Looking for an external perspective of Australia

[pooty]

A friendly, laid back people with a great sense of humor and interesting language, and everyone is descended from deported convicts.
90% of Australians live in houses at the beach, the other 10% in the Outback, a dangerous swamp.
Australians never have go to the zoo because there are wild animals everywhere. Aboriginal elders are consulted for their wisdom.
Ethnic Australian clothing consists of board shorts and a tank top printed by a southeast Asian beer company.
Because of all the Asian immigration, I see Americans fighting part of WWIII thereabouts.
edit: so if you want to allowed to walk around and shoot at things whenever you feel like, you can either come to The States, or write a new constitution after the war.

[JAD]

I have been a few times, scattered over 20 years and focused only on business in Sydney and Melbourne. I find Australians to be good to do business with — notably innovative (I was heavily involved with Cochlear Ltd, for example, and that’s just flat cool) and honorable. Political opinions are similar to the other Commonwealth countries — a tendency towards statism, isolationism, and xenophobia — but with a certain edge that’s definitely not present elsewhere (maybe in the African cw, I have no experience). It is the only country where a native has noticed my accent and made a point of interrupting my Devonshire tea in order to tell me how important the NRA is, and not to make the same mistakes they did of giving an inch. I agreed and appreciated it.

The country has become so bigoted towards Catholics, though, that I won’t go anymore if I can help it. We have a bunch of stuff to do there, but if I’m going to face opprobrium I’d rather make the shorter flight to Norway. It’s easy to find young colleagues who are eager to make the flight. Young engineers think of Oz as a vacation wonderland.

[OlongJohnson]

90% of Australians live in houses at the beach, the other 10% in the Outback, a dangerous swamp.

Everyone knows the outback is a desert.

Oh, and...

[TiroFijo]

Isn't it the country that doesn't want people like Israel Folau to play for them?

[SeriousStudent]

I really liked Perth and Brisbane. I felt like the Aussies appreciated Americana servicemen more than Americans and I really liked the Australian women and vice versa. It’s too bad that Australia is an anti gun, PC commonwealth country

I have a really nice WestPac libbo story about Perth I'll write up when I have time. It is safe for work.

1MarDiv Corporal, Guadalcanal veteran came back and married his Australian girlfriend after the war. I got to stay at his house when we had a 72 in Perth.

He has since passed, but we swapped Christmas cards for years. More details tonight when I have time to write.

[Cookie Monster]

Have not been to Australia but I spent 3 months traveling and backpacking through New Zealand about a decade ago. Been trying to find a way back there every since and looked at immigrating or spending a year or two there.

I hiked the PCT for a few weeks with an old retired engineer "Aussie Dave" I met randomly and have a another twin parent friend from Australia.

So really swallow look but man I'd go to visit and work for a few years in those countries. Things are pretty good where I am at though.

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What are Australian demographics? Do they have the unassimilated minorities that are problematic in Western Europe and the USA? Or have the Moslems not been encouraged in their activities as has been reported?

Australia has a lot of immigrants. Like America we had a lot that came across in the country's growing phase but assimilated quite well into the population. More recently though we are seeing a similar pattern to Western Europe where more are coming across and creating their own communities with their own laws. (Although our media and politicians will refuse to talk about it - there are no-go zones here in Australia now as there are in the UK and elsewhere). Australia isn't affected as much by this as Western Europe. I think geography - both location and land mass has subdued this a little but given time I think we're headed for a similar scenario.

[Stephanie B]

I felt like the Aussies appreciated Americana servicemen more than Americans and I really liked the Australian women and vice versa.

I heard one master chief tell someone: "Kid, iffn' you can't get laid in Australia or Israel, you need to cut your <deleted><deleted> off."

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Isn't it the country that doesn't want people like Israel Folau to play for them?

It's the country where the media and corporations don't want Israel Folau to play. He started a 'go fun me' for his legal battles. Gofundme cancelled it on some made up ground of hate speech. Some other organisation in Australia picked it up and I believe raised 1.5 million in the first 24hrs for him. I'm not sure where it's up to now. For Australia that's quite significant given our small population size. So on the media forefront it would appear as though Australia doesn't like him, but behind the scenes - the stuff the media and PC group don't want people to know about it's a different story.

The hate against free speech and the so called 'tolerant' group that are vehement against anyone who doesn't support their own views is in full motion here - pushing as hard as they can to shut down any individual or business that dare stands up. Unfortunately Australian's have been a sleepy lot. I'm not sure whether we'll wake up fully in time to fight back or not. The media has done an incredible job on twisting the mindsets of many Australian's here.

Banks, large corporate companies, the majority of the media and certain government parties are trying everything they can to push a certain agenda - although I get the feeling that you have the same issue in America. (Which has me wondering just how connected all these entities really are.

But I guess it's the same as us looking at America. From what we observe (if we don't do any research of our own) - the media would have us believe that American's hate Trump, he got in there only by lying, technicalities and external Russian influence and that he'll be out on his but come 2020 and the only ones that support him are Nazi extreme right wing crazies. For those of us willing to dig a bit deeper we see that it's actually the media that are out rightly blatantly lying to us, that he's actually quite popular amongst a number of level headed Americans and whilst Trump has some tenancies that can be embarrassing (Twitter feeds), many of his policies have some deep thought to them. On a personal note I wish we had someone in our country like him that would shake things up and arrest the descent in the direction we're heading.

I take it from the replies so far that people don't look at Australia and think "Abandon ship - any sane person would be fleeing that country and heading to the USA"? I admit I feel that way about certain Western Europle countries at the moment and was just wondering if people would think the same about Australia and that I can't see it for being part of it, or whether Australia seems a little more sound?

[BehindBlueI's]

Other than one expat friend who lives there, I don't really have an impression. I have an impression of general and field grade officers from when they would come through an internal checkpoint. The officers had big floppy hats, I'm not sure where there camo pattern was supposed to blend in at, but they were unfailingly polite and affable. Aussie officers treated you like a person they'd just sat next to at a bar and were looking to socialize a bit. British officers were polite but stiff, you were not of their social standing but could safely exchange customary pleasantries in passing. American field grade officers assumed you were furniture and thus did not bother to interact with you, with rare exception.