 |
Our experiences.In these scales you'll find a number of our experiences by name. Good ones on the right, bad ones on the left. Just click on them to read what our experiences on that particular subject were. But be careful. No nation is as good in whingeing and complaining as the Dutch. Are we the only people who use the word cancer as a verb, denoting : to nag, whinge, complain??????? So, are the scales in balance?? They seem to be but looks deceive. Read on and discover!!! If you don't want to read all that whingeing and complaining but only want to know whether we'll stay or not click here. (You might also miss some of the positive things!!)
|
| Platitudes To us, Australia is the land of the platitudes. To our knowledge, no country uses as many as Australia. With platitudes we mean statements with no real meaning, a commonplace remark, used as some sort of slogan. They are used to prevent a real discussion about things and if you use them often enough people start to believe them. A few of the platitudes we really hate "Australians are fair in sports", "Give the battlers a fair go!" (I really hate the word 'battler'), "Australia is an egalitarian society". "The White Australia Policy" was abandoned somewhere in the seventies. But Australia is still a racist country. (Ask the UN and Amnesty International). Especially in regards to aboriginals and Asians but basically everyone with an accent gets screwed in Australia. As we have experienced time and again. But then again, maybe this is not racism but xenophobia or just sheer stupidity. People keep telling us it's different in Sydney, but is it? And if it is, so what?? We don't live in Sydney. We buy locally and thus get screwed locally. Especially retailers take advantage of strangers. You can almost see the dollar signs in their eyes as soon as they hear the accent. They sell a pitbull as a beagle/labrador cross. They sell a Sigma with a dying engine. 'Friends' organise driving lessons for penniless refugees and afterwards present them with a bill. Those same 'friends' organise a rent free home for the same refugees and again, they present the bill afterwards. And we could go on and on. Is this typically Australian? I don't know. Do the Dutch treat their migrants the same? I hope not, but then again, we were not migrants in Holland so it's hard to say. But at least in Holland political correctness is not a dirty word. You're not supposed to dob and they also say it is very un Australian. But ever since we've been here dobbing seems to have been the national pastime. We have been dobbed in (anonymously of course) about our dog who was supposedly underfed. This about a dog that got homecooked meals! When the RSPCA called at our house they immediately saw that this was not true and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the dog. And later someone else dobbed us in and called the real estate agent that our lawn looked disgusting (which it did, but it was in the middle of summer and there wasn't much grass to begin with and NO we did not water the weeds!). The point however is not if it was true or not. The point is that someone called the real estate agent to dob us in. There are even adds here on TV with the slogan "Dob in a dumper" Call the police if you see someone dumping rubbish! Call the police if you see an illegal activity! But if some perverted paedophile murders a child in full view of some people they hesitate to call the police!!! (This happened just a few weeks ago) I'll have to admit that I wasn't impressed with Dutch politicians and often I just did not vote because I thought they were all a bunch of losers. But coming to Australia has changed my impression a bit. Now I think Dutch politicians are holy compared to their Australian counterparts. Watching the parliament in action on TV here is like watching kindergarten. You can see people arguing and shouting, telling the others "they started it". If you are Labor your official policy is "against Liberal". If you're Liberal your official policy is "against Labor" How simple can you get? Never a compromise or an admission that the other side may have thought of something good. No, the other side is always wrong, you don't have to think, you just say NO. If you are a Labor man/woman you can never argue against anything Labor proposes. No wonder people don't talk about politics here! Australia really is a beautiful country. Everything is here, desert, forests, mountains, coast. And all beautiful. You can dive, climb mountains, track through rainforests, survive in the outback, everything is possible. So far, we have seen just a tiny part of this great country but we are hoping to have many more holidays here to explore other parts. Go to the Australia Page to read about places to visit in Australia. Australian people in general are absolutely very friendly. Everyone went out of their way to help us when we first arrived here. Even one shopkeeper I hardly knew offered to lend us some blankets in case we were cold. Getting help is never a problem and everyone always has a friendly word to say. We had never even heard of Yabbies but now we love them! In a metaphorical sense of course because we love them best cooked. It is so great to be able to go to a quiet spot (a dam or billabong) and actually catch something that you can eat. It would be unthinkable in Holland where even if you caught anything it would probably be contaminated and highly polluted. We've learned to catch Yabbies with a piece of meat attached to a string. You throw the meat in the water and when you can feel the yabbies munching away you pull the string in. It's not as simple as it sounds and last time we went 'yabbying' we only caught a few small ones. But that doesn't matter, just to be able to go out somewhere to try and catch yabbies is fantastic to us. Another thing we really like here. Even though it is sometimes too hot in summer. But overall the weather here is really great. And sun does make a difference. The world really looks better if the sun shines (maybe now you understand why the Dutch are such good complainers). Autumn and spring are the best seasons, not too hot and very sunny. Even the winter here is pretty good and can be compared to a Dutch spring. Australia is such a big country that is is not strange there are so many quiet spots here. (just to compare, Australia is 100 times bigger than Holland but both countries have almost the same number of inhabitants.) If we did something in the weekend in Holland we would be doing it with thousands of other people. Imagine, traffic jams before and after you do something nice in the weekend. The first few goods days of summer, the roads to the Dutch beach are totally congested and some parts are even closed off because they are 'full'. So we were amazed when we made trips here that we hardly ever saw any other cars. If we spotted two or three we would say "wow, it's busy today". Besides, you can go somewhere and be the only one there. We love it!! Ever read "Asterix in Rome"? They should have called it "Asterix in Australia". We thought, or at least we were always told, that Holland was bad with all it's rules and regulations. But as always, Australia is again the best in the world!! We should have known when we applied for the visa. Form 126 to apply for form 456 which is necessary to fill out form 302 which can't be done without form 127. This in itself is not deadly. What is deadly is that no one ever knows anything. If you call to ask for information, not just to the Australian Embassy but any institution here in Australia, you'll get a different story every time you call. And when you think you finally have all the information and try to finalise things at the office, you can start all over again because somehow it still is all wrong!! Try enrolling in Medicare here. Or try getting a NSW Driver's licence. The Balance.So, are the scales in balance? Or do we see more negative things than positive??? As I said before, we're Dutch, we always see more negative things. But in all honesty I must say that the scales are tipped to the 'good' side. Even though we may sound very negative at times we still think our life here is better than in Holland. Sure Australia is a racist country but so is Holland and just because we have never been on the receiving end there doesn't make it any better. It's not a reason to leave a country or not to stay there any more. Sure the politicians behave worse than the average 3-year-old (which is probably an insult to every 3-year-old) but what would we do without them? Who would be able to annoy us then?? What would we laugh about when we watch TV, what would shock us?? Again no reason to leave a country. If that was the case we should have left Holland when Dries van Agt and after him Ruud Lubbers were prime ministers. They were just as bad (slightly more criminal I would say) but they were able to conceal it a bit better than their Australian counterparts. And then I won't even start about DEETMAN!!!!!! (who single handedly destroyed the Dutch education system. Good on ya Wim, working in the demolition industry now???) So we'll stay for a bit longer to enjoy the peace and quiet. We even bought a house in a small country village called Coolamon. Click HERE for a picture of the house. But NO, we don't think and never will, that watching the national team play the World Cup Cricket final is a national duty. The thought alone is enough NOT to watch it!!! Sorry, but living so close to Germans, the Dutch are very weary of nationalistic feelings. It starts with the world's least significant sport (or was it lawn bowles that held that record?) and ends with .... uh ......... (check your History books!) |
|
Page last updated: Wednesday, 18 August 1999 |
