Where am I from??

What does it mean to be identified with a country? 


I mean, according to official documentation (ie passports) I am Italian and Australian. But I don't speak Italian, nor have I ever lived there for longer than a month, and I have (to my knowledge) no Indigenous Australian heritage whatsoever. 


Yet my father was in the first of his family's generations (both sides) to be born in Australia and to grow up there from birth. My mother's family has six generations of farming in Australia stretching back to their migration from Poland sometime in the 1800s (retained in her Polish maiden name if nothing else). So some part of me has 'Polish blood', however minimal, but at what point did this minuscule part stop becoming Polish and start becoming 'Australian'? When did my father's Italian-English-Armenian-Scottish-Indian-mumbojumbo mix of ethnicities amalgamate into an Australian identity? 


At first I thought it was where you grew up and the culture that you identified with strongly. And for the most part, I think this is the defining aspect. I identify myself as Australian because it is the place I grew up and the lifestyle I was raised with. English is the only language I speak fluently (a very Australian characteristic) and I speak it with an Australian accent. However if an English person moved to India, married a Scottish person and they had children together there, who spent their whole childhood there, would you say that the children (having no Indian physical characteristics whatsoever) were Indian? (This is what happened with my father's mother's family - hence the 'Indian heritage.' They identified themselves as being part-Indian.) 


So there is something in the physical characteristics realm, as well, obviously (e.g. a person of African heritage living in a non-African country would still be identified as African upon sight) . But if that's the only link you have to that culture it seems pretty arbitrary too, if you have never lived in the country or anything. 


And what does it really mean to be 'Australian' then anyway, if the above definition isn't enough? There are some people who only refer to Indigenous Australians as being 'Australian', which is fair enough in part, but I also think that that ignores the people that have grown up in Australia and have nowhere else they would call their country. I.e. me. I guess you could have something like 'Australians' and 'Invasion Australians.' I don't know. This also reminds me of my aversion to celebrating Australia Day. They should change the name of that.


Anyway this is quite a superficial, introductory discussion of the topic/general ramble, but it was more to kind of figure out my own thoughts about it. I think it's interesting to talk to people about their cultural identity and heritage, and see where they identify themselves with and why. Especially while on exchange! :)