Well, here's my experience of Australia, and since 've never been anywhere else, it won't be tainted ^_-
-Yes, as OsUltimo said, you can see a Kangaroo if you go and look, but they don't hop down the city streets. There used to be a family of about 20 kangaroos that lived about 700 meters from my house, but only because our house was very new, and the rest of the area was undeveloped, so the 'roos all lived in the bush.
Hmm, the only time I've ever seen a kangaroo is in the zoo, and once or twice in the bush (when I lived in a country town in WA). The others have all been dead along the highways I've driven down. If you drive along a highway, it's pretty hard not to see at least one or two dead roos. My dad's hit two within the last year and believe me, they fuck your car up. It's expensive to hit one ^_^ You'll never see one outside of a zoo if you live in a major city, at least in the inner city areas. I think that's a good thing, they're much safer away from people. Ah, and yes, they are scary. they're kindof impressive/interesting from afar but close up, a large kangaroo is a scary thing. Joeys (baby kangaroos) are gorgeous though.
- The most-played sport in Aus is soccer, although I don't believe it has the largest fan-club. Most people seem to know a lot more about football (yes, football, that game played with the brown, eliptical ball you throw at each other) than soccer, which is understandable, seeing as soccer is gay and crap and should be banned.
Yep, it was just recently announced that the most played sport is soccer, but like Peter said, that's not by far the most popular sport. That figure I imagine comes from children's weekend sport. The sport of the average person is AFL (Australia Football League) and quite frankly, kicks soccers ass ^_^ It's called "footy" everywhere and if you say "football", AFL is what you mean - EXCEPT in Queensland, where I live. Here, the major sport is Rugby League and that's what "footy" means.
- 13 year old girls in GENERAL don't dress like whores. They are slowly becoming MORE whore-like (and I completely 100% blame America's media domination of Australia for this), but as I see it, the whore-age doesn't arrive until about 16/17. Of course, there are exceptions, and these exceptions are increasing by the day, as girls realise they can get away with shorter and shorter and shorter skirts and skimpier and skimpier tops. I want to shoot them (mainly because if you are going to wear sexy clothes, you must AT LEAST have breasts to show off in them, so you aren't pulling up the front of your shirt every 5 seconds! And I mean that seriously)
Hear hear! ^_^ Yeah, young kids dressing like prostitutes isn't such a big problem here, but the one thing I can't STAND that is EVERYWHERE is hipster jeans. BUTTCRACKS! Am I the only one that finds this sort of thing just plain obscene in public? It also really pisses me off because it makes it SO hard for me to find a decent pair of pants that come above the waist (and pubic area). Girls these days know nothing about leaving things to the imagination.
- Women's Lib is undergoing a change in Aus. More and more women are reverting back to 'tradition' - that is, staying at home and being a housewife. Not by force, but completely by choice.
Really? o_O I haven't really noticed... it isn't a big trend yet. It'll be good when it is though, I'm sick of women thinking they NEED to take liberties just because they can.
- Some of our delicacies include Kangaroo/Platapus/Wombat meat, as well as Dingo Steak.
...Though, we never eat them. Tourists eat them. You'll have to go to a pretty weird place, or an expensive restaurant to get this sort of thing. I've never had them, but I hear kangaroo meat is awful. I've actually never heard of people eating platypus or wombat.
Some other facts
- We're a very Americanised nation (though who isn't?) but we seem to do what the US does in a small way.
- Burger King is called Hungry Jacks here. I remember seeing American tv when I was a kid and thinking "Hey, Burger King has the same logo as Hungry Jacks!". The suck as much here as they do anywhere else though. Blech.
- Noone but farmers in the country wear those big, brown, wide-brim hats and hardly ANYONE would wear them with the corks hanging from the brim. Again, you can buy them in tourist shops.
- We use PAL here ^_^ Not NTSC.
- We do ride camels. In Broome, a tropical tourist town in the north west. My parents got a ride on a camel along the beach. I don't think anywhere else though.
- Our capital cities are small on a global scale, though Sydney is as ugly as any of the big ones. Brisbane is beautiful ^_-
- We have the best chocolate in the world - Cadbury. As I understand it, In the US you only have chocolate bars? You don't have large chocolate blocks split up into little pieces or anything? Of course, I love overseas chocolate too, but I think Cadbury is the best all-around, normal chocolate you'll ever get.
- We eat beef all the time. The impression I get from tv is that in the US, steak is considered a bit of a ... not a delicacy, but a special meal? Not at all here, though we love it. We just have it often enough that it's nothing special. I think in America you tend to eat a lot of pork, right? Australia is definitely a beef country (though nowadays, chicken probably takes over).
- Uggboots belong to us, you stupid foreign company trying to own the name. Fuckers! (sorry, it just gets me mad...)
- Sydney likes to give the impression overseas that they're a big harbour based city but again... for the tourists, really. Whenever I see Sydney portrayed on overseas shows, I'm like "All they -ever- show is the harbour!".
- There may be a lot of spiders and stuff in the outback but you hardly ever see them in a city environment. My biggest problem this year is ants.
Hmm, I'm sure I'm missing heaps of stuff I'd like to say but that'll do for now.
