CutlureShock! Australia

Ilsa Sharp

Description

CultureShock! Australia is chock-full of information that will help you assimilate effortlessly into life in the land Down Under. Written in an easy-to-read style, this book covers all the basics for settling in, including the options you should consider before deciding whether to have a pool in your backyard or a full-fledged garden in the front, and what to do when your teenagers assert their rights. Peer beneath the laid-back veneer of the Australian people and learn more about what they hold dear as well as their attitudes towards 'tall poppies' and multiculturalism. Discover how to entertain guests around the 'barbie' and what to do when given a 'shout'. Find out more about how to speak Strine as well as how important leisure is in the Australian working world. CultureShock! Australia is the only guide you will need to fully understand the Aussie people and their culture and truly enjoy your stay in the land of the Southern Cross.

Informations

• Publié par: MarshallCavendishM
• Date de parution: 01 août 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814408905
• Langue: English

Extrait

Introduction



Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania. Australia is a haven for nature lovers, with spectacular rocks and ranges, lush flora and forests and unique wildlife

Contents First Impressions Fast Facts Resource Guide Culture Quiz Further Reading More Cultureshock! Apps

I would like to think that this book may help explain Australia to newcomers and visitors and thus bridge any ‘culture gaps’, improving the chances of mutual empathy and friendship. It is my particular, personal wish that Australia and Asia should draw closer together.
I hope, too, that the book will help Australians understand themselves and what it is that makes their culture unique, by holding a mirror up to them and asking them to see themselves through outsiders’ eyes.
Finally, I must beg Australia’s pardon if any of my interpretations have been skewed somewhat by my own ‘Sandgroper’ bias, due to being located at Perth, despite my best efforts to avoid such imbalance, and for any other inadvertent ‘greenhorn’ errors.

First Impressions



Australia's favourite animal, the koala. Today, the greatest threat facing the lovable koala is the loss of its natural habitat. It is believed that there are only about 10,000 koalas remaining in Australia

Contents Geography: Land and Light People: Straight-Talking, Easy-Going, Apparel-Challenged Language Accent Customs Upside-Down Land: Nature and Environment

Australia

‘A wilful, lavish land All you who have not loved her, You will not understand.’
Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar (1885–1968), from ‘My Country’, a hymn to the Australian land that newcomers should read in its entirety
First impressions are often closer to the truth than later, more compromised, qualified and considered views. What strikes you first about Australia may not be the whole story, but it is a good outline to fill in later. I’ve written about likely first impressions here in the order of the most powerful impressions made, not necessarily with any logical linkage topic-wise.

Geography: Land and Light

The ‘tyranny of distance'—the road stretches as far as the eye can see—is typical of Australia

It was April 1989. We had just made our first landfall as migrants to Australia, in grand old-fashioned style aboard a (Russian) cruise ship and carrying masses of goods and chattels including our precious fax machine, at Fremantle docks in Western Australia. An Australian customs officer was suspiciously snooping through our bags. Spotting a huge camera lens, he said, "Phew! What’s that?" "Oh," says my husband, "that’s a wide-angle lens." He gazed at us with dreamy sun-washed eyes, and said laconically, "Yeah, right, well, you’d certainly be needing that here, wouldn’t you?"
He knew and we knew that Australia is, well, big very big. Pretty hard to frame with most average wide-angle lens, in fact. ‘A wide brown land’ as it has famously been called by Aussie poet Dorothea Mackellar in her poem ‘My Country’. Perhaps the very first things you notice about Australia are to do with the land, and with that legendary light, that blistering sun shafting out of a brilliant blue sky immodestly naked of any white clouds at all. Everything looks bright and sharp-edged, as though you have just ‘photo-shopped’ the Contrast element in a photo already shot through some kind of polarising filter.
My Tamil-Malayalee (South Indian) husband comes from tiny, crowded island-nation Singapore, one of the most densely urbanised countries on the planet, so perhaps unsurprisingly (even though his idea of an ‘outdoors expedition’ is to drive his car through open bush without ever getting out), he says the thing he loves most about Australia is the way the horizon stretches endlessly before him, unblemished by a single skyscraper, or any other building for that matter. And indeed it does. Open ‘empty’ land is an enduring image of Australia.
With this comes the sense of distance ‘the tyranny of distance’ is another cliche often aptly applied to Australia. It’s not that easy to grasp that Australia, including the offshore southern island of Tasmania, is more than seven and a half million sq km (or almost three million sq miles) in area, which means it is as big as the USA (without Alaska) and 24 times the size of Great Britain. If you are in Perth, Western Australia, you don’t just ‘run over’ to Sydney, or vice versa; it’s just like going ‘overseas’. You might as well ‘run over’ to Asia it’s closer.
So Australians are nonchalant about driving a few hours to visit the ‘rellies’ (relatives) for ‘tea’ (read ‘dinner’) or for a routine business meeting ‘just up the road’. If they tell you the destination is ‘a cut lunch and waterbag’ away, better beware, because that will be quite a distance. And they are very car-bound. This is a land of big highways, articulated long-distance truck juggernauts and routine speeds of 110 kmph. Americans will recognise it.

