From the Australian on Oz Day, 1996. Stolen naturally. Stealing should be number 31 :). This country, in 1996, is unrecognisable from the wide brown land of the 19th century and the Hills Hoist kindom of the 1950s. But here are corners that will be forever Australian. Margaret Simons lists tehm, and examines what kind of nation we are now. ... article blah blah with list ... A subjective list of 30 essentially Australian things ----------------------------------------------------- 1: Vegemite. The Poms have Marmite, which tastes similarly revolting, and has meat in it to boot. But Vegemite, together with the recipes for Vefemite scones, Vegemite soup and Vegemite quiche, is our very own perversion. (Cam note: Vegemite was originally called Pawill and advertised "Marmite, but Pawill". :) 2: A twisted relationship with the land In this country we have always been sawing off the branch on which we sit. The foundations od our mytholofy and economy are rooted in the inland, yet most of us live on the coast. The pioneers wanted to conquer the land, and out presence in Australia relies larfely on practices that destroy that which we love. 3. Distance. So obvious it is a cliche. One nation flung over an area larger than Europe. Perth is closer to Bali than to Sydney. In Birdsville, school children travel more than 100km to sell their fundraising raffle tickets. 4. The ability to make Road movies. This is probably the only place apart from North America where it is possibe to hop into your car and drive from one side of the continent to the other without visas, permits or any kind of permission. 5. Walk socks and shorts. A pragmatic rather than a goof look. Author Helen Garner has said Australian men dress like little boys. But then, who said suits were a sensible idea? Let alone pith helmets. 6. Australia all over As Professor Graeme Turner, author of _Making it National_, has said, the closest thing you could get to the old Bulletin magazine put to the airwaves. (Cam: I'm not sure I have heard of this..) 7. White sand on the beaches, red sand inland For Europeans, both of them come as a shock. For Australians th ecolours glimpsed from an aircraft are like a welcome home flag. 8. The feeling of your thongs sticking to the bitumen. and the summertime experience of hopping, bare-foot, from patch of shade to patch of shade. And picking three-corner jacks out of the soles of your feet. And having skin-peeling competitions with your sister. 9. Weird Wildlife Kangaroos, wallabies, platypusus and koalas. Magpies that sound like rusty wheelbarrows. Big lizards that eat the snags off your barbecue. Plants that look like bottle brushes or angry old men. Trees with paper bark, and millioncolour leaves. More venomous snakes than anywhere else in the world and spiders that lurk under the toilet seats. And flies. Lots of flies. 10. Democracy. the oldest democracy in a region not known for it and one of the oldest in the world. 11. Middle everything. We are a country of the middle-class. We are suspicious of extremes and public passion, except when it is to do with work or sport. Our political parties are variations on the middle. (Cam: I'm not sure I would put work in there, but maybe thats just me. :) 12. Steaks Cheap, good ones that overlap your plate. I once diened in a country motel where the menu was rare, medium or well done, with chicken for vegetarians. 13. A prime minster who touched up the queen. Okay, so the whole thing was a beat-up. Keating's gesture was the kind that most men his age would make when ushering their mothers or their elderly aunts. What does it say about the idea of nobility that this would cause such a storm? 14. Peace Almost all of your violence is domestic and intimate. Few people care enough about politics to fight. Which is a good thing. So far. 15. Aberrant Horizons distances that refust to fade. Roads that disappear under mirages of water. Cars ahead of you that disappear, as though falling over the edge of the world. 16. Nonsensical political boundaries States defined by an arbitary straight line. "Welcome" and "Please come again", say the signs on the borders- the only indication you have left or arrived. 17. The Smells The smell that comes with the rain. The smell of hot eucalyptus leaves. Beer smells. Aeroguard smells. Septic tank smells. The smell you catch when you drive past a winery. 18. The Blue Singlet uniform. Leading to the "no singlets" signs in pubs, confusing foreigners who wonder if they shuld undress to take theirs off. 19. The Murry Draining half the continent. Feeding half the continent. Dambed, wired and contained. Dying in its tracks. Our great, tragic, muddy Mississippi of a river. 20. The bush ballard Best ignored. I have heard of a man whith a bad speech impediment who writes powtry. You can't make out the words, but you can tell he's reciting a bush ballard, just from the rhythm. 21. Mateship The thing that allows men to never talk, to know next to nothing about each other, yet to know, with certainty, that they love each other. 22. Tidy Towns Where lese do towns compete fiercely for the accolade "tidy"? The town on Lithgow recently won the competition, but the local newspaper ran into trouble with its front-page headline. It read: "A tiny accolade", which is about right. 23. Government as parent We hate it. We sling off about it all the time, but come drought, financial collapse, hard luck and natural disaster, and we expect it to bail us out. 24. Halal butchers next to the Vietnamese supermarkets next to the Turkish restaurants next to the ocker pubs next to the Kentucky Fried Chicken next to Chinatown next to Devonshire teas next to faceless office blocks next to McDonald's. 25. The tiled public bar Other cultures make a great fuss about their beers- look at Germany, or the Real Ale movement in Britian. Australia, though, is probably the only country to have designed bars so obviously made for hosing down. 26. Country towns with clipped lawns, sprinklers, frocks and an open air of moral certainty while only a few kilometers away, Aboriginies live in between sheets of corrugated iron, sometimes without running water. A life on the edge. 27. The best soaps in the world which is hardly surprising, since we are also one of the most suburban nations, and the suburbs are where the great joys and tragedies of life can all be found in the one street, behind the triple-fronted brick veneer facades, it's just that in real life, things can't usually be resolved in one episode. 28. The sense of humor An American friend tells me: you put yourself down in the States, and everyone pets and reassures you. Put yourself down in Australia, and people know you are joking. 29. Odd ideas about heritage There arn't many places in the world where rusty galvanised iron rooves are heritage items, or where buildings less than a hundred years old qualify for preservation on the grounds of their age. 30. Endless agonising about what is essentially Australian. Professor Graeme Turner writes that older nations have denser mythologies, from which ideas of nationhood arise implicitly, "The newer nations have to undertake the process of nation formation explicitly, visiblu, defensively, and are always being caught in the act- embarrassed in the process of construction."