From Down Under to Down South

Category: Australian Eyes on America

I Want My Girls Safe Online. What Happens to Our Privacy?
AUSTRALIAN EYES ON AMERICA

I’ve been trying to understand Australia’s proposed digital duty of care, and I keep coming back to one fairly simple thought: I want my girls to be safe online.

The less simple question is what we should do to make that happen.

I’m an Australian dad living in the United States. I’ve watched this discussion develop in both countries, and I can see why people come at it from different directions. But I’m not writing this because I’ve landed on a firm position. I haven’t. I’m trying to work out what the proposal would actually mean for families like mine, and what questions I’d want answered before deciding whether it’s a good idea.
- Why Americans Say “You’re Welcome” So Often
What does “duty of care” mean online?

“Digital duty of care” sounds like something I’d have to sign before being allowed into a meeting.

As I understand it, Australia wants online platforms to take more responsibility for the harm their services can cause. That means looking at how the platforms work, including the algorithms that decide what keeps turning up in our feeds, rather than waiting for someone to report a problem after it’s happened. The proposal would also give people more choice about those feeds.

I can see why that appeals to parents. I’d like to know the people running these platforms have thought about what happens when a child uses them. But I’m still trying to understand what they would actually be required to do. If my daughter is being bullied, I want the platform to act. Beyond cases like that, who decides what counts as harm, and what would acting on it look like?

For now, this is still a proposal. The Australian Government’s exposure draft and consultation material describe a new responsibility for online services to manage risks and prevent serious harms. The government says the framework is meant to improve safety while protecting freedom of expression. Those aims sound compatible in a sentence. The difficult work is deciding how they fit together when a real case lands in front of a platform.

The part I understand as a dad

It’s hard to monitor what your children see online every minute of every day. My girls are still young, and I can already imagine how much harder that will become as they get older and want more privacy and independence.

If stronger safeguards help protect my girls from bullying and harmful material, I’m all for them. Kids shouldn’t have to manage every online risk alone just because the internet is difficult to regulate.

I worry about AI-generated and manipulated images, too. Someone could take an ordinary photo of one of my girls and alter it to make it look as if she’d done something she never did. I would hate for that to happen. Once someone shares a manipulated image, getting it back under control can be nearly impossible.

In a case like that, I’d want the image removed, the person responsible to face consequences, and the platform to face financial penalties if it failed to respond properly. That feels clear to me. Where I get stuck is deciding what rules should apply to material that upsets or harms people but isn’t obviously illegal. Who decides what crosses the line? How do we give platforms enough responsibility to act without asking them to remove anything that might attract criticism? Those questions are not an argument against protecting children. They’re part of working out what protection should look like.

Why the debate sounds different across the Pacific

Living in America has made me more aware of how quickly questions about government power and free speech enter the conversation here. The US administration’s response to Australia’s proposal focused on the risk of censorship and the effects the rules could have on American technology companies. Australia’s proposal, by contrast, starts with the responsibility of online services to take reasonable steps against foreseeable harms.

That’s a difference in emphasis, rather than a neat split where one country cares about safety and the other doesn’t. People in both places worry about children and value free expression. But in my experience, Australians are often more comfortable asking what rules might help, while Americans are quicker to ask who gets to make those rules and how far they could reach. I understand both questions. I don’t want a platform shrugging off serious harm. But I also don’t want a broad or unclear standard to become a reason for lawful speech to disappear. I’m not sure there’s a simple line that resolves that tension for every situation.
- Americans Have a Hidden Superpower: Encouragement
Living between Australia and America can make the same online safety question sound quite different.

Age checks bring privacy into it

The question gets more personal when the proposed solution involves proving who you are, or how old you are.

Here in Tennessee, state law requires age verification for certain websites with material considered harmful to minors. I understand the aim: children shouldn’t be accessing adult material. But I still find myself asking what information a user has to provide, who handles it, and what happens to it afterwards. People have challenged the Tennessee law in court, too. The argument over where to draw the line is far from settled.

When I walk into a shop to buy alcohol, someone checks my ID and lets me go. As far as I know, they don’t record my details or keep a list of what I’ve bought. What is the online equivalent? Can a service confirm that I’m an adult without storing my identity or keeping a record of what I visit?

