The misadventures of Bruce and Shiela... an epic tragedy

Nothing gets on my tits more than people painting the Australian people as a bunch of quaint hicks. Crocodile Dundee, Steve Irwin, Kath and Kim and that episode of The Simpsons are like nails on a chalkboard for me.

Unfortunately, for the right price large corporations like Oprah and McDonalds can bribe an Australian "celebrity" to pass off a stereotype as the truth.

The Aussie stereotype means fuck all in today's society. In fact for it to be accurate we would all have to live in the Outback deserts of Northern Territory, drink XXXX beer while wearing an Akubra, blue wife beater and khaki shorts.Due to being at the arse-end of the world people have no idea what Australia is really like.

A long lost relative in America got in touch with us recently, he spoke about America and how they have these awesome things called "roads". Yup, apparently we haven't heard of such a thing in Australia. A European crossword puzzle stated the Uluru (that big fuckin rock in the middle of the Aussie desert) was in the USA... part of the Grand Canyon apparently.

Admittedly i am a bit of a bogan (an uncommon Australian coloquialism for red neck.) I do use the term budgie smugglers and occasionally refer to a male as a bloke, but this is a rarity. The truth is that depending on where you are in Australia there is a different type of person.

Here's some of our own stereotypes:

Melbourne Stereotype - Coffee drinking, business types. Think Seattle without the grunge

Sydney Stereotype - Colourful and fun yet still civilised. Think California

Brisbane Stereotype - Its also called BrisVegas...guess why

Darwin Stereotype - See Australian Stereotype

Hobart (Tasmania) - Olympic Peninsular meets Deliverance. Wet and inbred.

Adelaide - renoun for their water the way that Mexico is, your corpse could end up in a barrel of acid

Perth - Mining town full of men (actually when i visited there it was like a warn version of Canada. Clean and polite)

Canberra - no one actually has a stereotype of Canberra because its just a giant roundabout that holds all the politicians. Its meant to be our nations Capital.

I'm a Melbournian. I live in the suburbs, I used to commute to the city for my financial administration job and my wardrobe consists of mostly black. More importantly; I avoid McDonalds like the plague because it tastes like utter shit.

I can tell you if someone I worked with suggested going to Maccas for a business meeting they would be hardcore ridiculed, same if they refered to someone as a bloke or a sheila.

Things Australia is fuckawesome at are:
- Science
- Our healthcare system shits all over yours (unless your French or Swedish, you dudes have a pretty sweet deal)
- Our Wine and Beer shits over many other countries' wine and beer

Things that are not so fuck awesome:

http://www.cracked.com/funny-163-australia/

admittedly i have not encountered any of those beasties. Although, i seem to have an infestation of white tail spiders in my room- they're about an inch and a half long and some carry a flesh eating bacteria...not so awesome.

We also have some really nasty snakes in my state...but other than that Australia is pretty ok and mostly non-Redneck