Canada with an Accent

By Joel Stein

I have wanted to go to Australia since I was 11 and read On the Beach, the novel about nuclear apocalypse in which the only surviving people were Australians who ate cyanide capsules and died. My parents' marriage, I now realize, must have been having some problems around that time. So when TIME told me it was sending me to Australia for the Olympics, I admit I was more excited about the free trip than the Games themselves. But after five days of traveling, I'm starting to suspect this isn't the swaggering, crocodile-hunting country it claims to be. In fact, Australia is less like a foreign country than anywhere else I've been. It has the same toothpastes we do, the same food, the same cars. It can't even produce indigenous television. I saw an even more vapid version of Matt Lauer on Australia's own Today show and a better-looking Mike Wallace on a local version of 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, the episode I saw of Caroline in the City was the real American version of Caroline in the City.

The only cultural differences I've noticed are that some of the Burger Kings are called Hungry Jack's, that you can curse on the radio and that Australians have a radically different opinion of the singer Kylie Minogue than anyone else on the planet.

I have spent untold hours staring at toilets, baths and sinks trying to figure out which way water goes down the drain, only to learn that, much like in our country, the water goes straight down. Sure, they've got marsupials, but one odd class of animals does not a culture make. Besides, it's not as if koalas and kangaroos are running around the streets. The only kangaroo I have seen so far was sitting on my plate, and it tasted suspiciously like venison.

I've driven three hours out of Sydney and flown to Melbourne, and I still haven't seen desert. The words outback and bush both mean "places where no Australian has ever been." The population is made up almost entirely of wussy suburban beach lovers. I think Sydney may be the only city not in France filled with men who would have a hard time beating me up. And so much for that rep for guzzling beer. White wine, mate? Australia has fabricated its manliness. It must have hired the p.r. company that named Greenland.

More than Europe or Asia, Australia is supposed to be exotic--the wild, strange land Down Under. But the truth is, it's Canada with an accent and a few cute phrases. How tough can a people be when their slang makes them sound like they're speaking to a child? I think I heard someone say, "Sorry, but I got all tazzly-wazzlied by the boggledoggles, mate," but it might have been "Get your luggage off my foot."

I do like this country. It's pretty and pleasant, and one of our dollars buys eight of their people. And yesterday I saw something in the newspaper that gave me hope for Australia's macho myth. It seems a kangaroo hopped through the glass door of a northern Australian home, destroying furniture and attacking children until the father clubbed it with a Jim Beam bottle the size of a small house. Unfortunately, my experience here suggests that even if bourbon-bottle kangaroo bopping were an Olympic sport, the Australians would still win only bronze.