Brits rush at chance for Aussie life

[Dauphin]

And people who use umbrellas on crowded walkways annoy me.

[Aeson]

The grass is always greener on the other side of the world.

[MOBIUS]

Sydney gets more rain than London. A friend who moved from London to Sydney said it was the first time in his life he'd owned an umbrella.

They've moved back now, 'cause they said they missed things like intelligent conversation and culture. Constant obsessions with beer and sport got dull. As did 70s attitudes to race and sexuality.

The entire country is an over macho cultural and intellectual desert IMO. Been there, done that, now happily living in the UK.

PS, Cascade beer FTW!

[molly bloom]

The entire country is an over macho cultural and intellectual desert IMO. Been there, done that, now happily living in the UK.

As I lived there for five years, I can truly attest that this opinion is the equivalent of a load of wombat dung.
Cultural and intellectual desert ?

Melbourne alone has an excellent gallery and museum dedicated to fine art, along with smaller museums in places such as Bendigo and Ballarat, where not only 19th/20th Century Australian work and the work of Koori artists is displayed, but also European, Asian and American work too.

Then there's the National Gallery in Canberra- home to the iconic 'Blue Poles' by Jackson Pollock, and currently exhibiting the 'over macho' costumes of the Ballets Russes...


http://nga.gov.au/Home/Default.cfm

The Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home , Adelaide's Biennial Arts Festival, Melbourne's Film Festival 2011....

That's without the excellent library service I used in Melbourne, where I had great conversations with the librarians about modern British writers- they were very interested in Monica Ali and Zadie Smith, for instance, and also in writers such as Walter Mosley and Alasdair Gray and others too numerous to mention.

Try to stop recycling the same old tired clapped out cliches- or at least get some new ones.

[MOBIUS]

You forget that I spent 8 months living there, so I speak from experience.

Even by accident, a country with a population of 20-odd million is bound to have the odd Jackson Pollock, or knowledgeable librarian...

It doesn't stop your country being a cultural backwater though...

For example: my backwater city of 300,000 in the poorest part of my country has an art gallery stuffed to the gills with art to the extent that I'm even willing to bet that its Impressionist collection is better everything in Australia put together.

As for libraries, I can virtually guarantee that the main library in my city is better than any library in your entire country.

The culture in your country is shrivelled and starved because it is, after all, populated by the descendants of our cast off criminals who continue to behave in the same brutish way to this very day. I guess every now and again there's a mutation in the gene pool, which is probably why you like being a very large fish in an extremely tiny cultural pond...

[MikeH]

The people I'm talking about were living in Sydney, not Melbourne.

Totally wouldn't be surprised if it was different in different places, we have the same in the UK after all but there's a big difference between there being cultural stuff available, and people generally visiting them or talking about them all the time in every day life. And it was a comparison with London, which is an unfair comparison with most places in the world.

MOBIUS you don't half know how to shaft anyone who is on your side of the debate don't you.

[MOBIUS]

I do have a certain inimitable style, don't I?

[Asher]

As I lived there for five years, I can truly attest that this opinion is the equivalent of a load of wombat dung.
Cultural and intellectual desert ?

Melbourne alone has an excellent gallery and museum dedicated to fine art, along with smaller museums in places such as Bendigo and Ballarat, where not only 19th/20th Century Australian work and the work of Koori artists is displayed, but also European, Asian and American work too.

Then there's the National Gallery in Canberra- home to the iconic 'Blue Poles' by Jackson Pollock, and currently exhibiting the 'over macho' costumes of the Ballets Russes...


http://nga.gov.au/Home/Default.cfm

The Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home , Adelaide's Biennial Arts Festival, Melbourne's Film Festival 2011....

That's without the excellent library service I used in Melbourne, where I had great conversations with the librarians about modern British writers- they were very interested in Monica Ali and Zadie Smith, for instance, and also in writers such as Walter Mosley and Alasdair Gray and others too numerous to mention.

Try to stop recycling the same old tired clapped out cliches- or at least get some new ones.

Fine Art is not a sign of intellectuality. It's typically more indicative of pretentiousness. I gather you are a tremendous fan of fine art.

[Egbert]

I do have a certain inimitable style, don't I?

You do.

[MOBIUS]

I know.

[Asher]

Wrong thread.

[Egbert]

.

Umh, what does a post of a dot mean?

[MOBIUS]

See above ^^^

[Egbert]

The entire country is an over macho cultural and intellectual desert IMO. Been there, done that, now happily living in the UK.
PS, Cascade beer FTW!

The culture in your country is shrivelled and starved because it is, after all, populated by the descendants of our cast off criminals who continue to behave in the same brutish way to this very day. I guess every now and again there's a mutation in the gene pool, which is probably why you like being a very large fish in an extremely tiny cultural pond...

Australian History 101, for Moby

In the old days bestiality was a crime. Many Welshmen were therefore rounded up and transported. Finding a shortage of sheep in the colony they had to make do with female humans. As you know Welshmen are at their sheep every day so by force of habit they were seeing to their human female substitutes every day. As a consequence they bred up like maggots becoming a large proportion of the colonial population. This lowered the colonial intelligence quotient and raised the brutishness quotient.

The obsession with beer began, as a major element of colonial culture, as Welshmen sought to drown their sorrows over the loss of their loved ones (sheep). The obsession with sport began as the Welsh took to athletic activities as a poor substitute for their favourite past time of chasing sheep through the hills and valleys of Wales.

This all explains the cultural and intellectual desert that is obsessed with beer and sport. Somehow the obsession with sheep was forgotten.

Professor Braindead, Really Real Phd in Australian history

[Docfeelgood]

could I keep my guns?