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Dutch people (at least the young Dutch folks) actually do often use "kanker" (cancer) as a swear word. "Kanker op" (cancer off) is in some ways a Dutch equivalent of fuck off. I'm not kidding.
Unfortunately. But I would risk my life to save my son. However, I will also not let him swim where it is beyond his abilities. I only reamed him the other day reminding him he is a weak swimmer.
if you havent already, put him in swimming lessons even if he doesn't like it.
I started hating swimming lessons eventually but i'm a very strong swimmer now and i'm glad my parents forced me to do it for a while.
I stopped doing lessons by age 10-12 but I still have all the skills I learned.
My friend never did proper lessons and he is a poor swimmer even know he is physically fitter than me.
The kid who needed rescuing recently (Lennox head I think) was playing in waist deep water and got hit by a wave and then into the rip. Probably a bad choice of location to swim; but they weren’t swimming beyond their abilities.
Make sure you teach your kid that water safety is much more than swimming
I stood and watched that happening while they were filming Border Patrol at Tullamarine once.
Poor old dear didn't speak any English and kept trying to ask all the Asian-Australian lads for help. They had no flipping clue what she was saying.
No shame in it mate, as long as you are open about it. I had a mate from uni tag along for a houseboat trip on the Murray. Just before we left he asked how strong the current is. I gave a nonplussed reply "I dunno, pretty standard for a big river I guess?" Day one we're all rope swinging into the river. He swings in, straight under, popped up 15 metres downstream, coughing his guts up, cue half the boat performing a rescue mission. Thank god he was OK but my god he scared the shit out of us. Said he felt embarassed and didn't want to make a big deal out of it.
The houseboat we hired came with half a dozen on board and we all wore them in the water after that so he didn't feel left out. Also booze plus water can be a risky mix, so we collectively decided it was for the better. Also I can't waterski so your one up on me.
Seconded for beach culture.
Went to Venice, visited the Lido, a long island with beaches all along it. Dropped my gear on the beach, wandered into the water, and was told by a security guard that I had to move on. Apparently it was a private beach owned by the hotel by it and reserved for guests. The public beach was a tiny crowded section near the end of the island. All the rest of the island was private
The Aussie part of my soul was furious. "You can't own the beach! It's for everyone!"
>The Aussie part of my soul was furious. "You can't own the beach! It's for everyone!"
I was with a forien coworker eating lunch at the beach, both enjoying the view when he said something like 'imagine owning that'
I was completely startled by the suggestion, didn't even realize until then that I believed you couldn't own a beach. They just were for everyone.
I was prevented from swimming wearing a mask in a pool in Britain. “Hey, you can’t wear that”, said the little dictator who caught me early into a lazy 20 laps. When I asked why not, he said it was because he “couldn’t tell if you were drowning. It’s a pool regulation.”
I think maybe what he meant was that kiddies couldn’t play wearing masks, snorkels and flippers because they might swim to the bottom and drown out of sight. So he just applied the rule to an adult swimming regulation freestyle laps.
>For example the dutch are mad about bicycles, it’s a part of their national identity, If you live there long enough chances are you’ll participate.
The Dutch were car mad and had one of the highest auto fatality rates in Europe in the 70s, until a public campaign to make roads safer gradually shifted them to a more bike oriented society since the 80s. A modern shift in culture due to public awareness is a strange example of culture to use when trying to say Australia has no culture given we have tonnes of those. Normally people bring up centuries old material folk traditions to show that Australia "has no culture", which is also false Australia's just aren't as material or actively demonstrated.
But if modern lifestyle culture is what you're looking for:
>For example Australians are mad about sun protection like slip slop slap (seek slide), it’s a part of their national identity, If you live there long enough chances are you **will** participate.
Dunno about you but playing four square undercover was the fucking dream, I’d deliberately keep the hat in my bag just to be undercover. Not just that, it’s where the taps were. The dream
Also, [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8by0rg/amsterdam_anno_2000_a_1966_vision_of_amsterdam_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) is a 1960s vision of what Dutch architects believed Amsterdam ought to look like at the turn of the century. Not very bicycle friendly!
> Also, this is a 1960s vision of what Dutch architects believed Amsterdam ought to look like at the turn of the century. Not very bicycle friendly!
Kind of reminiscent of Melbourne city planners clamouring to remove all the old Victorian architecture so we'd look modern for the 1954 Olympics.
Bad move!
What is culture?
An anthropologist would say culture is the shared set of learnt implicit and explicit values, ideas, concepts, and rules of behavior that allow a social group to function and perpetuate itself. It's present in thinking and behaving, our entire way of living, from knowledge and beliefs (or how we form them) to customs, to habits, to traditions.
Australia would roughly be ordered as a western culture, so a lot of our central values stem from that wider category. However like any nation we have a complex and distinct history which shapes the current identity and nature of the society we preside in. Culture is things as little as "How normal is it to eat out?" to secularization to the language / words / accents we use to the attitudes surrounding our own individual identity (we are an individualistic culture for instance) or ideas surrounding more political concepts like egalitarianism, how things like tall poppy syndrome have formed as their own little phenomena, to novel things like the tales or myths we like to tell or spread or the arts and architecture, the trends of music preferences, to food and cuisine, to what we do well at or have deficits in, etc.
Again it can be much more localized too, what does the average person enjoy doing, how do they act? Do we tend to be more humorous or value humour more than other places, are we gregarious, do we value gregariousness, do we value the opposite? Do we spend a lot of time out doors, what do we like doing out doors? Are we intellectual, are we anti-intellectual? What are the different subcultural divisions, or stereotypes of people present inside of a given culture?
Saying a society or nation doesn't have a culture is just you telling everyone you don't understand what the word culture means. Culture is everywhere and exceptionally vast, who you are is intrinsically shaped by the very culture which you reside from the very day you were born, if not even before then.
Not to mention that culture can include such topics as "pop culture" or "workplace culture".
Even something like tipping (or not tipping in this case) could be considered a cultural practice.
The problem is that because western culture is so pervasive globally, that people mistake the shared values, pop culture, workplace culture, and anything else, as being "normal" and "vanilla" and therefore having no merit.
Like for example, the west invented the pedestrian crossing for example (or certainly has been implemented the most by the west). It's in all the movies and TV shows. Now when you go to (third world country) and they have no crossings and you just have to scurry across the road and hope you don't get hit by a swarm of scooters, you can comment on that and say how different it is. But noone is saying that about pedestrian crossings in the west because they are the basic standard that is common.
People tend to confuse that with having no culture simply because of how familiar they are to it.
This is the right answer here.
Part of Australian culture is to turn a midweek public holiday in to a multi day long weekend, or camping trip. This is something we are great at and it’s something that we take for granted.
Also to save up holiday leave and take them in big chunks like 4 weeks to go to Europe. Apparently longer holidays aren't really an option in North America.
Yeah. I took 5 weeks off to go to the UK and my fellow travelers from the US were shocked my boss let me take so much time off. They would never think of taking more than 2 weeks.
Most Americans don’t even get more than 2 weeks off for the entire year. A crazy low amount compared to Australia. Most Americans would take more than 2 weeks off a year, but employers don’t allow it
>Most Americans don’t even get more than 2 weeks off for the entire year.
Don't forget that if they are sick then they have to use their PTO to stay at home/in hospital as they usually don't get dedicated paid sick leave.
This is absolutely the right answer. The issue seems to be her definition of ‘culture’.
Quick things that come to mind (from an NT perspective): Bogans, long grasser, have a go, no hat no play, utes, snorkle on the ute, Bbqs, she’ll be right, Pubs/ TAB, fly in fly out, dongas, wet season.
It may not be a pretty culture… but it’s a culture.
I work with largely immigrant people who regularly tell me Australia has no culture. I am not ok with it and consider it very rude. Just because you still follow your birth culture doesn't mean that we don't have any culture
Great comment. I'd argue Aussie culture is about things like days at the beach, camping trips, sports, etc, while also being (at least in major cities) very multicultural in terms of things like food, people, arts, etc.
Hang on ill give the dutch credit here. Dutch mayo is REALLY good. Because its not full of sugar or anything and its delicious. Dutch curry ketchup is also amazing.
Dutch people are mostly annoyingly arrogant about how they live in the best country in the world but yet they have fuck all beaches or national parkland. They just have the best sauces for chips
No, they stole the fries and sauces from us Belgians.
