Cringe or Based? Australian Culture

Yeah Nah

“the opposite of the Cringe is not the Strut, but a relaxed erectness of carriage” -

AA Phillips, The Cultural Cringe, 1950

Lola writes about What is Australian culture? Well worth a read.

There’s a few additional things that I want to put on the barbie.

1. Them Foreigners Comin Over Here

In the time between Phillips writing his bracing critique of Australia and today, the UK and Australia have added about the same number of inhabitants - roughly 18 million. The difference is that the UK population started at 50m and grew by 36%. Australia started at 8m and more than tripled. And that growth included a lot of immigrants. About a quarter of Australians are born overseas (like me) and another quarter have at least one parent born overseas (like my son).

That rate of growth and high level of immigration is difficult for Europeans and even Americans to understand. While 200 years ago, Australia was a country that you were sent to, it is now overwhelming a country that people have chosen to move to.

Compared to Brits, I find Australians to be far more optimistic and more future-facing. Our best days are not behind us. And we’ve come here voluntarily.

This is not to say that immigration is not a challenging political topic nor that racism is non-existent in Australia. But we seem to have acquired a functioning multi-cultural society “in a fit of absence of mind".

2. It’s Always Sunny In Sydney

In much of Australia, the weather is warm and sunny. This might sound like a trite observation but it allows an outdoor culture to thrive in a way that it doesn’t in the rainy UK. The archetypal UK social context is the pub. In Australia, it is the barbeque. This means that the culture is more Mediterranean than Northern European.

This also supports the heavy focus on playing and watching sport. It’s just easier to do when it’s not freezing cold or damp. It probably helps with optimism too.

3. Latte Sippin Townie Folk

The iconic elements of Australia are generally from The Bush* - Crocodile Dundee, Uluru (that’s Ayer’s Rock to you), digeridoos, crocodiles, koalas, etc. However Australia is very urbanized. Not quite as much as Japan but a bit more than the UK or USA. Most of it is freakin’ desert. While in Australian political discourse, “Inner City Latte Sippin’ Elite” is a term of abuse, it is also a description of the majority of Australians. Thanks to our Italian immigrant cohort, we have awesome coffee. And even tradies** love to start the day with a latte. You’ll prize our overpriced speciality coffees from our lukewarm, dead hands.

4. Long Way From Anywhere

As everyone who visits Australia knows; we are a long, jetlag-inducing way from anywhere. This means that we are hard to invade. In fact, Australia has only been colonized on two occasions in known history - whereas Europe is like Shibuya Crossing. It also means that when Australians travel, they travel. Bali (the Aussie equivalent of the Costa Del Sol or Cancun) is a 6 hour flight. In over 20 years in Australia, I have only ever met two people that have not travelled internationally. Australia’s relative smallness population-wise also means that if you have a smidgeon of talent or gumption, you’ll up sticks for America or Europe or Asia or somewhere. And then you might come back when you’ve made a buck and you remember how good the weather is.

5. Empty Country

Australia is a very big country geographically but comparatively puny population-wise. Think how empty it must have been in 1950. Travelling between the cities reinforces who big and empty the world is and how small human beings are. You get that sense of space in a lot of Australian music.

In this post, I have barely mentioned aboriginal indigenous first nations culture(s) and their vexed relations to more recent arrivals. I have also not discussed the dialectic between state compliance and the larrikin.

But who knows what will happen in future posts.

*Which is not a euphemism for women’s pubic hair. That is correctly referred to as a “Map of Tassie”.

**These are blue collar workers, not male prostitutes.