I did not give much thought to my Australianness when I nervously anticipated how I would be received as a new student in Oxford way back in 2004. I thought about my first days of high school, and about not having my brothers and sisters around. I wondered whether I would be able to continue to say to myself, 'It doesn't matter what people say about me or my personality, I have loved-ones who have said worse things about me'.
What I did not prepare myself for in the slightest was the barrage of balls that would be thrown at me for being Australian and therefore either (or a combo of) competitive, brash, obnoxious, entitled, unintelligent, anti-intellectual, backward, racist (a cab driver asked me only the other day whether Australians were hateful people), unsubtle and therefore unfunny. The most persistent comments come from the English, but I've got to say, the New Zealanders are up there... Even a South African man came up to me last week (having only met me once) to let me know that South Africa beat New Zealand in rugby union and that it made him feel 'good that the Aussies would get smashed.' How did the Aussies come into it?
Our energy and enthusiasm is seen as crass and annoying or evidence of stupidity. A Danish student remarked to me recently that she'd never hurt such vile things said about a population than the comments her British friends make about Australians. I tried to explain that it was only because of our special, parent-child relationship (where the child leaves the parent) that Brits felt so stridently comfortable about making comments that they never would about Africans or Asians, for instance, or even Canadians (the good son who does his own thing and does not cause trouble). It did make me wonder though. And come to think of it, an English guy recently told me that he could not tolerate 'Colonial women' because they (we...me) were too aggressive and upfront.
I have been trapped in awful, drunken conversations at 2am about shrimps on barbies (caught by trying to explain that no one in Australia uses the word 'shrimp'), Fosters (same thing), backwardness (our literacy rate is higher than that of the UK!), convicts (the proportion of convict descendants; the intentional policy of enforced labour in the colonial period), the arrogance of Aussie males (sporto jerks everywhere; you're projecting because you're smaller than them), The Ashes, our Olympic medal tally. The list goes on. And each time I engage I just feel depleted, infantile (like when your brother used to upset you with the same bait each time) and silly. Usually and increasingly, I concede to a few points - Australians can be too much sometimes in some contexts (especially on Contiki buses) and the male, macho culture (bushman, Anzac hero, sportsman) is intense and sometimes nauseating.
But I still don't like the conversations. I don't like being patriotic. It's akin to loyalty to 'houses' at school. But I must be. How else can I explain why I have to force a smile after the third Aussie-bashing joke in almost every Flight of the Conchords episode?
I didn't even consider that I would be representing Australia in the UK. But I am. I would prefer to represent myself and maybe my family. Apparently I am here to prove or disprove the very strong, prevalent (and most often not jokey) viewpoint that Australians are crap.
What's your problem with Aussies, mate? (eager, but not aggressive tone)