That distinction matters to me. I could be comfortable with age verification if it genuinely confirmed age without retaining identity or browsing history. I’m less comfortable with the idea of handing over personal information without understanding who can see it or how long it stays around.

I already get spam calls and adverts that seem to know an unsettling amount about my interests. I don’t know where every detail comes from, and I’m not claiming my phone reads my mind. But the experience does leave me wondering how much information is collected as we move through everyday life online. And then there’s the question I keep coming back to: twenty years ago, most of us weren’t asked to prove our age before using the internet. The online world has changed, and children can now encounter things that were much harder to reach. That’s a real difference. Still, I want to understand why a particular check is needed, whether it will work, and what information it will create before I decide I’m comfortable with it.

An online age check raises a question I don’t have to ask when I show my ID at a shop: who keeps the information afterwards?

I’m still working it out

I don’t want the government telling me how to raise my children or what they should believe. I do think government has a role when children are neglected or seriously harmed. Between those two statements sits a lot of difficult territory, especially when a platform’s design can influence what a child sees without a parent knowing it’s happening.

I want my girls protected from bullying, exploitation and manipulated images. Platforms to take responsibility when their systems contribute to serious harm. I also want parents to remain parents, and I want people to have privacy online.

I can’t yet say exactly how all of that should be balanced. So I’m trying to understand the proposal before deciding what I think of it: what risks it is meant to address, what platforms would have to do, who decides when they’ve done enough, and what information users may be asked to give up along the way.

If you enjoy these personal observations about life between Australia and America, you can support From Down Under to Down South through Buy Me a Coffee.
September 28, 2026
Why Americans Never Really Leave School Behind
AUSTRALIAN EYES ON AMERICA

There are certain things I expected to leave behind when I finished school.
Homework. Exams. Being told what to wear. The occasional teacher who seemed personally offended by my existence.
What I didn’t expect was to move to America decades later and discover that, for some people, school never really ends.
Not the actual education, mind you. The identity.

I’ve lived in the United States for eight years now, and one thing I’ve noticed is how often schools find their way into everyday conversations.
Where did you go to high school? Which college did you attend? Who do you support?
That last question can be particularly dangerous in Tennessee. Give the wrong answer and you may find yourself in a conversation about football that lasts considerably longer than you intended.

At first, I thought this was simply another American cultural quirk.
But the longer I’ve lived here, the more I’ve come to appreciate that the question of where someone went to school can be about considerably more than education.
Sometimes it’s about finding a connection.
Sometimes it’s about belonging.
Maybe it’s about a football team that hasn’t won anything significant in years, but whose supporters remain convinced that next season will be different.
And sometimes, whether we like it or not, it’s about social status.

For some American communities, school spirit continues long after graduation.

The Question That Sounds Simple but Isn’t

Imagine meeting someone at a party.
You exchange names, establish that neither of you is particularly interested in discussing the weather, and then comes the question

“Where did you go to school?”

For an Australian, the answer might be a straightforward piece of biographical information.

For an American, depending on where you live and who’s asking, it can open an entire conversation.

The person might recognise the school. They might know someone who attended it. They might have played against its football team or discovered that your cousin married their old chemistry teacher.

Suddenly, two strangers have something in common.
- Why Americans Say “I Appreciate You” Instead of “Thank You”?
One particularly interesting example is St. Louis, Missouri, where asking someone which high school they attended has long been recognised as a local conversational tradition.

A 2007 feature in St. Louis Magazine explored how the question can reveal shared acquaintances, neighbourhood connections and aspects of someone’s background.

Imagine that.

You could be 52 years old, have a mortgage, two children, a career and a perfectly respectable collection of lawn maintenance equipment.

Yet someone still wants to know where you were sitting during Year 10 biology.

To be fair, I can understand the appeal.

I’ve moved between countries and lived in enough different places to appreciate how valuable a familiar connection can be.

When someone discovers that you grew up near the same place, knew the same people or experienced something similar, the conversation immediately changes.

You stop being two strangers.

You have a shared starting point.

But there’s another side to the question, and it’s worth acknowledging.

Sometimes Your School Says Something About Your Background

Not every question about education is innocent curiosity.

The name of a school can sometimes suggest where someone grew up, the financial circumstances of their family or the social circles they moved in.

That doesn’t mean everyone asking is making those judgments.

