Australian Perfidity

For reasons too complex to go into here, the urban exploration community in the Twin Cities has for some time been becoming more and more imitative of the Australian UE community, as perhaps best exemplified by the antics of the Cave Clan. Australia’s contributions to urban exploration are unquestionably real, and many, and varied. Yet Australia is not Minnesota; in a community (we use the term loosely) of scores of explorers, why everyone is constantly working to become “more Australian” remains a mystery.

Might it be a short-sighted desire to, having already experienced the worst that Australian urban exploration has to offer (childish squabbling, political in-fighting, intractable conflicts of personality), reap some of the “benefits” of their style of exploration? Perhaps.

Might it be a simple unwillingness, or reluctance to make an effort, to create a unique subculture all our own? Or, could it be a defeatist disillusionment with the subculture that did exist here that’s led to the increasingly slavish copying of everything Cave Clan? I’m not in a position to say.

What I do know is that the process needs a label. I’m not sure what the term for “becoming more like Australia with every waking hour that goes by” is, and neither does Google. “Australification” only returns five hits (six now, I suppose); few of the other terms return any results at all.

So, like any good cunning linguist, I’m going to just make something up, pull something out of my, ahem, arse, as they might say. I’m torn between two perfectly appropriate terms, both entirely unencumbered of hidden meaning or double-entendre - “Ausification” and “Austracization“. Which do you prefer?

With apoligies to Siologen, et al - three lines from Linkin Park’s Numb: