From Down Under to Down South

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  • The Hidden Cost of Competitive Dance in America

    The Hidden Cost of Competitive Dance in America

    There is a point in every parent’s life when you realise your child’s hobby has developed its own economy.

    I think we reached that point somewhere between the dance costumes, competition fees, hotel rooms and my wife working an eight hour shift at Bridgestone Arena while I sat in a car outside a dance studio doing work on my phone.

    Our ten year old daughter Georgia dances competitively.

    Seven routines this year.

    Our seven year old, Brianna, has gone back to dance too and has already announced that she would like to try out for the competition team next year.

    Because apparently we looked at our current family schedule and thought it lacked ambition.

    The funny thing is, none of this feels particularly unusual anymore.

    Afternoons are spent driving to the studio.

    Groceries happen while somebody is dancing.

    Work gets done from the car.

    Weekends disappear into competitions.

    Family trips get built around nationals.

    Money quietly moves from one part of the family budget to another.

    Somewhere along the way I realised there is an enormous economy sitting underneath American kids’ activities that you barely notice until your own family becomes part of it.

    And I don’t just mean money.

    Young competitive dancer performing alone under dramatic stage lighting at a dance competition
    What you see is a few minutes onstage. What you don’t see is the family economy of time, travel, work and money that helped get her there.

    It Starts Out So Innocently

    Georgia started ballet when she was two years old in Australia.

    She loved dance from the moment she put on her first ballet shoes.

    Back then, dance was relatively simple.

    You went to class.

    You learned your routine.

    There was an end of year recital.

    Parents watched.

    Everyone went home.

    Competitive dance is a different universe.

    Georgia is now in her fourth year on company, and the older she gets, the greater the commitment becomes.

    Tuition is higher.

    There are competition entry fees.

    Costumes.

    Choreography fees.

    Solo lessons.

    Travel.

    Hotels.

    Food.

    Then there are seven competition dances, which means seven routines have to somehow make their way from a studio in Tennessee onto stages around the Southeast.

    We regularly travel to Kentucky and Georgia for competitions. Nationals this year was in Daytona Beach, Florida.

    We were there for seven days.

    One day without dance.

    We called it a family holiday. Technically, I think that counts.

    The Three Minutes You See Aren’t the Expensive Part

    A competition routine might last a few minutes.

    Getting a child onto that stage can consume an entire weekend.

    For us, a typical competition begins on Friday.

    If we’re heading somewhere like Atlanta, Georgia may have to leave school early so we can get there that evening. At the moment her elementary school doesn’t consider dance competition an excused absence, which is something that will become more complicated as she gets older and Friday night performances become more common.

    We arrive Friday evening, check into the hotel, find dinner and get to bed.

    The preparation has already started.

    Georgia may have done her fake tan a couple of days earlier, or sometimes before we leave on Friday.

    If she has an early Saturday performance, Nikki can be up at 4 a.m. doing hair and makeup.

    Four.

    In the morning.

    I grew up dancing ballroom in Australia and somehow I don’t remember Bankstown RSL requiring this level of preparation.

    Then you arrive at the competition.

    Some of these events are extraordinary.

    Huge stages.

    Professional lighting.

    Multiple cameras.

    Some of the bigger ones feel less like the dance competitions I remember growing up and more like television productions.

    It is genuinely impressive.

    You can then spend anywhere from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. there.

    At one competition in Atlanta last year, it was so crowded that Brianna and I couldn’t even find somewhere to sit and watch Georgia.

    We had already checked out of the hotel.

    So after driving all the way from Tennessee to Atlanta to watch our daughter dance, we went back to the car…

    and watched her on an iPhone. Parenting is magnificent.

    Large competitive dance stage with theatrical lighting and cameras during a dance competition.
    Some of the larger competitions feel closer to television productions than the dance competitions I remember growing up with in Australia.

    Then There Is the Cost Nobody Puts on an Invoice

    This is the part I hadn’t really thought about before becoming a dance parent.

    Time.

    A 30 minute dance class does not take 30 minutes.

    There is the drive there.

    The wait.

    The drive home.

    Multiply that across two children and several days a week and suddenly large pieces of your family life are being organised around a dance studio.

    I deliberately schedule my own ballroom lessons while the girls are at school.

    Afternoons are largely theirs.

    If one of them only has a 30 minute or one hour class, sometimes there isn’t much point driving home, so I stay in the car and work.

    Other times I do the groceries while they’re dancing.

    You become surprisingly good at this.

    Dance class at 5:00.

    Groceries at 5:07.

    Back at the studio at 5:56.

    Child retrieved.

    Nobody forgotten.

    Successful evening.

    The car becomes an office, waiting room, transport department and occasionally somewhere to eat dinner. A portable charger has become essential equipment for this dance dad when I’m working from the car.

    Nobody sends you an invoice for any of that.

    But it still costs something. Time is part of the hidden economy too.

    Sometimes Hockey Pays for Ballet

    This may be my favourite part of the whole strange system.

    Nikki is the only member of our immediate family who doesn’t dance.

    So naturally, she has been dragged into the dance economy anyway.

    She works concession stands at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville through a fundraising arrangement that allows parents to work events to help raise money toward their children’s activities.

    She’s the only parent from our studio doing it, but she works alongside dance mums from other studios.

    The shifts are long.

    Usually around eight hours.

    There is a small set amount, but most of what the group receives comes from tips that are shared among the people working. Nikki will typically generate around $120 to $150 from a night, with checks made out to the dance studio.

    That means somebody can walk into Bridgestone Arena to see a Predators game or a country concert, buy something from the concession stand and leave a tip.

    A little piece of that money eventually helps pay for a child’s dance.

    Last week Nikki worked the Brooks & Dunn concert.

    Now the Nashville Predators are back.

    So in our house, hockey season is also dance fundraising season.

    Country music pays for ballet.

    Hockey pays for tap lessons.

    America has some fascinating economic systems. Similar nonprofit concession fundraising arrangements operate elsewhere in Tennessee, where registered organizations staff arena concession stands and funds can be applied toward participants’ fees and other activity costs.

    Bridgestone Arena in downtown Nashville, where parents can work event concessions to help fund children's activities.
    In our family, a night working concessions at Bridgestone can help pay the next dance bill.

    Not Every Family Experiences the Cost the Same Way

    There is another side of competitive dance that I’ve become increasingly aware of.

    Some of the families around us appear considerably better off than we are.

    You see the houses.

    The cars.

    The travel.

    Some live in homes that, by our standards, look like mansions.

    I don’t know their finances, and appearances certainly don’t tell you everything.

    But I do know ours.

    There have been times when I’ve looked at what is coming up and wondered how we’re going to afford all of it.

    So far, we always have.

    We have never sat Georgia down and told her she might have to stop dancing because we can’t pay for it.

    I hope we never have to.

    But it has made me realise something.

    When people talk about opportunities for children, we often focus on whether the opportunity exists.

    I’ve written before about something else I’ve come to admire in America: the willingness to encourage children to imagine what might be possible.

    But encouragement is only part of it.

    Someone still has to get the child there.

    Pay the entry fee.

    Buy the costume.

    Book the hotel.

    Be available at 4 a.m. to do the hair.

    Someone has to sit in the car. Someone has to make the whole thing work.

    Because This Isn’t Just a Hobby to Her

    This is the part that matters.

    If Georgia were miserable, none of this would make sense.

    She isn’t.

    Dance is her passion.

    She started ballet at two and she’s now ten. She’s been on company for four years.

    I regularly give her the opportunity to try something else.

    Her response is usually some variation of:

    Dad, are you serious?

    This is all she wants to do.

