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It's always most difficult to talk about your home, but I'll take up the challenge and try and describe my birthplace, Australia, to you.

Australia May 2001

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 15:37:40

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It's always most difficult to talk about your home, but I'll take up the challenge and try and describe my birthplace, Australia, to you.

Australia is a funny place.

Not a great start I know but bear with me.

Australian's don't have the bubbly, exhausting enthusiasm of the Yanks. Nor do we have the over polite, stuffy formality of the Brits. Nor the pure passion of the Hispanic cultures. Nor the artistic arrogance of the French, the pedantic efficiency of the Germans or obsequious manners of the Japanese. Anyone I haven't offended yet ?

The usual Aussie, at home or on holiday, is described as "laid-back" or casual. It's almost as if the absence of a dominant characteristic defines you as Australian. If you were too much one thing or another you just wouldn't be an Aussie at heart.

"She'll be right mate" is the unofficial watchword of the true-blue Australian. This means a couple of things. Firstly it means "don't worry" or as my T-shirt says "no worries" or perhaps as Douglas Adams prefers "don't panic". Secondly it more or less implies nothing is worth getting that worked up about. No matter how bad the situation, how much has gone wrong or how awful you feel... "she'll be right mate!"

Okay so why, if it is true in the first place, is this so ? Well, the country itself certainly lends itself to a kind of apathy. It's a big, wide, uncaring land. From coast to coast the dominant feature is a huge stretch of unremarkable landscape, a red-brown swathe of scrubland known just as "the bush".

Now this sounds a lot worse than it really is. It's not all "bush" and as I'll explain later there are as many different bits as any continent has to offer. The bush however holds a special place in Australia's hearts and in its collective consciousness.

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