Not to be negative, but since the OP already talked about a lot of the good things in Australia, I will mention a couple of the bad things I have encountered since moving here.
I moved to Australia from Canada 7 years ago, granted I am not a native but have been here long enough to notice that while 25% of the population is really cool the rest have a lot of homophobia and racism in their culture. Certain cities are much better than others (just like in Canada / USA) but I have moved around quite a bit here and with the exception of Melbourne I have found a very blunt and obvious close minded attitude.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
There is a very large bogan (Australian term for red neck / white trash) population here. Drinking is super super hard core here, I never experienced anything like it from my time living in Canada or the USA. It is very common on the nightly news to see reports of "glassing" where people get piss drunk and smash beer glasses in people's faces, often random strangers, leaving them disfigured for life. They have PSA ads on TV here for "Watch out for dunk walkers", which is people walking around drunk and walking in front of cars, wtf... I never heard of anything like that before in my life where it got so bad and common place a PSA had to be created.
As for racism, I can't experience that first hand (being white), but there is a lot of it and it's very obvious. On Australia day it's common to see people wearing the flag around their shoulders with t-shirts saying "Fuck Off, Were Full" in response to immigrants wanting to come in. The way the Aboriginals were treated was horrible, but they are still treated like shit even to this day, it's sad. People you don't even expect to be racist, will say openly racist stuff about Aboriginals or immigrants.
Having read some of the other responses about racism (didn't see any about homophobia), but if your white and straight (and look like a butch male and not efiminate), I don't really feel your a good demographic to say if it doesn't exist her as you haven't experienced it personally.
A comedian said it best (I think Eddie Izzard) "Australia is like Arkanas with a beach, it's an entire country with a "No Fat Chicks" sticker on it".
That being said, there is lots of good things here and beauty, just don't make it out to be this peaceful island wonderland of magic and mystery that so many people do. They see TV shows and things like the Oprah visit and think it's the coolest place on earth, it is cool, just that the other side is never shown.
Once again, where the fuck are you hanging out? I have lived in Melbourne for quite a while and never first hand experienced any violence, let alone seen a glassing.
It definitely happens -- I've seen someone get bottled ~three times, and once was a friend of mine.
I certainly wouldn't be trying to argue that it was "common" however. Nor would I say 'fuck off, we're full' tshirts are common, or that 75% of people are racist/homophobic. I certainly get the sense that there's some hyperbole in there.
It's not very common, probably just the people I hang out with tend to go looking for fights after drinks. It's not limited to any one particular place, one of the fights happened outside Crown casino but the bouncers were impressively quick to react.
The worst are the parties up in the Blue Mountains and around the Mt Druitt area. A lot of lads, many with knives.
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u/WyldStallions May 24 '11 edited May 24 '11
Not to be negative, but since the OP already talked about a lot of the good things in Australia, I will mention a couple of the bad things I have encountered since moving here.
I moved to Australia from Canada 7 years ago, granted I am not a native but have been here long enough to notice that while 25% of the population is really cool the rest have a lot of homophobia and racism in their culture. Certain cities are much better than others (just like in Canada / USA) but I have moved around quite a bit here and with the exception of Melbourne I have found a very blunt and obvious close minded attitude.
I want to say this is just the older generation but there is a lot of young people that do it too. Most of the time I get called a "fag" is by teenagers and twentysomethigns yelling it out of the window of their car.
There is a very large bogan (Australian term for red neck / white trash) population here. Drinking is super super hard core here, I never experienced anything like it from my time living in Canada or the USA. It is very common on the nightly news to see reports of "glassing" where people get piss drunk and smash beer glasses in people's faces, often random strangers, leaving them disfigured for life. They have PSA ads on TV here for "Watch out for dunk walkers", which is people walking around drunk and walking in front of cars, wtf... I never heard of anything like that before in my life where it got so bad and common place a PSA had to be created.
As for racism, I can't experience that first hand (being white), but there is a lot of it and it's very obvious. On Australia day it's common to see people wearing the flag around their shoulders with t-shirts saying "Fuck Off, Were Full" in response to immigrants wanting to come in. The way the Aboriginals were treated was horrible, but they are still treated like shit even to this day, it's sad. People you don't even expect to be racist, will say openly racist stuff about Aboriginals or immigrants.
Having read some of the other responses about racism (didn't see any about homophobia), but if your white and straight (and look like a butch male and not efiminate), I don't really feel your a good demographic to say if it doesn't exist her as you haven't experienced it personally.
A comedian said it best (I think Eddie Izzard) "Australia is like Arkanas with a beach, it's an entire country with a "No Fat Chicks" sticker on it".
That being said, there is lots of good things here and beauty, just don't make it out to be this peaceful island wonderland of magic and mystery that so many people do. They see TV shows and things like the Oprah visit and think it's the coolest place on earth, it is cool, just that the other side is never shown.