Fairy Tales

Why do Australians have European fairy tales read to them as children? Traditional fairy tales are complete and utter fantasy for Australians. It seems absurd that I grew up with the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson when Australia doesn't have castles or woods or even princes and hunters. We have beaches and bush and desert.

Having been in Europe for a while, where the landscape is the same as that in fairy tales I heard as a kid, all the old stories make so much more sense now. For example, in Hans Christian Andersons The Wild Swans, the Princess must weave shirts for her brothers out of nettles without speaking or crying out, in order to free them from an enchantment. And as a kid, you think, yeah, it would be hard not to speak for so long. Then the other day I encountered some nettles in the garden and they STING. They sting like buggery. So the true extent of the sacrifice she made to save her brothers becomes apparent.

Who knows, maybe if I were a European kid, I might have still thought the same thing I did, but at least I would know that a nettle really really hurts and that the poor girl had to endure making shirts out of stinging leaves and a whole bunch of other stuff too without speaking -- giving more depth and understanding to the story.

The closest thing Australia could get to a fairy tale that makes sense with the environment of the country are the Dreaming stories of the Aborigines.