Thursday, July 7, 2011

Things about Australia that I love (part of an occasional series)

Every red-blooded American considers Australia a kind of spiritual “second home”. It’s the place where we would live if we couldn’t live in the U.S. There’s the same sense of rugged individualism, outspoken honesty, love for adventure, and stiff-spined courage that animated our own forefathers. Here are a few things that strongly appeal to me.

Lovely sheilas! New Miss Universe Australia crowned.

Interesting animals! Friendly wombats.

Lethal warriors! Aussie commandos.

Great bloggers! Tim Blair.

Inscrutable headlines! “Mal Meninga’s Willie Tonga-inspired war-cry lifted Maroons to victory in State of Origin decider”.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's confusing about Big Mal? He's always been pretty easy to understand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt--SGmIKIQ

(ChomFa - too lazy to get a Google or other account)

JeffS said...

Aussie Sheilas! Ain't nothing like 'em.

TW: ratted. Not me! No, I didn't rat on anyone!

Minicapt said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy_TB6onHVE

Cheers

Yojimbo said...

And a tip of the cap to the "Matildas". They are in the quarters of thw World Cup.

TimT said...

Great to see the wombat love going on, but check out this news:

SCIENTISTS in northwest Queensland are piecing together the remains of a prehistoric marsupial that would have looked like a monster wombat.
Palaeontologists have unearthed the remains of a diprotodon at a dig at Burketown, the ABC reports.

They hope it will be the world's most complete diprotodon skeleton ever sourced from a single specimen.

Professor Michael Archer said it was unusual for all of the creature's bones to be in one location.

"What we're seeing here is the biggest marsupial that ever lived in the world - a three-tonne monster that was walking around this land somewhere between 50,000 and two million years ago," he said.

"This was its last stand."

The giant wombat joins giant kangaroos and crocodiles among the scary creatures that once wandered the countryside.

TimT said...

According to a radio interview I heard, the Mega Wombat would have been about 3 metres tall (like a big rhino) and probably lived in a herd. My favourite story this week!

bruce said...

I was privileged, 6 years back, before he died, to spend an hour with a gent who was a member of this remarkable force:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2/5th_Commando_Squadron_(Australia)

"On 29 June 1942, the Company launched a raid on a Japanese aerodrome in Salamaua, the first Allied attack on Japanese land forces anywhere."
***

I must insist that our folks have benefited by adopting American practices. Cheer-leading, to name just one.

Paco said...

TimT: Love the prehistoric wombat stuff!

Emmett Flatus said...

"Rugged individualism" used to be true. Kinda went down the drain when they collected all the guns and ground them up. Now, like in Mother England, only the baddies have guns and citizens cower in their homes.

Bob Belvedere said...

-Scientists on the East Coast of America have discovered a live slime weasel in the Oval Office.

-Linked to at:
Rule 5 News: 09 July 2011 A.D.