From the Sydney Morning Herald:
It used to be awesome being an Australian abroad.
When I first started travelling, only about 10 years ago, everyone loved an Aussie. You walked into a pub, someone would hear your accent, and clap you on the shoulder and buy you a drink. “G’day,” was an acceptable pick-up line.
You’d find yourself the token conversation piece at get-togethers, where you could persuade people that you wrestled kangaroos for a living. Doors magically opened, hassles were incredibly smoothed over, with the help of an Australian accent.
But it’s all gone wrong …
Try the old “g’day” line at a pub in London now, and at best you’ll get a roll of the eyes, at worst a “piss off jafa”.
(Jafa, by the way, is a phrase originally coined by Kiwis about Aucklanders, but is now the term used by Londoners when they hear our accent and think, “Just Another F—ing Australian.”)
The disdain now shown for Australian travellers abroad (and by the occasional worked-up reader on this blog) is pretty worrying for those of us who love to travel, and were used to being treated kindly purely because of our nationality.
So what’s happened to the lovable Aussie?
Firstly, we’re suffering from a serious case of overexposure. The fact that Australia is so far away from anywhere else used to mean that not many of us made it to foreign shores. Now, not only do we have air travel, but we have extremely cheap air travel, meaning that any wanker who can manage to scrape together a few hundred dollars can go and prop up the tittie bar industry in Phuket for a week or so.
It also means groups of blokes on buck’s weekends can wreak havoc on the world in an “I’m sick of getting pissed at Establishment, let’s go do it in Bali” kind of way. Travel used to be confined to people who were completely dedicated to it, who would spend all of their savings on that big trip away. Now, anyone can go and act like as big a moron away as they do at home.
But it’s not just the buck’s night crowds that are ruining our reputation. It’s a real worry that Aussies in Europe are now being tagged “New Yanks”. No offence to the old Yanks, but that’s not something I want to be.
We’re now seen as the arrogant, loud twats who complain when everything’s different to how it is back home. Australians always had a reputation for liking a party, but now we’re the obnoxious drunks, abusing the bar staff because their English sucks, whingeing that we’d kill for a Carlton Draught instead of this crap we’re being forced to drink.
Australians are almost a comedy piece. People in Aussie-populated pubs will scream out “Aussie Aussie Aussie” just to have a chuckle at the inevitable slurred cries of “Oi oi oi!” from the bloke in the Wallabies jersey who would treat it as a sign of disrespect if you didn’t answer the call.
Sadly, there’s also politics to consider. Australia used to be barely a blip on the world political radar (and mostly still is); however, we’re not the innocent, fun-loving little country we used to be (and New Zealand still is – see how easy it could have been?). Like the Yanks, we’ve dived into an unpopular war, taken powerful sides on a huge world issue, and generally tried to push around a bit of weight that we don’t have. You might say politics and travel shouldn’t be linked; however, people overseas know what we’re up to. It affects all of us.
Another possible point, although I can’t quite convince myself this is true, is jealousy. Is the “arrogant Aussie” tag just a way of brushing off the fact that many people would like to call Australia home? We do have it pretty good here. Do other people think that, too?
The bottom line, however, is that anyone who’s travelled knows there are a lot of Australians out there acting like dickheads, and it’s giving the rest of us a bad name. I’ve been to bars in Africa, only to watch a drunk Aussie get thrown out by locals for trying pull his pants down and run around the pool table. At the running of the bulls, I’ve seen Australians flip cultural respect the bird in favour of running in their favourite AFL jersey, rather than the traditional red and white costume. Once, at a cafe in Munich, a compatriot jokingly tried to draw a large swastika on my arm, seriously missing the hideous insinuation. I’ve been involved with groups of Australians on organised tours roaming Europe, laying waste to city after city.
It’s not pretty, but we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. When some other country’s citizens start getting called “New Aussies”, I’m handing in my passport.
