THE ONLY PLACE TO LIVE... We,
the people of the broad brown land of Oz, wish to be recognized
as a free nation of blokes, sheilas and the occasional in between.
We come from many lands (although a few too many
of us come from New Zealand) and, although we live in the best country
in the world, we reserve the right to bitch and moan about it whenever
we bloody like.
We are One Nation but we're divided into
many States.
First, there's Victoria, named after a queen
who didn't believe in lesbians. Victoria is the realm of Mossimo
turtlenecks, café latte, grand final day and big horse races.
Its capital is Melbourne, whose chief marketing pitch is that it's
"liveable". At least that's what they think. The rest
of us think it is too bloody cold and wet.
Next, there's NSW, the realm of pastel shorts,
macchiato with sugar, thin books read quickly and millions of dancing
queens. Its capital, Sydney, has more queens than any other city
in the world, and is proud of it. Its mascots are Bondi lifesavers
who pull their Speedos up their cracks to keep the left and right
sides of their brains separate.
Down south we have Tasmania, a State based on
the notion that the family that bonks together stays together. In
Tassie, everyone gets an extra chromosome at conception. Maps of
the State bring smiles to the sternest faces. It holds the world
record for a single mass shooting, which the Yanks can't seem to
beat no matter how often they try.
South Australia is the province of half-decent
reds, a festival of foreigners and bizarre axe murders. SA is the
state of innovation; where else can you so effectively reuse country
bank vaults and barrels as in Snowtown, just out of Adelaide (also
named after a queen). They had the Grand Prix, but lost it when
the views of Adelaide sent the Formula One drivers to sleep at the
wheel.
Western Australia is too far from anywhere to
be relevant in this document. It's main claim to fame is that it
doesn't have daylight saving because if it did all the men would
get erections on the bus on the way to work. WA was the last state
to stop importing convicts, and many of them still work there in
the government and business.
The Northern Territory is the red heart of our
land. Outback plains, cattle stations the size of Europe, kangaroos,
jackaroos, emus, Ulurus and dusty kids with big smiles. It also
has the highest beer consumption of anywhere on the planet, and
its creek beds have the highest aluminium content of anywhere too.
Although the Territory is the centrepiece of our national culture,
few of us live there and the rest prefer to fly over it on our way
to Bali.
And there's Queensland. While any mention of
God seems silly in a document defining a nation of half-arsed agnostics,
it is worth noting that God probably made Queensland. Why He filled
it with dickheads remains a mystery.
Oh yes, and there's Canberra. The least said
the better. We, the citizens of Oz, are united by the Pacific Highway,
whose treacherous twists and turns kill more of us each year than
die by murder. We are united in our lust for international recognition,
so desperate for praise we leap in joy when a ragtag gaggle of corrupt
IOC officials tells us Sydney is better than Beijing.
We are united by a democracy so flawed that a
political party, albeit a redneck gun-toting one, can get a million
votes and still not win one seat in Federal Parliament while bloody
Brian Harradine can get 24,000 votes and run the whole country.
Not that we're whingeing, we leave that to our
Pommy immigrants. We want to make "no worries mate" our
national phrase, "she'll be right mate" our national attitude,
and "Waltzing Matilda" our national anthem.(So what if
it's about a sheep-stealing crim who commits suicide).
We love sport so much our newsreaders can read
the death toll from a sailing race and still tell us who's winning
in the same breath. And we're the best in the world at all the sports
that count, like cricket, netball, rugby, AFL, roo-shooting, two-up
and horse racing.
We also have the biggest rock, the tastiest pies,
the blackest aborigines and the worst-dressed Olympians in the known
universe.
We shoot, we root, we vote. We are girt
by sea and pissed by lunchtime.
And even though we might seem a racist,
closed-minded, sports-obsessed little people, at least we're better
than the bloody Kiwis - why else would there be so many of them
here?
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