What Living Overseas Taught Me About Australia

Living overseas changes the way you see the place you came from.

After eight years in the United States, I’ve started to notice things about Australia that I never really thought about when I lived there. Not the big, obvious things — but the small, everyday ones. The kinds of things that quietly shape your sense of home.

In this episode, I reflect on what I didn’t realise I’d taken for granted growing up in Australia. From simple routines and food, to humour, culture, and the sounds that stay with you long after you leave.

It’s not about one place being better than another.
 It’s about what becomes visible… once you’re no longer surrounded by it.

If you’ve ever lived overseas — or even just away from where you grew up — this might feel familiar.

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Transcript

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The moment that always gets me when I go back to Australia might not be what you'd expect, because it's not the harbour, it's not the opera house. It's the accent. Standing in the arrivals hall at Sydney Airport and hearing a broad Aussie voice somewhere nearby that first, go, mate, welcome home. I instantly relax. Because suddenly I'm somewhere where I don't have to explain who I am. Where no one's trying to figure out where I'm from. You better take cover. Living overseas changes the way that you see home. It makes you realise how many small things about the place that you grew up you never really noticed before. Things like the sound of Maggies in the morning or that smell as you walk into a bakery and hearing someone complaining about how bloody hot it is outside in a thick, Aussie accent. And when you grow up somewhere, you just assume that that's how the world works. And then you move somewhere else and you learn that it's not. After eight years of living in the US, I've realized that there are quite a few things about Australia that I didn't know that I had taken for granted. Small everyday things, some cultural, some surprisingly small. And one of the first things I noticed was how practical the differences were. And when we first moved to the US, something as simple as tapping your credit card to pay barely existed here. Now in Australia, paywave started back in 2006. You walk into a shop, tap your card, walk out again. As long as it was under 100 bucks, no PIN number, you're good to go. Now, here at the time, everything fell a little slower. Insert the card, wait, sign something. I guess in hindsight, at least you had time to think about what it was that you just bought. But it wasn't until around 2019 that things really started to shift here. And now, of course, paywave is everywhere. Tap and go, easy is. But at the time it was one of those small things that made me realize that Australia had quietly been ahead on quite a few everyday conveniences. Online banking was another big one, and still is to this day. In Australia, you've been able to move money between banks freely and easily for years. It's just part of everyday life. In most cases, it's there instantly as well. Now, here it does feel a bit different. Wires, fees, one to three days for the money to show up, and still a bit more of a reliance on checks. And sometimes you just sit there thinking, surely there is an easier way to do this. Schools have been another difference that we've really had to learn as we go. Because in Australia, the structure for us is fairly straightforward. Primary school goes for six years, then high school goes for six years. Simple. There's nothing in between. But here you've got elementary school, then middle school, and then you've got high school. And that only runs for a couple of years at the end. Took a little while to get our heads around how all of that works. No school uniforms either. So that's another adjustment. You're thinking every morning, what are we going to dress the kids in today? Now, none of these things are wrong. They're just different. And living overseas really teaches you that quickly. One of the first places that you really notice cultural differences is the supermarket. Yeah, remember our first proper grocery shop after we moved here. And honestly, it was exciting. There were brands everywhere that I'd never seen before. Entire aisles full of things that I thought only existed in American movies or TV shows when I was growing up. I remember the first time I saw Twinkies in an aisle for the first time, and I thought, hey, they're actually real. But then after a while, you start looking for the things that you grew up with. And food for me is my number one homesick item. You don't realize how many things you miss that you can't easily get. Custard powder, mint sauce, veggie mite, obviously, frozen meat pies. Even lamb isn't nearly as common as what it is back home. I remember asking about it once and being told that's a bit too fancy for a while, my. And it feels oddly comforting. Just like your taste memory has suddenly been triggered. I guess it's then that you start to realize something else. Food carries culture. Every country does it differently. In Australia, we're so used to a lot of international influence in everyday food. Turkish, Malaysian, Lebanese food, especially. Kebab shops everywhere, late-night stops after a night out at the pub. And here in the US, you'll find Euros instead, which are good, but they're not quite the same thing. They're close. Just not 2 a.m. after the pub closes, close. But it does make you realise how specific your food memories are. You don't just miss the food itself. You miss the places. The late-night kebab shop, the bakery on the corner, or the little takeaway that's been there for ages. Food is tied to memory in a way that you don't fully appreciate until you're somewhere else. Now, shops and stores, because