Keith Vander Linden - On Australia

The scenery is beautiful (e.g., Sydney harbor, the beaches, the Blue Mountains).
So is the weather.
They have weird animals (e.g., parrots, kangaroos, koalas).
They do great barbecues ("barbies" as they would have it).
You don’t need to remember first names - just call everyone "mate" - this works with men, women, children and pets.
They are fiercely egalitarian (e.g., people tend to ride in the front seats of cabs).
They put coconut in everything.
They have great shower heads.
One of the national TV stations (SBS) features non-Hollywood movies.
They have a slightly naughty sense of humor in their advertisements: e.g., "We’re #1 on #2" (an ad for a waste treatment company), "we protect your largest organ longer" (an ad for sunscreen with a picture of naked man holding a bottle of the product in a strategic location), and "Try freezing your nuts this summer" (an add for frozen snickers bars).
Primary and Secondary students ride free on public transport.
Crime is lower (e.g., We’ve had a number of lost items returned that would have been long gone in the US or England).
The seafood is excellent and affordable.
It’s thousands of miles from anywhere.

Sunburn - No one gets a tan, it’s a burn or nothing.
You’ll eventually be killed by either a poisonous animal or a rip tide (or skin cancer).
Santa shouldn’t wear shorts.
Blundstone boots are disgustingly ugly - Be happy if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
They’ve reduced all the nouns in the English language to two classes, those ending in "ie" and those ending in "o". Here are some translations:
- barbie - barbecue
- mozzie - mosquito
- prezzie - present
- garbo - garbage
- muso - musician
- arvo - afternoon
- and so on - ad nauseum
  Here are more from Maria Milosavljevic
Cockroaches¹ (Sydney only I’m told)
They put beets on hamburgers.
They have plastic toilet seats.
Corrugated iron is used as a designer building material.
It’s thousands of miles from anywhere.

¹ or "cockies".