    If we told her tomorrow that school had been cancelled permanently but dance was still on, I suspect we’d barely finish the sentence before she was in the car.

    She lights up when she dances.

    She already talks about going to college and eventually becoming a dance teacher.

    There are genuine pathways from dance into higher education in America. Universities including USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance offer competitive talent based dance scholarships, while other universities offer scholarship opportunities tied to dance majors and auditions. USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance

    She’s ten.

    Nobody knows where any of this will lead.

    She may become a dance teacher.

    She may pursue something completely different.

    Life has plenty of time to work that out.

    Right now, our job is simply to give her the opportunity to find out.

    I’ve already had moments when I’ve realised just how much Georgia’s dreams are being shaped by growing up here rather than in the Australia where she was born.

    Georgia preparing to dance during her fourth year on a competitive dance company.
    She started ballet at two in Australia. Eight years later, dance is still the thing she wants to do more than anything else.

    Apparently One Competitive Dancer Isn’t Enough

    Then there’s Brianna.

    She returned to dance this year and is taking jazz, hip hop and ballet.

    She now wants to try out for company next year.

    This should probably terrify us.

    Instead, our reasoning has become:

    Well, she’s already at the competitions anyway.

    There would be overlap.

    The second child is cheaper.

    We’re already paying for the hotel.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    There is something slightly alarming about reaching the point where adding a second competitive dancer starts sounding like an efficiency measure.

    But that’s how embedded this world has become in our family.

    It isn’t something we occasionally attend anymore.

    It is part of the rhythm of our lives.

    Nationals Is a Holiday. Sort Of.

    This year nationals took us to Daytona.

    We were there for seven days and, thanks to some flight credits I needed to use, we flew rather than drove.

    We spent plenty of time at the beach.

    We ate out.

    A lot.

    That last part belongs firmly in the expense column.

    We had a great time and absolutely treated the trip as a family holiday.

    But out of seven days, we had exactly one day with no dance.

    That pretty much sums it up.

    Even the family holiday gets absorbed into the machinery.

    Dance first.

    Beach around it.

    Family trip to Daytona Beach during a week away for a national dance competition.
    We turned nationals in Daytona into our family holiday. Out of seven days, one was completely dance free.

    Then She Walks Onto the Stage

    After all of that, there is the actual dancing.

    I don’t get particularly nervous watching Georgia in group routines.

    The smaller groups, with five or so dancers, are fun.

    The enormous team productions can become a completely different challenge.

    Sometimes there are so many dancers moving on and off stage that if you don’t already know where Georgia is supposed to be, finding your own child becomes part of the entertainment.

    Then there’s her solo.

    That’s different.

    I get nervous.

    Really nervous.

    I feel like I watch the entire thing holding my breath.

    For those few minutes there is nowhere for her to disappear.

    It’s just her.

    And perhaps that’s when the hidden economy becomes visible to me.

    Not the dollars.

    Not the hotel.

    Not the petrol.

    Not the hours in the car.

    All the things behind it.

    The lessons.

    The rehearsals.

    The 4 a.m. makeup.

    Mum working at Bridgestone.

    Dad working from the car.

    The trips to Kentucky and Georgia.

    The week in Daytona.

    The costumes.

    The school juggling.

    All of it leads to one little girl standing alone under the lights doing the thing she loves. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel particularly complicated.

    What I’d Tell Another Parent

    If somebody with a five year old who loves dance asked me whether their child should try out for a competition team, I wouldn’t tell them not to.

    I’d tell them to understand the commitment.

    Because the child isn’t the only person joining the team.

    The family is.

    Competitive activities don’t simply occupy a line on the family calendar.

    Eventually they start rearranging the calendar around themselves.

    That doesn’t make them bad.

    It doesn’t make the money wasted.

    It simply means parents should understand what they’re saying yes to.

    Because if the child really loves it, you may be saying yes for quite a while.

    I Don’t Think There Was Ever Much Doubt

    Sometimes I think back to Georgia putting on her first ballet shoes in Australia.

    She was two.

    It would be tempting to say I never imagined that tiny ballet class would eventually lead to enormous American competition stages, seven routines, interstate travel, national competitions and an entire family economy operating behind her.

    But that wouldn’t really be true.

    She loved dance from the moment she put those shoes on.

    I don’t think there was ever much doubt we’d end up somewhere like this.

    The stages got bigger.

    The commitment got bigger.

    The bills definitely got bigger.

    But the reason we’re doing it hasn’t really changed at all.

    She loves to dance. Sometimes an entire family economy grows around something as simple as that.

    Georgia wearing her first ballet shoes at age two in Australia.
    It started with ballet at two years old in Australia. The scale has changed. Her love of dance hasn’t.

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  • I Want My Girls Safe Online. What Happens to Our Privacy?

    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.

    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.

    A man sits beside a phone and photographs of Australian and American neighbourhoods.
    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.

    A hand holds a phone beside a leather wallet on a living-room table, with the screen and ID details hidden.
    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.

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  • Why Americans Never Really Leave School Behind

    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.

    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.

    American college football supporters wearing university colours at a homecoming game.
    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.

    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.

    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.

    College marching band performing in Nashville
    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.

    Marching band at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville Tennessee
    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.

    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.

  • Why Americans Say “I Appreciate You” Instead of “Thank You”?

    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.

    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.

    I appreciate that refers to the action, while I appreciate you refers to the person
    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.

    Search asking whether saying “I appreciate you” is flirting
    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.

    Two strangers chatting casually in the aisle of a Dollar General store in Tennessee
    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.

    If you enjoy these observations about life between Australia and America and want to support the site, you can buy me a coffee below.

  • Apparently, I’m Old Now. The Evidence Is Becoming Difficult to Ignore

    Apparently, I’m Old Now. The Evidence Is Becoming Difficult to Ignore

    THIS WEEK IN AMERICA

    Nobody actually tells you when you get old.

    There is no letter.

    No government department quietly updates your status.

    Your children don’t gather around the kitchen table and explain that, after careful consideration, the family has decided you are no longer young.

    It happens much more subtly than that.

    One day you’re driving to get a haircut, flicking through radio stations, when you hear a Supertramp song.

    Excellent.

    Finally, somebody is playing some decent music.

    Then you hear the station call sign.

    Hippy Radio, playing your favourite golden oldies.

    I’m sorry. What?

    Apparently, while I was busy raising children, moving countries, paying bills and generally getting on with life, somebody moved the definition of “oldies.”

    Nobody consulted me.

    In my head, oldies are still songs from some distant historical period involving enormous wooden stereos, orange dining chairs and greenish carpet.

    I know this because we actually had the orange dining chairs and greenish carpet.

    But that’s beside the point.

    Supertramp is not oldies.

    At least it wasn’t until the radio informed me otherwise.

    Retro 1970s living room with wood paneling, plaid sofa, orange curtains and green shag carpet.
    In my head, this is still what the oldies station is supposed to look like.

    The strange thing about being 52 is that I don’t wander around feeling 52.

    I’m not entirely sure what 52 is supposed to feel like, but presumably this is it.

    Most mornings I still feel fundamentally like the same person I’ve always been. There isn’t some older bloke occupying my body and issuing instructions.

    Then the outside world provides evidence.

    Music is particularly ruthless about this.

    Songs you remember being released start appearing on classic stations. Albums from your youth have anniversary editions commemorating numbers of years that seem mathematically impossible.

    Eventually you hear a song and think, “I remember when this came out.”

    That sentence alone should probably come with reading glasses.

    The unsettling part isn’t really getting older.

    It’s watching things that still feel contemporary in your memory become nostalgia for everybody else.

    There is a difference.

