What's their attitude towards us?
 

Hi to all those people already living down under!

Have a question......Hubby was at work the other day and at the moment he is working for a lady who used to be a air hostess for British Airways. She flew to Australia frequently and she said (not knowing we have applied to emigrate!) that Australians really don't like the Brits and can actually be quite rude and nasty towards us. Is this true? I was under the impression that they do like to give a good ribbing about "whinging poms" and the like, but if you took it in good humour and gave as good back, you would fine.

Have any of you experienced this rudeness/nastiness first hand or heard of it towards Brits? Does ribbing/mucking about EVER go too far? Is it like to offend?

All responses welcome, please be honest.....:blink:

Carla

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

All the Australians I've met have been lovely, warm and friendly people, well except for my next door neighbour who throws her rubbish over my fence nearly every day. :sneaky:

Just the other day I was in a shop and this woman I've never met before asked me where I came from, how long I'd been here and said how brave she thought we were for moving all the way around the world. The same day I struck up a conversation with a lovely old lady who's neighbour had come from the UK 30 years ago and she talked to me about how her neighbour had taught her to make her favourite dish - toad in the hole. :D

Australians are like everyone else - you get good and bad people. Stay away from the bad ones and you'll be just fine. But on the whole, there are more nice ones than not. :)

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

[QUOTE=carla-trev;5407250]Hi to all those people already living down under!

Have a question......Hubby was at work the other day and at the moment he is working for a lady who used to be a air hostess for British Airways. She flew to Australia frequently and she said (not knowing we have applied to emigrate!) that Australians really don't like the Brits and can actually be quite rude and nasty towards us. Is this true? I was under the impression that they do like to give a good ribbing about "whinging poms" and the like, but if you took it in good humour and gave as good back, you would fine.

Have any of you experienced this rudeness/nastiness first hand or heard of it towards Brits? Does ribbing/mucking about EVER go too far? Is it like to offend?

All responses welcome, please be honest.....:blink:


I've been offended twice by Australians. Once when I rang about a job and the employer informed me he didn't employ 'English People' and the other time by an estate agent who told me that "You're not in the Uk now and I only deal with the men of the household" WTF - and he was deadly serious too.:mad:

Those two incidents I put down to blatant rudeness and pure ignorance.

However when you put in perspective the amount of Ozzies I have met 2 t***s out of hundreds is nothing. Everyone else has been lovely. Much as I struggle living here I still love having a natter to the lady in the bakers, the greengrocers, the guy in the post office and they love hearing about the UK.

I used to work with loads of Ozzies in the UK and am used to the banter. I give as good as I get and have got many Ozzie mates who I can have a laugh with but sometimes it can take a bit of effort on your part especially if they haven't travelled and.

In fact I can honestly say I have met more rude Brits than Ozzies.

Like Wendy said good and bad everywhere so don't worry about what the trolley dolly said. ;)

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Thanks for the replies guys.

That's what I thought that on the whole the Ozzies are a fun, down to earth and good humoured race of people and that's why I thought I would fit in with them. Maybe she didn't take kindly to banter? My husband is used to plenty on banter on work sites, between mates but someone that he worked with from the north of england (not meaning to generalise, by any means!), did not take to the banter and saw it as bullying - maybe it is the same thing?

I guess in the UK we are so over-run with immigrants from other countries that anyone from Oz/New Zealand is a novelty and we love it, whereas over there maybe we are not the novelty anymore.

Wendy - why does your neighbour throw her rubbish over your fence? Is she a difficult neighbour? Sounds a bit rough to me!!!!!

Carla x

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

She has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder I think :D She's always in the garden cleaning!

It's mostly stuff that may have blown in off the street, like McDonalds wrappers (we have one just over the road) I caught her a few weeks back and she hasn't done it since, so hopefully it has stopped :sneaky:

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Don't kid yourself.

The UK is no more 'over run' with immigrants than Australia is.

I would think there are far more immigrants, as a proportion of the population, in Australia than in the UK.

.....and brits only form a percentage of the immigrants in Australia....the rest are from the same places as those in the UK.

