Life down under still one big party

FOR LOVE OF OZ: Since he moved from Mexico to Australia in 2007, Aldo McLaren has learned to adapt to a culture very different to the one in which he was born and raised.

Some things he adjusted to easily. He quickly embraced the Aussie barbecue culture, willingly broadened his passion for soccer to include footy, rugby and cricket and fell in love with the party atmosphere of Australia Day. But one lesson about Australian culture he learned the hard way —the art of pacifying one’s neighbours.

“In Mexico I think we are a little bit more free to do the things we want,” Mr McLaren said.

“If you want to have a party or something you can have music, dance and have a really good time and the police never will bother or the neighbours … because you are living in your house.

“Here we have to really think before doing something where the neighbour will say it’s too loud and the police will come and tell me to be quiet.”

The man from San Blas, a small fishing village overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the coast of Mexico, discovered this one birthday — November 20 — which happily coincides with Mexican Independence Day.

“In Mexico we make any excuse to make a party. If we win, if we lose, we make a party,” he said.

“I like to have a party (in Australia) and invite my friends and I always make a pinata and we have a lot of people and we dance. We had the police knocking on the door and saying we are so loud.

“That’s why I always invite my neighbours now. And I tell them, please call me before you call someone else.”

The father-of-one could be forgiven if he had an aversion to police, which could be the product of his upbringing in Mexico where police rule with an iron fist.

However, he insists there is more to his homeland than the murders, brutality and drug cartels reported so often in the news.

“I know Mexico at the moment is really bad … the talking about guns, the children and everything,” he said.

“And it happens because there is a lot of drugs and bombing and all that but the other side is really safe too.

“We don’t live in fear. If anything, I think we are more afraid of the police. Here they do the job they have to do but in Mexico they don’t respect you, they are the law and that’s it.”

There are other aspects of Mr McLaren’s homeland that have not been hard to leave behind.

Apparently we are better at keeping our place clean.

“I really like Australia where everything is so clean, no rubbish on the street and its really beautiful. In Mexico we destroy everything with the rubbish, we don’t respect anything,” he said.

Mr McLaren arrived in Geraldton nearly a year ago with wife Rea, who he met in Bali and married in Switzerland in 2014.

They have a one-year-old son, Romeo.

After seven years working as a stonemason in Margaret River, he found it difficult to obtain work in his trade in Geraldton.

Not one to depend on luck, he decided to use another of his talents, cooking, to supplement his income when stone masonry jobs are sparse.

His mobile food business in Geraldton, Tacos Locos, allows him to share Mexican culture and cuisine with others while supporting his family.

“I’m really proud of my food,” he said.

“I do everything like my Grandma used to do — nice and fresh. We’ve been getting a lot of really good responses from people who like to try something fresh, authentic and healthy.”

Like many young men from Mexico’s working class, Mr McLaren, who once worked as a diving instructor, dreamed of supporting his extended family by working in America.

One of the lucky ones, at 18, he did work in the United States for a couple of years, but he said the luckiest break came when his mother and stepfather, whose surname he bears, helped him move to Australia.

“I think my life has improved here,” he said.

“I have been learning a lot of new things and a new way of living. Mexico has a lot of culture and traditions that I miss but also I’m learning to live the way that is here. I know that we have to respect and enjoy everywhere we go.

“What I miss from Mexico is the simplicity of it. I grew up in the fishing town. People don’t have much money, they don’t have brand new phones, brand new laptops, nothing like that, but they are really happy.

“I think now in the big cities like this (Geraldton) we are worrying more about how we look to other ones. When you ask a kid, what do you want, they want an iPhone 6 when before they wanted a ball and to be happy.”

An Australian citizen since 2011, Mr McLaren said while he had experienced some incidents of racism since coming here, generally Australians had welcomed him.

“I have experienced negativity from older people, like they call me a black person,” he said.

“Maybe they have been living here for a long time, maybe they were born here. This is an isolated incident, its not like I get it all the time.

“I think it was easy for me to come to Australia because many Australians have a background of coming from somewhere else as well, so they can understand you better too.

“I really enjoy here how everyone celebrates Australia Day, how the community gets together like one, you know.”

• For Love Of Oz is an occasional series about people born oversees who now call Geraldton home.