USA in OZ

I found a lot of America in Australia.

Of course there are many similarities to England: Government, education, red post boxes are all direct descendants and, like in India, Cricket is in the lifeblood of Australians. But what fascinates me more are the ways that this young country has recently chosen to evolve closer to Europe (with the metric system, for example) or in many obvious ways to the USA.

The grounded, three-prong outlet with a switch – a bit of both UK and USA - like Australian dollars also heads of British monarchy.

Historically, the native aboriginal population who lived off the land has a troubled history at the hand of European settlers. After the penal colony era, Australia continued to take in poor, tired and unwanted peoples from far away. The country is even relative in land mass to the US.

And like Americans, Australians like to think big: big skies, big, dry stretches of land,big oceans. The country can even boast to having the world's largest homes (average floor area of a new home is 215 sq m – versus 202 sq m in the US).

Cars (and homes) often sport the red white and blue flag.

It's not just the dollar and big houses that have been adopted since colonial days. These are some of many 'Made in AUS' similarities we found while driving through Australia:

• Dusty gold rush towns still thrive like main streets of yesteryear. And now malls have caught on in a big way as has the concept of a Walmart superstore which here is called 'Big W' - except it's owned by Woolworths (no historical relation to the US five and dime empire.
• McDonald's - are so abundant that you know a town has a few houses when a "maccers' is built. However, Burger King is known as Hungry Jack's since many US brands try to reshape themselves into Aussie institutions.
• The pickup truck, known as a "ute" is emblematic (see below) and Australian carmakers Holden are now owned by GM. Indycar stock car racing is also popular here.
• Australian rules football - cousin of American Football. There is a sports-crazy mentality to both participate and watch sports at all levels. A large amount of time, money and importance is placed on sports. Fanaticism runs deep especially in Melbourne which used to have all of the teams in the AFL and is still home to most of them.
• Ice cold beer - in fact every bottle shop has a cold room to house most of it's beer. Low carb beers - have also caught on here, perhaps for the gym rats. Pick some up at the drive through liquor stores.

A Holden 'Ute'.

All this might make for a seemingly comfortable lifestyle. Despite abundant natural resources the country is not prepared to deal with the pressures placed on it by gas guzzling cars and large, inefficient homes. Yet it seems that Australians living in their mansions believe that they can cope by just flicking the switch on the air conditioning. Sound familiar?