Home and Away

When Aussie journalist Lee Kumatat was pondering whether to leave her native Sydney, she didn’t question the truth about the different attitudes she was told she might encounter

English people are reserved and stand-offish, so don’t expect the same level of assistance from them as you get here in Australia: that was the warning cry as I left Oz for the UK. It’s true that Aussies make friends more quickly, and if you’re in trouble they’re more likely to jump in and pull out all the stops to get you out of it, but they’re also very conscious of their personal space and their interactions with strangers can be more tentative.

The English tend not to get involved as much if they think you’re about to cry, but as long as emotion isn’t involved, I find Australian prejudices are unfounded. Overall, people in England tend to treat people with a disability a bit more like we’re part of the community. When I’m out and about, they offer help more seam­lessly and with more sophistication than back home.

Aussies are quite vague about giving directions but while England’s lovely old winding streets can be a challenge, I usually get the help I need to get where I want. Often, if people don’t feel able to explain how to get somewhere, they’ll enlist others to help or even walk along with me. I’ve had some lovely chats with people as we go in search of a particular destination. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen in Australia, but it happens less.

I’ve only once been asked by a perfect stranger in England how long I’ve been blind and whether it was the result of an accident or just one of those things. This happens with regular monotony in Australia; quite often it’s the opening salvo. Maybe it has to do with Aussies not beating about the bush. Generally speaking though, in England, the subject doesn’t seem to come up until much later on in the conversation.

Sometimes, I even get to divulge the information before I’m asked, which is almost unheard of at home. If English reserve is to blame for that, then I’m thankful for it.

Steps present a challenge – not for me but for my guide dog, who has a back problem. I try to avoid them where I can but England has lots of them and the lack of lifts and escalators, especially on the rail and tube networks, astonishes me. As a young country, Australia seems to have tackled this problem pretty well. I do wonder at a Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) that says that people must be given access to the built environment but doesn’t make this possible.

And somebody somewhere has done an excellent job at pointing out the “reasonable accommodations” clause in the DDA, because it’s bandied about as an excuse much more often here than in Australia. I’m yet to find out who gets to decide the boundaries of reasonable.

Australia’s definition seems stricter than England’s. For instance, although I wasn’t old enough to experience it at first hand, I understand that some of the things that England still considers as “reasonable adjustments” were done away with in Australia 30 years ago: practices like offering to mind my guide dog while I go to the theatre, in case someone steps on him and breaks his neck, just don’t happen in Oz
any more.

Another phrase people hide behind in England is “for occupational health and safety reasons”. I hear that too often from official-sounding people. It’s not that safety is valued less in Australia, but they do seem better at acknowledging that common sense must partner rules and regulations.

While I do feel less isolated here and in some ways more involved in the community, ways of addressing disability and access, especially in recreation, seem less integrated. Having to use different phone numbers from everyone else if I want to book assistance on a train or make a booking at the theatre can feel quite insulting if I’m having a fragile day.

Another practice that seems rife here and boggles my mind is that of keeping disabled toilets locked in public places. I don’t recall ever having to track down a master keyholder in Oz and follow them cross-eyed and cross-legged back to the toilet, so they can open the door for me. I don’t understand why this needs to happen. Isn’t it better that some people will use a toilet that they’re not entitled to than for others to have to submit to the power of the keyholder for that day?

It’s interesting to observe the differences between our two countries. I hope that any decision about which of them to live in won’t be decided by any of them.