It means the information can carry social meaning beyond the classroom.

In St. Louis, for example, discussions about the famous high school question have included both interpretations: people who see it as a way of finding mutual friends and people who believe it can be used to establish social standing.

The distinction matters.

Asking where someone went to school because you’re hoping to discover a mutual acquaintance is one thing.

Deciding what sort of person they must be because of the answer is quite another.

I find this especially interesting because schools can become shorthand for entire communities.

A school name might tell a local person roughly which neighbourhood someone came from. It might suggest a particular sporting rivalry, a religious tradition or a family connection stretching back generations.

Of course, none of that tells you whether the person standing in front of you is actually worth knowing.

For that, you’re probably going to have to talk to them.

An outrageous concept, I know.

Then There’s College. That’s an Entirely Different Level.

For many graduates, university loyalty becomes a lifelong connection.

One of the things that surprised me about American university culture was how visible it remains outside the university itself.

People wear college shirts to the supermarket.

They put university stickers on their cars.

They decorate their homes in school colours.

They follow the sporting achievements of students who were probably born long after they graduated.

Some even travel considerable distances to return to campus for homecoming celebrations.

Now, Australian universities have alumni associations, sporting clubs and plenty of graduates who remain proud of their institutions.

But the scale and visibility of American college identity, particularly around major sporting programs, feels quite different from what I grew up with.

You don’t need to have attended the University of Tennessee to notice its presence around Nashville.

Orange merchandise is everywhere.
- Tennessee Orange and White Checked T-Shirt
In parts of the South, college football isn’t simply something you watch.

It’s something you inherit.

Your parents supported a particular university. Their parents supported it. Now you’re expected to continue the tradition.

You might attend an entirely different institution.

You might never attend university at all.

Doesn’t matter.

Apparently, your football allegiance was settled before you were old enough to hold a spoon.

And it’s important to recognise that the relationship between universities and their supporters isn’t limited to graduates.

College teams can represent an entire state or region. For some supporters, the institution is part of their community identity rather than their personal educational history.

That makes the question of which college someone supports quite different from asking which college they attended.

One is about education.

The other might be about family, geography and several generations of sporting disappointment.
- Americans Have a Hidden Superpower: Encouragement
Why School Sports Matter So Much

If you want to understand the continuing importance of schools in American communities, sport is a useful place to start.

High school football in particular can bring together people who otherwise have little reason to gather in the same place.

Parents, grandparents, former students, local business owners and neighbours turn up to support the same team.

For some towns, Friday night football is a major community event.

A September 2026 Associated Press report explored how high school football continues to provide a sense of unity, tradition and opportunity in communities such as Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.

That community role helps explain why people can remain attached to their old school long after graduating.

The school wasn’t just somewhere they attended classes.

It was where they played sport, made friends, performed on stage, attended community events and developed relationships that might last for decades.

The sporting connection is widespread, although certainly not universal.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in February 2022 found that 48% of American adults reported participating in organised competitive sports during high school, college or both.

That doesn’t mean every former student remains interested in school sport.

But it does demonstrate how many Americans have personal experience of the sporting side of education.

And I can see why those memories endure.

When a school is also a community gathering place, leaving the classroom doesn’t necessarily mean leaving the community behind.

American school traditions extend well beyond the players on the field

Watching My Own Children Grow Up in the American School System

This is where the subject becomes a little more personal for me.

I’m an Australian raising two daughters in Tennessee.

Their experience of school is already different from mine.

I’m watching them grow up with traditions, terminology and expectations that weren’t necessarily part of my own childhood.

Things like school spirit, mascots and the importance attached to particular school events are part of the world they’re learning to navigate.

As a parent, I find myself paying attention to things I wouldn’t have given much thought to before.

Which school will they attend?

What opportunities will it offer?

Will they find good friends?

Will they feel comfortable there?

Will it encourage their interests and help them discover what they’re capable of?

Those questions aren’t uniquely American, of course.

Parents everywhere worry about their children’s education.

But living here has made me more conscious of the role a school can play in shaping a child’s wider social world.

For my girls, school isn’t simply a building where they learn maths and English.

It’s part of where they’re growing up.

It’s where friendships develop, confidence can grow and memories are made.

As a father, I hope those memories will be good ones.

I also hope that, years from now, when someone asks them where they went to school, they’ll remember more than the name on the building.

Raising my daughters in Tennessee has given me a different perspective on the role schools play in American life.

The Part of American School Culture I Understand Better Now

When I first arrived in America, I sometimes found the continuing attachment to schools a little strange.

I couldn’t quite understand why a grown adult would be so emotionally invested in an institution they left 30 years ago.

Particularly when the attachment involved shouting at a television because a 19-year-old missed a field goal.

But after eight years here, I’ve started to see the bigger picture.

A school can provide something that becomes increasingly valuable as we get older.

Continuity.

People move away. Careers change. Families grow. Neighbourhoods transform.

The place where you spent your teenage years might be one of the few connections that remains.You can return for a reunion and encounter people who remember a version of you that your current friends have never met.

You can watch a football game and feel connected to the town where you grew up.

You can meet someone on the other side of the country, discover they attended the same university, and immediately have something to talk about.

None of that requires believing your school was better than anyone else’s.

It’s simply the comfort of belonging to something familiar.

Of course, not everyone has happy memories of school.

For some people, graduation was a welcome escape, and they have absolutely no desire to return.

That’s worth remembering whenever we romanticise school spirit.

A place that represents belonging for one person might represent exclusion for another.

The value isn’t necessarily in the institution itself.

It’s in the relationships and experiences people associate with it.
- The Moment I Realised My Children Belong in America
Maybe the Question Isn’t Really About School at All

I’ve come to think that asking someone where they went to school is often another version of a much more familiar question.

Where are you from?

Not necessarily geographically.

Where did your story begin?

What sort of community shaped you?

Do we have anything in common?

Americans have plenty of ways of answering those questions, and schools are just one of them.

For some, it’s a university.

For others, it’s a hometown, a church, a sporting club or the neighbourhood where they grew up.

I still find it amusing that a person can spend four years at university and then devote the next 40 to wearing its merchandise.

But I understand it a little better now.

Perhaps that’s one of the things I’ve learned from living between two cultures.

Sometimes the things that initially seem strange aren’t particularly strange at all.

They’re simply familiar human needs expressed in unfamiliar ways.

The desire to belong.

The pleasure of finding a shared connection.

The comfort of knowing that somewhere, even decades later, there’s a place that still feels a little bit like
home.

Although if someone asks me where I went to high school, they’re going to need a few minutes.

Mine was in Australia.

That tends to complicate the conversation.

Enjoy seeing America through Australian eyes?

From Down Under to Down South is an independent project exploring the little things that make life between two countries interesting. If you enjoy these stories and would like to support more of them, you can buy me a coffee. Thanks for being part of the community.
September 21, 2026
Why Americans Say “I Appreciate You” Instead of “Thank You”?
AUSTRALIAN EYES ON AMERICA

There’s a phrase I’ve heard quite a bit since moving to America that, even after eight years, I still don’t quite know what to do with.

“I appreciate you.”

It sounds nice. It is nice.

Well, probably.

But every time I hear it, the Australian in me still has the same reaction.

You appreciate me?

What have I done?

“Thank you,” I understand. “Thanks, mate.” Easy. “Cheers, mate.” Even easier.

But “I appreciate you”? Yeah, we’ve only just met. Where exactly is this going?

The One Word That Changes Everything

Before moving to the United States, my family and I came here on vacation quite a lot. Every now and then, I’d hear someone say “I appreciate you.”

Once I actually moved here and started living and working among Americans every day, I heard it much more often, especially here in the South.

Someone does some work at your house. You pay them.

“I appreciate you.”

You help a client sort something out at work.

“I appreciate you.”

To the person saying it, there may be nothing particularly remarkable about the exchange.

To my Australian ears, it sounds surprisingly personal.

If an Aussie mate of mine suddenly looked me directly in the eyes and said, “Mike, I appreciate you,” I’d immediately become suspicious.

What do you want?

Or are you taking the piss?

Australians aren’t short of ways to express gratitude. We say “thanks,” “cheers, mate,” “you didn’t need to do that,” and plenty of other variations.

I also say “I appreciate that” all the time. And that, I think, is where this gets interesting.
- Why Do Australians Say “Mate”? It Doesn’t Always Mean Friend
I Appreciate That. Not Necessarily You.

When my daughters were younger, I remember trying to get groceries out to the car while pushing a pram.

