Wolfie65
Active Member
I think my first impressions from Australia may have come from nature shows on TV - koalas, kangaroos, etc.
Then, there was a TV series in the 1970s - title escapes me - set in Queensland/Indonesia, prominently featuring a pontoon plane.
Add Crocodile Dundee and I thought of Australia as a wide open land of rough individualists, much like the American west ca. 19th century.
This picture changed when I started meeting bunches of Aussies on the Let's Drink Europe tour, many of them were among the coolest people you could ever hope to meet, partiers to the core and world champion travelers, no one does (did...) round-the-world travel as well as the Aussies.
However, they also told me that the vast majority of Australians are suburbanites - Sydney and Melbourne alone account for a good 1/3 of the Australian population - and have little to nothing in common with Mick Dundee - or Ned Kelly, for that matter.
1950s Kansas is more like it.
Aussies I met in the US, on the other hand, differed pretty drastically from their Europe-touring compatriots, they tended to be rather combative, have huge chips on both shoulders and seemed to feel like they had an obligation to prove that EVERYTHING in Oz was better than everything in the US, California in particular. They also tended to be more of the traditional tourist type - x weeks in LA, SF, New Orleans, Miami, DC, NYC, Boston and off home.
Discovered Australian sports - NRL, AFL - a few years ago, happy to see team sports that hadn't been completely destroyed by the Politically Correct Cancel Culture just yet.
And now......they have Dan Andrews, Gladys Berijiklian (sp ?) and assorted other monsters and are living in Marxist hell.
Then, there was a TV series in the 1970s - title escapes me - set in Queensland/Indonesia, prominently featuring a pontoon plane.
Add Crocodile Dundee and I thought of Australia as a wide open land of rough individualists, much like the American west ca. 19th century.
This picture changed when I started meeting bunches of Aussies on the Let's Drink Europe tour, many of them were among the coolest people you could ever hope to meet, partiers to the core and world champion travelers, no one does (did...) round-the-world travel as well as the Aussies.
However, they also told me that the vast majority of Australians are suburbanites - Sydney and Melbourne alone account for a good 1/3 of the Australian population - and have little to nothing in common with Mick Dundee - or Ned Kelly, for that matter.
1950s Kansas is more like it.
Aussies I met in the US, on the other hand, differed pretty drastically from their Europe-touring compatriots, they tended to be rather combative, have huge chips on both shoulders and seemed to feel like they had an obligation to prove that EVERYTHING in Oz was better than everything in the US, California in particular. They also tended to be more of the traditional tourist type - x weeks in LA, SF, New Orleans, Miami, DC, NYC, Boston and off home.
Discovered Australian sports - NRL, AFL - a few years ago, happy to see team sports that hadn't been completely destroyed by the Politically Correct Cancel Culture just yet.
And now......they have Dan Andrews, Gladys Berijiklian (sp ?) and assorted other monsters and are living in Marxist hell.
