The World: Healthier and Less Perplexed

GERALD STONE and his wife Beth made the long journey from the U.S. to Australia with their two daughters in 1962, refugees from the nuclear-fallout scare of that year. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Stone, 37, lived for five years in New York, where he worked for United Press International. As the senior reporter on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s top television news show, he earns $11,200 a year, which he reckons would be worth twice as much in U.S. terms.

“It all seemed so unsophisticated, almost naive,” Stone recalls of Australia nine years ago. “Trucks stopped on highways to let schoolgirls cross the road. The groceries didn’t keep paper bags, so you had to bring your own.” There were few Americans in Sydney in those days, he says, “but it was very pro-American. Australians had Hollywood visions of America as a land of big cars, big houses and beautiful people. The American accent had status here.” In those days, Stone recalls, “Australians would ask in surprise, ‘Why would an American come here?’ ” They no longer need ask. “The headlines have done it: the death of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the race riots, Viet Nam.” In 1962, Stone was one of about 200 Americans who arrived in Australia for permanent or long-term residence; last year the figure was 9,000.

The Stones are about to move into their new, $30,000 four-bedroom home on a gum-tree-shaded site overlooking the middle reach of Sydney harbor. “My last trip to the U.S. showed me for sure that we lead a good life here,” he remarked one morning last week. “In Columbus,” he said, “old friends were afraid to let their kids go downtown to a movie.” At that moment his twelve-year-old daughter Klay was shopping alone in downtown Sydney. “They no longer seemed to know the answers to their problems,” Stone continued. “Once, for every American problem, there was a solution. Not any more. In Columbus there’s crime and fear of crime. Who needs that?”

Stone is not altogether satisfied with the quality of Australian schools. On the other hand, he finds Australia a better place to raise his daughters. “Young people grow up here under less pressure of permissiveness, of drugs and pornography. Growing up here in the ’70s is like growing up in America in the ’50s.” –

Beth, who is taking university courses and working in a psychiatric health center, finds more to criticize. “There’s a Victorian inequality of opportunity for women here, a great waste of women’s resources. Women here don’t seem to think they have the right to speak. Even well-educated women hesitate to enter a dinner-table conversation unless asked.”

Her husband does not disagree. “Some of the main problems here are the lack of a viable political opposition, the status of women, and deficiencies in education,” he says. “But things are improving; Australia is coming into its maturity.” With the passion of a convert he adds, “In a word, Australians are healthier than Americans, and less perplexed.”