You’ve got shopping bags. You’ve got a baby. Another child who has suddenly decided that the opposite direction is the only direction worth travelling in.

Every now and then, someone would offer to help.

“Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that.”

Perfectly natural.

But notice that final word.

That.

I appreciate the thing you did.

Change one little word and suddenly it becomes:

“I appreciate you.”

Now you’re appreciating me.

That sounds different. At least it does to me.

One small word changes where the appreciation lands: on what someone did, or on the person who did it.

Apparently, I’m Not the Only One

I went looking online to see whether this was simply another case of me living in America for eight years and somehow misunderstanding everybody.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

It turns out people are surprisingly divided over “I appreciate you.”

Some love the expression precisely because it moves the gratitude away from the act and toward the person. “Thank you” acknowledges what somebody did. “I appreciate you” acknowledges the person who did it.

Which…

Okay.

That’s actually pretty nice.

Damn it.

I was hoping this would be easier.

Other people hear exactly what I hear. To them, it can sound too personal or even slightly intimate for a brief interaction with someone they barely know.

People even Google whether “I appreciate you” is flirting.

That makes me laugh because nobody is sitting at home at midnight searching:

Cashier said thank you. Does she want me?

Change the exchange to “I appreciate you,” though, and suddenly someone is wondering:

Hang on. What did she mean by that? Should I go back tomorrow?

Mate, she was being nice.

Leave the poor woman alone.

Still, the fact that the question gets asked tells us something. “I appreciate it” doesn’t seem to create the same confusion. Neither does “I appreciate that.” It’s you that changes the feeling.

Apparently, “I appreciate you” can sound personal enough that people actually wonder whether it’s flirting.

Why “I Appreciate You” Sounds Southern to Me

For a long time, I assumed this was simply an American expression.

Then I realised my sample might be slightly skewed.

I’ve spent most of my American life in the South. “I appreciate you,” including the more Southern sounding “‘preciate ya,” has long been associated particularly associated with Southern speech.

That doesn’t mean people elsewhere don’t say it. They absolutely do.

So before somebody in Wisconsin starts furiously typing, “I HAVE APPRECIATED PEOPLE SINCE 1987,” I’m not suggesting the South owns appreciation.

It’s simply where I’ve really noticed it.

And when I think about Southern conversation, the expression makes sense.

People here can make remarkably small interactions feel personal. It’s one of the things that surprised me after moving here: Americans will talk to complete strangers.

You can be standing in a supermarket and suddenly find yourself talking to somebody you’ve never met about barbecue, the weather, their knee replacement and where their daughter went to college.

You only wanted milk. Twenty minutes later, you’re practically family.

In the South, a quick trip to Dollar General can turn into a conversation with someone you’ve never met.

Maybe “I appreciate you” belongs in that same world.

It’s a little warmer than the interaction actually requires.

The bloke fixing your air conditioner isn’t just the bloke fixing your air conditioner.

He’s Dave.

How’s your mum?

Did your son win his baseball game?

Here’s your cheque.

I appreciate you.

The Australian version might simply be:

“Cheers, mate.”

Same affection.

Considerably fewer syllables. Efficiency.

But Do People Actually Mean It?

There’s another part of the expression that interests me.

Once something becomes a phrase people use automatically, does it still carry its literal meaning?

If someone says “I appreciate you” to every customer who walks through the door, do they genuinely appreciate every single one of them?

Yeah, probably not.

Sometimes it may simply be verbal furniture. It sounds nice, fills the space and signals that an interaction has gone well.

We all do this.

“How are you?”

“Good, how are you?”

Nobody wants the actual answer.

“Well, since you’ve asked, my back’s playing up, the cat threw up at three this morning and I’m questioning several major decisions I’ve made since 1997.”

No.

“Good.”

“I appreciate you” can work the same way. Sometimes it may simply mean “thanks,” “have a good one,” or “we’re finished here.” But sometimes it means considerably more.

The Time I Knew They Meant It

I spent many years working in banking, and I heard “I appreciate you” from clients fairly regularly.

Usually it was simply part of the relationship.

They’d say, “I appreciate you.”

I’d respond, “No problem” or “No worries.”

Someone offers me direct praise and apparently my Australian instinct is to immediately knock it down three levels.