    I don’t hear the music of my younger years and think, “Ah yes, a fascinating artifact from another era.”

    I hear it and think, “Turn it up.”

    The historical artifact, apparently, is me.

    Having young children was supposed to protect me

    So I thought I’d found a loophole.

    I have two young daughters, Georgia and Brianna, which means contemporary culture arrives in our house whether I request it or not.

    I know who Olivia Rodrigo and Ariana Grande are. You can even hear me occasionally playing some of their songs on piano or guitar while the girls sing.

    For brief periods, this creates the reassuring illusion that I remain culturally current.

    Then they start talking about Squishies.

    If you haven’t encountered Squishies, congratulations.

    They’re soft foam objects that you squeeze.

    Then you watch them slowly return to their original shape.

    That’s essentially the business model.

    Naturally, one Squishy is never enough. They appear to multiply around the house when nobody is looking.

    There are Squishies shaped like hamburgers, hot dogs and various other foods.

    There are even sticks of butter.

    Yep, a foam stick of butter.

    Thousands of years of human civilization brought us agriculture, democracy, antibiotics, air travel and the internet, eventually allowing us to reach our ultimate destination:

    squeezable butter that cannot be eaten.

    My daughters love them.

    This is one of the interesting things about being a parent at this age. You don’t completely lose touch with youth culture because youth culture keeps being dumped on your kitchen counter.

    You simply become an observer rather than a participant, or the one that pays for it each time you walk past Five Below.

    Colorful Squishy toys, including a stick of butter, hamburger, hot dog and other food shapes, arranged on a kitchen table.
    Thousands of years of human civilization, and somehow we arrived at a foam stick of butter.

    Then your childhood becomes ancient history

    The girls delivered another reminder recently when I decided to introduce them to Home and Away.

    For Americans unfamiliar with it, Home and Away is one of those Australian television programs that doesn’t really require an introduction if you grew up there.

    It began in 1988.

    When I was growing up, it was simply part of the landscape.

    Summer Bay. Alf Stewart. Teenagers experiencing an extraordinary number of personal crises for people living beside such a beautiful beach.

    It was there after school.

    It was there year after year.

    More importantly, it is still on television.

    So I thought I’d introduce my American daughters to this important piece of Australian culture.

    They weren’t impressed.

    It was, I was informed, “too old.”

    Too old?

    It’s still on!

    I wasn’t asking them to sit through a flickering black and white newsreel while somebody played a piano in the corner.

    This is a television show that is currently being made.

    Unfortunately, there is a flaw in my argument.

    When your father introduces you to a television program that began 38 years ago, you are entitled to ask questions.

    I don’t particularly care for that mathematics, but I acknowledge its existence.

    There’s something fascinating about showing your children the culture you grew up with.

    You’re not merely showing them a television program or playing them a song.

    You’re handing them a tiny piece of your own history.

    This mattered to me.

    This made me laugh.

    This was normal in my house.

    This is what Australia looked and sounded like when I was growing up.

    Then your child looks at it with absolutely none of the nostalgia attached and effectively says:

    “Yeah. Bit old.”

    Children are excellent at historical perspective.

    Home and Away title over an aerial view of an Australian beach and ocean.
    Home and Away has been on Australian television since 1988. Apparently that makes it “too old” for my daughters.

    Famous children should not be allowed to become adults

    There is another particularly aggressive way the universe reminds you how much time has passed.

    Children you remember from television become adults.

    I recently discovered Honey Boo Boo had turned 21.

    She can legally walk into a bar in America and order a drink.

    This is just not on!

    Certain people from television are supposed to remain permanently frozen at whatever age they were when we first encountered them.

    Macaulay Culkin should still be defending his house from burglars.

    Kevin Arnold should still be trying to work out what Winnie Cooper thinks of him.

    Honey Boo Boo should definitely not be old enough to order a cocktail.

    The problem isn’t that these people age.

    It’s what their aging reveals about us.

    If the child you remember watching on television is now a fully grown adult, all those years happened to you as well.

    Celebrity birthdays therefore become less like entertainment news and more like unsolicited medical information.

    I have decided not to investigate this phenomenon any further.

    Then I saw the other side of getting older

    Eventually, I arrived at the haircut that had started this entire crisis.

    Since moving to America, I’ve generally had my hair cut at Sport Clips.

    Even after eight years in the United States, I still appreciate how simply American the entire concept is.

    You get a haircut.

    You watch sport.

    Why should these activities have ever been separate?

    The only obvious flaw in the business model is the absence of a bar.

    At the location I visited, roughly a dozen televisions were showing sport, but none of them provided the main entertainment that afternoon.

    A young boy was having an absolutely spectacular tantrum because he did not want his hair cut.

    Not mild resistance.

    This child had taken a position.

    There would be no haircut.

    Negotiations had failed.

    Diplomatic relations had broken down.

    Scissors had apparently become an instrument of oppression.

    His poor grandmother was attempting something every parent eventually attempts: reasoning with a small person who has absolutely no interest in reason.

    I remember those years.

    You can present a three year old with a seven point argument, supporting documentation, photographic evidence and independent witnesses.

    They will listen carefully to the entire presentation.

    “No.”

    Watching this unfold, something occurred to me.

    My girls are past that stage.

    I don’t have to wrestle somebody into a haircut chair anymore.

    There’s no carrying a screaming child out of a shop while avoiding eye contact with everyone watching.

    I don’t have to cut food into precisely the correct shape only to discover that today’s correct shape is different from yesterday’s correct shape.

    I don’t have to negotiate with tiny terrorists over shoes.

    Suddenly, getting older didn’t seem quite so terrible.

    Georgia and Brianna posing in front of rockets at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
    My girls are well past the haircut tantrum stage. These days, life with them looks a little more like this.

    Maybe we’re asking the wrong question about getting older

    We spend an extraordinary amount of energy trying not to get old.

    Buying products promising to make us look younger.

    Celebrating people who somehow don’t appear to age.

    We joke about aching backs, grey hair and needing to make the font bigger on our phones.

    I understand all of it.

    But sitting in that barber shop, watching a grandmother conduct peace negotiations over a haircut, I wondered whether we’ve made aging sound like something that simply takes things away.

    It gives you things too.

    Perspective is one of them.

    At 52, I know myself considerably better than I did at 22.

    I care much less about impressing people who aren’t particularly important to me.

    I’ve had different careers. Moved countries. Raised children. I’ve made good decisions and spectacularly questionable ones.

    I’ve accumulated enough life to know that many things that seem catastrophic while you’re living through them eventually become stories.

    Some even become funny stories.

    You also begin to understand how temporary the stages of life really are.

    When your children are tiny, it feels permanent.

    The sleepless nights feel permanent.

    The tantrums feel permanent.

    The toys covering the floor feel permanent.

    Then one afternoon you’re sitting in a barber shop watching somebody else negotiate with a screaming child and realize that part of your own life quietly ended without you noticing.

    There wasn’t a ceremony for that either.

    That’s the strange thing about getting older.

    We notice the things we’re losing because they’re obvious.

    The grey hair.

    The younger face.

    The ability to stand up from the floor without making a noise.

    We don’t always notice what we’re gaining at the same time.

    I don’t actually want to be 22 again

    This may be the greatest revelation of all.

    I’m not particularly interested in being young again.

    There are certainly things I’d happily borrow from my younger self. His metabolism would be useful.

    His knees wouldn’t hurt.

    He also had considerably less white hair.

    But would I actually trade places with him?

    Probably not.

    He hadn’t met my daughters.

    Hadn’t lived in America.

    He hadn’t experienced most of the things that eventually made him me.

    Getting older isn’t something happening instead of life.

