This year’s summer here in the UK has found me considering questions of identity, challenging “facts” about myself and where I belong, as well as taking advantage of a few opportune moments along the way to fall back on my Australian heritage for personal gain.
Having lived abroad for around four years now, I am beginning to notice some changes in the way I identify with my home country. In fact, Australia, Australasia and that whole southern side of the globe are becoming a thing of myth or legend for me. I am, I feel, beginning to loose my Australian identity. Of late I have found myself taking on what stereotypes and features of my upbringing fit my purpose as a traveller, while distancing myself from the parts that don’t; a bit of a pick and mix. Despite being very aware of this transformation going on, those who have not known me so long are of course not so in the loop. This means that I am still able to ride the back of many old Australian stereotypes. There is a list of these that stick to you in most parts of the world, some true, some not, some desirable, some repellent. A few of the more positive (if not a little light on evidence) that make this list are:
- It is always summer in Australia and therefore temperatures of 35 degrees upward are easily tolerable, no matter how long you have been living outside of the country.
-All Australians are equipped with a fearless and innate ability to capture and dispose of dangerous/pesky animals and insects.
-Ozzie’s are friendly by nature and always easy-going.
I have spent the last few months of this particularly hot English summer working in a veggie/vegan kitchen in East London, and have found the atmosphere intolerably hot. While fending off my colleague’s assertions that I am soft and a sorry excuse for an Australian, I began to grapple with the idea that perhaps its true. I have it seems, accustomed myself to the European climate in more ways than one. Apart from the fact I now struggle with temperatures of 25 degrees upward, I can honestly say I like the cold. As the Norwegian’s say, “there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”…Actually, scratch that. There is bad weather and it’s in the UK all through the winter, but the summers can still be pretty damn hot.
With the heat have come spiders, cockroaches, and other creepy crawlies, all of which allow me to show off my apparent macho “Australianness”. This works particularly to my advantage when my wife, of Norwegian descent, turns in to a quivering mess at the sight of anything with eight legs, allowing me to ride gallantly in to capture and dispose of the offending arachnid. Unfortunately for me, apart from the adulation of my other half, there is little to no gratification, not even a flutter of the heart. Having grown up with some of most dangerous and aggressive spiders in the world, European spiders are comparatively benign, making the job more of a chore. Those large enough to appear in any way threatening, seem to have been lost in some evolutionary black hole when pitted against their Australian cousins: slow, cumbersome, and so unused to people trying to catch them to put up any fight. I often like to recount Steve Irwin-esque tales from the old country to my European friends; such as the time I in an epic battle splattered the abdomen of a particularly aggressive funnel web and then had to continue fighting the sharp end while it writhed and snapped in my general direction until I delivered the finishing blow. Little do they know I spent a good part of that “epic battle” hopping about squealing like a man-child.
Finally there is one aspect of the Australian archetype that I am particularly happy, like the pet kangaroo of my childhood, to hitch a ride on. As an Australian you are immediately thought to be friendly, easy going and a generally tolerable as a person without passing any of the essential stops and checks. While I do my best to support this illusion, I guess it is only a matter of time until the world realises that despite being from the land down under, Aussies can be complete bastards. Luckily for me our current prime minister is working hard at administering a dose of this reality to the world, so I don’t have to.
This summer has thrown up a few big questions like: “Why am I so sweaty?” “Should I start a pest control company?” And “why does everyone think I drink Fosters?” but more than that it has made me question my identity and whether I should return to Australia to get back in touch with my roots… And the answer to that at the moment… I am having too much fun being a pick and mix Aussie, and finding out where I might really belong.
