This is my little series on the big move back to Australia. Perhaps I will look back in the future and laugh... or cry!
Part 1: Finding a Moving Company
Past 2: A Slight Travel Panic
Part 3: Comparing Crypto Tax Accounting platforms (Cointracking vs Rotki)
Part 4: A Week in Involuntary Stasis
Part 5: The Last Harvest
Part 6: Letting Go...
Part 7: Putting the name out there!
Part 8: Prohibited Materials:
Part 9: Liquidity Freeze!
Part 10: NOOOOO, Steam Deck Delay!
Part 11: A Father's Guilt
Part 12: Middle of the Night Interviews
Part 13: Poopyitdy Poopydity Poop Poop.... Corona Variant Omicron!
Part 14: Things I will MISS about Netherlands
Part 15: Things I WON'T MISS about Netherlands
Part 16: Last Concerts in Europe
Part 17: The Pre-Packing
Part 18: Stuff is Getting Real....
It is now less than a week before the big moving day... well, the stuff has mostly gone now and now it is just the people (and five stringed intruments...) that will need to keep Corona-free and make the last trip to Schiphol to board the plane to get back to Australia. Although there are many things that I'm looking forward to (I will write about that in a later post...), it would be foolish to think that our homeland is going to be a perfect utopia. After all, we have changed over the last 15 years... and Australia has changed over the last 15 years. It is likely that we won't slot back in exactly the same way that we left!
Schooling and Education
Primary (ha ha...) amongst my worries about Australia is the way that the schooling system is set up... especially after experiencing the Dutch version of schooling. Now, by no means is the Dutch system without its own flaws and problems... but the Australian model (much like the UK and American models) is based heavily around a public/private divide... with the split of resourcing being similarly divided. Of course, not every private school is loaded and not every public school is short-funded... but the overall game incentives for funding make it skewed like that.
This also means that many of the teaching philosophies that we have enjoyed here in the Netherlands are the domain of private schools. We have our kids at a lovely Montessori school here... which costs about 500 euros in voluntary payments. The equivalent schooling philosophy in Australia would be tens of thousands of AUD... per year... per child. Well, that is just ludicrous. So... we have found ourselves a decent public school instead.
... but I will miss the wealth of choice in education that is available in the Netherlands. Of course the choice is there in Australia... but it is an illusory choice if you need to start to bankrupt yourself to make a "choice". It is the ultra-capitalist's choice... freedom of choice, if you have the capital to play the game... if you don't, you aren't restricted, but game incentives mean that it is actually a really BAD and non-logical choice!
House Prices
Wow... so, selling a house here in the Netherlands was done at a pretty tidy profit in comparison to what we had bought it had. We even ended up stopping the bidding and declining higher offers to choose a buyer that we liked. House prices in Australia are just as red-hot... and hopefully, we will have stored up some karma to find a similarly generous seller who isn't just after dollars and profit... but a future custodian of their house.
That said... our expectations of space and size are completely changed after living in mainland Europe for so long. It is likely that something that others would consider small in Australia would still seem quite large for us! Anyway... most of this is now out of my hands, I have been blacklisted from the house choosing process after suggesting a few... my oldest girl and wife have much better taste anyway. And let's not kid ourselves, I'll probably be the least bothered by anything!
Ongoing Work
Well... we are freelancers after all, and in music... in a pandemic world! This would be a worry regardless of whether we were moving or not! However, we have chosen to move to one of the smaller cities in Australia (close to family as the priority) and turned down salaried positions in regional centres for the same reasons. So, we are going to be a touch more expensive to import for concerts and all of that...
So far, it is no problem... I have been quite touched by the offers of work that have appeared so far. It was always promised if/when we ever returned.. but I had always thought that was just a polite thing to say... and hadn't really held out much hope until concrete offers were made. But, my next year is fuller than expected! (Although... given that we both expected zero for a while... that wasn't a huge hurdle to jump!).
Small Music Scene
Australia does have a good music scene in Classical and Early Music that is the equivalent in spectrum to Europe... however, it is a small scene. In comparison to Europe, it is tiny... with only a handful of specialist groups (compared to hundreds or thousands!)... and fewer individual players in comparison as well. This doesn't have to be a problem... but small groups can sometimes evolve in a weird way... especially with when fragile egos are involved!
Luckily, musicians are well known for their completely stable personalities and lack of neurotic frailties! I may be screwed...
Add to that the fact that I'm not really a great player in the social aspects of networking and all of that... I'm pleasant (I hope) and friendly (I hope...) but I'm horribly not keen on the networking... and avoid it like the plague.
I'm generally the nerdy guy that hates small talk... but hates taking shop and gossip. The person who the cool kids talk to... whilst looking around for someone better to talk to!
Beaurucratic Thinking
I'm hoping that this is just a thing that is amplified by the distance (living away), but it appears that Australian speech and ways of dealing with each other has become less direct and honest than I remember. People talk in pseudo-academic/corporate speak.... where they use too many words and too long words to say things that are ultimately meaningless whilst trying to appear "smart". It drives me nuts... as I get quite cranky when people don't get to the point... and even crankier when there isn't a point... and crazily cranky when it the pointless point is dressed up in pretty wankery!
The American Drift
The Australia that I knew was a Social Democracy... a nice mix of European state and Anglo capitalism. Over the years, we have adopted perhaps a bit too much from our friends in America. I mean this in every respect... ideas from the Left and Right (and all over the place) have been adopted in Australia... we see the division in America, and the ideas from that land may be better suited to the land that they originated in. Australia is the land of helping your mate... whatever the hell they look like. We are less rabidly individualistic, and as a middle power... crazily pragmatic. We get stuff done without needing to crow about it... or getting hung up about ideology.
... sadly, I see less and less of this sort of Australia over the time that I have lived overseas. I see more of the "me me me" idea... in both Left and Right caricatures. I see it in the education stuff that I study... I questioned why we always seem to take our lead from the US in education trends, economics and politics... in the end, it appeared not to be because the ideas were fit for purpose or successful... but because they came from English sources and that they were America. Well... many "solutions" for the United States work for the United States because it is the biggest and most affluent country. We need to be smarter than that...
Anyway, none of this is meant as a slight to any Americans... it is just that I don't want my Australia to look like the United States. We are different countries, and there is nothing wrong with that... of course, the Australian way is always going to be better!
I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x
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