5 Things You Should Know Before Dating An Aussie

Australians are awesome. Sure, we're weirdly specific about coffee, psychotically patriotic, especially when caught in other countries (the national sporting colors are green and gold, by the way), prone to getting weepy at Qantas ads, and peculiarly ignorant about the rules of baseball, but we're a pretty cool country. And while we're as full of weirdos, emotionally bizarre lunatics, and sleazes as any other country, we have an abject advantage in the dating pool: everybody automatically thinks dating an Australian is cool. Unfortunately, they're often quickly disillusioned and drawn into an argument about cricket.

All of these 17 pieces of knowledge are things I've had to teach my foreign partners. Aussies often don't realize how strange an obsession with skin cancer is, or why everybody keeps assuming we all love Kylie Minogue. (No, we do not. Does every American love Reba McEntire? Precisely.) But we're used to certain stuff, like people assuming we're surfing goddesses, or know all about how to commune with snakes.

If you find yourself dating an Aussie, these are things you are just going to have to accept. Or at least try to accommodate with as much grace as possible. (My husband still gives me dark looks and calls me a heathen when I order an Aussie burger with the lot. He will eventually be converted.)

1. There is not one Australian accent; there are many.





Much as you may not be able to tell apart a Sydneysider from a Melbournite, we can. (Particularly because Sydney and Melbourne have a hilarious rivalry going on, and if you're looking to date a resident from one city, you may have to pretend the other doesn't exist.) Hell, it's possible for Australians to tell which suburb you're from. Add to that the fact that a lot of us have lived and worked overseas, and it's a toss-up whether any of us sound similar at all.


2. We are much more scared of skin cancer than you are.





If you say idly that you have a suspicious mole, your Australian partner will be pouncing on it and measuring the sides with a ruler before you can say "melanoma". Chances are exceptionally high that we know or are related to somebody who's had some skin cancer — and there have been so many publicity campaigns about cancer prevention and awareness that we're probably mini-experts on mole diagnosis.


3. There is no such thing as "looking" Australian.





Australia had one of the biggest influxes of immigrants in world history after World War II. It's one of the reasons the food's so good — everybody lives there. So if you're surprised that we're not all six foot, blonde, tanned surfers, you're going to look like an idiot. (Also, many of us cannot surf. Not that we haven't tried.)

4. We will probably know more about sports than you do.





Even if we hate it, we've probably picked up enough knowledge from the communal national obsession that we can hold a decent conversation about swimming, cricket, rugby, or something else where Aussies excel. We'll probably also have weird nostalgia for athletes you have never heard of — with the exception of Ian Thorpe. You have heard of Ian Thorpe, yes?

5. Nobody believes American football is a proper sport, though.





Baseball's fine, but gridiron (aka American football)? Seriously, you guys have seen a game of rugby, right? Australian sport's lucky if it has rules, let alone the paddings, coverings, or medieval quilts your lot waltz around in. Tom Brady is, on a fundamental level, a pussy, and we are unlikely to be convinced otherwise without a considerable amount of brainwashing.


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