    It is life.

    Perhaps the trick isn’t desperately trying to remain young.

    Perhaps it’s remaining interested.

    Keep listening to new music even if you still think the old stuff is better.

    Let your children explain whatever bizarre thing their generation has decided is important.

    Try new things.

    Pay attention.

    Keep being surprised.

    Keep finding things funny.

    Just don’t become the person who decides everything worthwhile happened during the twenty years when they happened to be young.

    I’ll accept 52.

    Even the white hair.

    I’ll accept that Home and Away began 38 years ago, although I reserve the right to complain about it.

    But Supertramp being classified as golden oldies?

    No.

    There are limits.

    If somebody wants to send me an official notification that I’m old, that’s fine.

    Just make sure they include the cardigan.

    I’ll probably need it.

    Prefer watching instead? This entire identity crisis began with a perfectly innocent drive to get a haircut.

    If you enjoy these stories about an Australian slowly trying to make sense of America, parenthood, getting older and whatever else life decides to throw at me, you can support From Down Under to Down South through Buy Me a Coffee. It helps keep the videos, articles and podcast coming, and I genuinely appreciate everyone who helps make this little corner of the internet possible.

  • Can You Love Your New Country Without Loving Your Old One Less?

    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 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.

    Canberra Australia and Lake Burley Griffin balloon festival
    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.

    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.

    Michael Saville holding his U.S. citizenship certificate beside an American flag after becoming a U.S. citizen.
    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.

    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.

    Family of four smiling together after building a life in the United States.
    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.

    NSW rural fire services fight a large fire in Australia
    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.

    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.

    Enjoyed this article?

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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.

  • What Tennessee Lost When Dolly Parton Died

    What Tennessee Lost When Dolly Parton Died

    THIS WEEK IN AMERICA

    There are famous people whose deaths you hear about.

    Then there are the ones you feel.

    Dolly Parton died on August 25, and here in Tennessee, you could feel it almost immediately.

    It wasn’t simply another celebrity death appearing on television screens and social media feeds. People were crying. Flowers appeared outside her home. Schools found their own ways to remember her. Radio stations played her music. Conversations that normally had nothing to do with country music somehow ended up being about Dolly.

    I cried too.

    That surprised me a little.

    I knew she’d been unwell. Only days earlier I’d watched an interview with her. She still looked happy. She still sounded like Dolly. There was nothing about it that made me think I was watching one of the final interviews she would ever give.

    Then she was gone.

    Over the next few days, I watched Tennessee react to losing someone who had been part of this state for generations.

    And I began to understand that people here weren’t simply mourning a famous country singer.

    They were mourning something much closer to home.

    Our family at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, with the Smoky Mountains in the background.
    A family trip to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. Living in Tennessee changed the way I came to understand Dolly Parton and her connection to this part of the state.

    Dolly Was Different in Tennessee

    I grew up in Australia, so Dolly Parton existed in my life long before Tennessee did.

    She was already one of those people who seemed permanently famous.

    The hair.

    The rhinestones.

    The voice.

    The jokes.

    The songs everybody somehow knew, even if they claimed they didn’t listen to country music.

    But living in Tennessee changed the way I saw her.

    Celebrity looks different when you live close enough to see the fingerprints someone has left behind.

    I’ve been to Dollywood several times. What always struck me about the place wasn’t simply that Dolly Parton owned a theme park.

    Plenty of famous people can put their name on something.

    Dollywood feels connected to the place that made her.

    There are craftsmen, music, old Appalachian traditions, reminders of mountain life and pieces of a culture that could very easily have been polished away in the name of creating something newer and shinier.

    Dolly became one of the most recognisable women on Earth without ever appearing remotely embarrassed by the mountains she came from.

    Quite the opposite.

    She took them with her.

    I think that’s one of the things I came to admire most about her.

    Success didn’t seem to require pretending she had come from somewhere else.

    I’ve even been eyeing a Dolly Parton TIME cover poster for the wall of my studio. Eight years ago, I’m not sure that would ever have occurred to me. Now it feels strangely appropriate.

    The Dolly Parton You Heard About Around Town

    Living around Nashville also means occasionally meeting people whose worlds have crossed with people you’ve only ever seen on television.

    Over the years I’ve met several people who knew Dolly.

    One woman had worked as her videographer.

    When Dolly came up in conversation, she described someone remarkably similar to the public version the rest of us knew.

    Funny.

    Sassy.

    Energetic.

    Caring.

    That always stayed with me because celebrity reputations often become considerably less impressive the closer you get to them.

    Dolly’s seemed to work the other way.

    There’s even an antique store not far from where we live where the owner has a photograph of herself with her. Apparently she used to drop in and browse.

    That image of Dolly somehow feels more Tennessee to me than a red carpet ever could.

    Dolly Parton, international superstar, wandering around an antique store.

    Yep.

    That really fits.

    A few years ago, when I was working as a bank manager in Franklin, Tennessee, I saw another side of her that I’ve never forgotten.

    Occasionally, checks would appear.

    They had Dolly Parton’s signature on them.

    Sometimes they were for $10,000.

    Sometimes $20,000.

    They were going to ordinary families who were struggling.

    There wasn’t a television crew standing beside them.

    Or an oversized novelty check.

    There wasn’t a press conference explaining what a wonderful person Dolly Parton was.

    Someone needed help.

    She helped.

    Working in banking meant I obviously couldn’t go home and start telling everybody whose accounts I’d seen. But I remember looking at those checks and thinking about how extraordinary it would be to have reached a point in life where you could quietly alter the course of someone else’s life.

    More importantly, it made me think about what I was doing with mine.

    That’s a fairly impressive legacy for a piece of paper.

    Carnton historic home in Franklin, Tennessee.
    Carnton in Franklin, Tennessee. It was while working as a bank manager in Franklin that I caught a small glimpse of Dolly Parton’s quiet generosity.

    Tennessee Didn’t Mourn Her Like a Celebrity

    In the days after Dolly died, I began noticing something interesting about the way Tennessee responded.

    There were certainly the expected tributes.

    Pink.

    Boots.

    Sparkles.

    Music.

    But there was something underneath all of that.

    Schools across Middle Tennessee encouraged children to wear pink or western clothes, bring books and perform acts of kindness. At Gladeville Middle School, students were invited to take part in a “What Would Dolly Do?” kindness challenge.

    At my daughters’ school, the principal spoke to the children over the loudspeaker.

    She asked them to honour Dolly through kindness.

    Not by listening to one of her records.

    Not by finding the biggest blonde wig in Tennessee.

    Kindness.

    Of everything they could have chosen to represent her, that’s what they chose.

    Meanwhile, mourners gathered outside Dolly’s Brentwood home in such numbers that flowers, signs and balloons accumulated around the property and police eventually had to manage traffic in the area.

    This wasn’t simply Tennessee saying goodbye to someone famous.

    It felt much more like people saying goodbye to someone they believed belonged to them.

    Or perhaps someone they believed they belonged to.

    There’s a difference.

    Tennessee tribute to Dolly Parton following her death in August 2026.
    Dolly Parton’s house in Brentwood Tennessee

    Then I Started Thinking About Mum

    My mum loved Dolly.

    She had her albums.

    One of my earliest memories of Dolly Parton’s music is Coat of Many Colors.

    I remember hearing it as a boy in Australia.

    More specifically, I remember Mum singing it.

    There were times when we didn’t have much money either.

    Mum worked hard. She loved horses, the country and life on the land. Given the opportunity, I think she would happily have disappeared onto a property somewhere with several horses and reappeared only when somebody reminded her she had children.

    There were parts of Dolly’s story that I think Mum understood instinctively.

