Tell me the bad things about living in Australia.

[ilovepixie]

Following on from the USA thread what's the worst thing about living in Australia.

Hang on, racism isn't overt in the UK? Brexit anyone?!

What does strike me is that it's much harder to recognise the casual racism in your own country because the way it's expressed is normal to you -- whereas in another country it stands out like dog's bollocks.

And I lost count of the number of chortling hooray Harrys who thought it was ever so funny to refer to me as a colonial when I worked in London a while back.

The worst thing about Australia? British backpackers (or club 18-23 on vodka...)

The TV is shit.
The sausages are disgusting.

A couple of people have mentioned sausages but you can get just as wide a range here as in the U.K. - there’s like 20 different types at our local butcher

Far too far away - made me feel claustrophobic. Holidays are so expensive. Since being back home I really appreciate being able to hop on a two hour flight and landing in a completely different culture (well until covid).

Also, while many Ozzie's are lovely there's no denying that a sizeable portion can be a little...er...gruff? Racism is pretty endemic too - was honestly shocked at how the aboriginal people live.

Still bloody love the place though! Everywhere has its faults and we had a lifestyle in Australia we're most likely never going to have again. Often dream of going back but again - just too too far away. Sigh.

I spent a month there. They are very racist and it's almost acceptable.

I've lived in Australia since 2013 and some of the things listed here are daft. I've seen one snake outside the zoo. The climate in Perth is Mediterranean and beautiful for nine months of the year, but the winter is like a British summer. Other bits of Australia have very different weather (Melbourne is freezing and the NT is tropical for example).I don't give a shit about sport, but none of my Aussie pals care. I haven't found it to be any more racist or sexist than the UK or Ireland. On the downside it is bloody far away from everywhere and flights are expensive. I actually find we are much better off here, we have a big house with a pool near the beach which we could never have afforded in the UK, and our quality of life is generally much higher. Australia is a very expensive place to holiday, but wages here are very high so once you are earning here the prices are relative. Of course we don't have castles or medieval architecture, but to say there is no history is ridiculous, we have the oldest living culture in the world. And I've never seen a flying cockroach! Must be an East coast thing?

Ha yes to the men being too forward. The boasting was cringe and very hard to get used to (I didn't).

"Oh so where do you live" would be answered with "out in Joondalup, I've got five acres. A swimming pool too". Just like that. Bizarre!

@onlyreadingneverposting8

About NZ,

First, welcome and all the best with your move.

Good

• People are generally very honest, including politicians, approachable, down to earth, no doublespeak.
• Fair-minded public administration.
• Teachers trusted to get on with the job.
• Buying a house easier than UK (although it has got trickier in recent years)
• National Radio.
• Good value raw foodstuffs (fruit, veg, meat, fish etc)
• Whittakers chocolate
• Everywhere near beaches, countryside etc.
• Space
• Clean air
• People are adaptable and very handy.
• Sport: easy to play at a high level.
• No foxes
• Anglophile - I occasionally get Pommy jokes but I've never been made to feel uncomfortable.
• People generally law-abiding. If something like the Dominic Cummings episode happened here, it would probably bring down the government.

Bad

• No decent newspapers.
• No decent news programmes.
• No decent news at all in fact.
• Parochial.
• Quality of goods in shops is low and expensive.
• Provision for special needs in schools is patchy.
• Crap television.
• Huge junk food culture and obesity problem.
• Health service is underfunded.
• Holidaying within the country is overpriced, and no other local options.
• Massive petrolhead culture, cars dominate on roads except in Wellington.
• Americanised right-wing element.
• No central heating: houses often cold and damp in winter, and often poorly built and VERY VERY expensive to buy or rent
• Books very expensive
• Anti-intellectualism
• Sunburn
• Sandflies
• Mosquitos
• No dress sense.

Racism: like Australia, what racism there is is quite overt, however, it's not as underhand as in the UK. Also because of the Treaty of Waitangi, NZ has been grappling with the issues in a way that the UK never has, representation of Maori and other minorities in Parliament, business etc is good. So if I were to compare the two I would say that NZ is less racist than the UK, however, it's a debatable point

Laughing at all the ‘I was in this little bit of Oz for a month, 10 years ago but I can comment on all of Oz and everyone in it!’

No doubt there are patches of xenophobia, rampaging jellyfish and crazy weather. It’s a VERY big place. It also has areas of sublime weather, multicultural cohesion and cute unique animals (that stay out of houses!).

It also is a young country, so has the freedoms from ‘class’ and tradition that come with that.

It mustn’t be too bad, gauging by the consistently high levels of emigration from the UK!

Yeah, Australia is very big, but it's all the same.

Also the aboriginal treatment, it’s very interesting as an outsider. I think treatment of aboriginals is very harsh both now and through history.
But Australians have a real dislike for what’s seen as benefit scrounges and people who aren’t trying to give life a good go. There’s a definite expectation that people will try to pull themselves up and people definitely get blamed when they don’t do that - a bit American in that regard.

