In which the 10-year-old me learns what being Australian means

Economists and political types here in Australia sometimes talk about the “tyranny of distance”, which essentially means that Australia’s physical location on this fine planet—in the middle of nowhere and fucking far from anything else—has a real effect on trade, mostly detrimental, and hence affects the Australian economy.

The idea behind it, perhaps, is that Australia misses some opportunities due to the extreme distances involved in getting people and products to and from terra australis. But I suppose one manifestation of this phenomenon—surely one the ivory-tower types don’t talk about—is the inverse, that due to Australia’s distance from North America and Europe it is often forgotten.

I see this in my job almost daily. We’re an outpost down here, far removed from the Mother Ship in New York (and even the regional Mother Ship in Hong Kong). One of the reasons I was brought down here was to help strengthen the ties between our offices in Australia and those in the US, particularly Washington, but we’re still overlooked. We kind of keep our heads down and do our own thing to a degree.

Anyway, it all goes to say that for the most part, Australia just isn’t on most Americans’ radar screens (I don’t know about the Europeans’ screens; I can only speak from my perspective as a Yank). I’m sure it’s a bit more visible nowadays, with the internet and a greater share of television programming and other pop culture ephemera. Or a greater number of Australians on the international scene (Hugh Jackman and Keith Urban hadn’t been invented yet when I was a kid). But it certainly wasn’t like that when I was growing up.

When I was a kid in suburban Texas, my entire impression of Australia could be summed up with the following words: Sydney Opera House, kangaroo, koala, boomerang (and, after 1986, Crocodile Dundee). Pretty much stereotypes all, and clearly the most superficial and glib understanding of the place. And I was a child whose father travelled to Australia twice for business, bringing back little presents for my sister and me with him, and who had a great aunt (I think she’s a great aunt, maybe a distant cousin) who is a real-live, actual Australian, albeit one who has lived in Ohio for most of her life.

An example: Growing up, I knew that Midnight Oil and INXS were “Australian bands”, but I didn’t know what that meant exactly. At least not in the way that I had a concept of what being a “British band” meant—I had, through exposure to television and actual British people, a general frame of reference for what British society was about. I could conjure up an image in my head of a young Mick Jagger or John Lennon or Pete Townshend going to school in Kent or Liverpool or London; I had heard of these places and had some (albeit passing and second- or third-hand) knowledge of them—what they dressed like, how they sounded, what they ate.

Further, we studied the British in school, obviously, because the story of America has to start with the British Empire. (Well, the Spanish, actually, or the Vikings, really, but this was the 1980s when Christopher Columbus was still the Discoverer of America and things didn’t start happening until the British colonised.) We certainly didn’t study Australia.

So, to me, at eight or 10, this country was a vague, amorphous concept called “Australia” and nothing more. All the Australians I knew about were just “from Australia” or they were assumed to be from Sydney, which was the only city I had actually heard of.

Now that it’s 22 years later and I’ve lived here for more than a year, and have travelled to a fair bit of the country (certainly not most of it, by any stretch), when I hear about these names I’ve known for so long I can actually picture where they’re from. Obviously, Sydney’s different from Perth and Geelong and wherever; these people are actually allowed to be from vastly different backgrounds, as opposed to some homogenous country.

Instead of being from “Australia”, Silverchair are from Newcastle. Kylie Minogue is from Melbourne. Paul Hogan is from rural New South Wales (Lightning Ridge, pop. 1,826).

OK, so INXS, Midnight Oil and AC/DC actually are from Sydney.

But it’s a bit like discovering that your neighbours of 20 years moved out six months ago and were replaced by a new family, or finding that your heretofore quiet uncle was a CIA spy.

Then there’s the phenomenon of not realising certain things are Australian. For example, I didn’t know AC/DC were Aussies until I was in college; I had just assumed they were British. I didn’t realise Silverchair were Australian when they hit American shores, but then again I didn’t pay much attention because I thought they sucked (they’re better now).

Or those who hide it well: Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is from Melbourne? Portia de Rossi is from Geelong? Anthony LaPaglia is Australian?*

Anyway, I’m not sure why all of this popped into my head this morning. But there it is.

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* This isn’t even to mention people who claim to be Australian, or are claimed by Australia as their beloved sons/daughters, who aren’t—like Mel Gibson (he’s from New York); Russell Crowe (he’s from New Zealand); Naomi Watts (British). Even Nicole Kidman is half American. That’s a whole other blog post.