    So when Dolly died, all those old memories suddenly came rushing back.

    My mum died four years ago.

    Grief does something strange after enough time has passed.

    It stops occupying the whole room.

    You learn to live around it.

    Days go by.

    Then weeks.

    You work. Take the kids to school. You complain about the electricity bill. You wonder why nobody in the house except you appears capable of replacing an empty toilet roll.

    Life resumes its normal nonsense.

    Then something completely unexpected opens a door you didn’t know was still there.

    A song.

    A smell.

    A photograph.

    Or apparently, the death of Dolly Parton.

    Suddenly I wasn’t only thinking about the woman Tennessee had lost.

    I was thinking about the woman I’d lost too.

    My mum helping her granddaughter Georgia sit on her horse in Australia.
    Mum helping Georgia onto a horse. She loved horses, the country and life on the land. I think there were parts of Dolly’s story she understood.

    A Song Somehow Travelled 9,000 Miles With Me

    The strange part is where life eventually took me.

    Imagine explaining this to the little Australian boy listening to his mum singing Coat of Many Colors.

    One day you’ll move to America.

    Not just America.

    Tennessee.

    You’ll visit the Smoky Mountains that Dolly sang about.

    Go to Dollywood.

    You’ll meet people who knew her.

    Even see small evidence of things she did for people when nobody was watching.

    Then decades after first hearing those songs on the other side of the world, you’ll be living just outside Nashville when Tennessee wakes to the news that Dolly Parton is gone.

    Life is ridiculous sometimes.

    We talk about migration in terms of places.

    I moved from Australia to America.

    That’s geographically true.

    But I’m increasingly convinced that when you move countries, you don’t leave one life behind and start another.

    You carry bits of the old one with you.

    Songs.

    Expressions.

    Memories.

    People.

    Most of the time they sit quietly in the background.

    Then something happens in your new home that suddenly reaches all the way back into your old one.

    For me, Dolly Parton became one of those bridges.

    A woman from the mountains of East Tennessee was part of my childhood in Australia because my mum loved her music.

    Decades later, East Tennessee became part of my own life.

    I don’t know that I could have written a more unlikely circle if I’d tried.

    I talked about that strange connection between Dolly, Tennessee and Mum on This Week in America. You can hear the original story below.

    Maybe That’s Why Dolly Meant So Much

    I’ve joked for years that if aliens ever arrive and demand to meet someone who represents humanity, we shouldn’t send a politician.

    Send Dolly Parton.

    Give her twenty minutes.

    We’ll probably be fine.

    It’s a joke, obviously.

    Mostly.

    But there’s a reason it works.

    Dolly managed something that’s becoming increasingly difficult.

    People who disagreed about almost everything seemed capable of liking her.

    She had her own beliefs, but she never seemed interested in turning every interaction into a test of whether you shared them.

    Dolly was deeply rooted in her faith and her culture without expecting everybody else to be exactly like her. She could make fun of herself without diminishing herself, and become extraordinarily successful without pretending she’d achieved it alone.

    Perhaps most remarkably, after making enormous amounts of money, she still seemed to notice people who didn’t have much.

    That’s much rarer than a good singing voice.

    Her Imagination Library has also put hundreds of millions of free books into the hands of children, an extraordinary extension of something Tennessee families had known about her for decades: she cared deeply about where she came from and believed success carried some responsibility to give something back.

    Dollywood has already announced that it intends to preserve that philosophy as it develops tributes to her legacy, including places for reflection and new experiences built around dreaming, storytelling and kindness.

    That seems right.

    Because I don’t think Dolly Parton’s most important legacy is Jolene.

    Or 9 to 5.

    Or even I Will Always Love You.

    It’s certainly not the wigs.

    Although, fair play, that’s a fairly substantial body of work on its own.

    I think her real legacy is much simpler.

    She came from very little.

    Achieved almost everything.

    She never seemed to become embarrassed by the people or the place she came from.

    And somewhere along the way, she made a lot of people want to be a little kinder.

    That’s not bad for one life.

    Goodbye, Dolly

    Tennessee feels a little different without her.

    I imagine it will for quite some time.

    For me, though, her death will always be connected to something more personal.

    I’ll think about Mum singing Dolly’s songs in Australia.

    About growing up without much money.

    I’ll think about horses and country life and those records playing when I was a boy.

    About the absurd route that eventually brought me from there to here.

    And perhaps that’s one of the gifts music gives us.

    It attaches itself to people.

    We think we’re remembering a song when we’re actually remembering a kitchen, a car, a childhood, a parent or a version of ourselves that disappeared years ago.

    Dolly Parton belonged to Tennessee.

    But somehow, a little piece of her belonged to my mum too.

    I hope wherever they both are, Mum finally gets to see the concert.

    Knowing Mum, she’ll probably want decent seats.

    Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at sunset in the Great Smoky Mountains.
    Gatlinburg, Tennessee, at sunset. Somehow the mountains Dolly sang about became part of my life too.

    If you enjoy these stories about life in America through Australian eyes, you can help support From Down Under to Down South with a coffee. Every coffee helps me keep writing, recording and sharing the stories I find along the way. Thank you for being here.

  • The Plague Hath Arrived: And Still the Children Want Snacks

    The Plague Hath Arrived: And Still the Children Want Snacks

    Getting sick when you live overseas can make you realise just how much of your old support system you left behind. It’s not simply that your family lives far away. It’s that when something goes wrong, the people who would normally step in and help can’t physically be there.

    Our family discovered that the hard way recently when all four of us got COVID.

    At one point, my wife Nikki and I were both completely wiped out while our two daughters, aged ten and seven, were sick as well. When one parent gets sick, the other can usually pick up the slack. When both parents are sick at the same time, things get considerably more complicated.

    The kids still needed feeding and looking after. There was washing to do, food to organise and a house that somehow continued producing dirty dishes despite nobody having the energy to do anything.

    For the first time in eight years of living in America, I found myself seriously wondering: what are we actually supposed to do if we both get too sick to manage this?

    Cold and flu supplies with tissues, tea, medicine and cough drops on a kitchen table.
    At this point, our kitchen table was starting to look like a small pharmacy.

    Sick Children Have a Remarkable Ability to Recover When There’s Something to Fight About

    Thankfully, our girls are old enough to do some things for themselves. They can get a drink, find a snack and entertain themselves without constant supervision.

    They are not, however, old enough to look after two very sick parents.

    They also demonstrated a fascinating feature of childhood illness. One minute, one of them would be lying on the couch looking miserable and telling us how terrible she felt. Twenty minutes later, both girls would be running around like crazed squirrels fighting over the television remote.

    Apparently COVID symptoms can temporarily disappear when your sister changes the channel.

    Then the fight would end and one of them would return to the couch.

    “Dad, I don’t feel well.”

    Neither did I, but unlike them, I hadn’t just completed a 100 yard dash through the house.

    At one point their continued demands inspired me to write a Shakespearean proclamation for the household:

    A plague hath descended upon this house, and both Mother and Father lie stricken, weak of limb and weary of spirit. Yet the young heirs show no mercy.

    If thou hungerest, seek thee the pantry. If thou thirstest, journey forth unto the kitchen.

    Cry havoc, and let slip the children.

    It summed up the week surprisingly well.

    When Cooking Becomes Too Much Effort

    Food was one of the first things to fall apart.

    We relied on takeaway far more than we normally would because neither of us had the energy to cook. There’s a particular level of sickness where having ingredients in the fridge becomes irrelevant. Chicken and vegetables might technically constitute dinner, but only if someone has enough energy to turn them into dinner.

    We didn’t.

