Have you consulted an agony aunt Australia? With more and more people turning to working as a a professional online advice columnist or agony aunt there are bound to be some in Australia.The thing is that you should be more concerned with the calibre of the person who is offering you agony aunt help than where they live, after all you are not going to meet them, these people are not your friends and are not going to socialise with you, they are “out there in the universe” offering a service from a distance. When you are seeking sympathy, understanding or guidance concentrate on these things…. how professional the agony aunt Australia person is (the last thing you want is someone who has a very life with their normal job and family and tells you they may be able to get around to reading your mail and replying to it in a few weeks)… how knowledgeable they are (the last thing you want is someone who does not understand what you are talking about and thinks that if they read about it online by googling and researching for a while they can wing it when they reply to you)….how caring and tactful they are (one of the problems with contacting a free agony aunt is that they feel they can be totally blunt and honest, telling you stuff which is hurtful, judgmental rather than helpful)… how affordable they are (do not be fooled by the fact that someone offers you free advice… this does not mean that their advice is worth having.. you are better off paying for good advice than receiving awful advice for free). This will be the same whether the person lives in Australia, USA, UK or anywhere else in the World!

The most notable of the agony aunts Australia is Kate de Brito. We do not know of any others who are well known, full time professionals or rising stars . The World may be a better place if a new agony aunt in Australia surfaced and made herself (it is usually a woman isn’t it?) known. About twenty years ago there was Kate de Brito who ran the Ask Bossy Online Advice Column and the blog All Men Are Liars. She left News Corp in 2015. to work for the women’s interest magazine Mamamia. Then returned again to News Corp in 2017. Most of the reputed advice columnists are in the USA and UK. If you wanted a celebrity you could listen to the wisdom and insight of Dame Edna Everage (some might say Barry Humphries in drag). Dame Edna was a fantastic wordsmith, brutally honest and keen to get a reaction. If you watch some of the television appearances he was in or read some of his books you will see that he was much smarter than most, but could a man really understand a woman? And could a man who is almost 90 years of age understand a very young woman? I think not. The well known Australia Clive James, another wordsmith, may have the necessary skills to advise men and Germaine Greer is an Australia woman to be reckoned with. Perhaps she could have become a professional agony aunt Australia in her younger days? Rather than trying to save the rain forests and talk about feminism.

Different agony aunts and advice columnists write with different attitudes and styles, some specialise in certain topics. It is better to choose one who you feel drawn to or feel that you can trust rather than someone else simply because they live in the same country as you. Distance is no object when the help is being given by email or letter. It would be great if we could have more professional agony aunts to choose from – no matter where they live. Perhaps some people prefer to go to someone they have read about in a newspaper or seen on television – something which is far more likely if living in the same country. Contacting a person for help if they have a very different culture, lifestyle and background to you might seem pointless but when you are asking about an emotional issue some of these are the same no matter where you live.

The trouble with advice is that plenty of people are eager to give it to you, but many of them are not wise or knowledgeable to do it well. You don’t get people suddenly exclaiming that they can advise on architecture, finances, dentistry or heart surgery because it is a vast and complicated very serious subject, but when it comes to love and marriage everyone believes they know it all. Some thing that simply standing there listening with a serious expression on their face counts as being wise and helpful, others will give such awful advice it would do the person harm to follow it. This would be the same whether you speak to someone in the UK, Canada, USA or an agony aunt Australia.