Don’t you love the real Australians? The ones who can tell you what a real Australian is? The ones who like to demonstrate they’re a real Australian. I’m very thankful to this person for setting me straight on a couple of things:
“I LOVE A SUNBURNT COUNTRY..WITH CHOPS N SNAGS N CHIPS, KANGAROOS AND,HOLDEN V8’S I LOVE THIS PLACE TO BITS, CAMPIN ON THE RIVER OR SWIMMIN BY THE SEA, AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE THIS WIDE BROWN LAND FOR ME, SO CMON MATES GRAB A BEER A RUM OR BOURBON AND RAISE YA GLASSES HIGH, AND GET SOMEONE WHO DOGS US, AND PUNCH THEM IN THE EYE, COZ IM A FLAMIN AUSSIE, ILL TAKE IT IN ME STRIDE, DONT LIKE IT HERE THEN BUGGER OFF COZ I HAVE AUSTRALIAN PRIDE copy and paste this to your wall if your a proud Australian.”
I especially like the “DON’T LIKE IT HERE” comment. Too bloody right, I get annoyed whenever I’m confronted by people saying they don’t like Australia. Well, I’ve never actually heard somebody express it but I’m sure they’re all over the place. Here’s further evidence someone shared with us that the Australia-haters are about:
From the lyrics of the Famous MERLE HAGGARD for those “blowins” that are bagging
AUSTRALIA DAY”
If you dont like it leave it and let this song that i’m singing be a warning…
When your running down my country man your walking on the fighting side of me”
Now BUGGER OFF “
Ironically it is in fact only this “ozzie pride” set who are demonstrating hate toward Australia.
Sorry blokes and sheelas, whenever you say “love it or leave it” you are expressing ill-will toward some often imaginary fellow Australian or an actual person who might have demonstrated their imaginary un-Australianness by simply daring to say ‘hang on a second, some Australians are actually different’. When you, the self-proclaimed “real Australians” diss things that fit outside your narrow definition you are in fact dissing aspects of the broader reality of what Australia is (as opposed to the selection of advertising jingles from the past 80 years you string together to tell us what Australia is). You’re the ones who are expressing that you have a problem with other Australians and therefore by extension – Australia. You are the ones literally showing the opposite of pride in Australia. Australia is a much larger thing than the narrow lists, mostly of consumer items, you define it by. Australia is not a shopping list.
I saw a comment from one of my fellow real Australians referring to young Australian of the year 2012, Marita Cheng, as …young “Australian” of the year. In the context the inference made by those quotation marks was clear – she’s not a ‘real’ Australian because her name’s Cheng and she’s got Asian eyes. Yet what this band of real Australians don’t get is that her very position makes it official – she is in fact the Young Australian of the year, a formal reflection of who Australia is and what we stand for, on the historical record in perpetuity and indelibly, and yet you and I both know there are self-proclaimed ‘real’ ozzies out there who will look at her and believe they have the right to say – she’s not a real Australian.
When telling you what a real Australian is they’ll often give you their own personal shopping list as a means of demonstrating that a real Australian is, surprise surprise, in fact identical to themself. Ironically what they’re actually demonstrating is a degree of insecurity about it. A “real” anything doesn’t have to go around constantly trying to prove it. They just be it.
Cultural cringe my arse.
Here, have a “reality” check real Australians, and tell me – in what aspects of this story does Australia take pride and in what aspects do we not take pride?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3FvCdTg6fk
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/australia-day-2012-address-full-speech-20120123-1qdh9.html