On Australia

The end of a journey into a bigger, stranger world

What makes a place? The people? The cuisine? The scenery? The pubs?

After 2 years in Australia, while not a grizzly veteran, I think I’ve earned my stripes and can answer the question… what is Australia?

Parts of European cafe culture, a big helping of anglosphere pop culture, a hearty dash of Asian influence, and a century of their own recipes adjusting to a new world. Throw that all on the barby and you get Australia.

I think Australia is best eulogized in 3 words. She’ll be right. Still seared in my memory as one of the first things I heard landing on Sydney’s shores 2 years ago. 3 words that hold a deeper meaning and outlook.

In my brief time living in Australia, they really believe that it will all be good.

This optimism lies at the heart of queenslanders, new south walers and victorians alike. It is the heartbeat and lifeblood of daily life in Australia. It won’t magically take care of itself, but if you put in the effort, she’ll be right mate. It is equal parts a call to action and call to relax. Have trust in yourself and the general goodness of nature and things will work out in the end.

They say Australia is the land down under, but I think in the classic Aussie way, shortened that title. Australia is the land always down for a schooner under any circumstances. Australia is a country always looking forward but also comfortable and content with the slower moments of the day. Schrodinger's Culture.

I have said throughout my travels, no matter where you go there are wankers and good blokes. Australia just has more of the latter. They have a genial nature but respect boundaries. You are constantly surrounded with a friendly demeanor and relaxed attitude. When the sunrise over the pacific is part of your daily routine and the weather rarely gets below 60 degrees, you can start to understand why. Your attitude might be different if your water view was the Muddy Mississippi and not the deep blues of the Pacific. Bastards.

To highlight this happy go lucky attitude, my partner and I sat for a few months during our second year to save some money and the general trust and kindness extended to us was astonishing. Almost everyone we pet sat offered their keys to the car if we wanted to explore or escape the house for a wee bit or for a casual spin. Didn’t think a thing of it. Just said keys are on hook please help yourself to our $40,000 land rover. I couldn’t believe it.

Some Americans are afraid to leave their front door, let alone open it to a stranger and have them take a joyride to the grocery store.

They have a fierce, fierce pride and a surprisingly strong economic, athletic, and cultural output for a country of only around 25 million people. A shocking number when you hear that for the first time and an even more shocking number to those of us who have spent time here. How is there only 25 million people here! A landmass the size of the continental United States and coastline that makes billionaires wet themselves has less population than the Ohio river delta. It isn’t because of a lack of sex, that is another thing Aussies are strong at!

What they make up for in per capita cultural gains, they lack in cuisine. I still couldn’t tell you what authentic Australian food is. It can’t be chicken parmy. That’s the bastard child of Italy and America. It surely isn’t a Sunday roast. That’s the only thing England has going for it in the culinary world. Australian borrows from the rest of the anglosphere but doesn’t really innovate or enhance the dish. The pub menu is a hodge podge from everywhere but when your country is barely over 100 years old it takes time to develop.

While Australia continues to find their footing in the culinary world, the immigrant communities have picked up the slack. The best Thai, Lebanese and Indian food I have ever eaten I found in Sydney. Like many Western countries, Australia is a multicultural metropolis with many different ethnicities, races and cultures calling the cities home. Food is one of the best imports from immigration and Australia has an amazing culinary scene from cuisines around the globe, specifically Asia. There’s good Asian food, and amazing Asian food, and the difference is only noticeable when you have amazing Asian food. Weirdly enough, Australia had so many amazing great non-Australian joints. The beauty of what multicultural living can do. It invigorates me and inspires me to visit the source of the cuisines we sampled. To have some Thai in Krabi or some Ramen in Kyoto sprung to the top of my travel list.

The diversity of its ethnic food is only matched by its beauty. It doesn’t have the castles and cathedrals of Europe, the millennia of empires and eloquence of Asia, but damn do the endless beaches and sun kissed desert make up for it. I never made it out west but the coastline of eastern Australia is as close to perfection as possible. Where rolling sea waves crashed into rolling green hills and this constant natural orgy of motion and stillness created the divine. This landscape is just filled with scenes that would convert anyone to awe and serenity. The ocean is indeed a goddess and Australia worships at the altar of the sands and salt.