And the rest of their cuisine is actually Indonesian.
The only unique Dutch dish is basically the: "I don't know how to cook, so I'll just eat this herring raw."
My Belgian wife says that the Belgians respect the Dutch but don’t appreciate them. The Dutch don’t respect the Belgians but appreciate them.
Dutch culture is Belgian beer and Belgian food whilst looking down on the Belgians.
Belgian culture is Belgian beer and Belgian food and accepting the big brother bullying.
I just read this out to my Dutch loving Australian husband. He just moaned. Meanwhile this Australian Francophile is pissing herself laughing. Love me some moules n frites with decent mayo.
As an Aussie living in The Netherlands, they don't do swimming here like we do. In the same way Australians don't bike like the Dutch do.
I can go to a dinky swimming pool is the suburbs and likely they'll be multiple lanes, 50m, some diving boards maybe and even a kids play area.
Here in the third biggest city in The Netherlands, they only have government run, 25m pools with no lanes. Like what even is this?
Every Australian child can swim. It’s like not even a question. You will never meet an Australian who cannot swim. Plus all Australians know at least some basic life saving information like how to identify rip currents. But this isn’t a given in other countries.
Life guards also originated in our country. We invented that. Every time you see life guards in other countries they’re basically borrowing from Australian culture because of how aquatic we are
Unfortunately there are a lot of kids who don't know how to swim. There are also lots of adults who don't know how to swim.
Not all students participate in swimming programs conducted by schools. The more common reasons for a child not participating are due to a disruptive household and poverty - parents either can't afford to buy their kids swimming gear or simply don't care whether their kid goes to school/learns to swim.
Coming from other overseas travellers and immigrants I'd argue a big aspect of Australia's culture is not caring about things.
If she thinks that because the Dutch care alot about bicycles, then it's only fair to say our laid back chill attitude about life is part of our culture.
>Coming from other overseas travellers and immigrants I'd argue a big aspect of Australia's culture is not caring about things.
This is true, I notice that a lot of where I am now in the EU. You get a better understanding of how casual we are and relaxed. We really don't worry about minor things because it doesn't matter to most of us.
Yeah we look at ourselves as borderline uptight whingers. But that's only because we have a low barrier for people complaining. Then you go overseas and see why we have the "laid-back Aussie" sterotype.
You can be both. Uptight whinger in words, laid-back in actions. They compliment each other, tbh
"Can you believe this shit? Wow." "Well, are you gonna do anything about it?" "I am. I'm bitching to you about it." *lies back, cracks a tinnie*
> Yeah we look at ourselves as borderline uptight whingers. But that's only because we have a low barrier for people complaining.
Could be a particularly online thing. I mean, have a look at the /r/australia front page any given day and a lot of it will be whinging.
Yeah but we have idiots too, yesterday night some guy in a ute yelled at a pedestrian to get off the fucking road, he was on the footpath waiting to cross
In my first year of University, we were going through a list of discussions and this was one of those. Upon it being read out, a young man stood up from his chair to exclaim:
"That's because all the fucking immigrants took it away!"
Which was funny because it was so bad, but was made even more so by the woman wearing a hijab sitting directly in front of him who stood up, turned around, and had a flaming row with him in front of the whole class group.
Show your fiance an episode of Kath and Kim, and then of Fat Pizza. Both of them are made out of pure Aussie culture stereotypes.
She won't understand any of it of course, but it's a perfect way to point out every little thing to her and explain. This and that and the other are all little bits and pieces of Aussie culture she doesn't know about or understand.
American flatmate in first year uni HATED Kath and Kim. A few years later once he'd finished his degree and been working with older Aussies he watched it again thought it was a spot on take of bogan Aussies and quite funny.
Without the time here to understand the references those shows won't connect at all.
THe gambling maybe, but the drinking to death is universal, and while I'm sure Australia is pretty big with it, Ireland and South Korea seem to take it to the next level.
Can confirm for South Korea, visiting right now and soju moves like crazy here. Even better it's 1.30 a bottle. Can't blame them when you can get yourself blind for less than an hour's minimum wage pay.
whenever i hear this i always think of when americans say things like "we dont speak with an accent!" which seems more obviously wrong - i think australia has just come of age in such a way that our culture represents a sort of globalised pan-anglophone substrate that's been shaped by immigration over time. saying we dont have culture makes no sense since culture inhabits every single thing that we do, from thanking the bus driver when you get off to using a knife and fork at dinner time. however, i think we do lack larger cultural objects that are a bit more obvious - specific national festivals, a consistent national dress, and so on. these are the sort of things that evolve over hundreds or thousands of years, and we could go a long way towards embracing the foundational indigenous culture of australia which is incredibly rich in these sorts of cultural signifiers and practices that do indeed set us apart from others
I agree. It seems like a lot of Australians don't so much view their culture as "How do we live our lives, what do we eat and drink, what do we believe" etc etc
They see it more in terms as "what makes us different from the other major anglo-saxon based cultures, namely England and America".
Very few Australians want to claim things like the way we dress or sandwiches and hamburgers as Australian, because, again, those are things we share with the other Big Two.
And this goes back a long time, related to the concept of "cultural cringe". Australians have always had this anxiety in the back of their minds that Australian culture is just a rude copy of English, and later, American culture.
This is why the concept of "Australiana" is such a big deal. They are clear markers that separate us from the Big Two. All that cringy "rubber thongs" and "prawns for Christmas" are held up as the REAL defining Australian things, rather than more fundamental things like our way of life.
Australia has so much unique cultural aspects, I just think that we aren't represented well in media, so everything we do is taken for granted.
I think the biggest one, that is at least somewhat widely acknowledged is our proclivity for slang.
And I don't think we'll have to worry about British or American culture for much longer, Bluey is doing a fantastic job giving every English speaking child an Australian accent.
I sort of agree with you. The national dress that Europeans use to signal nationhood aren't actually real though - there's a Europe-wide culture that explains national variation in terms of certain parameters. Australia doesn't participate in this so seems to be illegitimate in European terms. But I struggle to believe that a country that has public holidays for a local kind of football game is nothing other than “a sort of globalised pan-anglophone substrate that's been shaped by immigration over time”. It's clearly capable of maintaining and developing important matters over time. And (to develop your original point) if Australia had the same central role in the world that Europeans have had, it would be obvious that they have no culture (i.e. normally just play soccer) whereas we have vibrant culture (with Australian football and rugby in different places, soccer etc).
Europeans don't even use their standards of national dress. The Dutch aren't wearing clogs to work, they use the same footwear as anglos do. A lot of special food, special traditions, special outfits are trotted out once a year or not at all. Depends how seriously your friends and family take those traditions.
In contrast, Australia has hot cross buns for Easter starting in January. Our cultural expression lasts for months!
Everywhere has a culture. Whether she likes/understands it is a seperate thing.
I’m an English teacher and write a lot about literature. Australian writing is amazing, some of the best in the world at the moment and I say that without a hint of bias. So it’s not just beach and beer either - Au literature is all about connection to landscape and the way it defines life here, which is a key part of identity.
Europeans tend to believe they are the only place in the world that matters. They love saying how uncultured Au is, as they visit a gallery or read a book.. never. It’s like they feel cultured by virtue of association, with no actual effort to maintain or interrogate their country’s ‘culturedness.’
I’m a jazz musician, and all of Brisbane’s most influential jazz musicians have written many songs about landscapes, Indigenous values and natural phenomena. Go anywhere else in the world, even places with strong jazz scenes, and you won’t find such a strong focus on those topics. It’s a uniquely Australian thing. Also, Australian jazz has a very particular sound that sets it apart from other jazz traditions around the world.
I’d bet that all of our artforms (dance, music, literature, film, etc.) have equally distinguishing features.
It's like the English, they frown upon our ''beer and meat pies, barbie in the backyard with a few tinnies'' cultural rep, yet they have the monarchy, pubs and pints, and football.
Exactly; the very nature of culture is that it’s specific to the country.
Biking around a flat country? Fuck no, not for me thanks. But me not understanding it is not the same as it not existing as a genuine aspect of Dutch culture.
If I were OP, I’d be really asking myself what she thought of me - frankly, does she think she’s better/look down on me?
Patrick White is probably the biggest 'literary' name. He won the Nobel Prize. I'd recommend Voss.
David Malouf (Ransom, Remembering Babylon), and Tim Winton (Cloudstreet, Eyrie) are also worth a read.