No worries.

But I remember one situation involving a complicated deceased estate.

Those situations can be difficult. There are documents everywhere, accounts that need sorting out and procedures that have to be followed.

Meanwhile, the people you’re helping haven’t developed a sudden passionate interest in banking paperwork.

Somebody has died.

I worked through everything with the family and eventually got it finalised.

They told me:

“I appreciate you.”

That one felt different.

I knew exactly what they meant.

They weren’t thanking me for processing some paperwork. They were saying:

You helped us through this.

In that moment, “I appreciate you” said something that “thanks” couldn’t quite say.

Which is where my entire argument falls apart.

Very inconvenient.

Maybe the reason the expression can make me uncomfortable is also the reason it can be so effective.

It is personal. That’s the point.

Did Ted Lasso Have Something to Do With It?

There is one other possible culprit in the wider popularity of “I appreciate you.”

Ted Lasso. The show certainly didn’t invent the expression. People in the American South were using it long before Ted wandered into Richmond with a moustache and an alarming amount of emotional stability.

But some viewers have said they started using “I appreciate you” after hearing Ted say it.

Which makes perfect sense.

You’ve got this relentlessly optimistic American bloke wandering around England telling people he appreciates them.

The British are presumably thinking:

Please stop.

But the expression fits Ted because his whole character is built around making interactions personal. He notices people. He acknowledges them. “I appreciate you” does exactly that.

I Still Can’t Bring Myself to Say It

After eight years in America, I’ve picked up plenty of American language without even noticing.

“I appreciate you” has never made the journey.

Somebody could do something wonderful for me and I’d happily say:

“Mate, thank you. I really appreciate that.”

That sounds like me.

“I appreciate you”?

I feel like there should be soft music.

Maybe a candle.

At the very least, someone’s buying dinner.

But I understand the expression better than I did when I first started hearing it.

Sometimes it’s simply another way of saying thank you.

Even a habit.

Sometimes it means exactly what it says.

And perhaps that’s one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about living in America, especially here in the South. There’s often a willingness to add a little warmth to an interaction that doesn’t strictly require it.

“Have a blessed day.”

“Y’all come back.”

“You be safe.”

“I appreciate you.”

My Australian side still hears those last three words very literally.

The person saying them might simply mean:

“Thanks, mate.”

Just with considerably more emotional paperwork.

I still don’t think I’m going to start saying it.

I’d get halfway through and lose my nerve.

“I apprecia… cheers, mate.”

There we go. Back on familiar ground.

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September 14, 2026
Can You Love Your New Country Without Loving Your Old One Less?
AUSTRALIAN EYES ON AMERICA

There is a strange assumption that sometimes follows you when you move to another country.

At some point, apparently, you are supposed to choose.

If you say too many nice things about the country you left, someone wonders why you left it.

If you say too many nice things about the country you moved to, someone wonders whether you’ve forgotten where you came from.

I’ve come across versions of both.

After eight years living in the United States, I’ve become very comfortable saying that I love America.

I chose to live here. I became an American citizen. I’m raising my children here. I’ve built a life here. There are things about American culture that I’ve genuinely come to admire, and many of them have become the subjects of the videos and articles I make.

None of that has made me less Australian.

That’s the part I think people sometimes misunderstand. Loving one country doesn’t mean you have to love the other one less.

I Didn’t Exchange Australia for America

When you immigrate, there is a tendency for people to think about the move as a replacement.

Old country out. New country in.

But that isn’t how it has felt to me.

Australia is still there in so much of who I am.

It’s in my accent, despite whatever America has been doing to it lately. My sense of humour, the food I occasionally find myself desperately searching for. The expressions that come out of my mouth without me even noticing them.
- The Small Things Australians Miss After Moving to America
The experiences that shaped me long before I ever imagined living in Tennessee.

America didn’t erase any of that.

It added to it. I think that distinction matters.

Australia is still part of who I am, even after eight years of building a life in America

Psychologists actually have language for this.

In research on immigration, assimilation generally means adopting the new culture while gradually letting go of your attachment to the culture you came from.

Integration is different. It means becoming part of your new culture while still maintaining your connection to the old one.

Research from the American Psychological Association suggests the two identities don’t have to compete. Immigrants can adapt to life in a new country while maintaining a strong connection to their heritage, and research has found benefits to being able to maintain both.