You can really be alone outside Australian cities where huge swaths of land are essentially untouched. You can close your eyes and around you is nothing, but also everything. The sounds reverberate to your soul and you feel it matches the rhythm of something eternal. Australia truly is a beautiful, beautiful place. A New York 9 could never.

Further, the local fauna and vegetation are unlike anything I could dream up. Tropical, but not in a pina colada and flower necklace kind of tropical. More in a foreign, deadly and enthralling kind of way. Make no mistake, the landscape is beautiful, but it is just as dangerous. Going in unprepared may be the last thing you ever do. Can’t really wake up and smell the roses when half the plants here can apparently kill me.

But what surprised me was the variety of trees, shrubs and bushes. Everywhere there was some green life, absorbing the sun and radiating its energy on every street corner. Sydney felt intertwined with its natural surroundings, not plopped on top of it. This breath of life extended to the pulse of the city.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and good day mates. Crocodiles are spawn that weren’t welcomed in hell at the beginning of creation and spit into the north of Australia. Something about these creatures terrified me on a primal level. I was just fine with the spiders, snakes and insects after a while. Like so many things, time is the ultimate usurper of fears, and you get accustomed to them. But the crocs mate. Legitimately terrifying. But the other wildlife were absolute delights. Wallabies, Roos, Emus, Sea Turtles, Whales and Koalas were well worth the price of a plane ticket and I was very blessed to have seen most of them in the wild.

With all this mixed together, Australia feels like a secret sometimes. A Shangri La hidden not in the mountains, but isolated on the far side of the world by 2000$ flights from anywhere. In other corners of our globe when you travel you hear whispers of the tenacity and fervor of Aussies on a night out, or when you hear an Australian accent abroad, you immediately perk up. They have a certain allure that is enamoring.

Even their politics were relaxed compared to what I am used to. I remember there was a serious controversy because the Prime Minister bought a 4 million dollar mansion on the Central Coast. I wish that was America’s politics Oh my! What a scandal! Please, that is rookie corruption. We don’t get out of bed for anything less than national embarrassment and constant infighting. Maybe they are insulated enough on this big ole island that the shock waves of the modern media landscape haven't penetrated. Or maybe they did what we couldn’t, and made a conscious decision to not allow that level of lack of integrity and respect reach their shores.

Also similar to America, the relationship with the indigenous population is at best complicated and at worst genocidal. How do we both reconcile with a past, present and future that has almost wiped generations of life, stories and beliefs off the face of the earth? In America we tend to wipe our hands together and say what is done is done and we can only look forward now, but in Australia, I think they understand that every end is a beginning. You can only look forward when you look at the past. It is all intertwined.

In America we fancy ourselves as extremely hard-working, and I believe that to be true, almost to our detriment, but here in Australia they are just as industrious but where Americans put on their bootstraps every morning, Aussies also put on their boots, but maybe throw some trunks under the suit for a lunch swim. They know how to enjoy life while also working hard. The laws in place afford an incredible work/life balance and they utilize their tremendous natural landscape as gifts to be valued, respected and used.

Everything has balance. I was in such a good rhythm in my day to day life that I had to take a step back and say…

Wait do they guys get it? Have they figured it out? Did they unlock the secrets of the Universe?

Here they might have.

I was attuned to myself, others, and the natural world in a way that just felt right. Everywhere I went there was some green, some vibrant self expression, some new flavor, some life outside of my own. Each corner had trees, each street had an array of eats, each block had an opportunity for something familiar or new.

The community felt like they didn’t just suffer this life, they wanted to be alive. They were excited to see what the day brings, work at it, and then enjoy it over a glass of wine outside under the stars. I will fondly, fondly remember my brief time here.

Now that I have left Australia it feels like I barely scratched the surface of such a strange and familiar place. The wonderful thing about being on the other side of the world is I can look either east and west, and my sights will eventually land on Australia. No matter where I go or what I do next, I know one look across the horizon and somewhere out there is where I took my first steps into a bigger world. The next steps after Australia are filled with uncertainty, struggle and doubt, but then again, she’ll be right mate.

P.S. Rugby was really cool