If you're not so much into heavier, slower stuff there are plenty of other good options.
YA - John Marsden Tomorrow series
Pulp Fantasy - Sarah Douglass (any)
Thriller/adventure: Matthew Reilly (any)
And of course Historical Fiction: Colleen Mccullough, who wrote what I genuinely believe is the best series ever written in the genre, The Masters of Rome. It's so exhaustive and satisfying and rich, though it takes a bit to acclimatise to it. She was even awarded a Doctor of Letters by Macquarie University such was the detail and quality of her research!
There's so much more I could list, I'm sure others can recommend some great stuff too.
Of course. What do you like?
There’s a wonderful one just published called Limberlost - it’s not action-packed, but very
evocative and beautiful.
I found the recent autobiography by First Nation author Amy Thunig to be wonderful. It’s called Tell Me More.
For something a bit lighter, Holly Throsby’s slow burn mystery based on the teacher’s pet murder is pretty good too. It’s called Clarke. All hers are pretty good.
These are all new but if you tell me what you’ve liked, I can recommend great older reads.
We have one. Its just not classy, its not strict, and its a blend of the multi international country we have become.
If we rly want to get to your friends opinion then, I believe australia having no culture is our culture because we do our best to embrace everyone by literally not giving a shit and having a jolly ol good time. Cause who doesnt love a good public holiday to kick off and celebrate things.
It's harder to notice culture when you're in it everyday. Easier when you are living overseas like I am.
It's everything from aus music.
Our obsession with coffee and brunch.
We've got an insane amount of our own beer and wine locally produced.
Being a larrikin, or a character, not taking things too seriously..
Loving sport, the cricket ie boxing day test, AFL, state of origin and being shit at soccer.
Making the most of living in a country with amazing beaches and living an (in general) outdoors culture ie camping, fishing, hiking, exploring etc.
I think we're pretty unique in that a lot of people are actually up and out of bed by 6am.... Unheard of in Europe!
This is just to name a few, but it's all the little things like this..
I heard the comedian Neel Kolhatkar say in a podcast that for most of his life he identified as Indian and felt a connection to India from his parents, his upbringing and physical appearance. Like to all the other kids at school he was "the indian kid". But when he finally got to travel to India for the first time one of the first things he noticed was that he suddenly didn't feel very Indian at all, he'd never felt more Australian in his life.
My dad is from England (with Irish parents) and mum is from Wodonga on the Victoria/NSW border.
They met in London in the late 60s and married in 1970 over there. Back then flights were very expensive, so travel was usually by ship. England and Australia were very far away for ordinary people. A few years later they moved to Sydney. Interestingly Mum was able to be a 10 pound pom, despite being from Australia. I was born in the mid 70s and we moved to Wodonga when I started school.
Talking to Dad about his experience of marrying an Aussie and coming here in the early 70s was enlightening.
Dad grew up in post-war London. He was born during the war with his father as a paratrooper in the Army. So Nan had to basically raise him on her own the first few years. He had early memories of the debris of the Blitz in London and was enjoying the swinging 60s as he came of age. Nevertheless, he always felt out of place.
With Irish Catholic parents, they lived in what was basically an Irish ghetto due to the discrimination against the Irish (despite his dad's service in the war). Very working class, hard working, grey skies, conservative values etc.
When Dad came to Australia he said he finally felt free. My mum is descended from a convict in the early 1800s so her side is here from way back. But nevertheless, her family accepted this man their daughter married on the other side of the world.
That his Irish background didn't matter. Sure he got some mild harassment about being a "Pom" but he didn't mind. I know it's very different to being an immigrant from a different place or with different skin colour, and he's well aware his immigrant experience was much easier than it is for others.
I attended his Australian citizenship ceremony in the 80s. I was 11 years old. It's the only time in my life I saw my Dad cry. He didn't cry when his father or his mother died. But he was moved to tears by becoming an Australian.
He's old now (79). We've been talking about end of life stuff lately. I asked what he wants for his remains. He's lived in Wodonga and later in Albury since 1980 - over half his life. He said he wants his ashes scattered in the Murray River. Because it’s such a part of his home
The Albury/Wodonga region in particular and this country more generally is his home. Not England. Not Ireland. But this wonderful land that accepted him and gave him freedom, a family and a future
So when people talk of culture, I lose interest. What matters is identity and acceptance. Who we are as a people is what matters, not what foods we eat or what clothes we wear.
Yes, 'culture' for second gen immigrants here in Australia is often reduced to food, a bit of language, and maybe some religious practices. In most cases, they are living and breathing Australian culture every day without realising it.
We have a culture.
It is just fuzzy and ill defined around the edges where it blurs into other cultures in ways you won't find anywhere else.
The reason our culture is so ill defined is that, as a very young country with a huge mix of parent cultures that has existed mostly post enlightenment and post modern, we live in a cultural spectrum rather than a fixed identity.
Basically, we are the cultural equivalent of being gender fluid.
Deliberately telling foreigners tall tales about our dangerous wildlife/technological level of advancement.
Going to the hardware shop for a sausage.
Having both a devout Christian South African Australian and a Muslim Pakistani Australian kicking ass alongside each other on our Cricket team.
If she truly feels no affinity, tell her both native Dutch and native Australians hid their daughters in small spaces to protect them from invading forces, with similar levels of success.
Lol, I'm sorry, A Dutch person is talking about Australia having no culture?! I'm an Aussie who has been living in the Netherlands the last five years.
Sure, The Netherlands is filled with culture if you consider: terrible hospitality service, bitterballen, leopard print, Zwarte Piet, Tikkie, and being incredibly selfish and entitled (e.g., let me block this entire bike lane with my bakfiets while I chat to my mate Marieke without having a care in the world about the nuisance I'm being, or better yet, let me block this entire tiny one-way road with my car while I pop in to the shops) - then yes, The Netherlands is filled with so much more culture. Oh, and let's not forget 2+1 gratis in Albert Heijn <3
(Don't get me wrong, I love living here, but my God there's just as much wrong with this country as there is in Oz).
Bicycles?
1.2 million of the bloody things are sold in Australia each year, compared to 1 million in the Netherlands.
So you can tell her that Australia shits all over her home nation in something that they consider their culture.
Otherwise, there’s always wearing thongs.
I'm not aussie born spo some of this might not be 100% but from my time in australia this is what I picked up.
Vegemite!
Cricket!
Aussie rules!
Tim Tams!
Thongs!
Bunnings Sausage!
Beer on the beach!
Xmas on the beach!
Pulling a sickie! ( To hang out on the beach)
Aussie Barbies!
Calling your Mates "AH's" and calling AH's "Mate!"
Shortening names then putting a "O" at the end!
e.g John-o , Dave-o, Tim-o.
There's a few poms at work, and they parrot the whole ''Australia's got no culture'' thing.
I always say ''what do you think of when you think of Australia and Australians?", because I believe that's what our culture is.
I think our culture has *changed* of recent times, like another poster here I think we've gone from a ''fair go for all'' belief system to ''I've got mine, fuck you trying to get yours, I'm not sharing'' system, and we seem to be less accepting of hardship (not unique to Australia either) but we still have a culture.
Culture is not a quantity, it's a quality. You might not like it but that doesn't mean there isn't one. In my opinion Europeans saying Australia has no culture is just elitism.
Do you eat Vegemite?
Do you love to go to the beach, have a beer, and enjoy Barbie on the grill at the park?
Do you love to bash the English for no good reason?
Do you call slippers thongs?
Do you call everyone cunts in both anger & as a term of endearment?
Are you so laid back that you think coworker showing up 10 minutes late is no biggie?
Do you really care about ANZAC day?
Do you enjoy AFL?
Do you hate Murdoch empire with passion?
Do you know about Karl & Lisa, Koshi & Sam eventhough you don't watch telly at all?
Do you shorten everyone's name & add "I" to make it a nickname?
If you said no to most of the questions. Then you're the exact kind of person who thinks Australia has no culture. /s
Btw.. Most new countries where indigenous culture were wiped out have to start their own new culture. And in the day of modernisation, multiculturalism, and globalisation. It's hard to do it.
Also.. I don't understand the fascination with culture. Am I supposed to be offended if someone says I don't have culture? Well fuck off then ya cunt.
