit from an distinctly average town in the "old country" can come and move to a massive house in a great suburb in one of the big cities whilst at the same time doing little work and basically enjoying a leisured life are so laughable. A tiny minority can do this.
Australia is a richer country now.
In 2019 the average Brit is now financially a fair amount worse off than the average Aussie, but that means that emigrants selling out from average towns in the uk will find themselves in relatively poor suburbs in the larger Aussie cities and way down the socio economic pecking order compared to many aussies who've lived and worked in aus for generations.
And whilst there is plenty of opportunity for betterment and happiness in a country which hasn't had a recession for 3 decades and no austerity, immigrants still need to work their way up and they do. a new Brit migrant will be competing with new entrepreneurial migrants from China and India, some who have come with plenty of money and will be living in the nicer suburbs than the Brits and want to work hard and be successful and strive - they would laugh at the idea of coming to Oz to sit on a beach and do no work.
hard work is generally rewarded.
This country is genuinely built on immigration from all corners of the world now.
But for British would- be immigrants some (not all) who arrive with an outdated feeling of superiority, and a whiff of the Colonial complex, the bubble bursting process and realising they are so out of date in their perceptions of OZ and will need to compete to be successful and build the life they want is a really rude awakening for them, and quite amusing for others 