Spot the difference

Andy, my host in Ballarat and a Brit who escaped long ago but returns a as visitor asked me on my last evening there about cultural differences  I’d observed between Australia and Britain., I had to think long  and hard because it really is like one of those spot the difference picture puzzles – the similarities strike first and it’s only when you concentrate that you begin to spot the differences.  Here’s a few:

Housing – although there are apartments in the city centres, most (white) people, seemingly regardless of social and financial status, aspire to live detached from neighbours on their own plot of land.  Sometimes there’s only a matter of a couple of feet between properties and fences are high and solid to provide privacy. Houses are all single storey, sprawling across the whole of the plot so that there is often little space between building and perimeter fencing.  Depending on the size of the plot, there might be a narrow flower border, some shady trees and plants in pots. Also possibly a small swimming pool or Jacuzzi tub.  But by and large, paving is it. I’ve met some people who are returning paving to garden and if you could grow avocados and melons why wouldn’t you.  Building materials differ too, with corrugated metal roofs on even on the houses of the well-off and extended well beyond the walls to provide shade. Older Victorian and Edwardian era houses often have beautiful metal ‘lacework’ forming part of balconies and porches and overhangs.  Fence material is usually another sort of corrugated metal, solid and square in section and I think sometimes called ‘siding’.  As well as being high enough to keep the neighbours at bay, I’m told that it is often sunk low enough and kept solid enough to keep the snakes out. Snakes might otherwise wander (slither?) in because all this desire for one’s own plot has resulted in big sprawling suburbs encroaching on brushland and therefore snakey’s home.  Suburban sprawl = high car usage = issues about carbon ,,,need I go on?

Anti-social behaviour – exists of course but for one thing you are much less likely to see people stuffing their faces anywhere and everywhere and leaving the resulting litter behind.  For example a quiet cinema without constant chomping and rustling was bliss.  Starving after a long Sunday bike ride I’d bought a pastry to eat on the train home (bikes are made welcome on trains).  The train was packed with young people coming back from the beach and I was the only person eating anything. Made me keep my pastry hidden in its paper bag as best I could while stuffing my face with it. There doesn’t seem to be any rules against it – just not done. Ditto sharing your music on the beach and failing to give up your seat to someone who needs it more. ( I’m 60 and allowed to be an old fart. )

Media – there’s  Kerry Packer of 20/20 cricketing fame as well as the Murdoch dynasty reducing the newspaper and other media business to drivel.  That said, I haven’t really explored newspapers apart from buying whichever one has a telly guide. Hmm if you think Brit TV is crap you’d sing its praises after a few weeks here.  Mainly foreign imports of popular ‘shows’ and spin offs like the inevitable quizzes. On the plus side a few well-worn British comedies are doing the rounds so I saw an episode of ‘Yes Prime Minister’ that I can’t remember seeing   before (the one about rescuing the dog on Salisbury plain).  Internet access is a generation behind the UK. If you think about the issues around universal fast broadband in the UK, then multiply them to how on earth you can expand broadband to tiny communities on this vast continent.  (Nice quote from an Aboriginal artist comes to mind: ‘you call it the desert, we call it where we used to live’.) But even in cities wifi in cafes and hotels is not the norm.  Where it’s good it’s very, very good – so at the University of Western Australia they’ve recognised that students (and me) spend a lot of time working outdoors so the Unifi wifi system is everywhere, four walls or not. It’s a lot less common to be able to book on the internet e.g. trip to Rottnest (more later) when I’ve been able to find out all about the ferry company on their website but have had to phone to make a booking.  My favourite media, books, are incredibly expensive new and about the same price as new in the UK in second hand shops. Today, cycling home, I came across, almost too literally, a man walking on the shared path who ignored my bell and nearly caused an accident not because his ears were full of i-pod,, but because he was reading  on his kindle. I don’t think the weather at home would be conducive to that. Enough media already!

If my ‘differences’ seem a little weighted in favour of the UK, please factor in the obvious positive differences  on the Aussie side – weather and the beaches to go with them; outdoor life well catered for –especially  cycle path heaven in Perth, swimming pool nirvana in Sydney.  Despite stereotype macho culture, more women in high places interviewed as CEOs and  politicians for example. Don’t know how much longer some of the leading women politicians will last though or how many are waiting in the wings with all those burly, budgie-smuggling men (think about male swimwear then move swiftly on).