In other words, the science doesn’t require me to hand in my Vegemite before I’m allowed to enjoy biscuits and gravy. Which is quietly reassuring.

Somewhere Along the Way, America Became Home Too

This is where things become more complicated than simply saying, “I’m an Australian who lives in America.”

Because America isn’t just where I live anymore.

It’s home.

That’s a surprisingly significant word for an immigrant.

Home used to have a very obvious answer. Australia was home because Australia was where I came from.

Then you spend years somewhere else. You work there. Make friends there. Raise your kids there.
- The Moment I Realised My Children Belong in America
You stop having to think about where things are or how things work. The supermarket becomes your supermarket. The roads become familiar. Places that once felt foreign become completely ordinary.

Eventually you return from a trip, walk through your own front door and think:

It’s good to be home.

Except you’re not in the country you once meant when you used that word.

You’re in the other one.

That has been one of the strangest changes for me.

I don’t feel 50 percent Australian and 50 percent American.

Identity isn’t a pie chart.

I feel Australian.

I also feel American. Those statements stopped contradicting each other a long time ago.

Becoming American Didn’t Feel Like Rejecting Australia

I remember standing in the courthouse on the day I became an American citizen.

There were about 40 of us, from all over the world, standing together and taking the Oath of Allegiance to the United States.

It was a proud moment for me.

But there was one part of the oath that felt strange.

I had to declare that I “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity” to any foreign state of which I had previously been a citizen.

In my case, Australia.

I understood what the oath meant. I was choosing to become an American citizen and accepting the responsibilities that came with that.

But standing there saying those words, I didn’t feel as though I was renouncing Australia.

I certainly didn’t feel any less Australian when I walked out of the courthouse than I had when I walked in.

Becoming an American citizen didn’t make me feel any less Australian. It simply gave me another country to call home.

If anything, becoming an American citizen felt like formal recognition of something that had already happened.

America had become part of my life.

I had a stake in this country.

Its future mattered to me because my future was here too.

So was my family’s.

None of that required Australia to become less important.

There is an interesting contradiction in the language of citizenship itself. For much of history, dual nationality was viewed with suspicion because governments worried about divided loyalties. Today, dual citizenship is far more widely accepted around the world, and both Australia and the United States allow people to hold more than one nationality.

So I walked into that courthouse as an Australian.

I walked out as an American.

But I also walked out as an Australian.

Maybe that’s the point. Becoming one didn’t require me to stop being the other.

Sometimes Other People Want the Choice More Than You Do

One of the interesting things about living between countries is how often identity gets defined from the outside.

People like neat categories.

Australian.

American.

Immigrant.

Expat.

Pick one.

But people don’t necessarily work that way.

Research into immigrant belonging suggests that the way newcomers are treated by the society around them can have a significant effect on whether they feel accepted as part of their new country. Research summarized by the Migration Policy Institute has found that public attitudes and political rhetoric can influence an immigrant’s sense of national belonging.

That makes sense to me.

Belonging isn’t only about deciding that a country is yours.

Sometimes it is also about feeling that the country has decided you are one of its people.

I’ve noticed something interesting when Americans meet me.

Obviously, the accent usually gives me away pretty quickly. People ask where I’m from, how long I’ve been here and, occasionally, something involving kangaroos.

But when they learn that I’m also an American citizen, something subtly changes.

It’s difficult to describe because nobody announces it.

The conversation just feels slightly different.

There’s a sense of, Oh, you’re one of us.

Maybe I’m imagining some of it. Human interactions aren’t exactly easy things to measure while you’re standing in the supermarket talking to a stranger.

But I’ve noticed it enough times to believe there’s something there.

My Australian accent still makes me interestingly foreign.

My American citizenship seems to make me belong.

The funny thing is, I don’t need one of those things to cancel out the other. I can be the Australian in the conversation and still be one of the Americans in the room.

Loving America Doesn’t Require Pretending It’s Perfect

There is another part of this that I think is important.

Loving your adopted country doesn’t mean pretending everything about it is sunshine, roses and butterflies.

I don’t believe that about America.

I didn’t believe it about Australia either.

No country gets everything right.

You can love a country and still criticize it.

Admire another country without declaring it superior in every possible way.

You can even prefer different things about different places.

