• 49% of Australians were born overseas or have at least one parent who was born overseas and moved to Australia
  • Someone from Sydney is typically referred to as a Sydney-sider
  • A person from Melbourne is called a Melbournian
  • Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke once held the Guiness World Record for the fastest beer sculling, downing 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds (he recreated the legendary feat at the SCG in January 2017)
  • Despite being a massive continent, 90% of Australia’s population live on the coast due to the majority of the interior being a vast desert
  • Australia’s Aboriginal people are estimated to have lived here for roughly 50,000 years, yet they now make up only 1.5% of the total population
  • The average Australian will eat the equivalent of 18 full cows and 90 full sheep in his or her lifetime
  • After Athens, Melbourne has the world’s largest Greek population
  • Australia has one of the world’s lowest population densities – it’s size is only a bit smaller than the USA, yet the population is only around 23 million, as opposed to 313 million in the United States.
  • The average Australian drinks 83 litres of beer per year
  • In Aboriginal culture, women are not permitted to play the didgeridoo

 

Cultural life

Australia’s isolation as an island continent has done much to shape—and inhibit—its culture. The Aboriginal peoples developed their accommodation with the environment over a period of at least 40,000 years, during which time they had little contact with the outside world. When Britain settled New South Wales as a penal colony in 1788, it did so partly because of the continent’s remoteness. Australia’s convict heritage ensured that European perceptions of the environment were often influenced by the sense of exile and alienation. Yet, the distance from Britain—and the isolation it imposed—strengthened rather than weakened ties with it. The ambivalence of the continuing colonial relationship, which only began to be dismantled in the second half of the 20th century, has been a central cultural preoccupation in Australia.