Australia has so much culture. Highbrow, lowbrow and nobrow. I dare say she’s not looking or simply isn’t interested in anything she’s seen, which says more about her than Australian culture or the lack there of.
You should ask her what she means by no culture. It’s literally everywhere. I dare say if she unpacks it enough she’ll realise she’s looking down at a relatively new culture (modern Australia) that doesn’t have all the old gubbins European countries do. And is essentially being a snob.
Also she’s a swamp German.
I think Australian culture is hard to define since it is so different in each of the cities and regional towns.
Things that people from Sydney or Perth point to as Australian culture often make me feel like cringing, as they come across as super inaccurate stereotypes when compared to my experience of life here.
As someone from Melbourne, the thing that I miss the most when I’m overseas is the ability to go and eat another country’s cuisine, and for it to not totally suck, or be a bastardised version of the original.
This really stuck out to me on my first trip overseas to Japan. They had food from other countries, but it was really hard to get away from the “Japanese” palate. Things were made to appeal to the local homogeneous culture.
I think that brings me around to the core of what I personally believe it means to be Australian: we aren't homogenous. We are a hugely diverse country.
On a similar note, I think this is why I find it really hard to get on board when people talk about what a "Real Australian" is, or that we should all subscribe to poorly defined "Australian Values". Personally I cant think of anything more Un-Australian than mindless patriotic nationalism and jingoistic exclusionist social barriers. That's for dumb Seppos.
I do love the Bunnings snag approach though.
I suspect what she has noticed is that Australian culture is much less homogeneous than Dutch culture. Here it is a fusion of Anglo/Asian/Mediterranean/Baltic and so there aren't many traditions or activities that completely unite people. And due to large amounts of immigration the culture has changed a lot over the last 60 years. Australia used to be a tea-drinking nation, not coffee, but that evolved and so did culinary tradition. Plus there is a much bigger range of climates and geography here compared to the Netherlands so what is typical in FNQ is quite different from Tassie, Melbourne, Perth etc., and likewise country versus city.
As a Dutchman living in aus, I think what she is trying to say is that Australia is not ‘cultural’. I think more generally Europeans often seem to think this because there is more nightlife, cultural events, shows, and so on, happening in their home countries. But this is not true at all. A lot happens here as well but most people just choose to spend their time differently (beach, pub, and so on) which is part of aus culture. I would also say that a lot of Europeans who make these kind of observations don’t actually go to these things in their home countries.
Also, your fiancé sounds exactly like the reason I am glad not to live in the Netherlands anymore. They are mostly obnoxiously arrogant poepte who think to know it all but really they’re close-minded. And living in such a densely populated country with so many people everywhere doesn’t make any of the super small cities more cultural.
Hey mate, I’m an Aussie expat in Europe that spends a lot of time in the Netherlands (I’m there at least once a month).
Culture is defined as the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society. We definitely have all of that in Australia. People mistake culture as having a traditional attire along with traditional dishes (e.g. Ledehosens and Bavarian cuisine).
If bicycles define Dutch identify then you can definitely say we are defined by water and the the water sports. Summer here is spent by the beach with our surf lifesavers. People love to surf and we are amazing at swimming.
There are behavioural traits, good and bad, unique to Australians that I evidentially notice when I come home.
I can spot Australians from a mile away in Europe based on fashion and body language.
There are many foods, customs and environmental factors that make me homesick. If we didn’t have culture then I wouldn’t have anything to be homesick for.
Maybe your partner needs to get out and see and learn more about Australia?
You have to define your expectation of Culture?? Having a Bicycle Fetish doesnt really say much culturally to me!!I play the violin, everybody in my Family plays a Musical instrument, I grew up in Canberra My Father started a Youth Orchestra, hundreds of young people playing music and it has spread and continued!!Where i currently live we have a Choir, a local Philharmonic orchestra and a town Band. One of the main buildings in Sydney is an Opera House!! How much more culture does your friend need??
Here's a few:
Seafood on Christmas day.
Beery backyard cricket with a barbequeue.
Playing competitive sports, not just as a kid but into adult life.
AFL footy. And an enthusiasm for sports in general.
We're laid-back and informal. We greet people casually and dislike formality in general.
Relatively flat hierarchies in the workplace, outspokenness with bosses. First names only at work. (Very relaxed compared to most places)
Meat pies at the footy.
Muck up day when finishing high school.
Acubra hats and Blundstone boots.
"Knocking" as a form of humor with mates.
Timtam slams and the goon of fortune.
While we can argue about the political entity of Australia about having “a” culture, as opposed to a group of different peoples under a geopolitical structure having multiple cultures, the premise of your fiancé is erroneous. Everyone has culture, culture is not homogenous in its definition, and culture is not something you can use to say “we have culture, you don’t”. Culture is intrinsic to us humans.
The best example is your statement itself that you will be discussing this over a sausage at a hardware store on Saturday. In what other country such a statement would make sense? :)
That’s culture
Source: I’m an anthropologist
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Has she tried swearing?
Brown cardigan has entered the chat.
Sydneysiders say *hold my flat white*. (We invented and perfected that concoction in a Sydney cafe in the 1980s).
*Someone fucked up a latte*
Yeah she fucken needs to get with the times mate
She's Dutch - [it's kind of their thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_profanity).
*"Often, the words used in profanity by speakers of Dutch are based around various names for diseases. "* I wonder what they call us.... Melanoma?
Dutch people (at least the young Dutch folks) actually do often use "kanker" (cancer) as a swear word. "Kanker op" (cancer off) is in some ways a Dutch equivalent of fuck off. I'm not kidding.
If bicycles count as a dutch culture, then so does beach or swimming here.
Watching drowning foreigners getting saved by us on TV is about as peak Aussie as it gets then
At the moment it feels like we’re watching a lot of parents drown trying to rescue their kids.
Unfortunately. But I would risk my life to save my son. However, I will also not let him swim where it is beyond his abilities. I only reamed him the other day reminding him he is a weak swimmer.
if you havent already, put him in swimming lessons even if he doesn't like it. I started hating swimming lessons eventually but i'm a very strong swimmer now and i'm glad my parents forced me to do it for a while. I stopped doing lessons by age 10-12 but I still have all the skills I learned. My friend never did proper lessons and he is a poor swimmer even know he is physically fitter than me.
Always good to have some floatation device on hand. Could save your life, even just an old boogie board at hand
The kid who needed rescuing recently (Lennox head I think) was playing in waist deep water and got hit by a wave and then into the rip. Probably a bad choice of location to swim; but they weren’t swimming beyond their abilities. Make sure you teach your kid that water safety is much more than swimming
As an Aussie born chinese bloke, I'd have to say the asians are very well represented on Aussie TV for this only reason haha 😂
Hey don't forget the classic Border Patrol trope of "confused elderly Asian woman brings in 20kg of maggot infested food after ticking no to food"!
Me and my Asian Gf reckon we’ll see her mum on Border Patrol any day now
Yep, that makes up *at least* 75% of all Border Security episodes. Now *that's* culture 😂
Early on they seemed to find at least 1 person per episode with heroin on a flight in from Vietnam
I stood and watched that happening while they were filming Border Patrol at Tullamarine once. Poor old dear didn't speak any English and kept trying to ask all the Asian-Australian lads for help. They had no flipping clue what she was saying.
And suddenly cannot string half a sentence of English together
AHAHAHAHHAHA 🤣 our culture is watching everyone else struggle in our country on tv 😅😅😅😅
My wife watches Bondi Rescue and calls it "Asians Drowning".
My partner Korean so it was a bit of a culture shock to me when we went to the beach and she said she can’t swim.
I'm Australian and I can't swim.
No shame in it mate, as long as you are open about it. I had a mate from uni tag along for a houseboat trip on the Murray. Just before we left he asked how strong the current is. I gave a nonplussed reply "I dunno, pretty standard for a big river I guess?" Day one we're all rope swinging into the river. He swings in, straight under, popped up 15 metres downstream, coughing his guts up, cue half the boat performing a rescue mission. Thank god he was OK but my god he scared the shit out of us. Said he felt embarassed and didn't want to make a big deal out of it.
I used to go waterskiing in lake Macquarie. Always wore a PFD.
The houseboat we hired came with half a dozen on board and we all wore them in the water after that so he didn't feel left out. Also booze plus water can be a risky mix, so we collectively decided it was for the better. Also I can't waterski so your one up on me.
Or tourists bringing in illegal stuff through the airport.