    Delivery drivers became our humanitarian aid workers. Leave the food at the front door, retreat to a safe distance and we’ll retrieve the supplies when able.

    I also managed to place an Instacart grocery order while exhausted and sleep deprived. When it arrived, I started unpacking things I had absolutely no memory of ordering.

    Scallion noodles?

    Apparently so.

    There were several other random purchases that made perfect sense to whichever version of me had been scrolling through Instacart at the time. It was like receiving a grocery order selected by a stranger, except the stranger was me.

    Packages of Momofuku soy and scallion noodles and tingly chili noodles from a mystery Instacart order while sick with COVID.
    Apparently COVID Michael decided we needed several packs of noodles. I have absolutely no memory of ordering them.

    Three Hours of Sleep Felt Like a Luxury Holiday

    Sleep became another problem. I went an extraordinary amount of time without getting any meaningful rest because every time I started drifting off, I would cough or wake up uncomfortable.

    Eventually I ordered sleep gummies from Amazon and paid extra for expedited same-day delivery.

    This was no longer casual online shopping. I needed those gummies.

    Amazon cancelled the delivery.

    Of all the packages to cancel, this felt personal.

    Eventually I remembered that we had some older sleep gummies in the house. They were out of date, which would normally have been enough for me to leave them alone. After that long without sleep, however, the expiration date started looking more like a suggestion.

    They worked.

    I slept for more than three hours in a row and woke up feeling as though I’d just returned from a two-week wellness retreat.

    COVID Cancelled Almost Everything Else

    Being sick gradually made our world smaller.

    The girls missed school.

    Georgia and Brianna missed dance classes.

    There wasn’t really a choice. Sending a child with COVID into a dance studio full of other children would have been a spectacularly bad idea.

    I had to cancel my own ballroom dancing too. There was absolutely no chance I had enough energy for that. I could barely foxtrot to the bathroom.

    Work became difficult for another reason: I had virtually no voice.

    A large part of what I do involves YouTube, podcasting and recording. My computer was sitting there, scripts were ready and there were things I wanted to make, but I couldn’t talk without coughing.

    It’s a strange frustration when you technically have everything you need to work except the physical ability to do it.

    Empty home recording setup with a microphone on a boom arm while illness prevented me from recording YouTube videos and podcasts.
    My microphone sat unused while COVID took away my voice and brought YouTube, podcasting and voice work to a temporary halt.

    Who Do You Call When Both Parents Are Sick?

    At the worst point, I found myself wondering whether there was some kind of government service for families in this situation.

    I genuinely didn’t know.

    What happens if both parents become too sick to properly care for their children? We weren’t at the point where we couldn’t look after ours, but lying there completely exhausted made me wonder what would happen if we got worse.

    Then I realised that if we were living in Canberra, I probably wouldn’t have been thinking about government departments at all.

    We would have called Nikki’s mum.

    She doesn’t live in Canberra, but I know she would have got in the car and driven there to help us.

    That one thought completely changed how I saw the week.

    The Invisible Support System You Leave Behind

    When people talk about emigrating, they usually understand that they’re leaving family and friends behind. You know you’ll miss birthdays and Christmases. You know you won’t be able to simply pop around for dinner.

    What I don’t think I fully understood was that I was also leaving behind a practical support system.

    It’s the person who can pick up your children when you can’t. Someone who brings dinner because they know you’re struggling. A grandparent who can watch the kids for a few hours while you sleep.

    It doesn’t take much.

    If Nikki’s mum had been able to come over, we wouldn’t have expected her to magically fix everything. Just having one healthy adult in the house would have made an enormous difference.

    Someone could deal with the girls while we slept, make some food or simply say, “Go to bed. I’ve got this.”

    After eight years in America, that was one of the rare occasions when the distance between here and Australia felt enormous.

    Family of four smiling together during a trip to Australia.
    Our family together in Australia — a reminder that although we’ve built our life in America, much of the family support network we left behind is still on the other side of the world.

    Technology Can’t Replace Being There

    Living overseas today is easier in many ways than it was a generation ago. We can video call family in Australia, send photos instantly and stay involved in each other’s lives from thousands of miles away.

    But there are limits.

    A video call can’t make dinner. It can’t collect your children from school, go to the shops or sit with the kids while both parents get some desperately needed sleep.

    There are moments when emotional closeness isn’t enough. You need someone physically close enough to show up.

    Friends can absolutely become part of that support network, but asking a friend to enter your COVID-infested house and take care of your sick children is quite an ask.

    Family can be different. Sometimes all you have to say is, “We need help.”

    Our Kids Miss That Proximity Too

    This experience also made me think about something I rarely consider: our daughters are growing up without grandparents nearby.

    They know their grandparents and love them, but they don’t have the everyday version of that relationship where you can simply go to Nan’s for the afternoon or a grandparent can unexpectedly pick you up from school.

    To them, that’s completely normal because it’s the only life they’ve known.

    During sickness though, I didn’t only wish someone could help Nikki and me. I wished there was another healthy adult nearby for the girls.

    They were sick too, despite occasionally transforming into crazed squirrels, and they still needed their parents.

    Unfortunately, their parents were operating at about four percent.

    I Wasn’t Homesick. I Missed Having Backup.

    That was probably the biggest realisation of the whole experience.

    I wasn’t lying in bed wishing we could move back to Australia. I wasn’t dreaming about Canberra, Australian food or the places I used to know.

    America is home. Our lives are here.

    What I missed was having backup.

    There’s a difference.

    You can love the life you’ve built overseas while recognising that there are things you gave up to build it. You can feel completely at home in your new country and still occasionally wish the people who would drop everything to help you lived a little closer.

    Most of the time, I don’t notice the 9,000 miles between us and Australia.

    This time I did.

    Getting sick reminded me that one of the hardest parts of living overseas isn’t necessarily missing home. Sometimes it’s discovering all the things you never realised home used to do for you.

    And I learned one other valuable lesson.

    Never place all your faith in same-day Amazon delivery during a plague.

  • Starting Over at 49 Was Harder Than I Expected

    Starting Over at 49 Was Harder Than I Expected

    In the past three years, I’ve applied for more than 2500 jobs.

    That number sounds made up.

    Honestly, if somebody had told me a few years ago that a former regional banking manager with 24 years of experience would end up applying for Amazon warehouse jobs, driving for Uber, uploading résumés at midnight and getting rejected from roles he could probably do blindfolded… I would’ve assumed they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere.

    But here we are.

    And somewhere between application number 700 and application number 1800, I realised modern job searching has become its own form of psychological warfare.

    Upload your résumé.

    Now manually type your résumé back into smaller boxes.

    Write a cover letter.

    Now answer personality questions designed to determine whether you’re passionate enough about moving cardboard boxes.

    Then hear absolutely nothing ever again.

    I suspect I may now hold the unofficial world record for hearing nothing from HR departments.

    The strange part is… I wasn’t always “starting over.”

    I’ve actually done this before.

    Apparently I Have a Habit of Reinventing Myself

    When I left high school in Australia, I completed a four-year chef’s apprenticeship.

    Young Australian chef early in his hospitality career before later transitioning into banking and eventually media and storytelling.
    Before banking, there was hospitality, kitchens, Samoa, and another life altogether.

    I eventually became a sous chef and then landed an executive chef role in Samoa. Later I moved into hotel management in Fiji.

    Then I came back to Australia and realised something uncomfortable:

    I didn’t want to do it anymore.

    So I started again.

    I got a job as a bank teller.

    That somehow turned into a 24-year banking career.

    Over time I worked my way up through management until eventually I became a regional banking manager.

