#145 Talking about my Australian mate
Thoughts from an Ozzie Expat in Italy
Hello friend,
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For those who don’t know, I’m originally from Australia. It's the place I’ve always called home despite not having lived there full-time for over two decades. It’s the place where the most treasured memories from my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood reside. It’s also where I’ve chosen to spend holidays with my child from when he was two until today; he’s now nearly 16.
I love being home in Perth, Western Australia. It is a place that is always so much younger, youthful, and free than my adoptive home. Like so many ancient places, Italy is filled with the weight of a long, entangled and traumatic history.
A physical and visceral sense of civilised history is a layering of people and stories that populate the space of an area. Yes, it is wonderful to live in a place where people have always been to see the history and remnants of the past. But the weight of all that layering of history can be overwhelming and suffocating.
Also, I have a real sense of a lack of personal space in Italy. Particularly in Sicily I feel quite claustrophobic at times, there is little space or opportunity for privacy individually or invention.
You are on public display as soon as you step out of your front door. You can feel people looking and almost hear the gossip and whispers. It has always irked me how everyone seems to know everyone else’s business.
However, the strong sense of connection and communication in the past has helped keep Sicily and Sicilians safe from their many invaders and invasions. Locals cling close together to save themselves from foreigners, even though their dialects were designed to keep strangers out while also being a kind of quick shorthand form of communication in an unbreakable code that connects each person to the next.
Sicilians have a shared vocabulary, experiences, and a mixture of nicknames, accents, and daily routines that allow them to connect and stay connected to everyone while also excluding foreigners. In fact, being a foreigner in Sicily can, at times, be quite exhausting.
Some aspects of the local dialect still exclude me from being 100% assimilated into Sicilian life. The fact that I will never be able to speak the local dialect as fluently as those around me immediately makes me identifiable as a foreigner.
As soon as I open my mouth, my accent gives me away, and even if I try to use the little bit of dialect that I have already learnt, there is no way I could pull it off at a convincing level of fluency. Only people brought up speaking the dialect from a young age will actually be able to communicate with it.
Even though I understand the local dialect very well and have picked up the principal vocabulary, my lack of fluency can never be improved.
When I return home to Australia, I feel lighter and more relaxed simply because of the language. I don’t have to think too much whenever I speak Italian. Even though it has gradually become more straightforward, mental gymnastics is still involved.
While I have gathered a particular variety of phrases and vocabulary in my mind, I still have to think about how to speak Italian, mainly if I’m in certain professional and formal situations with native Italian speakers. For example, parent-teacher nights in Italy are still very nerve-wracking as I begin to perspire at the thought of using the formal tense and become aware of my foreign accent, as each professor points it out to me.
Being home in Australia gives me a sense of more space—time and space to breathe the freedom of a modern society built upon an ancient landscape.
Back in Australia, I love how Australians can be so laid-back, accepting and liberal. Above all, I love how nobody cares about what you are doing. Yes, there will always be gossip, but I'm perfectly happy with it as long as it’s happening well and truly behind my back or out of hearing distance.
Most Aussies don’t give an F about the rat race, people are genuinely there for their mates. Friendship is so important to Australians; friends are often just as important as family. Most people are usually up for a good time and always have a moment for a chat.
I always take the opportunity to catch up with my family and friends, which is exactly what I need. For some reason I haven’t really made many friends in Italy. Perhaps it’s part of Sicilia‘s isolationist culture; many people have made lifelong friends through school ties, others tend to socialise through their family connections and work colleagues are always a little more superficial in nature.
But in Australia, people are more open to building new friendships and maintaining old ones. After all, friendship—or rather ‘mate-ship’—is considered an essential aspect of Australian culture.
There is something magical when you are reunited with an old friend, how you can pick up where you left off, how you were reminded of things you forgot and above all how you see the different elements of that person or place which made you like them in the first place.
I like to think of Australia as my oldest friend; I immediately feel at home there, accepted, open and happy. I’ll always look forward to going, being and living there. I may be annoyed at overcrowded suburbs with tiny houses, bad town planning, endless public works, traffic and the inability of people to be spontaneous or the dominant and sophisticated and sometimes ignorant and ugly Bogan culture.
But all is forgiven when I see the city lights or moonlight on the Swan River, 28 parrots and galahs in the public parks and gardens, families walking on a sunny winter day, a pint of craft beer with a decent amount of foam on top in a local pub, restaurants filled to the brim on a Saturday night, a local AFL match, a steaming hot pie on a cold winter's night, or even something as simple as hearing people calling one another mate.
Even though Australia has changed so much over the decades, and I don’t always recognise or understand the changes, I always seem to be able to pick things up where we left off.
Australia and I will always remain friends as long as we still have that connection.
That’s all I can think of for now.
Speak soon.
Rochelle
Sometimes, I talk about Sicily.
Other times, I talk about whatever is on my mind.
My writing is always about lightning, the mental load, and sharing my thoughts.
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