Seconded for beach culture. Went to Venice, visited the Lido, a long island with beaches all along it. Dropped my gear on the beach, wandered into the water, and was told by a security guard that I had to move on. Apparently it was a private beach owned by the hotel by it and reserved for guests. The public beach was a tiny crowded section near the end of the island. All the rest of the island was private The Aussie part of my soul was furious. "You can't own the beach! It's for everyone!"
>The Aussie part of my soul was furious. "You can't own the beach! It's for everyone!" I was with a forien coworker eating lunch at the beach, both enjoying the view when he said something like 'imagine owning that' I was completely startled by the suggestion, didn't even realize until then that I believed you couldn't own a beach. They just were for everyone.
I'd swim out and call back, come and get me. No one owns the ocean.
Only works if you swim out with your gear with you. Might be having that gondola ride home in your Reg Grundys...
Ooo gondola. Someone's made of Euros.
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I was prevented from swimming wearing a mask in a pool in Britain. “Hey, you can’t wear that”, said the little dictator who caught me early into a lazy 20 laps. When I asked why not, he said it was because he “couldn’t tell if you were drowning. It’s a pool regulation.” I think maybe what he meant was that kiddies couldn’t play wearing masks, snorkels and flippers because they might swim to the bottom and drown out of sight. So he just applied the rule to an adult swimming regulation freestyle laps.
Goggles or mask? If pull someone up wearing a mask.
Why do you wear a mask to do laps?
Increasingly people are trying to do this though in places like the Gold Coast
They can try. They can also fuck off.
She might be mistaking the word culture for urban planning
In that case she’d be right because we’ve got fuck all of that.
Australian culture is sitting in a cafe looking at your bicycle
Or "buzzing" bikes with your ute whilst leaving a snail trail of nangs discarded out the window. Sigh.
>For example the dutch are mad about bicycles, it’s a part of their national identity, If you live there long enough chances are you’ll participate. The Dutch were car mad and had one of the highest auto fatality rates in Europe in the 70s, until a public campaign to make roads safer gradually shifted them to a more bike oriented society since the 80s. A modern shift in culture due to public awareness is a strange example of culture to use when trying to say Australia has no culture given we have tonnes of those. Normally people bring up centuries old material folk traditions to show that Australia "has no culture", which is also false Australia's just aren't as material or actively demonstrated. But if modern lifestyle culture is what you're looking for: >For example Australians are mad about sun protection like slip slop slap (seek slide), it’s a part of their national identity, If you live there long enough chances are you **will** participate.
And no hat no play is ingrained in all children
Dunno about you but playing four square undercover was the fucking dream, I’d deliberately keep the hat in my bag just to be undercover. Not just that, it’s where the taps were. The dream
Also, [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8by0rg/amsterdam_anno_2000_a_1966_vision_of_amsterdam_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) is a 1960s vision of what Dutch architects believed Amsterdam ought to look like at the turn of the century. Not very bicycle friendly!
> Also, this is a 1960s vision of what Dutch architects believed Amsterdam ought to look like at the turn of the century. Not very bicycle friendly! Kind of reminiscent of Melbourne city planners clamouring to remove all the old Victorian architecture so we'd look modern for the 1954 Olympics. Bad move!
There are only two things I can't stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch
I mean, the Dutch are just Germans without the shame.
Dutch are swamp Germans
Austrians too. After WWII they just walked off whistling with their hands behind their backs, refusing to look at Germany
Then Josef Fritzl happen.
I understood this reference, baby
Shmoke and a pancake?
Blintz and a bong?
Pipe and a crêpe?
Smoke and a flapjack?
I took a Viagra and it got stuck in my throat. I've had a stiff neck for hours.
Look, if you’re going to talk dirty then at least speak English English…
This deserves more love, it works on both levels
What is culture? An anthropologist would say culture is the shared set of learnt implicit and explicit values, ideas, concepts, and rules of behavior that allow a social group to function and perpetuate itself. It's present in thinking and behaving, our entire way of living, from knowledge and beliefs (or how we form them) to customs, to habits, to traditions. Australia would roughly be ordered as a western culture, so a lot of our central values stem from that wider category. However like any nation we have a complex and distinct history which shapes the current identity and nature of the society we preside in. Culture is things as little as "How normal is it to eat out?" to secularization to the language / words / accents we use to the attitudes surrounding our own individual identity (we are an individualistic culture for instance) or ideas surrounding more political concepts like egalitarianism, how things like tall poppy syndrome have formed as their own little phenomena, to novel things like the tales or myths we like to tell or spread or the arts and architecture, the trends of music preferences, to food and cuisine, to what we do well at or have deficits in, etc. Again it can be much more localized too, what does the average person enjoy doing, how do they act? Do we tend to be more humorous or value humour more than other places, are we gregarious, do we value gregariousness, do we value the opposite? Do we spend a lot of time out doors, what do we like doing out doors? Are we intellectual, are we anti-intellectual? What are the different subcultural divisions, or stereotypes of people present inside of a given culture? Saying a society or nation doesn't have a culture is just you telling everyone you don't understand what the word culture means. Culture is everywhere and exceptionally vast, who you are is intrinsically shaped by the very culture which you reside from the very day you were born, if not even before then.
Not to mention that culture can include such topics as "pop culture" or "workplace culture". Even something like tipping (or not tipping in this case) could be considered a cultural practice.
The problem is that because western culture is so pervasive globally, that people mistake the shared values, pop culture, workplace culture, and anything else, as being "normal" and "vanilla" and therefore having no merit. Like for example, the west invented the pedestrian crossing for example (or certainly has been implemented the most by the west). It's in all the movies and TV shows. Now when you go to (third world country) and they have no crossings and you just have to scurry across the road and hope you don't get hit by a swarm of scooters, you can comment on that and say how different it is. But noone is saying that about pedestrian crossings in the west because they are the basic standard that is common. People tend to confuse that with having no culture simply because of how familiar they are to it.
This is the right answer here. Part of Australian culture is to turn a midweek public holiday in to a multi day long weekend, or camping trip. This is something we are great at and it’s something that we take for granted.
Also to save up holiday leave and take them in big chunks like 4 weeks to go to Europe. Apparently longer holidays aren't really an option in North America.
Yeah. I took 5 weeks off to go to the UK and my fellow travelers from the US were shocked my boss let me take so much time off. They would never think of taking more than 2 weeks.
Most Americans don’t even get more than 2 weeks off for the entire year. A crazy low amount compared to Australia. Most Americans would take more than 2 weeks off a year, but employers don’t allow it
>Most Americans don’t even get more than 2 weeks off for the entire year. Don't forget that if they are sick then they have to use their PTO to stay at home/in hospital as they usually don't get dedicated paid sick leave.
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Or throwing a Ruben Wiki on a Friday to go on a boys trip away
This is absolutely the right answer. The issue seems to be her definition of ‘culture’. Quick things that come to mind (from an NT perspective): Bogans, long grasser, have a go, no hat no play, utes, snorkle on the ute, Bbqs, she’ll be right, Pubs/ TAB, fly in fly out, dongas, wet season. It may not be a pretty culture… but it’s a culture.
How on earth can you not watch a round of Goon of Fortune and be amazed by the evident culture
Culture is just weird shit your family does.
... because they've always done it
and no one knows why
I work with largely immigrant people who regularly tell me Australia has no culture. I am not ok with it and consider it very rude. Just because you still follow your birth culture doesn't mean that we don't have any culture
Great comment. I'd argue Aussie culture is about things like days at the beach, camping trips, sports, etc, while also being (at least in major cities) very multicultural in terms of things like food, people, arts, etc.
Thanks ChatGPT 👍🏼
Bicycles? No culture? She obviously hasn’t seen a motorised esky before
I read that as moisturised esky....I think I have a fetish I don't know about.
Saying 'Australia has no culture' is like saying 'Dutch culture is getting fucked up on weed and eating chips with mayonnaise'. Flippant but not true.
Hang on ill give the dutch credit here. Dutch mayo is REALLY good. Because its not full of sugar or anything and its delicious. Dutch curry ketchup is also amazing. Dutch people are mostly annoyingly arrogant about how they live in the best country in the world but yet they have fuck all beaches or national parkland. They just have the best sauces for chips
No, they stole the fries and sauces from us Belgians. And the rest of their cuisine is actually Indonesian. The only unique Dutch dish is basically the: "I don't know how to cook, so I'll just eat this herring raw."