And aboriginals are seen as the worst abusers of that benefit culture in that they get so many advantages and programs to try to pull themselves out of poverty but yet when you see aboriginals in towns especially in the NT and QLD they are so much more likely than non aboriginals to be openly drunk and violent so people’s opinions are formed by this experience.
In the same way when I last lived in the U.K. the “demon of the moment” was hoodie gangs of young mainly black teenagers hanging around and causing trouble. They were then thought of as trouble makers even if they were just hanging around with friends but people had their opinions. So in Australia if your only experience of aboriginals is someone passed out at 11am in the doorway of a bottle shop, or screaming abuse at a child in the street, you tend to form your opinions based on that.

God I’d forgotten about the news. It was so...vague.

Bad things about Australia:

• Too far from England (home)
• Houses are freezing
• Aussies are very tight and refuse to put on heating
• State schools are terrible, so most people have to pay for private
• WiFi is terrible
• People are very money oriented and judge you if you have less money than them.

I'm sure there's more .

The are surprising racist ( I always thought they were all lively and easy going)
Really sexist
Obsessed with sport to the point where I’m sure their sports men could murder someone live on a pitch and it would be okay so long as they won - doesn’t apply to women’s teams ( see sexism)
Heat,fires, skin cancer etc
Culturally years behind the rest of the world - tho they make up for it by being outdoorsy.
Massive creatures that continually need to be kept at bay! Spiders, snakes Etc.giant. I mean GIANT.

‘Brits love the R word’
That’s because no-one thinks of the Aussies as raving racists. Then you go and it’s like being in Kentucky or Mississippi

• Hot in the summer
• Bugs inside the house
• People lacking manners more so than in Britain
• Racism against the indigenous population (otherwise it’s far less racist than Britain but that doesn’t make it ok)
• Dairy not as good as some places in Europe (although British dairy has really gone down hill recently too)
• Fairly limited culturally outside of Sydney (but I suppose that’s true of most places that aren’t big cities but given there’s just the one big city in Australia it’s more noticeable).
• berries are rubbish (other fruit and veg is general is better than Europe but the berries are just depressing, the strawberries in particular)
• you can’t really live outside of the city/commuting towns which have basically merged with cities. People do but it’s weird and not an option in most people’s eyes.
• lots of droughts

Lack of culture
Snakes and spiders
Horrendous racism and sexism

‘Racism against the indigenous population (otherwise it’s far less racist than Britain but that doesn’t make it ok) ‘
I strongly disagree having been there with non-white friends I can tell you that even in Sydney and Melbourne there was open racism towards them.

If you started a what’s good about Oz thread my comments would be triple the negative ones. I actually love Oz.

@Ozgirl75 but the government has made sooo much effort in the past twenty years to move people away from that experience with the endless imposition of indigenous affairs on history curriculums and funding for indigenous cultural centres, films etc that there really isn’t an excuse for not understanding.

@CovidicusRex I totally agree, and I think the governments have been doing a good job at doing what they can to change people’s impressions. I think the schools do a lot too - my children are always learning about aboriginal culture, they study reconciliation week, sorry day, learn so much about in a positive way about the culture. Plus for them, living in Sydney they also have the positive experiences of seeing aboriginal people going about their day to day business (my boys’ Pre school teacher was aboriginal for example).
But I was amazed when I visited the NT and TNQ just the poverty and open alcohol and drug abuse that seems rife in the communities so you can understand why people who live alongside that have a different view, however many positive messages they see on the TV.

@Ozgirl75

A couple of people have mentioned sausages but you can get just as wide a range here as in the U.K. - there’s like 20 different types at our local butcher

I bet they all taste of salt

I grew up in Australia and moved to the UK when I was in my early 20s. I almost moved back last year after separating from my husband (who grew up on the opposite side of Australia) but decided not to in the end. Reasons being:

1. No job opportunities for my field. Technology is way behind.
2. Racism and sexism. The way people talk about aboriginals is awful. Even people who aren't normally racist will say some horrible things about them as a group.
3. Driving culture. The idea of walking somewhere / relying on public transport like we do in London is very unusual.
4. Not much in the way of culture. I like sport but I also love art galleries and museums too.
5. Small mindedness. People don't often tend to leave Australia and they don't seem to understand why anyone would want to leave there when it's so great (even though they have never left themselves).
6. The summer is really hot. Like you can't go outside because it feels like a wall of heat hot on some days. You end up stuck in air conditioned houses because it's just too hot to go outside.
7. Americanisation of culture. Showy / brash and in your face. Constantly trying to outdo one another.
8. Food is very expensive.
9. No life in the evenings. My parents live in suburbia and no one leaves their house in the evenings. Pubs are shut by 10pm. You see no one on the street. It feels totally dead.

There are some great things about it too but on balance, I find I prefer living in London to Australia.

onlyreadingneverposting8

Another one to add to the bad list for NZ.

Schools.

I used to congratulate myself that my kids were going though schools here, not England.

Now they're most of the way through... er, um yeah.. less said the better really. Ignore the PISA ranking.