    Australian regional banking manager during his corporate career before leaving banking and later rebuilding his life in Tennessee.
    On paper, this probably looked like success. In many ways, it was.

    On paper, it probably looked like success.

    And financially, in many ways, it was.

    But toward the end, my life had quietly narrowed into work.

    I was commuting three hours a day.

    Working six days a week.

    Seventy-hour weeks had become normal.

    My youngest daughter was three and barely knew me.

    I’d become one of those blokes who spends his entire life providing for his family while somehow barely getting to participate in it.

    Then came the moment that broke me.

    In July 2023, after finally securing a transfer closer to home, my boss had me fire my second-in-charge before I even started. I’d have no backup which meant even longer hours.

    Then I was informed my office was being removed.

    No desk.

    No office.

    After 24 years.

    I quit on the spot.

    No backup plan.

    No next job.

    Nothing.

    At the time, I thought I was escaping burnout.

    In hindsight, I think I was also escaping a version of myself.

    The Part Nobody Talks About

    When most people picture unemployment, they imagine somebody sitting around not wanting to work.

    That wasn’t my reality at all.

    I wanted to work.

    I just didn’t want my entire identity consumed by corporate life anymore.

    When I first moved to America, I actually hoped I could transition into something more meaningful.

    Fraud or Investigations.

    Just wanting to help people without chasing targets and goals.

    Something where experience mattered.

    Instead, after four or five months, I ended up back in retail banking managing a downtown branch.

    And somehow, years later, I found myself sitting in front of LinkedIn at midnight applying for literally everything.

    Insurance roles.

    Fraud teams.

    Case management.

    911 dispatcher positions.

    Local police departments.

    Sheriff’s offices.

    Warehouse jobs.

    At one point I think I applied for enough positions to qualify as a full-time applicant.

    Laptop displaying online job applications late at night during a prolonged period of unemployment and career rebuilding.
    Somewhere along the way, job searching became its own full-time job.

    The strangest part was being simultaneously “overqualified” and unemployable.

    In the very few interviews I actually got, people would ask me why I wanted such “basic” jobs.

    Which is a very polite way of saying:

    “Why is somebody with your background here?”

    The truth?

    Because bills still arrive and kids still need dance lessons.

    Because groceries still cost money and pride doesn’t pay the electricity bill.

    And because somewhere along the way, I realised I no longer cared about status nearly as much as I cared about having a life.

    The Job I Thought Changed Everything

    There was one role that nearly broke me emotionally.

    A position with the Department of Community Services.

    It genuinely felt like the first job I’d ever applied for that aligned with who I actually was.

    I would’ve been working with victims of human trafficking and child abuse. Things I had experience in as a Bank Manager.

    Helping people.

    Something meaningful.

    I had a phone interview.

    Then a panel interview.

    Then I got the call.

    I got the job.

    I accepted it.

    Long government building hallway symbolizing the emotional weight and disappointment of losing a meaningful job opportunity later in life.
    For a little while, I thought I’d finally found something meaningful.

    I remember feeling absolutely ecstatic. Telling people excitedly.

    Honestly, I thought maybe my entire career had been leading toward this.

    Then it disappeared.

    Background checks revealed I didn’t have a university degree.

    Nobody had mentioned one was required.

    I had 24 years of banking leadership experience.

    International experience.

    Extensive management experience.

    The Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court as one of my references.

    Didn’t matter.

    No degree.

    No job.

    That one flattened me.

    I think that was the moment job searching stopped feeling frustrating and started feeling personal.

    After that, even the thought of another application made me physically recoil.

    The Quiet Shame of Starting Over Later in Life

    I’m 52 now.

    And while nobody will openly say it, I do believe age plays a role.

    Maybe it was age, or maybe it was being Australian.

    Maybe it was experience or that employers saw somebody who’d managed large teams and assumed I’d leave.

    Or maybe they preferred younger graduates, maybe all of it.

    I’ll never know.

    But I do know this:

    At some point, repeated rejection stops feeling professional and starts feeling existential.

    You stop wondering:

    “Why didn’t I get the job?”

    And start wondering:

    “Has the world quietly decided I’m past my use-by date?”

    That’s a hard feeling to explain to people.

    Especially as a man who spent most of his adult life being the provider.

    For years my role was simple:

    Work.

    Provide.

    Keep moving.

    And to be fair, I did that.

    But I also burned myself out doing it. Multiple times.

    I missed huge parts of life while climbing ladders that, in hindsight, weren’t attached to anything meaningful.

    Losing my Mum a few years ago changed something in me too.

    It made me realise life is a lot more fragile than corporations would like us to believe.

    One day you’re working 70-hour weeks.

    The next day the people you spoke to every day disappear.

    That was another strange lesson.

    People you think are your friends at work often aren’t.

    The moment you leave the system, the system moves on.

    Very quickly.

    The Unexpected Part

    Here’s the part I didn’t expect.

    Somewhere inside all this uncertainty, I accidentally found parts of myself again.

    Australian ballroom dancer practicing in Tennessee after rediscovering creativity, movement and identity beyond corporate life.
    Somewhere during all of this, I found my way back onto a dance floor too.

    I rediscovered dance.

    Built a media brand from scratch.

    I taught myself podcasting.

    Audio editing.

    Video editing.

    Writing.

    Graphics.

    Storytelling.

    I spend over 40 hours a week building it now. I’m sitting here at midnight writing this.

    Australian creator and podcaster building a media brand from home in Tennessee after leaving a long corporate banking career.
    Building the brand didn’t just give me work. It gave me a creative life again.

    And the funny part is… it doesn’t feel like work.

    Not because it isn’t real work.

    It absolutely is.

    But because for the first time in a very long time, it actually feels like me.

    Ironically, people often don’t see content creation as a “real job.”

    So these days when somebody asks what I do, I usually say:

    “I’m a writer.”

    That tends to confuse people less than saying:

    “I’m an Australian YouTuber and podcaster living in Tennessee trying to explain American goodbyes to the internet.”

    But while the financial side has been difficult, this period also gave me something banking never could.

    Time.

    I’ve been able to drive my daughters Georgia and Brianna to school.

    Take them to dance.

    Australian father with his daughters in Tennessee after leaving corporate banking and rebuilding a more present family life.
    For years I provided for my family. This period finally let me participate in it.

    Music lessons.

    Do the groceries.

    Be present.

    And honestly?

    I’ve loved it.

    I think somewhere along the way, I realised the version of success I’d spent decades chasing may not actually have been mine.

    So Where Does That Leave Me?

    Recently, after nearly three years of applications and rejection, I was offered a part-time job in a completely unrelated field.

    The interview was quick.

    Simple.

    Human.

    And the next day they offered me the role.

    No endless personality tests, or corporate theatre.

    No twenty-stage recruitment process requiring the emotional resilience of a Navy SEAL.

    Just:

    “You seem capable. We’d like to hire you.”

    Honestly, I felt everything at once.

    Relief.

    Exhaustion.

    Sadness.

    Gratitude.

    Maybe even grief.

    Because part of me wanted the media brand to become fully sustainable before I ever had to go back to regular employment.

    But another part of me knows something important now:

    I don’t actually want my old life back.

    Australian creator in Tennessee rediscovering humour and everyday joy after leaving a long corporate banking career.
    Turns out happiness sometimes looks less like a boardroom and more like bothering skeletons at a Spirit Halloween store.

    Financially?

    Sure.

    There are parts of it I miss.

    But the version of me who only existed to work?

    No.

    I’ve already done that.

    Twice, apparently.

    And maybe that’s the strangest lesson in all of this.

    Careers are chapters.

    Not identities.

    At 18, I thought I was a chef.

    Then at 30, I thought I was a banker.