G

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Australia is a country, it has the same problems as any other country - crime, drugs, pollution, etc.
By the same tokens Australians are people - some of them accept migrants, some dislike them , some are friendly to strangers, some aren't. the British are the same, some are friendly to immigrants in the UK, some aren't, some accept, some don't.

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

This may be just me :unsure: but I find that any country is more accepting to immigrants that are their own 'kind' (for want of a better word) than to other kinds of immigrant. So people will probably find that the attitude of 'most' people, whether in the UK or somewhere else in the world are more accommodating to people of their own kind (for want of a better word again)

Unfortunately in this day and age, this kind of discrimination goes on everywhere. But like I said before, stay away from the bad people, who exist the world over, and you'll be fine. Don't bow to their level and ignore the ones show racism in any form. :)

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Been here six months and not been offended once by anything like that.
Some banter, but to be honest not even much of that. Not a big deal!

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Hiya

We've been here for just under 6 months and haven't been offended by anyone, in fact everyone we have met has been exceptionally nice, friendly and have gone out of their way to be helpful. Its as Wendy said there are good and bad as there are everywhere but generally we've found Australians to be really lovely. I'm scottish and get the piss ripped out of me for my accent, but I just rip it right back and we have a great laugh, its all in good fun.

Wendy, how's it going luvvie? Not spoken to you for ages!!!!

Good luck Carla, you sound like you'll fit in just fine.

Nikki

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

I'm fine. Was thinking about you today how weird is that! I'll call you this weekend if your not too busy?

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

We have been here nearly two years now and havent really had any bad experiences as such. There is a lot of light hearted banter about my accent as I am from the NE England but it is all in good fun and gives me a good laugh.

I dont know whether the area you live in has a bearing on this as we are on the gold coast and there is a huge population of migrants here, and probably 50% of the Aussies I work with have a parent who wasnt born here.

I dont think that I have really found anyone to treat me differently at work or anywhere else, probably the only annoying thing is the assumption that all poms like their beer warm!

Julia

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Agreed. If you meet too many bad apples you've probably moved to the wrong spot or am inthe wrong job.

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

I was in Oz for just under a year and noticed things a couple of times.

There were two jobs advertised in the window of a shop in China town in Sydney. I asked for an application form for the job, which one they say, the full time one I say, sorry that job has been filled, ok- the part time job then, oh- that has been filled too. Nearly a month later they were still being advertised. I assume that was more to me not being chinese than being English though.

I also applied for a job in a supermarket again in Sydney and the manager told me to come back later and he would have an application form for me. He was a lovely man. When I went back the woman I asked to get him for me, wouldn't, and told me there were no jobs, they wouldn't employ holiday visa workers. She refused to get the manager!

While working in Grace brothers in Sydney a woman came in complaining at the top of her voice as a lebanies girl was working there, saying they shouldn't employ lebanise people, that quite shocked me.

And then while working in Adelaide for a backpackers picking people up at the bus station we had a couple of different people should at us for stealing THEIR jobs, and telling us to go home. Both of these blokes (at different times) looked like ZZ top and didn't look like they had washed or cleaned their clothes in years. Not supprising they couldn't get a job.

Mostly people were VERY friendly. I love the banter. My other half did get mistaken for being scottish a couple of times (he is from Manchester).

But we were invited to dinner at total strangers houses SO many times. We were even invited buy a bus load of old people to their retierment home. Our first night camping we had 6 people helping us put our tent up as we hadn't got a clue. We were taught how to fish by ozzies.
The friendlyness is one of the reasons we are so keen to get back.

Re: What's their attitude towards us?
 

Hi, we went out for 2 weeks in March for a look around as we are hoping that everything will be sorted for us to leave in March. I had one encounter of rudeness by a girl in a garage but looking back i think i was as much to blame as i think i may have been a bit rude initially, didnt intend to be though. A lady at the animal park was lovely, she helped me to get rid of my abundance of coins that i didnt quite get and was using notes all the time...think i had about $16 in coins.....oh the shame!! haha

Cant wait to go now.

Nickie