Australia Is the Best Place in the World to Live (If You like the Good Life)
And one thing you’re going to hate that you don’t know about.
Americans think I’m the close cousin of Crocodile Dundee.
They imagine me walking around in a pair of budgie smuggler swimmers that leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to the male anatomy. They expect me to walk outside and come face-to-face with a Kangaroo or a Koala bear. Some of that is true.
But most daily life in Australia is nothing like that. Let me show you.
Kangaroos on the footpath on the way to lunch
My startup office back in 2010 was on a new estate. Like much of the land in Australia, animals lived on it before the bulldozers came in and took their homes. On the first week at the new office, I went to buy a salad sandwich.
I walked down a long concrete path in the hot Australian sun. Out of nowhere, I see two large kangaroos and a few of their joeys. They’re crossing the road. I don’t get too close because most Aussies know that Kangaroos will kick the crap out of you if you dare get close to them.
I watch from a distance as the kangaroos try to go about their life. All their surroundings except for a tiny kid’s playground have been taken. They have to cross busy roads to survive.
They eventually flee the scene by hopping away.
I walk to the end of the path where two vacant blocks of real estate are. All of a sudden out of nowhere a kangaroo comes running towards me. I bolt in the other direction and manage to get out of their alive.
Further up the street is a popular shopping center. Kangaroos lurk there too. They’re waiting for a dumb human to come up and try and pat them. No one dares. For the year or so I worked there I played dodge-a-kangaroo.
You might be wondering why they weren’t relocated. They can’t be. Once they’re taken away from their natural home they die. So they’re left in the human habitat to get hit by cars and die until their kangaroo clan is gone.
Sad.
Despite this story, run-ins with kangaroos are rare.
Koalas are rare too
There are a few places you can still see the Aussie koala bear we’re so famous for. My friend happens to live on an island full of them.
I went to visit him there a while back. In the cover photo of this story it shows them just chilling in his garden waiting for a nap. You can get close to them without much drama.
My friend has them all over his property. It’s more like a koala park than a farm. Again, this is rare.
I love Australia for its rare wildlife.
Australia is extremely multicultural
Many of my American friends think there are lots of True Blue Aussies in Australia. Nope. If you come to visit you’ll find it odd just how multicultural it is. I live in one of the biggest cities in Australia: Melbourne.
The Asian population is huge. That’s why it was hard for me not to marry an Asian woman.
I love it because Australia is a blend of cultures.
When you work a normal job there are days where everyone brings in a dish from their place of birth. The mix is incredible — Middle-Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Palestinian, American, Pakistanian, Turkish. At one lunch I counted more than 40 different countries where people came from.
As a result, Australia doesn’t have a lot of racism. We’re very accepting of other cultures because our own is such a mishmash.
That’s why foreigners love to live in Australia.
No guns
In the early 90s, there was a tragedy known as the Port Arthur Massacre in Australia. A mad man went on a rampage with a gun and killed 35 people.
In America, this isn’t an uncommon event. In Australia, it’s extremely rare. The incident shook our population to its core. The government banned all guns shortly after. I remember the day they placed all the guns in a huge pile to dispose of them. It was a great victory.
We’re able to walk around and feel safe without the threat of someone coming up and pointing a pistol in our face.
It’s a big deal.
The best beaches you’ve ever seen
I’m a beach bum.
I love to swim in the ocean and get in the water when the Australian summer hits. The heat isn’t that different to LA in the summer for those of you who are American. It still feels hot though.
Beaches at places such as Wineglass Bay, The Great Barrier Reef, or Byron Bay are to die for. You can’t get better. They’re well-maintained and Australians respect and keep them clean.
No matter how bad your workday is you can always cool off at the beach.
You’re everyone’s mate
Australian culture is built on mateship.
We love an underdog. We love to help each other out during tough times. Even if we don’t know you, you’re our mate and we love ya.
That level of camaraderie can help us overcome even the toughest challenges (such as a global health crisis). We’re the lucky country too.
Even when vaccines run low, bushfires break out, or energy grids collapse, we get lucky. A foreign country or a random billionaire like Elon Musk always comes in to save the day. Even in the 2008 Great Recession, our economy was one of the few not to collapse.
We often think our luck will run out. But it never does :)
Good jobs. Lots of tech.
I accidentally got the best job in Australia a few years ago.
I got hired to help bring tech companies into Australia. I worked with the government, lawyers, accounting firms, banks, and commercial real estate companies to help the biggest tech giants in the world come here.
My job was to be their glorified tourist guide and sell them the Australian dream. All of them needed a head office in the Asia Pacific. They often looked at Singapore but nine times out of ten I could sell them on Australia, thanks to our kickass relaxed lifestyle.
The two biggest cities in Australia are Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne is the San Fran of Australia — full of creativity, great hospitality, and bay area views. Sydney is the New York of Australia. It’s the financial district and has loads of tall buildings. In fact, Melbourne does too.
The best way to describe the central business district of Melbourne, where I live, is like a smaller version of New York. We’ve got many tall buildings and lots of busy highways with subways running underneath them. When I tell Americans this they sound surprised. They can’t believe we have such giant cities with tall buildings.
Once tech companies come to visit they quickly realize how functional Australia is. That’s why we have attracted many of the biggest tech giants in the world.
Australia doesn’t just import talent though. We also have our own homegrown tech giants too. Here are a few you probably didn’t know were Australian:
- Canva
- Envato
- Xero
- Atlassian
- AfterPay
We can fire up a good barbie (BBQ) and build great software. Don’t underestimate us.
This is the only thing that matters to Aussies
When I write about making money online or early retirement some people get angry. They don’t quite understand why Aussies like me talk like that.
It’s because Australians value lifestyle over buying dumb stuff.
Even if we can make a bucketload of money we always choose to have more time to enjoy our country and kick back with mates.
I gave up a high-paying job in tech to get closer to the Australian lifestyle. I know it sounds nuts but it’s our way of life. Aussies were the first time billionaires. We want to make enough money so we can stop worrying about money as soon as possible.
It’s counter-intuitive yet true.
The worst thing about Australia is you don’t know
So far it’s all glorious.
We’ve got a giant secret most people don’t know. We have one of the most unaffordable real estate markets in the world. The prices have gone up for 30 years straight without a crash.
A shack far from the city starts at more than $1 million. Even if you work a 6-figure job it’s hard to afford anything. The reason is that our property market has become financialized. In other words, it’s where Australians put all their money as an investment. The rest of the world dumps their money here, too, to buy up all the real estate.
We have a loophole created by the government called negative gearing. It basically means the super-rich can buy the property and significantly lower their taxes. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is enormous.
It’s the only reason millennial Aussies like me are angry and want to leave. It’s got to the point of being ridiculous.
So if you seek to move to Australia and buy real estate, think again.
Closing thought
I want to leave you with two uncommon facts you probably didn’t know.
- The Matrix film was filmed in Australia.
- Tony Robbins is a huge fan of Australia. He owns a home on the Gold Coast. The business that looks after him — and many other iconic Americans, like Gary Vee — is based in Australia too. Tony comes to Australia three times a year. He doesn’t visit any other place in the world that many times.
Come to Australia and see for yourself. This is the best place in the world to live if ‘laidback’ is your middle name the way it is mine.
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