one small difference I didn't realise I'd noticed so much was language. Because in Australia, we go to the shops. You might say, I'm heading down to the shops, or I'm just going to duck into the shop for a sec. Here, everything is store. It's a tiny difference. But it's one of those little cultural signals that still remind you of where you are. And even something like the word mall. Now, in Australia, we tend to have shopping centres. Here, especially here in Nashville, there are strip malls everywhere. Rows of shops stretched along a car park. It took a while for that to feel normal to me. And even now, I still sometimes catch myself saying, I'm just ducking down the shops instead of to the store. Old habits, travel with you. Another thing I didn't really appreciate until I moved overseas was cultural. Australians, we tend to keep things fairly level. Someone talks themselves up too much, usually doesn't land very well. We even have a phrase for it: tall poppy syndrome. If someone starts getting a bit too big for their boots, someone will usually say something like, Oi, pull your head in, mate, and cut them down. Here in the States, I noticed something a little different, especially in the workplace. People are very comfortable talking about how much work they've done or how well they've done something. Now I had one guy who used to come into my office at the end of every day, and he would give me a full rundown on every single thing that he had done that day and how well he had done it. And I'd be sitting there thinking, yeah, good on you, mate. I just hurry up, I want to go home. Now I guess at first it made me feel a bit uncomfortable, and not because it was wrong, just because it wasn't something that I had grown up around. Aussies tend to lean towards self-deprecating humor. We'll take the piss out of ourselves before anyone else ever gets a chance to. And it's just part of our culture. One thing I definitely didn't realize that I'd taken for granted in Australia was balance. Not that we don't work hard because we absolutely do, but there's usually a sense that life exists outside of work as well. When I first moved here, I ended up in a job where I was commuting an hour and a half one way every day, six days a week, 70 hours a week sometimes. But the experience taught me something that I hadn't really thought about before. Balance matters. It's one of those things that you don't really appreciate until it all disappears. And once that happens, you start noticing something else. The things that you miss about home aren't the big famous things. It's not the harbour bridge, it's not the opera house. It's the small everyday things. The sounds, the food, the way that people talk, the little rhythms of life that you grow up with. And that's when you start to notice things like birds. The sound of Australia. Australia is blessed with so many different types of birds. When you grow up there, you don't think much about it. But once you've been away for a while, you realize just how unique it actually is. The sound of magpies in the morning, cockatoos squawking somewhere in the afternoon, rosellas and lorikeets flashing through the trees with all the colour that they bring. Cuckoo barrels laughing somewhere off in the distance, and even thousands of budgies flying across the sky in green and yellow colours. One of the funny things about birds in Australia is that you don't really realise just how many we have until you leave. Because growing up, it's all just normal. It's just background noise to everything else. After a while living overseas, though, you start to realize just how quiet some places feel without that soundtrack. Coming home to Australia is always an interesting feeling. Flying into Sydney over the harbour, it never really loses its impact. But the moment that always stands out for me comes later. Driving out of the airport, getting used to driving on the other side of the road again. And every time I go back, I go through the same little mental checklist, sit on the middle line, Michael, stay on the left, and try not to look too unsure about everything. Then you start noticing the signs. Wollongong, Paramount, Canberra, kangaroo crossing signs, little clues that you're back. And then there's the space, the wide skies, the open stretches of road, distances that just feel normal. And when you get close to the coast, there's that smell in the air, the ocean, it's clean, it's fresh. It's really hard to describe, but it's unmistakable. And somewhere along that drive, there's usually a bakery stop. If we're heading down the coast, it'll be in Berry, or if we're heading inland, it might be in Barellin. Walk in, grab a meat pie, maybe a sausage roll, an iced coffee dare, and uh maybe a vanilla slice too for the road. It's such a simple moment, but it's one of those small Australian rituals that instantly feels like home. I think the moment that always gets me the most though is the accent. Standing in the arrivals hall, hearing a broad Aussie voice somewhere nearby, and something in my body just relaxes. Because suddenly I don't have to explain who I am. No one's wondering why I'm there. No one's asking where I'm from. I'm home. Living overseas changes how you see the place you came from. It makes you realise that it's just not a place on a map. It's hundreds of small things. It's the sounds, it's the food, the humour, the birds, the smell of the ocean when you get close to the coast, walking into a bakery. And maybe that's why hearing that first Australian accent in the arrivals hall always hits me the same way. Because suddenly all those little pieces fall back into place. Everything just feels familiar again. And maybe that's the strange thing about leaving a place. Sometimes you have to leave it to be able to really see it. And sometimes to realize that it was home all along.