Admittedly I’ve only been in Melbourne, so far, as I just got back (unfortunately things have worked out that way, and dragged me back here…), but this is now, on a technicality, Australia’s largest city, and it feels awful… Like, I cannot for the life of me understand what possesses over five million people to want to move to/live in this shithole. But I’ve never liked Melbourne, so maybe I’m just jaded…
However it honestly feels like things are on the brink of collapse, or implosion, here. I see that the city has, in many contexts (official and otherwise), *been given the dual name of “Narrm”, which is meaningless, made up, Abo shit. I see that the “activists” spent most of the last couple of months tearing down and defacing statues, and yelling and screaming about “tearing down the colony” and similar bullshit. And they’ve gained so much “institutional power” that councils are now scared to put those same statues back up, or just flat out refuse to do so…
I see that endless woke immigration has turned this place into little more than a Chinese vassal state, where fucking Mandarin is becoming almost as common as English (on signs and the like), and I see that sheer entitlement, an over-generous welfare state, and a failing education system has turned this place into essentially a country of entitled brats.
So yeah, much though I hate to admit it, Sweden clearly has its problems, but at least it feels like a vaguely functioning society still, where people still want to work and contribute to society (at least native Swedes, that is). It really doesn’t feel like that here, so much, anymore… Sadly.
Not that I would ever live in Melbourne anyway, but I don’t really see myself “repatriating” here, long-term. I just don’t like it enough to stay.
Though the weather is much better than almost anything I experienced in Sweden, and nature here is nice (I love the smell of eucalyptus, for one. I guess that’s in my blood) - I admit that much.
But fuck, as a society, “we’re” becoming just like much of Canada, or Blue States in the US, now. And that’s rather sad.
It is for now and I live in a red area so that helps. Is there anything going on in Australia that gives you hope?
The referendum result last year (landslide “No” vote, against the “Voice to Parliament”, in every state and territory except the Capital, which is extremely similar to DC, lol), tbh, and the resulting scrapping of “Land Acknowledgements” by some local councils. Only happened in the two most “conservative” states, so far, that they’ve scrapped the wokespeak, but still, there’s momentum…
But yeah, the urban/rural divide, and the divide between the four less urbanized states/territories, and the other four (which hold like 65% of the population), has become almost untenable… Much like the red/blue divide in the US…
I’m from one of the traditional “blue states”, you could say, but I’ve been living in a “red state” for a while. It’s like two different countries, at this point…