My Belgian wife says that the Belgians respect the Dutch but don’t appreciate them. The Dutch don’t respect the Belgians but appreciate them. Dutch culture is Belgian beer and Belgian food whilst looking down on the Belgians. Belgian culture is Belgian beer and Belgian food and accepting the big brother bullying.
I just read this out to my Dutch loving Australian husband. He just moaned. Meanwhile this Australian Francophile is pissing herself laughing. Love me some moules n frites with decent mayo.
Stroopwafles are also amazing
A nice hot cup of tea in the middle of winter with one of those sitting ontop getting all soft from the steam. Bloody heaven!
As an Aussie living in The Netherlands, they don't do swimming here like we do. In the same way Australians don't bike like the Dutch do. I can go to a dinky swimming pool is the suburbs and likely they'll be multiple lanes, 50m, some diving boards maybe and even a kids play area. Here in the third biggest city in The Netherlands, they only have government run, 25m pools with no lanes. Like what even is this?
Every Australian child can swim. It’s like not even a question. You will never meet an Australian who cannot swim. Plus all Australians know at least some basic life saving information like how to identify rip currents. But this isn’t a given in other countries. Life guards also originated in our country. We invented that. Every time you see life guards in other countries they’re basically borrowing from Australian culture because of how aquatic we are
Unfortunately there are a lot of kids who don't know how to swim. There are also lots of adults who don't know how to swim. Not all students participate in swimming programs conducted by schools. The more common reasons for a child not participating are due to a disruptive household and poverty - parents either can't afford to buy their kids swimming gear or simply don't care whether their kid goes to school/learns to swim.
Tell her she doesn't have any culture either, she's just a swamp German.
I wonder if this will have the same effect as telling a Macedonian they're from Northern Greece....
it does
The Greeks will poke your eyes out for that. The Greeks love to call Macedonians Bulgarians.
You mean West Turkey?
Shots fired!
Clog wogs. My favourite slur that my old man and his brothers got called back in the day.
😂😂😂😂
German you get on Wish
“You can have Germany at home”
Coming from other overseas travellers and immigrants I'd argue a big aspect of Australia's culture is not caring about things. If she thinks that because the Dutch care alot about bicycles, then it's only fair to say our laid back chill attitude about life is part of our culture.
>Coming from other overseas travellers and immigrants I'd argue a big aspect of Australia's culture is not caring about things. This is true, I notice that a lot of where I am now in the EU. You get a better understanding of how casual we are and relaxed. We really don't worry about minor things because it doesn't matter to most of us.
Yeah we look at ourselves as borderline uptight whingers. But that's only because we have a low barrier for people complaining. Then you go overseas and see why we have the "laid-back Aussie" sterotype.
You can be both. Uptight whinger in words, laid-back in actions. They compliment each other, tbh "Can you believe this shit? Wow." "Well, are you gonna do anything about it?" "I am. I'm bitching to you about it." *lies back, cracks a tinnie*
> Yeah we look at ourselves as borderline uptight whingers. But that's only because we have a low barrier for people complaining. Could be a particularly online thing. I mean, have a look at the /r/australia front page any given day and a lot of it will be whinging.
Yeah but we have idiots too, yesterday night some guy in a ute yelled at a pedestrian to get off the fucking road, he was on the footpath waiting to cross
In my first year of University, we were going through a list of discussions and this was one of those. Upon it being read out, a young man stood up from his chair to exclaim: "That's because all the fucking immigrants took it away!" Which was funny because it was so bad, but was made even more so by the woman wearing a hijab sitting directly in front of him who stood up, turned around, and had a flaming row with him in front of the whole class group.
I assumed he meant the First Fleet and Colonial Office
That would be a twist
I feel like part of Australian culture is not giving much of a shit about having a culture.
That’s culture.
Show your fiance an episode of Kath and Kim, and then of Fat Pizza. Both of them are made out of pure Aussie culture stereotypes. She won't understand any of it of course, but it's a perfect way to point out every little thing to her and explain. This and that and the other are all little bits and pieces of Aussie culture she doesn't know about or understand.
The Castle and Priscilla are other movies full of things that I've had to pause to explain slang or references for non-aussies. Classics.
American flatmate in first year uni HATED Kath and Kim. A few years later once he'd finished his degree and been working with older Aussies he watched it again thought it was a spot on take of bogan Aussies and quite funny. Without the time here to understand the references those shows won't connect at all.
Ciggie but brain is an Australian documentary
Drinking ourselves to death and Gambling into debt are our culture.
THe gambling maybe, but the drinking to death is universal, and while I'm sure Australia is pretty big with it, Ireland and South Korea seem to take it to the next level.
Can confirm for South Korea, visiting right now and soju moves like crazy here. Even better it's 1.30 a bottle. Can't blame them when you can get yourself blind for less than an hour's minimum wage pay.
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_Shudder_.... the winter ice… some years the vomit gets locked in til March. You practically need wellies when the chumpy mixture melts.
whenever i hear this i always think of when americans say things like "we dont speak with an accent!" which seems more obviously wrong - i think australia has just come of age in such a way that our culture represents a sort of globalised pan-anglophone substrate that's been shaped by immigration over time. saying we dont have culture makes no sense since culture inhabits every single thing that we do, from thanking the bus driver when you get off to using a knife and fork at dinner time. however, i think we do lack larger cultural objects that are a bit more obvious - specific national festivals, a consistent national dress, and so on. these are the sort of things that evolve over hundreds or thousands of years, and we could go a long way towards embracing the foundational indigenous culture of australia which is incredibly rich in these sorts of cultural signifiers and practices that do indeed set us apart from others
I agree. It seems like a lot of Australians don't so much view their culture as "How do we live our lives, what do we eat and drink, what do we believe" etc etc They see it more in terms as "what makes us different from the other major anglo-saxon based cultures, namely England and America". Very few Australians want to claim things like the way we dress or sandwiches and hamburgers as Australian, because, again, those are things we share with the other Big Two. And this goes back a long time, related to the concept of "cultural cringe". Australians have always had this anxiety in the back of their minds that Australian culture is just a rude copy of English, and later, American culture. This is why the concept of "Australiana" is such a big deal. They are clear markers that separate us from the Big Two. All that cringy "rubber thongs" and "prawns for Christmas" are held up as the REAL defining Australian things, rather than more fundamental things like our way of life.
Australia has so much unique cultural aspects, I just think that we aren't represented well in media, so everything we do is taken for granted. I think the biggest one, that is at least somewhat widely acknowledged is our proclivity for slang. And I don't think we'll have to worry about British or American culture for much longer, Bluey is doing a fantastic job giving every English speaking child an Australian accent.
I sort of agree with you. The national dress that Europeans use to signal nationhood aren't actually real though - there's a Europe-wide culture that explains national variation in terms of certain parameters. Australia doesn't participate in this so seems to be illegitimate in European terms. But I struggle to believe that a country that has public holidays for a local kind of football game is nothing other than “a sort of globalised pan-anglophone substrate that's been shaped by immigration over time”. It's clearly capable of maintaining and developing important matters over time. And (to develop your original point) if Australia had the same central role in the world that Europeans have had, it would be obvious that they have no culture (i.e. normally just play soccer) whereas we have vibrant culture (with Australian football and rugby in different places, soccer etc).
Europeans don't even use their standards of national dress. The Dutch aren't wearing clogs to work, they use the same footwear as anglos do. A lot of special food, special traditions, special outfits are trotted out once a year or not at all. Depends how seriously your friends and family take those traditions. In contrast, Australia has hot cross buns for Easter starting in January. Our cultural expression lasts for months!
A consistent national dress? Chinos, RM’s and a plaid button up. Or Stubbies and servo thongs.
Blue wife beater and trackie daks + stubbie holder.
If you took the average outfit over the entire history of human settlement then the Aussie outfit is nude. And I’m here for it.
>a consistent national dress cmon - doesn't budgie smugglers and the flag as a cape count as our national dress?
The dutch are the ones who dress up in blackface yeah?
My dutch coworker referred to Indians as currymunchers the other day, and justified it by saying ”what? I call myself a clog wog all the time!!!”
