Australia Is Not That Different

Ever since I attended school in the United States, I have gotten questions that have made me laugh, sigh, or even mad. For example I have been asked numerously, “Are there kangaroos jumping around your neighborhood like how we have squirrels?” I would laugh hysterically and in my mind wish that it was true, but sadly answer with a no. I would explain how kangaroos didn’t live in the cities and how we lacked in crazy squirrels, we had plenty of colorful, but noisy birds. Where I lived, Sydney, there were cockatoos, white parrot-like birds with yellow Mohawk-like hair, colorful parrots, black crows, kookaburras, and hundreds of other beautiful birds found nearly in every livable tree. One thing that started out fun, but is now annoying is when people walk up to me and ask me, “Speak some Australian” like Australian is another type of language. I would explain how there is no Australian language, and that it is just an accent that differs from different people. When I say this, people would disagree and say that they don’t have an accent when they obviously do, but they are just so used to this way of speaking that they do not know any different. Plus, I would tell people who ask me, “Are you Australian?” how being Australian is a nationality, and is not running through my genes. I would then compare how being Australian is like how they are American, it is not in your genes. 

Even though I enjoy laughing at how ignorant some people can be, I do get tired of the same questions repeated over and over again like they are the only things people know about Australia. Just today I was asked, “Do Australians dress weird, like do they wear really funny clothes?” and “Is Australia just plain desert?”

This made me surprised, and I answered, “You do know that Sydney is just a city like San Francisco. It is really not that much different.” These questions have made me realize that some people really think Australians have different lifestyles just because it is in a different location as the United States.