Australians Abroad - How it all has changed

It was December 1970, a precocious young Australian engineer had just completed his degree and was working for an English company in Melbourne. Then he went to Sydney and another English outfit who decided they liked him and needed him in England. So at the tender age of just 17 he stepped on to an aeroplane for the first time in his adult life and headed off on a great adventure. By October 1972 he was back in Australia. But when E.G. Whitlam came to power that fateful December his fate was sealed. The job he had been brought back for vapourised as did funding for pretty much any meaningful defence related research at the time.

So in desperation it was back to the UK. And it was there, and in the USA, Belgium, Israel, South Africa and France that he would spend the next 10 years. But one day the life of the nomad ran out of charms and he decided it was home he wanted. But he made one essential mistake, he went home rather than making, or finding, a home.

Then it was nearly 16 years of trying to survive in Australia. Funding in Australia for serious fundamental research in physics was non-existent, and remains that way. Same in engineering and mathematics, all areas he was qualified in and areas he had worked in overseas at such places as Stanford, Oxford and MIT. But their was nothing. Then he tried consulting, but Australian companies don't like paying for European answers, or that's what he was told.

Then he made another mistake, he married in Australia (but hey, we all make those mistakes wherever we are) and it wasn't until after some deep and serious intimacy with the Australian health-care system ( in my opinion without question the best in the world at the time) that finally he admitted defeat in 1999. During the preceding 16 years he had been overseas regularly, and he thought of going back to the UK or the US, maybe even Europe, he had job offers in all three places. But he met and fell in love with a Canadian, and in 1999 there daughter was born in Melbourne.

But by April 2000 he was on a plane again. The house was all packed in a 20ft shipping container and would arrive in Toronto 12 weeks after they did. It was possibly the smartest decision he had ever made. Without the offer of a job in hand he arrived on a Friday afternoon. By Monday he had work! Private consulting work which he could do as a visitor until he got a work permit. The Canadian immigration system accepted him happily and in time he not only had his working visa, but permanent residency and all that goes with it. Canada has been great, it is North American without being American. People don't carry guns, they don't all say 'have a nice day' and then scowl, and they do accept foreigners here with ease.

So now after 30+ years since he first left Australia he knows he can never go back to live. The cost of living there is high, real-estate prices are extraordinary, and worst of all, attitudes to technology and science are all wrong. In Canada he is earning the best money of his life and garnering a respect he had forgotten was possible. Australia could be a clever country, if only it had some clever people running the country. So many opportunities have been missed, often because we threw out a system which was the best in the world and replaced it with a worn out copy of something inferior from somewhere else.

My near four years in this country have made many things about Australia clear. Australians need to have faith in themselves, they can, and have, come up with technology and approaches which are far superior but all too often they throw them away because they are Australian and thus can't be any good. In the last few days we see yet again an Australian government selling out to the US, this time in a free trade deal. Did John Howard look at Canada and see how NAFTA has affected this country? Obviously not! Okay, I could whine about this sort of thing all night. Best thing I heard out of Australia was when I went to the consulate here in Toronto and found out I could now have dual nationality. It means I can make a new life here on a permanent basis without cutting my ties with the country that make me so darned angry, yet which I miss so terribly some days that it hurts.

So the mistake of 1982 has been rectified. I have found a place to settle down and call home, but sadly it isn't Australia. Sincerely,

February 2004