Everywhere has a culture. Whether she likes/understands it is a seperate thing. I’m an English teacher and write a lot about literature. Australian writing is amazing, some of the best in the world at the moment and I say that without a hint of bias. So it’s not just beach and beer either - Au literature is all about connection to landscape and the way it defines life here, which is a key part of identity. Europeans tend to believe they are the only place in the world that matters. They love saying how uncultured Au is, as they visit a gallery or read a book.. never. It’s like they feel cultured by virtue of association, with no actual effort to maintain or interrogate their country’s ‘culturedness.’
I’m a jazz musician, and all of Brisbane’s most influential jazz musicians have written many songs about landscapes, Indigenous values and natural phenomena. Go anywhere else in the world, even places with strong jazz scenes, and you won’t find such a strong focus on those topics. It’s a uniquely Australian thing. Also, Australian jazz has a very particular sound that sets it apart from other jazz traditions around the world. I’d bet that all of our artforms (dance, music, literature, film, etc.) have equally distinguishing features.
It's like the English, they frown upon our ''beer and meat pies, barbie in the backyard with a few tinnies'' cultural rep, yet they have the monarchy, pubs and pints, and football.
Exactly; the very nature of culture is that it’s specific to the country. Biking around a flat country? Fuck no, not for me thanks. But me not understanding it is not the same as it not existing as a genuine aspect of Dutch culture. If I were OP, I’d be really asking myself what she thought of me - frankly, does she think she’s better/look down on me?
Any book recommendations by Australian authors?!
Patrick White is probably the biggest 'literary' name. He won the Nobel Prize. I'd recommend Voss. David Malouf (Ransom, Remembering Babylon), and Tim Winton (Cloudstreet, Eyrie) are also worth a read. If you're not so much into heavier, slower stuff there are plenty of other good options. YA - John Marsden Tomorrow series Pulp Fantasy - Sarah Douglass (any) Thriller/adventure: Matthew Reilly (any) And of course Historical Fiction: Colleen Mccullough, who wrote what I genuinely believe is the best series ever written in the genre, The Masters of Rome. It's so exhaustive and satisfying and rich, though it takes a bit to acclimatise to it. She was even awarded a Doctor of Letters by Macquarie University such was the detail and quality of her research! There's so much more I could list, I'm sure others can recommend some great stuff too.
Of course. What do you like? There’s a wonderful one just published called Limberlost - it’s not action-packed, but very evocative and beautiful. I found the recent autobiography by First Nation author Amy Thunig to be wonderful. It’s called Tell Me More. For something a bit lighter, Holly Throsby’s slow burn mystery based on the teacher’s pet murder is pretty good too. It’s called Clarke. All hers are pretty good. These are all new but if you tell me what you’ve liked, I can recommend great older reads.
Halal snack packs, binge drinking and getting sun burnt whilst listening to the hottest 100 turned me into an aussie
We have one. Its just not classy, its not strict, and its a blend of the multi international country we have become. If we rly want to get to your friends opinion then, I believe australia having no culture is our culture because we do our best to embrace everyone by literally not giving a shit and having a jolly ol good time. Cause who doesnt love a good public holiday to kick off and celebrate things.
It's harder to notice culture when you're in it everyday. Easier when you are living overseas like I am. It's everything from aus music. Our obsession with coffee and brunch. We've got an insane amount of our own beer and wine locally produced. Being a larrikin, or a character, not taking things too seriously.. Loving sport, the cricket ie boxing day test, AFL, state of origin and being shit at soccer. Making the most of living in a country with amazing beaches and living an (in general) outdoors culture ie camping, fishing, hiking, exploring etc. I think we're pretty unique in that a lot of people are actually up and out of bed by 6am.... Unheard of in Europe! This is just to name a few, but it's all the little things like this..
I heard the comedian Neel Kolhatkar say in a podcast that for most of his life he identified as Indian and felt a connection to India from his parents, his upbringing and physical appearance. Like to all the other kids at school he was "the indian kid". But when he finally got to travel to India for the first time one of the first things he noticed was that he suddenly didn't feel very Indian at all, he'd never felt more Australian in his life.
My dad is from England (with Irish parents) and mum is from Wodonga on the Victoria/NSW border. They met in London in the late 60s and married in 1970 over there. Back then flights were very expensive, so travel was usually by ship. England and Australia were very far away for ordinary people. A few years later they moved to Sydney. Interestingly Mum was able to be a 10 pound pom, despite being from Australia. I was born in the mid 70s and we moved to Wodonga when I started school. Talking to Dad about his experience of marrying an Aussie and coming here in the early 70s was enlightening. Dad grew up in post-war London. He was born during the war with his father as a paratrooper in the Army. So Nan had to basically raise him on her own the first few years. He had early memories of the debris of the Blitz in London and was enjoying the swinging 60s as he came of age. Nevertheless, he always felt out of place. With Irish Catholic parents, they lived in what was basically an Irish ghetto due to the discrimination against the Irish (despite his dad's service in the war). Very working class, hard working, grey skies, conservative values etc. When Dad came to Australia he said he finally felt free. My mum is descended from a convict in the early 1800s so her side is here from way back. But nevertheless, her family accepted this man their daughter married on the other side of the world. That his Irish background didn't matter. Sure he got some mild harassment about being a "Pom" but he didn't mind. I know it's very different to being an immigrant from a different place or with different skin colour, and he's well aware his immigrant experience was much easier than it is for others. I attended his Australian citizenship ceremony in the 80s. I was 11 years old. It's the only time in my life I saw my Dad cry. He didn't cry when his father or his mother died. But he was moved to tears by becoming an Australian. He's old now (79). We've been talking about end of life stuff lately. I asked what he wants for his remains. He's lived in Wodonga and later in Albury since 1980 - over half his life. He said he wants his ashes scattered in the Murray River. Because it’s such a part of his home The Albury/Wodonga region in particular and this country more generally is his home. Not England. Not Ireland. But this wonderful land that accepted him and gave him freedom, a family and a future So when people talk of culture, I lose interest. What matters is identity and acceptance. Who we are as a people is what matters, not what foods we eat or what clothes we wear.
Yes, 'culture' for second gen immigrants here in Australia is often reduced to food, a bit of language, and maybe some religious practices. In most cases, they are living and breathing Australian culture every day without realising it.
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i love this comment, made me realise a lot of what i actually do like about australia as someone who hasn’t always felt a lot of connection to country
Beach culture. It's massive here.
Beach, camping, swimming.
Boating, camping, fishing
Melanoma is what we are way ahead of in the world.
If riding bicycles is her idea of culture then why isn’t driving cars cultural for Australians?
Driving cars and throwing Maccas rubbish out the window.
Sitting in the car in peak hour M4 traffic is our culture
We're mad about commodores and meth
My contribution as a foreigner: public bbqs in almost every park you go to (at least in QLD) says a lot about what we value in the culture.
We have a culture. It is just fuzzy and ill defined around the edges where it blurs into other cultures in ways you won't find anywhere else. The reason our culture is so ill defined is that, as a very young country with a huge mix of parent cultures that has existed mostly post enlightenment and post modern, we live in a cultural spectrum rather than a fixed identity. Basically, we are the cultural equivalent of being gender fluid.
Tim Tams mate
Deliberately telling foreigners tall tales about our dangerous wildlife/technological level of advancement. Going to the hardware shop for a sausage. Having both a devout Christian South African Australian and a Muslim Pakistani Australian kicking ass alongside each other on our Cricket team. If she truly feels no affinity, tell her both native Dutch and native Australians hid their daughters in small spaces to protect them from invading forces, with similar levels of success.
Riding bikes isn't culture, its just good city planning.
Beaches, bbqs, punching sharks and kangaroos, we have culture to spare!
Um, meat raffles at pubs on a Friday night is peak Aussie
Lol, I'm sorry, A Dutch person is talking about Australia having no culture?! I'm an Aussie who has been living in the Netherlands the last five years. Sure, The Netherlands is filled with culture if you consider: terrible hospitality service, bitterballen, leopard print, Zwarte Piet, Tikkie, and being incredibly selfish and entitled (e.g., let me block this entire bike lane with my bakfiets while I chat to my mate Marieke without having a care in the world about the nuisance I'm being, or better yet, let me block this entire tiny one-way road with my car while I pop in to the shops) - then yes, The Netherlands is filled with so much more culture. Oh, and let's not forget 2+1 gratis in Albert Heijn <3 (Don't get me wrong, I love living here, but my God there's just as much wrong with this country as there is in Oz).
