User blog:Zaffie/This! Is! Australia!!!

Well it's not Sparta, that's for sure.

After a long and tedious two hours searching the internet for information on WHY people are consistantly so wrong about Australia, I have decided to make my own brief guide. This is purely for the purpose of my own sanity, although it would be nice if people would read and remember the information here, since I feel like I have learned a lot about America/Canada from you guys. (I already knew a lot about England)

Firstly, koalas. They are not called koala bears, and I can't understand why people seem to insist on calling them that. They are JUST called koalas. The people who call them koala bears are very sadly wrong. They may be getting confused with DROP-BEARS, a close relative of the koala. Let's recap. Koalas are small, grey, fuzzy and quite cute. They sleep in trees a lot, can only eat eucalyptus, make a weird coughing/grunting sound and don't need a lot of water. Drop-bears are quite a bit bigger than koalas (think sun bear) and also live in trees. They look similar, but drop-bears have much larger front limbs which they use to hold themselves in the tree. They don't make a sound (that we know of) and are startled by unexpected loud noises, often causing them to fall out of their perches. (Have you ever seen fainting goats? It's like that only funnier and with louder crashes.) If they fall on top of you... well, that's bad, since they're big and heavy and have massive claws. Normally if we Aussies go bushwalking we will wear a crash helmet (sometimes with spikes on it - the same helmet is used for swooping magpies) and some people believe that smearing vegemite in one's hair or behind one's ears also discourages them. (They really hate the smell of vegemite).

Right, so, now that we've established they are called KOALAS, let's move on. The capital of Australia is not Sydney. That is a lie, a terrible horrible lie. The REAL capital is in fact Canberra, which used to be a sheep paddock and consequently gets overlooked most of the time. It's really quite sad.

There is no such thing as 'the Aborginal language'. There are in fact multiple languages used by the Aboriginals of Australia. Words such as 'wotderellwozdat' meaning thunder, 'didjabringabeeralong' meaning drink and 'kangaroo' meaning I don't understand are not true. Kangaroo IS an Aboriginal word but the thing about it meaning 'I don't understand' is a myth. Those other words are just sentences which don't look English but actually are.

Yes, there are a ton of poisonous snakes and spiders here. You guys don't all have to make such a huge fuss about it! Avoiding them is really quite simple - all you do is learn as a child to stay out of the long grass under all circumstances. You must make sure when walking in Australia that you stomp your feet as loudly as possible - particularly in summer, when it takes a long time to walk anywhere because you have to stop each foot twice per step. Snakes hate the vibrations all this stomping makes, so it is very successful and keeping them away. As for the spiders, they often string webs at head height, particularly the largest spiders. Tourists start crawling along paths after the first couple of weeks in Australia, just to avoid those huge spiders, but that is a MISTAKE. Firstly they are not making enough noise to scare the snakes off, and so they often get bitten, and secondly the most deadly Australian spider (the red-back) is very small and lives on the ground. The only way to avoid death by spider bite is to completely cover your entire body when venturing out into the Australian bush. Red-backs also live in many Australian houses, so if you visit your Australian friends be sure to bring long jeans and a leather jacket (any other material is not tough enough to resist the powerful jaws of the red-back).

Waltzing Matilda is NOT the National Anthem. We do have an actual anthem, and it's totally awesome. Waltzing Matilda is awesome too, however, and it is not full of nonsense words as I have seen people claim. All of those words mean something, guys.

I have seen people who think that a 'bunyip' is a wart on your foot. That is a fail, they're thinking of 'bunions'. The bunyip is in fact an Australian animal. It lives in billabongs (smaller than a lake but larger than a creek) and has been known to eat people or simply drown them. According to surveys done in 2010, the bunyip is responsible for more deaths than the crocodile or the shark. Tourists are particularly vulnerable to the bunyip, as most Australians are told stories about it from birth and know how to avoid it. Descriptions of the bunyip vary (some people claim this is because no one who has seen it has lived to tell the tale) but it is said to be similar in some ways to the platypus - with a large toothy mouth instead of a bill. It is almost certainly carniverous, and has large four-toed feet (we've seen tracks and skeletons). It is also believed to have a large flat tail (again like the platypus) although that is only visible in tracks and cannot be proved by bones (so the tail would be fairly immobile).

In conclusion, Australia is a really great place to holiday. It's beautiful, it's fantastically warm, and if you follow all of the steps above you will come to no harm at all. Don't forget your tough clothing, vegemite, and STAY AWAY FROM BILLABONGS. Oh yeah, and if I catch ANYONE calling them koala bears... well let's just say my spatula is always at the ready.