Having decided not to move here, I moved on in my head to attempting to describe all the countries I’ve been to in a few words.

…

America is brazenly self-confident, often irritatingly cheerful, and utterly naive in a very aggressive way. It carries within itself the full knowledge of its own superiority, as well as a creeping fear that this brings horrible dangers. It’s deeply caring and sympathetic, but lacks empathy for cultures incongruous with its own. In many ways, it is a 19 year old, charging around the world full of passion and idealism while doing everything it can to fill its room with as much stuff as it can fit in there. It covers itself in self-confidence like cheap cologne, and all the while doubt that maybe not everything can be fixed is eating at its insides.

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Australia is young too, but it’s a rougher kind of young than America. Similar creation stories at similar times, but Australia is so much less idealistic than America. Our creation story has no Independence War, or Civil War or Thanksgiving myth. We made for ourselves myths and heroes out of Ned Kelly and the jolly swagman rather than Washington and Lincoln. Our heroes are people subverting the world around them simply to survive, America’s heroes are idealists who took radical action to make their ideals reality, and subverted reality for a “higher purpose”. America grew a nation out of a rich land, a land of brown loam and mountains, bountiful prairies and huge forests. Australia grew out of red dirt that was dead long before we got there, and forests of gum trees too crooked to build with.

We’re (Australians) a broad, rough, honest people. Irreverent and coarse, blunt and loud. Cynical without bitterness, sarcastic without meanness. Practical with a “that’ll-do” approach to that which we don’t think is that important. A hard creation myth that makes us feel as though we’ve weathered something, a weird cultural love of ‘larrikinism’ and a mass buying into of the myth of ‘mateship’. But buying into those myths makes them real in their outworking, so there’s a kind of glowing pride associated with surviving in a mostly dead country, and a love for the underdog, and a feeling of responsibility to each other as long as you’re ‘mates’. We have a fascination for other places, but never lose sight of our own personal sense of superiority. We’re young but like to think we’re old, and pretend to be less idealistic than we are or want to be. As wonderful as it is to not have to respect something simply because everyone else does, it is sad that we find it hard to respect anything at all. Irreverence as a habit isn’t always the best policy.

Very honest and perceptive descriptions, in my opinion.  Maybe some day, I’ll be able to write that well.