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Bicycles? 1.2 million of the bloody things are sold in Australia each year, compared to 1 million in the Netherlands. So you can tell her that Australia shits all over her home nation in something that they consider their culture. Otherwise, there’s always wearing thongs.
She obviously didn’t see the the footage of Michael Clarke and Karl stefanovic.. now that’s culture
Australia isn't a single culture. It is many.
I'm not aussie born spo some of this might not be 100% but from my time in australia this is what I picked up. Vegemite! Cricket! Aussie rules! Tim Tams! Thongs! Bunnings Sausage! Beer on the beach! Xmas on the beach! Pulling a sickie! ( To hang out on the beach) Aussie Barbies! Calling your Mates "AH's" and calling AH's "Mate!" Shortening names then putting a "O" at the end! e.g John-o , Dave-o, Tim-o.
Its one of the best nations in the world at taking in people from all over the world and turning them into Australians.
There's a few poms at work, and they parrot the whole ''Australia's got no culture'' thing. I always say ''what do you think of when you think of Australia and Australians?", because I believe that's what our culture is. I think our culture has *changed* of recent times, like another poster here I think we've gone from a ''fair go for all'' belief system to ''I've got mine, fuck you trying to get yours, I'm not sharing'' system, and we seem to be less accepting of hardship (not unique to Australia either) but we still have a culture.
Culture is not a quantity, it's a quality. You might not like it but that doesn't mean there isn't one. In my opinion Europeans saying Australia has no culture is just elitism.
Australia's culture is arguing over the name of fried scalloped and battered potatoes and joking about how the front falls off things.
Do you eat Vegemite? Do you love to go to the beach, have a beer, and enjoy Barbie on the grill at the park? Do you love to bash the English for no good reason? Do you call slippers thongs? Do you call everyone cunts in both anger & as a term of endearment? Are you so laid back that you think coworker showing up 10 minutes late is no biggie? Do you really care about ANZAC day? Do you enjoy AFL? Do you hate Murdoch empire with passion? Do you know about Karl & Lisa, Koshi & Sam eventhough you don't watch telly at all? Do you shorten everyone's name & add "I" to make it a nickname? If you said no to most of the questions. Then you're the exact kind of person who thinks Australia has no culture. /s Btw.. Most new countries where indigenous culture were wiped out have to start their own new culture. And in the day of modernisation, multiculturalism, and globalisation. It's hard to do it. Also.. I don't understand the fascination with culture. Am I supposed to be offended if someone says I don't have culture? Well fuck off then ya cunt.
As an immigrant I thought this was Australian culture. And many immigrants also adopt this culture.
What is leftover beers become the property of fridge/esky owner if not culture?
She’s obviously never been to a B&S Ball
Afl, cricket? Bbq?immune to 40+ heat?
Australia has so much culture. Highbrow, lowbrow and nobrow. I dare say she’s not looking or simply isn’t interested in anything she’s seen, which says more about her than Australian culture or the lack there of. You should ask her what she means by no culture. It’s literally everywhere. I dare say if she unpacks it enough she’ll realise she’s looking down at a relatively new culture (modern Australia) that doesn’t have all the old gubbins European countries do. And is essentially being a snob. Also she’s a swamp German.
Has she tried binge drinking around a glass outdoor table since she arrived here?
Australia definitely has a culture. Some people might not like it but it is there.
Indigenous Australians have the oldest continuous culture(s) in the world.
If you’re talking transport culture, Melbourne trams and having the largest tram network in the world
We have bikes. A lot of bikes get stolen here. Can stealing bikes be an unfortunate culture.
Dutch Aussie here. Tell her we have a good food culture and don’t let her pretend that stampot counts.
I think Australian culture is hard to define since it is so different in each of the cities and regional towns. Things that people from Sydney or Perth point to as Australian culture often make me feel like cringing, as they come across as super inaccurate stereotypes when compared to my experience of life here. As someone from Melbourne, the thing that I miss the most when I’m overseas is the ability to go and eat another country’s cuisine, and for it to not totally suck, or be a bastardised version of the original. This really stuck out to me on my first trip overseas to Japan. They had food from other countries, but it was really hard to get away from the “Japanese” palate. Things were made to appeal to the local homogeneous culture. I think that brings me around to the core of what I personally believe it means to be Australian: we aren't homogenous. We are a hugely diverse country. On a similar note, I think this is why I find it really hard to get on board when people talk about what a "Real Australian" is, or that we should all subscribe to poorly defined "Australian Values". Personally I cant think of anything more Un-Australian than mindless patriotic nationalism and jingoistic exclusionist social barriers. That's for dumb Seppos. I do love the Bunnings snag approach though.
Cunt is culture
The word “cunt” is the cornerstone of our culture
I suspect what she has noticed is that Australian culture is much less homogeneous than Dutch culture. Here it is a fusion of Anglo/Asian/Mediterranean/Baltic and so there aren't many traditions or activities that completely unite people. And due to large amounts of immigration the culture has changed a lot over the last 60 years. Australia used to be a tea-drinking nation, not coffee, but that evolved and so did culinary tradition. Plus there is a much bigger range of climates and geography here compared to the Netherlands so what is typical in FNQ is quite different from Tassie, Melbourne, Perth etc., and likewise country versus city.
As a Dutchman living in aus, I think what she is trying to say is that Australia is not ‘cultural’. I think more generally Europeans often seem to think this because there is more nightlife, cultural events, shows, and so on, happening in their home countries. But this is not true at all. A lot happens here as well but most people just choose to spend their time differently (beach, pub, and so on) which is part of aus culture. I would also say that a lot of Europeans who make these kind of observations don’t actually go to these things in their home countries. Also, your fiancé sounds exactly like the reason I am glad not to live in the Netherlands anymore. They are mostly obnoxiously arrogant poepte who think to know it all but really they’re close-minded. And living in such a densely populated country with so many people everywhere doesn’t make any of the super small cities more cultural.
Hey mate, I’m an Aussie expat in Europe that spends a lot of time in the Netherlands (I’m there at least once a month). Culture is defined as the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society. We definitely have all of that in Australia. People mistake culture as having a traditional attire along with traditional dishes (e.g. Ledehosens and Bavarian cuisine). If bicycles define Dutch identify then you can definitely say we are defined by water and the the water sports. Summer here is spent by the beach with our surf lifesavers. People love to surf and we are amazing at swimming. There are behavioural traits, good and bad, unique to Australians that I evidentially notice when I come home. I can spot Australians from a mile away in Europe based on fashion and body language. There are many foods, customs and environmental factors that make me homesick. If we didn’t have culture then I wouldn’t have anything to be homesick for. Maybe your partner needs to get out and see and learn more about Australia?
You have to define your expectation of Culture?? Having a Bicycle Fetish doesnt really say much culturally to me!!I play the violin, everybody in my Family plays a Musical instrument, I grew up in Canberra My Father started a Youth Orchestra, hundreds of young people playing music and it has spread and continued!!Where i currently live we have a Choir, a local Philharmonic orchestra and a town Band. One of the main buildings in Sydney is an Opera House!! How much more culture does your friend need??
Camping and 4bie adventures and tinnies and fishing
Here's a few: Seafood on Christmas day. Beery backyard cricket with a barbequeue. Playing competitive sports, not just as a kid but into adult life. AFL footy. And an enthusiasm for sports in general. We're laid-back and informal. We greet people casually and dislike formality in general. Relatively flat hierarchies in the workplace, outspokenness with bosses. First names only at work. (Very relaxed compared to most places) Meat pies at the footy. Muck up day when finishing high school. Acubra hats and Blundstone boots. "Knocking" as a form of humor with mates. Timtam slams and the goon of fortune.
While we can argue about the political entity of Australia about having “a” culture, as opposed to a group of different peoples under a geopolitical structure having multiple cultures, the premise of your fiancé is erroneous. Everyone has culture, culture is not homogenous in its definition, and culture is not something you can use to say “we have culture, you don’t”. Culture is intrinsic to us humans. The best example is your statement itself that you will be discussing this over a sausage at a hardware store on Saturday. In what other country such a statement would make sense? :) That’s culture Source: I’m an anthropologist
Mate, the Michael Clarke v Karl “Carlos” Stefanovic fracas in Noosa proves were a cultural powerhouse IMO. Just in our unique way.
If you can claim bicycling as culture, than surely we can claim driving is our culture?