Thats an amazing thread.....my hearts go out to the families involved. I never realised how many fallen soliders there were

Mmm, not sure really what "mateship" and culture have to do with each other. But i find Australians are the most backstabbing bunch i have ever come across. Most would not only sell their own granny, but kill, cook and serve in pies in order to get one over someone else

:-) To me - it just depends.....

I heard what you said, and some or many stories at face value would indicate that- that was what Jad said - although she took it beyond mil deaths and went on to list traits and characteristics but I suppose the point is that all countries tend to report for the local market. The Dutch would do it etc. Not my main thrust but my view is that there are mitigating circumstances.

In other segments - change of tack - I've seen the Victorian print compare a situation unfavourably with other countries despite what people say here on BE. Lack of a Melbourne airport rail link. Others.

I have had the total opposite of that experience. While I may have had some issues with 'Australia' in the past, I have never had any issue with Australians themselves.

Whereas, I find that some expats peddle a negativity relating to Australia and Australians that represent a similarly negative, if more individual, personal trait.

Backtracking a bit, of course, just because there are mitigating circumstances and explanations does not make any of those reported slants and wrongs any less cringeworthy (Hev's point). I find some things a bit cringeworthy only because of the coverage they get here.

I had an issue with Jad's post not because of the facts as she reported them, although I have some quibbles, but because of lines like 'are they really that insular?' which to me is part of the tabloid nature of the same old, same old complainants and their complaints. It was just another of the cliches.

I reckon that people get annoyed with a place and then set out to list all it's own foibles. Along the way, new disenchanted forum posters read their list, add their own to it, and then the list of tales is forever perpetuated by legions. The story becomes bigger than the reality and certainly so in the complainant's mind. At the end they end up personally the worse for it.

Aye and look at the role model they've got. The government.

I can't believe they've sacked the prime minister and are try to pretend it hasn't happened.

Keel

I thought it was a fine example of politics. In other situations the process visible to the public has been a drawn out bore. With the challenged clinging on....

I thought it brilliant - all over in a week with the main effort inside 24 hours and over by teatime....

I have to agree with you there. Very Machiavellian.

I sat around for a long time wondering where before i had seen Australians before and then one day sat in a meeting that was only taking place to arrange a meeting that was a pre meeting for the paperwork needed to organise the meeting, it struck me. Anyone who has read Hitch Hickers Guide will recognise the following:

Guide Description:
Australians are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters – and of course it depend on how much payment was offered and whether or not it was smoko. The best way to get a drink out of a Australian is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. On no account should you allow a Australian to read poetry at you.
In the series it is told that, far back in prehistory, when the first primeval Australians crawled out of the sea, the forces of evolution were so disgusted with them that they never allowed them to evolve again. Through sheer obstinacy, though, the Vogons survived (partly by adapting a misplaced, badly malformed, and dyspeptic liver into a brain). They then emigrated en masse to the Perth (although the film has them staying on Vogsphere), where they form most of the Galactic bureaucracy, most notably in the Australian Constructor Fleets (which, despite their name, patrol the galaxy demolishing planets). The only named Australians in the stories are Jeltz (see below), Kwaltz (who appears in the film), Zarniwoop, revealed to be a Vogon in the Quintessential Phase, and Jeltz's son Constant Moan. The space craft are mine boggingly ugly and appear to humans as utes, particularly the Holden V8 often in lurid colours.
Australians are roughly human-sized, although much bulkier, with brown or grey skin. Their noses are above their eyebrows, which are either ginger (in the television series) or white (in the film). The film's commentary states that the idea behind the high flat noses was that they evolved both the noses and the severe bureaucracy from being repeatedly smacked in the face by the paddle creatures under the sand on West Australia whenever they had an independent thought.
Behaviour
Australians are described as officiously bureaucratic, a line of work at which they perform so well that the entire galactic bureaucracy is run by them.
In Perth, the Australians would sit upon very elegant and beautiful gazelle-like creatures, whose backs would snap instantly if the Australians tried to ride them. The Australians were perfectly happy with just sitting on them. Another favorite Australian pastime is to import millions of beautiful jewel-backed scuttling crabs from their native planet, cut down giant trees of breathtaking beauty, and spend a happy drunken night smashing the crabs to bits with iron mallets and cooking the crab meat by burning the trees. In the movie, the Australians seem to smash the crabs for no apparent reason besides pure pleasure at killing something.

I know where you're coming from verystormy but actually, I find your post a bit offensive - but maybe that's the intention?

Are you a Vogon?

and for those who can't be bothered looking it up (I did)


"The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Vogons are slug-like but vaguely humanoid, are bulkier than humans and have green skin"

People who generalize negatively about Aussies usually generalize about everything else.

I'm generalizing about generalists.

Ironic hey

100 % spot on

I've actually given up raging against the Australian propaganda machine...its impossible to defeat.