Proud to be an Aussie (yeah I know the "stats" at the bottom have been around)

[Shannow]

Being Australian is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV.

Oh and...... Only in Australia ... can a pizza get to your house Faster than an ambulance.

Only in Australia ... do supermarkets make sick people walk all the way to the back of the shop to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in Australia ... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a DIET coke.

Only in Australia ... do banks leave both doors open and chain the pens to the counters.

Only in Australia ... do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars on the drive and lock our junk and cheap lawn mower in the garage.

Only in Australia ... do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn'twant to talk to in the first place.

Only in Australia ... are there disabled parking places in front of a skating rink.

NOT TO MENTION...

3 Aussies die each year testing if a 9v battery works on their tongue.

142 Aussies were injured in 1999 by not removing all pins from new shirts.

58 Aussies are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers.

31 Aussies have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in.

8 Aussies had serious burns in 2000 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.

A massive 543 Aussies were admitted to Emergency in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with their teeth.

and finally.........

In 2000 eight Aussies cracked their skull whilst throwing up into the toilet.

IF YOU'RE PROUD TO BE AUSTRALIAN SEND THIS ON!

 

[sprintman]

Still the best place to live on the planet. They don't call it the 'lucky country' for nothing. And I wasn't born here....s

 

[moribundman]

The term "The Lucky Country was" coined by Donald Horne, and it did in fact become the title of his famous book.

quote:

---

In a hot summer's night in December 1964 I was about to write the last chapter of a book on Australia. The opening sentence of this last chapter was: 'Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.'

That sentence was a rather brutal indictment of his country at the time. It is a direct, uncompromising and seemingly unambiguous commentary on Australia in the 1960s. Horne was critiquing an Australia that did not think for itself; a country manacled to its past; and 'still in colonial blinkers': If we are to remain a prosperous, liberal, humane society, we must be prepared to understand the distinctiveness of our own society.

He was thinking about things like Australia's cultural cringe, its foreign policy and the White Australia Policy. He was, to paraphrase those words, talking about a 'not too clever country'.

I had in mind in particular the lack of innovation in Australian manufacturing and some other forms of Australian business, banking for example. In these, as a colonial carry over, Australia showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society.

Australia, Horne argued, developed as a nation at a time when we could reap the benefits of technological, economic, social and political innovations that were developed in other countries. Those countries were clever: Australia was simply lucky.

When The Lucky Country was released in 1964, most of the reading public was aware that the phrase was being used ironically. Horne laments the fact that it has since been taken up by others and given different meanings: '... I have had to sit through the most appalling rubbish as successive generations misapplied this phrase'.

---

 

[Shannow]

moribundman,
given the current resources boom, we are luckier than ever.

We don't innovate, we don't value add. We just dig up and ship out our resources.

The second rate (and that's really a dis-service to the third rate, and a number of other primates) people who set policy have no foresight whatsoever.

Why would you sell an entire gas reserve to China, fixed price for 25 years, at 1% of the current cost of oil, without withholding even a week's worth of Oz consumption from the deal, if you were looking to the future.

We're also the dumb country.

 

[moribundman]

quote:

---

given the current resources boom, we are luckier than ever.

---

I'm not saying you aren't. I was just trying to make a point of putting sprintman's statement into the proper, historical context.

 

[Matt_S]

Those "Only in Australia" statements are just as true here in the states.

 

[JavaMan]

"Only in Australia ... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a DIET coke."

Surely you have desert.

 

[gtx510]

How do you get killed by a 9V battery?
I know it only takes 0.5A to stop your heart but doesn't the current need to pass thru your chest?