There are things Australia does that I wish America would copy tomorrow. There are things about American life that I now genuinely prefer.
- Americans Have a Hidden Superpower: Encouragement
That isn’t betrayal.

It’s perspective.

In fact, one of the unexpected gifts of immigration is that you begin seeing both countries differently.

Distance makes you notice things about the country you left that you once took for granted.

Living somewhere new makes you question things you once assumed were universal.

Then you go back to the country you came from and discover that you’re looking at that differently too.

I’ve experienced that with Australia.

Things that were completely unremarkable to me when I lived there suddenly stand out. Some make me appreciate Australia more. Others make me wonder how I never noticed them before.

You haven’t stopped being an insider.

But you’re not entirely looking at it through an insider’s eyes anymore either.

Somehow, you become both.

It’s occasionally confusing.

But it’s also fascinating.

Maybe Belonging Doesn’t Have to Be Exclusive

In some ways, none of this should be particularly unusual in America.

Americans have been combining identities for generations.

Irish American. Italian American. Mexican American. German American.

For some people, the connection to the first country goes back generations. They may never have lived there, or perhaps never even visited, but their heritage can still be an important part of how they understand who they are.

My version is obviously a little different.

Australia isn’t where my ancestors came from several generations ago.

It’s where I came from.

It’s where I grew up and spent most of my life before moving to the United States.

But maybe the principle isn’t so different.

Becoming American doesn’t require everything that came before it to disappear.

Researchers studying bicultural identity have found that people can identify strongly with both their heritage culture and their national culture. Research also suggests that seeing those identities as compatible, rather than in conflict with each other, can help people feel more connected to the society around them.

That feels much closer to my experience than the idea that I must gradually become less Australian in order to become more American. America didn’t replace Australia.

Our family has built its life in America, but Australia remains part of our story.

It joined it.

I Still Know Where I Came From

There are moments when the distance from Australia hits harder than others.

One of the biggest for me came during the Black Summer bushfires of 2019 and 2020.

I was thousands of miles away in America while fires burned up and down the New South Wales coast and surrounded the area where I grew up.

Glued to Australian news reports. I listened to Australian radio from America trying to find out what was happening.

These weren’t just names of towns appearing on a news report.

I knew these places.

Knew the roads.

I knew the countryside.

I was watching places I knew like the back of my hand burn. At one point, I watched as fire roared across paddocks towards a house I had once lived in and came frighteningly close to engulfing it.

During the Black Summer bushfires, I watched from America as fires tore through parts of New South Wales I knew intimately.

Being in America didn’t make any of that feel distant.

If anything, being unable to physically be there made the distance feel enormous. The COVID years brought a different version of the same feeling. Australia suddenly seemed much further away than the number of miles between us.
- The Plague Hath Arrived: And Still the Children Want Snacks
Those experiences reminded me that moving overseas doesn’t sever your connection to the place you came from.

But neither does missing Australia mean I’m secretly waiting to leave America.

That’s the false choice.

I can miss one place while being happy in another.

Be proud of where I came from while being grateful for where I ended up.

Care about what happens to Australia and care deeply about what happens to America.

I can watch Australia play sport and know exactly which side I’m supporting.

Okay, some loyalties apparently do have limits.

But for everything else, I’ve stopped feeling any need to choose.

I’ve lived in America long enough now to understand that moving countries didn’t divide my identity.

It expanded it.

Australia gave me the foundations of who I am.

America has shaped who I’ve become since.

One doesn’t diminish the other.

So can you love your new country without loving your old one less?

After eight years of trying it, I think the answer is pretty simple.

Yes. You just end up with more than one place in the world that feels like yours.

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Sources and further reading

The American Psychological Association’s work on immigration and acculturation explains the distinction between assimilation and integration, including the ability to participate in a new culture while maintaining attachment to one’s heritage culture.

The APA’s more recent review of immigration research discusses evidence supporting bicultural integration and the psychological and sociocultural benefits associated with maintaining connections to both heritage and destination cultures.

The Migration Policy Institute has examined both dual citizenship and immigrant belonging, including the historical shift away from treating dual nationality as inherently incompatible with integration. Research published in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology has also examined dual identity among immigrants and the relationship between identification with both heritage and national cultures, belonging and psychological outcomes.
September 8, 2026