People: Straight-Talking, Easy-Going, Apparel-Challenged

Hotel lounge sign in Darwin suggests how naked Aussies can get

The next most likely first impression will be of a chatty, friendly people who are also prone to straight-talking unembellished with niceties, and who don’t seem to worry much about what they are wearing or not wearing. In the neighbourhood shops, on the street or in the bus, you will be amazed at how long you have to wait for service while the counter-person has a little chat with the person in front of you in the queue, or at how easily you can strike up a friendly conversation with strangers, or get help from them. The message is ‘slow down, talk to me.’
The same generous smiles are wheeled out in negative situations too. There is a general acceptance for example, that you, the customer, will not get upset just because the counter-person tells you with a sweet smile and a shrug, "Oh, sorry, we ran out of those last night/last week/last month" even though they are clearly listed on the stocklist/menu. The plumber or repair man who didn’t keep his appointment but turns up two days later will beam broadly, "Yeah, sorry mate, had a few things to do." This is a recurring scenario. Why get upset?
Turning on the radio or television will give some of you a heart attack as you register some reporter savaging the Foreign Minister face to face without any respect for his position or title, referring to him as a ‘you pompous dope’ (true!) or just ‘Steve’, or witness fairly extreme nudity and lewd acts on Big Brother at the relatively early hour of 9:30 pm. The language heard all around you on the streets may seem very raw, liberally doused with the ‘F...’ word. Don’t come to Australia for respect for authority, modesty or linguistic restraint. But sometimes, it’s liberating to be as rude as you can be in Australia. Watch Parliament and enjoy a good fight.
White people without shoes, strolling the streets shirtless or virtually in their underwear are all particularly puzzling to migrants and refugees newly arrived in Australia from what used to be called ‘Third World’ countries. And why does one see so many incidents of sheer rage, shouting scenes, what should be private quarrels, open and public on the streets? Who knows. Some trace it to a violent history in a rugged land.

Language

The unique ‘Strine’ or ‘Austrayan’ use of the English language is really in your face from the minute you land. From the moment you struggle with whether the restaurant dress code means a G-string-style bikini bottom or rubber (‘Japanese’) sandals by ‘No Thongs’ (the latter actually) or make a fool of yourself taking an entire dinner service of crockery to a party where you have been asked to bring ‘a plate’ (of food, you dummy!) to ‘tea’ (gotcha, it’s dinner not tea!), this issue will plague you for a long time to come. No, you do not ‘root’ for your favourite footy team unless you want to ‘cop’ an obscenity rap instead you ‘barrack’ for the team. Consider the car-yard placard that says ‘You Beaut Utes, Lay-Bys’ and translate: ‘Excellent Utility Vehicles ( a small truck with a front cabin and an open back ‘tray’ section for carrying light loads), no-interest hire purchase deals available’, is an approximation.
‘Catchya’ is also a favourite parting shot which might seem a bit mysterious to some short for ‘Catch you later.’
Another aspect of language that strikes many non-Western arrivals is Australians’ extreme preoccupation with ‘politically-correct’ forms, for lack of a better term. Banish all thought of continuing to use terms like ‘handicapped’ (change to ‘disabled’, ‘differently abled’ or ‘challenged’); ‘blind’ (‘visually impaired’ or ‘visually challenged’); ‘spastic’ (just ‘disabled’ will do); chairman (always ‘chair-person’); ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘spouse’, ‘girlfriend’, ‘boyfriend’ (‘partner’ works for everybody, including gays homosexuals if you don’t understand ‘gay’ but leads to some confusion when you are not sure whether or not a business partner is meant!); ‘natives’ (‘indigenous Australians’, ‘traditional owners’, ‘the first people’, or just ‘Aboriginals’); ‘prostitute’ (‘sex worker’, ‘working girl’).
As another example, a particularly daft term used by the jargon-ridden social services industry is CALD, standing for Culturally And Linguistically Diverse. It’s really code for ‘Wog’ or ‘Non-white’. If you are white and Anglo-Celtic, you are supposed to answer the question on official forms, ‘Are you from a CALD background?’ with ‘No’. But who on earth has determined that a white Anglo-Celtic background