Perhaps we should also point out that the national anthem is sung to the tune of Gilligan’s Island.
It was only when I traveled to the USA, which acted as a differentiating environment, that I realised how similar we are to poms compared to USAians. Both are very nice (top blokes), but as others have said, Aussies take the piss of themselves and others. US people are more serious about life.
There’s at least some “on-campus” accommodation - had a few friends staying there when I was at uni. For the most part it seems to be populated with international students or people from rural areas or interstate (but even then, a lot of those will just share a flat somewhere instead). Not quite the same as the US equivalent would probably be, but it is an option (if not the most common one).
And yeah, no-one drinks Fosters. It’s bizarre going overseas and seeing it on tap in bars all over the place, when back home you’d hardly see much of it unless you were looking for it in a bottle shop. Went to an Australia Day celebration in the UAE a few years back, and they had Fosters and Crowns behind the bar - you could immediately tell who were the Australians by looking at what everyone was drinking 
It’s true there’s on-campus accommodation at most unis, but it’s generally for “International” students- not “Australians”, except in rare cases like people from rural areas. The point I’m making is that the “University Experience” in Australia doesn’t (for 98% of Australians) involve living in a Dormitory or Greek Society accommodation on-campus, at marked contrast to the US “University Experience”.
Not only does no-one drink it, it’s actually quite hard to get (at least in QLD) unless you go to a backpacker pub or a big liquor store.
Living in campus is not as near universal here. There are plenty of people who do. The places you live on campus are called (confusingly enough) “colleges”. Some specialise in international students, but most don’t. There are a lot of rural people who stay in a college. There are a lot who do not. Your information is both wrong and substantially inaccurate.
Where you got your degree matters quite a lot. For example in Brisbane law degrees from Bond or Griffith are not valued as highly as those from QUT or UQ.
I challenge that it’s “substantially” inaccurate. I’d be astonished if my uni had 5% of its students living in the colleges.
Also note that there isn’t the U.S. expectation that you kill time with a bacchalaureate and then do your real learning in “graduate school”. The degree is the key qualification and while you might then go on to do a Master’s, you’re not spending four years earning a degree just to say that you can now go get a real qualification.
(Half-)Seriously, do you follow me around the boards waiting for me to post things so you can disagree with me? I’m starting to wonder if we live in completely different alternate universes or something. 
I have a postgraduate degree. I’ve studied at two universities and have spent a considerable period of time doing so. The sum total of “Australian” students I have interacted with who live “on-campus” is zero. All of them, without exception, have lived either with their parents (or with their SO) or in a flat with other students. It goes without saying that there will be “Australian” students living in the Halls of Residence or otherwise “on-campus”, but the vast majority of “Australian” university students do not live on campus.
I know Law Degrees (in fact, degrees in general) from Bond are worth “less” than they used to be because now anyone can go there with HECS (or whatever they call it nowadays), but you’ll agree it’s not like the US or UK where having a degree from the “Right” university is of vital importance depending what field you’re going into. I don’t think it matters too much whether your nursing degree is from QUT or Griffith or USQ, for example.
One big difference between the USA and Australia is in the distribution of our populations. In fact, even Australians are sometimes surprised at how urbanised we are, compared to our “Outback” image.
Consider the following stats:
Australia
Total Population - 20 million
Largest City - Sydney, pop 4.5mill, 22% of the country
Population living in a city over 1mill, 12mill, 60% of the country
Compared to:
USA
Total Population - 300 million
Largest City - New York, pop 8.3mill, 3% of the country
Population living in a city over 1mill, 24mill, 8% of the country.
If the USA followed the same pattern as Australia, you’d have over 70 million people living in the city of New York. That’s a lot of people!
Some consequences - as touched on above, people don’t tend to travel to other cities as much for study or work. Any city over a million can support a decent university, and job opportunities in all but the most specialized fields - and the majority of the population already lives in such a city. We do still travel (a lot!) but the reason tends to be “because I want to see something different” - in which case, why not do it properly and head off overseas somewhere?
WRT on-campus living … the reason why Martini probably never met any on-campus residents is that they’re very insular (I can say this - I was one!) My estimate of the demographics from Melbourne was that the dozen or so colleges probably had about 500 - 600 residents (out of a total student body of 12-15 thousand) and the vast majority of them being from country Victoria, a solid minority from overseas, and a tiny sprinkling from Tasmania. And we mostly socialized in-college, since we were already living in each others pockets and all.
You’re using different kinds of “cities” there: metro areas for Australia, and local government areas for the U.S. If you went by cities as LGAs in Australia, you’d find that there’s only one city over 1 million, and it’s Brisbane. (Sydney is about 200,000 and Melbourne is about 70,000). If you go by metro areas, this list has 52 cities over 1,000,000 in the U.S.
As an example of the difference it can make, depending on your definition there are 3 different possible answers to the question, What is the largest city in Ohio?
(1) The Cincinnati Metro Area is the largest with an urban centre in Ohio – but a significant part of the metro area is in Northern Kentucky.
(2) The Cleveland Metro Area is the largest entirely in Ohio.
(3) The City of Columbus is the largest incorporated city in Ohio – but the metro area is the third largest in the state.
Oh, ok. I probably should have realised my numbers were a little off :). I even did know somewhere in the back of my mind that a US “city” was different from an Australian “city” but seem to have temporarily forgotten it.
I can still see a fairly significant difference though. Using the numbers from your link, now we have:
Largest city - 6% of population
Top 5 combined - 17%
Cities over 1million - 55%
So let’s just say a very small number of places hold a disproportionate amount of the population.
Your experience does not define the universe. There are (relatively) few Australians that post here. In my opinion this creates a higher not lower duty to attempt to be accurate when one is attempting to provide information about Australia. Blatantly incorrect statements like “(never “on-campus”)” and “(generally) nobody cares where you got your degree” need to be corrected. Accuracy matters on this messageboard. You are a relatively recent immigrant yet you regularly and with great confidence make unqualified statements about what happens in Australia or what Australian think. Instead of wondering about why I correct you, maybe you should wonder about why you need to be corrected so often.
This might be true for some areas of study in the U.S., but certainly not all (or most?).
Regarding fraternities, my husband lived in a Residential College at his university. The way he describes it, it was exactly like a U.S. fraternity, except I think they drank more than any fraternity guys I ever knew.
In my experience (I don’t know any official stats on this), but almost everyone I knew in college in the U.S. held down some sort of job while attending classes, in order to pay for living expenses and/or tuition.
Maybe, but it is a useful measuring-stick.
And everything I post about this country is, in my view, correct- based on my own experiences and observations. Just as everything you post is correct, based on your experiences and observations.
Evidently you’re a literalist. If someone says to me “Never on-campus” in the context of the earlier conversation, it goes without saying (at least to me) that there will be exceptions. There’s always exceptions.
As other posters here have mentioned, the number of students living on-campus is tiny (someone mentioned 500 students out of a student body of 15,000) In my book, that’s near enough to “Never” for the purposes of an informal messageboard conversation. And I added the “Generally” qualifier to the “where you got your degree isn’t that important” thing because I’m not listing every specialist exception (like Law or MBAs or Accounting) when, to the Lay Reader, it should be taken as read that when you’re dealing with Professional, Ultra-White Collar Old-School-Tie Network stuff that it matters. But for the average BA student? I honestly don’t think anyone’s really that hung up on “Where you went to school”.
I’ve been living in this country for a decade, my entire adult life. I’m not some “Fresh Off The Boat” immigrant. I have Australian citizenship. I have an absolute right to comment on these matters, same as you. I’m offended you’d think otherwise, frankly.
And I still wonder why you correct me so often. No-one else from this part of the world does. I don’t see Cazzle or Threnody following me around the boards shouting “WRONG!” whenever I post something. Whenever I see your username appearing in a subject I’ve posted in, I groan inwardly wondering what you’re going to criticise me for this time.
I’m sure you don’t mean to do it, but it really doesn’t come across as being particularly pleasant or “nice” for want of a better term. I was thinking about it the other evening and I don’t think it’s so much the fact you’re disagreeing with me as the tone in which you do it.
So, I’m asking you nicely- and genuinely- if you’re going to disagree with me, could you please firstly consider find a more pleasant way of doing it? One that doesn’t involve implying I’m a cretin who’s got no idea what they’re talking about? Because I really do find it quite unpleasant. I extend you the same courtesy in our disagreements and I’d appreciate the same in return.
South Aussie 35 years, Taswegian for the last year, and IME:
So far, it’s 2:1.
Instead of wondering why I’m correcting you, maybe you should wonder why you needed to be corrected. 
I’d disagree that no-one cares where you got your degree, especially if you’re fresh out of uni. If I’m employing and I have a choice of wo people, one with a degree from Bond University and one from a real university, I know which I’m going with.
I mean, the USA (apparently) gets off on sending troops around the word-to fight in ill-advised wars.
When you guys sent your army into Timor, was there public support for this?
Or did the Autralian people oppose this intervention?
There was a lot of controversy about Australian involvement in the Vietnam War (I can remember taking part in demonstrations). Not so much about East Timor, because it was seen as mostly defensive, though it has made relations between Australia and Indonesia a bit difficult at times.
Australia has also sent troops to support the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m sure that’s been somewhat controversial, but I’ve been out of Australia for most of that time, so I’m not sure how much.
In my personal opinion, the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars have been ill-advised, but East Timor not so much, even though (most of the time) Indonesia and Australia have a good relationship. East Timor voted for independence in 1999, and Australian troops were there to help with a peaceful transition to independence.
As to the student housing in college, I can offer a perspective (but I’m a 'Merkin, so take it for what you will):
In 1999, I studied at Murdoch Uni in Perth for a semester while doing my undergrad at Wisconsin. Murdoch does have a student village, but it’s not all that big - the current website says it houses 800+ students, 6-8 to a flat. While Australians definitely did live there - one of my flatmates was born and raised in Darwin, two others in small towns outside of Perth by 100 km or so) - there was also a large contingent of overseas students (I was from the States, two of my other flatmates were from Singapore). I’d put the student village population at probably half and half.
Murdoch currently has a student body of 14,000+, not sure how many it had in 1999. So the majority lives off campus in some form.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the Australian public demanded that we intervene, as part of a UN peacekeeper force by preference or unilaterally if absolutely necessary, and that we should have been in there weeks earlier but Indonesia would not allow it. As it turned out INTERFET under Cosgrove did a very good job once they got there.
The background to this is interesting and plays on the relationship between Australia and Indonesia. Which has been volatile, hostile even but apart from a few fire-fights, never actually come to blows. Both sides have considered the other to be expansionist, with resources including oil & gas, terrorism, vestiges of colonialism, profound cultural, ethnic and religous differences etc and you have a relationship that needs a lot of careful attention.
As a parallel for the US reader take the US v Cuba relationship and transfer all the wealth and military power to Cuba.
Indonesia is an archipelego with over 160 million people and the largest Islamic country in the world, Australia just 20 million. We have an army of 25,000 backed up by an airforce and navy with the best weaponry that we can afford from the US. Indonesia’s military (TNI) is about half million conventionally armed troops. Indonesia has been run by military strongmen since independence with a gradually evolving democracy. The TNI is as much an economic and politial organisation as a military police.
In the past 20 years we have come a very long way. Australia’s help following the Boxing Day sunami, Indonesia actions following the Bali bombing. Much closer, and multi-layered political and police/military interaction. Going forward the relationship is steadly getting stronger. Anytime we look back on the not-to-distant past it gets murky.
The touch point for the past 60 years is East Timor, an old Portuguese colony as distinct from Dutch Indonesia.
Three times in that period the Australia has been involved there and the cost in blood to the East Timorese has always been horrific.
During the Japanese advance in WWII Australia took a forward position in East Timor and were supported by the locals. After Australia withdrew, estimates that up to a quarter of the local population was killed during the Japanese occupation.
When Portugal withdrew precipitously from their former colonies in 1975 , they created a power vacuum. East Timor declared independence but a bit over a week later Indonesia (with the tactit approval of the US, and foreknowledge of Australia) invaded and annexed the country as Province 27 of Indonesia.
Estimates as high as 100,000 East Timorese were killed the first year. Between 1975 and 1998 as much as on third of the local population were killed during the occupation.
In the 1990s Indonesia came under a wave of political and economic pressure. One of these was the East Timorese independence movement, which gained prominence after the masacre of 270 civilians at the Santa Cruz cemetery in 1991.
None-the less it was surprise to all parties involved when President Habibie offered a plebicite on East Timorese independence to be held at the end of August 1999. The East Timor economy, as with most Indonesian provinces, was run by a the military unit, Kopassus and with support of sympathetic militias. With the prospect of loss of face, power and money they started a widespread campaign of intimidation. Around 5,000 were murdered in the lead-up to the election.
Despite this, 98% of eligible East Timorese voted 78% for independence and the militias went on an uncontrolled rampage. Reports as high as 200,000 were displaced out, and 60,000 killed in a population of 800,000 until the INTERFET intervention brought the situation back under reasonable control.
Giles, if that is the best you can do, please disqualify yourself immediately as a authority on Australian domestic and regional matters.
peaceful transition to independence?
For fucks sake. Hundred of thousands of men, women and children were killed by colonisers and occupiers in Timor Leste’s pursuit of independence.
Not. peaceful. at. all.
Giles I believe was talking about independence in 1999. As such your figure of hundreds of thousands of deaths is incorrect.
On a lighter note, I still drink XXXX and I am in Perth.
This is sort of true. Sort of.
While Australians tend to eschew the cheering, flag-waving patriotism of Americans, there are plenty of Australians who wallow in a very unbecoming sense of superiority, and who are very narrow-minded about what constitutes proper Australian behaviors and practices.
It’s no coincidence, i don’t think, that the term "un-Australian’ is one heard quite frequently, in a similar way that un-American is heard quite frequently in the United States. The attempt to prescribe appropriate actions and thoughts might seem, at times, to be tongue-in-cheek or half-hearted, but the fact is that there exists a considerable subset of Australians who take this stuff deadly seriously, and who are very intolerant of contrary opinions.
The funny thing is that, alongside this fairly unreflective nationalism or patriotism, Australia is also home to a particular kind of parochial inferiority complex. Many Australians will, in one breath, talk about how Australia is the greatest country on earth, and in the next will desperately seek reassurance that the rest of the world is aware of Australia’s existence.
If an Australian does something significant on the international stage, you an be sure that the news stories will lead not only with the accomplishment itself, but will also make much of the fact that Americans/Brits/Europeans/whoever have noticed how awesome this particular Australian is. There appears to be a constant need for Aussies the reassure themselves that they really are more than a small backwater that the rest of the world doesn’t think about very much.
Of course, this isn’t too much different from the sort of self-centered attitude you find among many Americans. The main difference is that Americans know how important their country is on the world stage; Australians need to try and convince themselves of the fact.
I say all this with love. Despite having lived in the US for almost ten years, i’m still an Australian citizen, i still love the place and have family and many friends there, and if the opportunity presented itself, my wife and i would think very strongly about moving there.
One other thing i’ve noticed about Aussies since i moved to the US is that, despite the fact that Australians get bombarded with American news and popular culture, there are still plenty of otherwise smart and well-educated Australians who are happy to make the most facile and simplistic generalizations about the United States. I think the Aussies on this message board are far better than average in this regard, maybe because they interact with so many Americans right here on the Dope, but if i had a dollar for every time i’ve heard an Aussie start a sentence with, “Yeah, but Americans are all…” then i’d be a rich man.