A lot of reading, but well worth the time and effort

 
'Value what you have and don't give it away.'

There's a lot to admire about Australia, especially if you're a visiting American, says David Mason, a US writer and professor, and poet laureate of Colorado.  Here's what he had to say............

More often than you might expect, Australian friends patiently listening to me enthuse about their country have said, ''We need outsiders like you to remind us what we have.''

So here it is,  - a small presumptuous list of what one foreigner admires in Oz.

1. Health care.
I know the controversies, but basic national health care is a gift.
In America, medical expenses are a leading cause of bankruptcy.
The drug companies dominate politics and advertising.
Obama is being crucified for taking halting baby steps towards sanity.
You can't turn on the telly without hours of drug advertisements - something I have never yet seen here.
And your emphasis on prevention - making cigarettes less accessible, for one - is a model.

2. Food.
Yes, we have great food in America too, especially in the big cities.
But your bread is less sweet, your lamb is cheaper, and your supermarket vegetables and fruits are fresher than ours.
Too often in my country an apple is a ball of pulp as big as your face.
The dainty Pink Lady apples of Oz are the juiciest I've had.
And don't get me started on coffee.
In American small towns it tastes like water flavoured with burnt dirt, but the smallest shop in the smallest town in Oz can make a first-rate latte.
I love your ubiquitous bakeries, your hot-cross buns. Shall I go on?

3. Language.
How do you do it?
The rhyming slang and Aboriginal place names like magic spells.
Words that seem vaguely English yet also resemble an argot from another planet.
I love the way institutional names get turned into diminutives - Vinnie's and Salvos - and absolutely nothing's sacred.
Everything's an opportunity for word games and everyone's a nickname.
Lingo makes the world go round.
It's the spontaneous wit of the people that tickles me most.
Late one night at a barbie my new mate Suds remarked, ''Nothing's the same since 24-7.'' Amen.

4. Free-to-air TV.
In Oz, you buy a TV, plug it in and watch some of the best programming I've ever seen - uncensored.
In America, you can't get diddly-squat without paying a cable or satellite company heavy fees.
In Oz a few channels make it hard to choose.
In America, you've got 400 channels and nothing to watch.

5. Small shops.
Outside the big cities in America corporations have nearly erased them.
Identical malls with identical restaurants serving inferior food.
Except for geography, it's hard to tell one American town from another.
The ''take-away'' culture here is wonderful.
Human encounters are real - stirring happens, stories get told.
The curries are to die for. And you don't have to tip!

6. Free camping.
We used to have this too, and I guess it's still free when you backpack miles away from the roads.
But I love the fact that in Oz everyone owns the shore and in many places you can pull up a camper van and stare at the sea for weeks.
I love the ''primitive'' and independent campgrounds, the life out of doors.
The few idiots who leave their stubbies and rubbish behind in these pristine places ought to be transported in chains.

7. Religion.
In America, it's everywhere - especially where it's not supposed to be, like politics.
I imagine you have your Pharisees too, making a big public show of devotion, but I have yet to meet one here.

8. Roads.
Peak hour aside, I've found travel on your roads pure heaven.
My country's ''freeways'' are crowded, crumbling, insanely knotted with looping overpasses - it's like racing homicidal maniacs on fraying spaghetti.
I've taken the Hume without stress, and I love the Princes Highway when it's two lanes.
Ninety minutes south of Bateman's Bay I was sorry to see one billboard for a McDonald's.
It's blocking a lovely paddock view. Someone should remove it.

9. Real multiculturalism.
I know there are tensions, just like anywhere else, but I love the distinctiveness of your communities and the way you publicly acknowledge the Aboriginal past.
Recently, too, I spent quality time with Melbourne Greeks, and was gratified both by their devotion to their own great language and culture and their openness to an Afghan lunch.

10. Fewer guns.
You had Port Arthur in 1996 and got real in response.
America replicates such massacres several times a year and nothing changes.
Why?
Our religion of individual rights makes the good of the community an impossible dream.
Instead of mateship we have ''It's mine and nobody else's''.
We talk a great deal about freedom, but too often live in fear.

There's more to say - your kaleidoscopic birds, your perfumed bush in springtime, your vast beaches.
These are just a few blessings that make Australia a rarity.
Of course, it's not paradise - nowhere is - but I love it here.

No need to wave flags like Americans and add to the world's windiness.

Realise what you have - value it and don't give it away!

(David Mason is a US writer and professor, and poet laureate of Colorado.)

Australia has ALWAYS been behind USA and Europe, In everything, In the old days it took years for us to catch up, to Both the good and the Bad, that happens over there, ?? BUT with Technology, ?? the World is a Much smaller place, !! and we are Catching up REAL QUICK ?? tHE Australia We knew is Fast disappearing, So enjoy what is left of this great Continent, ?? Before it is just History ??

I think the bottom line here is it is not who runs a country, or who owns what and who does what, that makes a country great and being part of it great ........ it's the people that make Australia great - their love of country, their sense of belonging and their pride in their country. It is sad that you obviously don't feel any pride in what you now call home!  I refer you to how many members of this forum describe our Country and  where they spend a great part of their lives......... "out in the playground" .......  my playground is great.

I am an Aussie, and proud of it!

No offence intended - just needed to say!

Cheers

 @ Jedo

Yes we live in the lucky Country

try living in the USA for a while , what they called the land of the Free

USA great place to visit, great place to leave if you are coming back to Aust

_wombat_ wrote:

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USA great place to visit, great place to leave if you are coming back to Aust

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Absolutely, Wombat! 

who is going to buy their Homes and Cars and Boats and Caravans if thousands have lost their jobs?

like any country its lucky for some but not others, that's life

This has been an interesting discussion, but it might be useful to recall that when Donald Horne wrote the book The Lucky Country in 1964, he was being ironic. The expression has sometimes since been misinterpreted, as a Government website notes:

In a hot summer's night in December 1964 I was about to write the last chapter of a book on Australia. The opening sentence of this last chapter was: 'Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.'

That sentence was a rather brutal indictment of his country at the time [the website says]. It is a direct, uncompromising and seemingly unambiguous commentary on Australia in the 1960s. Horne was critiquing an Australia that did not think for itself; a country manacled to its past; and 'still in colonial blinkers': 'If we are to remain a prosperous, liberal, humane society, we must be prepared to understand the distinctiveness of our own society'.

"I had in mind in particular the lack of innovation in Australian manufacturing and some other forms of Australian business, banking for example. In these, as a colonial carry over, Australia showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society."

Australia, Horne argued, developed as a nation at a time when we could reap the benefits of technological, economic, social and political innovations that were developed in other countries. Those countries were clever: Australia was simply lucky.

When The Lucky Country was released in 1964, most of the reading public was aware that the phrase was being used ironically. Horne lamented the fact that it had since been taken up by others and given different meanings: '... I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase'.

Hard to believe that the book came out half a century ago!

Cheers, Tony

en different meanings: '... I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase'.