How To Celebrate Australia Day If You’re Overseas
January 26 is a nice day to celebrate what’s good about our big brown country – and never more so than for Australians overseas. Whether living abroad or travelling the world, spending Australia Day surrounding ourselves with connections to home just makes sense. Grab some mates, crack a tinnie and respond to your neighbour’s puzzled expressions at your excitement with an excuse that is yours for one day only: ‘STRAYA.
#1 Fill yourself with nothing but the finest Australian delicacies
There’s only one day a year when it’s really worth paying $8 for an imported jar of Vegemite, searching high and low for a tin of Milo or trekking halfway across a city to find a single Tim Tam, so make the most of it. Don’t accept the UK’s insistence that Foster’s is a real Australian beer, or listen to Americans chide you to put a shrimp on the barbie. Whip out that culinary prowess and impress your international friends with the national treasure that is Anzac biscuits, locate yourself a BBQ – yes, even if it is -10 degrees outside – and raise your snag in slightly-stale white bread towards the nearest Bunnings.
#2 Surround yourself with fellow Aussies
Australians love to spread themselves overseas, so you won’t be surprised to find plenty of Antipodean bars around the place. Enter at your own peril, of course – overly enthusiastic Australians coming into contact with other enthusiastic Australians can be an eventful combination – but with full confidence that you’ll get the full Australia Day experience. From Bangkok to Berlin, New York to the Netherlands, there are countless Australian-themed bars that will not only bring all the Aussies in a 20 kilometre radius, but hopefully a solid Aussie brew, too.
#3 Try and recreate the searing heat
Smack bang in the middle of summer Down Under, in most parts of the inhabitable world, Australia Day comes in the dead of winter. To go along with your Aussie food, beers and the rest of the festivities, it’s only fair that you emulate the unbearable muggy heat we usually find ourselves #blessed with come January 26. Turn your apartment’s heater dial all the way up to 40 degrees, blow up that banana lounge and pretend you’re at the party of a friend of a friend of a friend just because they have a pool. You won’t even notice the blizzard outside – promise.
#4 Brush up on your Aussie lingo
If you fancy a more low-key way to assert your patriotism this Australia Day, why not drop some ~hilarious~ and confusing colloquialisms and urban myths into your everyday speech to confuse literally everyone in the world without a kangaroo on their passport. Tell terrifying tales of drop bear attacks, chuck a sickie and go out for a bev in the arvo, and flaunt your favourite thongs to people who definitely think you’re talking about your underwear.
#5 Stream the Hottest 100 no matter what the time is
Having triple j counting down the tracks in the world’s biggest musical democracy all afternoon is all very well and good if you’re in your backyard in Melbourne, but midday on Australia’s East Coast is 1am in London, 7am in New Dehli and 11pm in Rio Di Janeiro. You’ll need some stamina to get through this one, but with as many Australian comrades as you can possibly find, all our gloriously carb-laden snacks and an Aussie battler attitude you might just keep your eyes open long enough to hear the winner.
Not convinced? Check out flights back home to Australia with Qantas here.