    At 52, I’m honestly not completely sure what I am yet.

    But I know this:

    I’m bigger than my job title.

    And if this whole experience has taught me anything, it’s that starting over can happen to anyone.

    Even the people who looked successful from the outside.

    Life After Corporate Work

    There were nights during all of this where I’d finish another application, close the laptop, and wonder whether I’d somehow become invisible.

    That was part of the reason I started writing more honestly about identity, migration and life between cultures here on the website. Articles like What America Gets Right, After Living Here for 8 Years and When the Show Becomes the Focus came directly out of this period of my life.

    I think when your career identity starts falling apart a bit, you begin trying to make sense of yourself in other ways.

    For me, that became storytelling.

    Podcasting.

    Writing.

    And weirdly enough… ballroom dancing.

    Going back to dance after all these years genuinely helped my mental health more than I expected. There’s something strangely grounding about having to focus on timing, movement and not tripping over your own feet for ninety minutes.

    Honestly, this whole brand exists because I finally stopped pretending work was the only meaningful thing about me.

    If you’ve found yourself in that strange middle ground too — between careers, identities, countries, expectations, or versions of yourself — you might also connect with some of the other stories I’ve written:

    And if you prefer listening while driving, walking or pretending to exercise like I do, the podcast lives here too:

    From Down Under to Down South Podcast

    You’ll also find it on iTunes and Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

    These days I’m still building.

    Still figuring things out.

    Still trying to create something sustainable.

    But for the first time in a very long time, I actually feel connected to the life I’m living while I’m living it.

    And that feels worth something.

    If you’d like to support the brand while I continue building all this from Tennessee, you can also shout an Aussie creator a coffee here:

    Hoo roo maties.

  • The Small Things Australians Miss After Moving to America

    The Small Things Australians Miss After Moving to America

    You think the big things will be what you miss when you move overseas.

    Family. Friends. Familiar places.

    And you do miss those things.

    But honestly… some of the strongest homesickness hits come from standing in an American supermarket looking for chicken salt.

    Or opening a packet of “Australian-style” lollies and realising they just don’t taste right.

    I’ve lived in America for around eight years now, and over time I’ve realised that home slowly becomes a collection of tiny things.

    Little routines. Familiar foods. Smells. Phrases.

    Small comforts that quietly remind you who you are.

    Australian food care packages for expat overseas
    A typical care package from Australia never lasts long in our house.

    Vegemite Becomes a Survival Item

    We go through a lot of Vegemite in our house.

    We normally keep four or five jars in the cupboard at any given time.
    I have it most mornings on toast, and both of our girls love it too. Nikki’s mum sends it to us in bulk from Australia, so at any given moment there are usually four or five jars sitting in the cupboard like emergency supplies.

    If we ever got down to one jar, I’d probably start rationing it.

    Americans are fascinated by Vegemite too. Whenever friends come over, it eventually turns into:
    “Alright then… let’s see you try it.”

    The reactions are usually dramatic. But for Australians overseas, Vegemite isn’t really about the taste anymore. It’s familiarity. It’s routine. It’s sitting at the kitchen table in the morning feeling, for a few minutes at least, like you’re back home again.

    I talked more about the strange experience of keeping an Australian identity while living overseas in this article:

    Allens snake lollies

    Australian Road Trips Just Feel Different

    One of the things I never expected to miss was Australian road trip culture.

    Growing up, road trips for us usually meant driving from Canberra to the coast, or inland to see Nikki’s family in Griffith. And before every trip, there was always the same ritual.

    Fill up the car.

    Go into the servo.

    Buy a bag of Allen’s snakes, maybe some other lollies, and drinks for the drive.

    There was something oddly comforting about it.

    Now, in America, we’ve replaced that ritual with Buc-ee’s stops.

    And honestly? Buc-ee’s is incredible.

    Australia has absolutely nothing like it.

    But even now, grabbing nuts or lunch at Buc-ee’s still doesn’t quite hit the same emotional note as buying a bag of snakes before heading down the highway in Australia.

    Part of that is because the lollies here just aren’t the same. The snakes are too sweet. Even the Cadbury chocolate tastes different because the version sold here is British Cadbury, not Australian Cadbury. You don’t realise how specific your memories are until you try to recreate them somewhere else.

    Every now and then we’ll order a mixed Australian lolly box online just because we are feeling homesick.

    • I’ve spoken before about how living overseas slowly changes the way you think, sound and even remember home, the below video is a great example of that.

    Care Packages Mean More Than You’d Think

    Care packages from Australia hit differently when you live overseas.

    Nikki’s mum sends boxes over for us and the girls, usually packed with Australian food, little gifts, chocolates, random surprises… and somehow it always feels bigger than just “stuff.”

    australian care package sent to expat overseas

    One year my old workplace in Australia sent us a huge Christmas box filled with Australian snacks, games, soccer balls, all sorts of things.

    It honestly felt like someone had posted a piece of Australia directly to our front door.

    And for the girls, it’s not even necessarily the food they love most.

    It’s knowing that Nanna packed it.

    That connection matters.

    I will admit though that they always beat me to the Caramello Koalas, they barely last a few days.

    Australian Bakeries Overseas Are Usually Disappointing

    This might upset a few people, but Australian bakeries overseas are almost always disappointing.

    We’ve been to Australian bakeries in America — including one in Atlanta that’s pretty good — but it’s still not quite the same.

    There’s also an Australian-owned café near us in Tennessee that sells meat pies and sausage rolls.

    Again… not even close to home.

    The funny thing is, the first thing I want when I land back in Australia isn’t anything fancy.

    It’s a bakery stop.

    A sausage roll.

    A meat pie.

    A vanilla slice.

    And an iced coffee Dare.

    That’s home.

    I make my own sausage rolls here now because sometimes it’s easier than trying to recreate the feeling through substitutes. We buy Jamaican meat pies and chicken pasties occasionally too, and while they’re definitely not Australian pies, they scratch a similar itch. Close enough becomes an important concept when you live overseas.

    Smells Become Emotional Time Machines

    Smell might actually be the strongest trigger of all.

    The bush after rain.

    Gum trees.

    The ocean.

    Jervis Bay National Park Australia

    Sunscreen.

    That hot Australian air right before a storm rolls in.

    Sometimes you’ll randomly smell something in America that takes you straight back to Australia for half a second before reality catches up again.

    It’s strange how powerful that can be. Even thinking about it now makes me a bit homesick.

    Watching Your Kids Grow Up Between Two Cultures

    One of the strangest parts of living overseas long term is watching your kids slowly become a blend of both countries.

    We still celebrate Australia Day at home, although having a barbecue in January is a bit harder when there’s snow outside in Tennessee.

    I try teaching the girls Aussie slang too.

    “How’s it goin’ mate.”
    “Yeah nah.”
    “No worries.”

    And Georgia especially will switch between Australian and American words or accents depending on who she’s talking to.

    It’s fascinating to watch.

    Because in some ways, that’s exactly what living overseas feels like yourself. You slowly become a mix of places.

    The Small Things Matter More Than You Expect

    I think that’s the biggest surprise about moving overseas.

    Home stops being one giant thing.

    It becomes little things.

    A jar of Vegemite in the cupboard.

    A care package from family.

    A bag of snakes before a road trip.

    A bakery stop after a long flight.

    A phrase your kids still say with an Australian accent.

    Tiny things that remind you who you were before life got complicated.

    And maybe that’s why Australians overseas hold onto those small comforts so tightly. Because sometimes the smallest things are the ones that make a place feel like home again.

    If you enjoy these Australia vs America reflections, I also talk about them regularly over on the podcast and YouTube channel: