For those of you who don’t know, January 26th (today) is Australia day. A day to celebrate all things Australian… but, hang on a second. Err, what exactly is Australian?
In 2010 I spent a semester abroad at SUNY Buffalo in New York State. I was there with one of my friends I met during my time at Uni, who has a Vietnamese background. I can’t tell you how many times people in the U.S were stunned to find out that my friend was in fact, Australian. People often seemed shocked that an asian girl was, well… Australian. This surprised my friend and I. I mean, the U.S itself, is a pretty multicultural nation. I couldn’t believe how ignorant some people were about the country. Someone I met at the campus dining hall thought that Sydney was full of Kangaroos, just to make it clear, IT’S NOT!! But, that’s a completely different topic.
Closer to home, I’ve experienced some sort of identity confusion of my own. I was born in Australia, I went to an Australian public, primary, high school and university. (Pretty much all our Uni’s are public… I think there are only two private institutes) I grew up here and obviously, I’m an Australian citizen. But is that enough? Some people might not think so.
I hate summer. Which a lot of you probably already know. When most people think of Australia they probably think of the beach and surfing and BEACH BAAABEZ… laugh out loud. I am no beach babe, far, far from it, actually. I also hate AFL (Australian Rules Football), Cricket and well, most sports in general. Apparently Australians LOVE THEIR SPORTS. I’m a vegetarian and as Sam Kekovich (read: douche) would state, not eating lamb is UN-AHSTRAAAALYUHN.
My grandparents moved to Australia from Greece and arrived here when my dad was only eight months old. They came because, at the time, Australia was requesting workers from Europe. My grandparents had five children and they worked their asses off (especially my yiayia) to support and give their children the best possible life that they could. My dad grew up in Australia, but while he was growing up, he encountered a few problems. When my dad was younger, it wasn’t exactly uncommon to be called a wog, sorry if I offended anybody by using this term. ‘Australians’ would use the word wog as a derogatory term against those with eastern european backgrounds, mainly, Italian and Greek.
These days, people with these backgrounds have taken the word as their own and often call each other wogs. Even though it doesn’t happen as often now, I hate it when people describe me as a wog. I mean, what the hell is that word anyway? I’m an Australian (just like all the other Anglo Australians) with a Greek background, I’m not a damn wog, whatever the hell that means.
It’s not all one sided though. The other day my dad and I were discussing something and he said something like, “that’s the way the Australians are” referring to Anglo-Saxon Australians. I get kind of annoyed when people who aren’t Anglo-Saxon talk like that. It’s like, err, Australians… and what are we?! This happens often in Australia though. I hear people saying they have friends who are, “Italian, Serb, Greek, Lebo, Aussie” What the hell man! I thought we were all Australian. Why are the Anglo-Saxon people the ‘Australians’? They have some sort of background tied to another country somewhere along the line too.
You know what else annoys me? If my boyfriend and I were walking down the street or something, some derro bogan dude would probably think that my boyfriend was ‘Australian’ and I was a ‘Wog’. The funny part is, my boyfriend was born in Sweden, has a British background, has only been a citizen for about 4 years and doesn’t identify as being Australian, at all. I don’t like the fact that Anglo-Saxons are, generally, automatically seen as being more ‘Australian’.
When those damn bogans start rambling about how, “fucken wogs stole our country” I think to myself. Wait a minute, if you want to get technical, none of us are real Australians then. The only real Australians are the indigenous people who lived here for thousands of years before anyone else got to this piece of land. You know what the sad part is? To those bogans, Aboriginal people aren’t really ‘Australian’ either. I know, it’s fucked up.
I think this rant mostly came to me thanks to the Sam Kekovich advertisements. They really piss me off. Eating lamb and having a ‘barbie’ (BBQ) is not what should constitute as being Australian, damn it! There isn’t just one identity to classify what a ‘true blue Aussie’ is. Being Australian should be about diversity and promoting an open mind. This country wouldn’t be what it is, Melbourne wouldn’t have so much damn good food, if people from all around the world didn’t decide to call this country their home.
Oh before I go, I think one of the things that pisses me off the most about some of the effed up ideas of our national ‘identity’ is the fact that people often use humour to defend offensive actions. When ‘Australians’ participate in activities that could very well be offensive to a large group of people, they often defend themselves with the old, “Australians are laid back and like to have a laugh, it’s our humour, get over it”. I’m sorry, but jokes that are at the expense of others are not funny. Ha, the fact that I back other cultures up at times like those probably makes me un-Australian. Ugh, now that, is a joke.
Anyway, so I’m not a total joy kill and don’t get hate mail from people telling me that I should move back to Greece or something. I don’t actually think Australia is that bad. I just think it’s stupid when these issues are totally avoided and people completely deny the fact that racism in Australia still exists. I know we don’t live in a perfect world and racism will probably never be completely eradicated, but it’s ridiculous when racism is still prevalent to the extent that innocent students from India are killed for no reason, purely based on their ethnicity.
But, I do admit, I’m quite lucky. We have a pretty good standard of living, free health-care, (kind of) free education and compared to a lot of other nations, our wages are quite high… which is extra good considering how strong the Australian dollar is right now.
Happy Australia day 
I apologise for the slightly crappy images. There wasn’t a lot of light and we used my boyfriend’s camera which doesn’t shoot as well in low light areas. The internet is also slow as hell right now, so I’ll reply back to all the comments tomorrow
P.S Do I really dress that weird? Yesterday when I was walking around Crown in Melbourne, loads of people would so obviously stare at me as I’d walk past, like I was a crazy person or something. I was wearing the outfit shown in these images.
