Australians Abroad - What the Papers Say

Below is a selection of press articles on Australians Abroad.

The Australian

Expat army fights back
By Claire Harvey
This was a front page story in which the effect of our 1999 - 2001 Dual Citizenship campaign was acknowledged.

"The growing political influence of expatriates was demonstrated last week when the federal Government agreed to repeal its ban on Australians holding dual citizenship.

The decision came after a concerted email and letter-writing campaign by the Southern Cross Group, web activists at Australiansabroad.com and other expatriate groups." August 11, 2001

The New York Times

August 31st 2000

"Kate Juliff of Australia, an information technology manager who has lived in New York for seven years, started Australians Abroad (www.australiansabroad.com) in 1996 to "raise issues of relevance to expatriates, as well as provide stories of interest, resources and a cybermeeting place for Australians living overseas." The site has 600 regular users with 1,000 drop-ins a day from 50 countries.

Australians Abroad features a message board, a chat room, a resources list with links to travel, immigration and international shipping sites, as well as columns written by Australians, including, "Letter from New York" and "Musings from Melbourne." The anecdotal columns, in which Australian slang is common, address issues facing many expatriates -- managing finances in Australia from overseas, obtaining credit in a foreign country, finding insurance.

In one "Letter from New York," Ms. Juliff wrote about the difficult experience of a parent's illness and eventual death while she was living overseas. Australians Abroad also has a search engine and database for Australian-related sites."

A Cyberhome for Strangers in a Strange Land By Christine Kenneally August 31st 2000

For full article, click HERE. This article was reprinted in whole or in part in the International Herald Tribune (September 1, 2000), the Lakeland Ledger (September 4th) and the Melbourne Age (September 15th 2000).

The Australian

July 14th 1998

"Australians Abroad DOES your voice get all croaky at the thought of home? Away from Australia it's easy to feel a little lost and left out.

Here you can join others in search of an Aussie anchor and do a little light reading as well.

To remind you of home there's a dispatch from Darwin, recipes from Melbourne, and a column on dealing with expat life in general. The message board will fill you in on essentials including films, media, the jobs situation, politics and sport. Guaranteed to bring back a weary traveller's smile."

The Technofile - SITES July 14th 1998 by the the surfteam at Yahoo!

The Sydney Morning Herald

May 9th 1998

THE AUSTRALIANS ABROAD SITE A browse through the message board on this site will remind you of all the things you'd miss if you lived overseas. The most common request is for information about watching Australian Rules football. The Events section goes one better, providing training times for the New York Australian Rules Football Club in Central Park. Kate Juliff, an Australian living in Manhattan, set up the site with fellow New Yorker Richard Rankin to provide feature articles and resources for Australians living abroad. The resources section includes links to Australian media and government sites, while the features give an insight into how expats find the OS lifestyle.

Charlotte Harper "Charlotte's Web" May 9th 1998

The Business Review Weekly

"A helping hand from a New York Internet site enables the Canberra firm Michael Hussey CPA to tap into a global clientele. The New York site, Australians Abroad, is immensely popular with Australians overseas because of its wide range of home-town news and information.

The site now provides a direct link in its tax section to the Canberra Hussey site, which was already established when the arrangement was made. The New York site has links to banks, lawyers and stockbrokers in Australia. Other Australian inhabitants of its tax section are the Australian Tax Office, Net Tax, a Sydney firm English Miller & Co, Australian Tax Returns, Arthur Andersen and the Adelaide-based OzEtax.

The Hussey site was organised 18 months ago by Michael's daughter Pam Hussey, 23, who estimates that direct revenue generation in the past year at $5000, largely from tax returns done for Australians overseas, including diplomats and journalists. She says there is also a large and unmeasurable benefit in the convenience that can be offered to any client and because of the broad-based marketing. Costs of setting up the site were negligible.

The quick response to the site caused initial disquiet about the professional indemnity implications of advising overseas inquirers. Pam Hussey capitalised on this issue by researching it, in the process being given radio, magazine and press coverage. Michael Hussey says the firm answers random inquiries with general information similar to what an Australian embassy would provide, such as providing extracts from master tax guides. If the inquirers remain interested they are invited to become clients. The practice has the minimum $500,000 cover through the Australian Society of CPAs indemnity scheme."

Tony Thomas Australia's Business Review Weekly magazine, 23 March 1998

The New York Times

September 28th 1997

"Travels With Sheila: A down and Under View of New York:

Like other expatriate Australians, Kate Juliff thinks of herself as part of an extended family of Australians who are either abroad or about to go abroad. Australians love to travel, but there nation is distant from every other country on earth, said Ms. Juliff, who settled in Manhattan in 1993. Indonesia, the nearest nation, is five hours away by air from Melbourne, where Ms. Juliff was born; New York is 30 hours away "door to door," she said.

Hospitality, in the form of helping traveling Australians, is therefore central to being Australian. Because Ms. Juliff is a computer whiz, it was natural for her to express her hospitality by setting up a Web site.

Started in August 1996, it is called "Letters From Manhattan for Australians Abroad." When The Australian, a daily newspaper in Canberra, gave the site a favorable review last December, the number of Web surfers viewing her page shot up and she expanded the site to include letters from contributors in Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan.

WHAT YOU SEE While Ms. Juliff regards Americans and Australians as similar, she acknowledges the differences in her weekly letter. Humour, for example. All Americans want their entertainment to be all one thing or another.

"I think the mix of humour, and high emotion be it sadness or happiness, perplexes many Americans," she wrote on Sept. 5. "This may account for the poor reviews for movies such as 'Angel Baby' and 'Muriel's Wedding'. The Time Out reviewer of 'Muriel's Wedding' was particularly aghast at the fact that a movie billed as a comedy had suicide and cancer themes along with the obvious humorous situations.. If a movie's a comedy, then everything in it must be lighthearted."

Ms. Juliff also reassures baffled expatriates that they are not crazy. To "Dorothy," presumably living here, she replied: "Yes, it is quite normal for shop assistants to make you wait while they have private conversations on the phone. All you can do is wait patiently. No other behaviour seems to have any effect."
To the curious, she answers in detail about American privation. On Sept. 5, "Liz from Tasmania" wanted to know; "In the we-have-everything-you-could-possibly-want world of N.Y., is there anything particularly Australian that you can't get over there, and miss?"

Yes, Ms. Juliff replied, citing a long list including jaffas, an Australian M&M-like candy; "real beer"; castor sugar, an Australian granulated sugar, and pavlovas, an Australian meringue-based dessert.

LINKS Scores, including links to other expatriate's pages, such as Kim and Mike Haven's page out of Houston, and a page about Aussie Slang (i.e., "I'll give you the deaf and dumb" means "I'll give you the inside information").

WHAT YOU GET "Letters From Manhattan" is less Alexis de Tocqueville and more folksy Alistair Cook, if Mr. Cook knew the hypertext markup language, the programming language. There is an E-mail address to contact Ms. Juliff and message boards where Aussies and others can post their greetings ("Hello, to any other Aussies in Romania! O.K., so I'm not getting my hopes up too much!")".

Anthony Ramirez "New York On Line" September 27th 1997