Australia is bloody huge. I mean gigantic in land size and it's open space.

Although Australia is big in land area, if you look at it from space you will see an orange country with only a thin green fringe around some of the mainland with Tasmania being the only state that is mostly arable and greened by rain.

The mainland deserts take days or weeks to cross, and most of Australia is desert.

All the Major cities are sprinkled around a section of the massive coastline with bugger all population on the far North East and North West coastline or near the centre.Most of us live on the East coast in or around four major Cities.

Australia is too hot and dusty for words more than a few hundred miles inland from any direction and it hasn't rained on a lot of it since Noah was a pup..

People survive in the outback because the Australian sense of humor is as dry as the desert itself. By the way, although we have very little rain water inland, it does rain sometimes and it rains a lot in some places and floods replace drought every ten years or so, refilling huge inland lakes.

To give you an idea of the Australian attitude to life in the raw and our weather, I recall the last time I was in the outback the temperature got to 45c (113 Fahrenheit.)

I was sitting in the shade on the veranda of an outback "mikbar" or general store/ petrol station. A local came up the road, dressed in stubby work shorts and a tee shirt. As he stepped up to the veranda I greeted him with the standard weather related greeting. "G'day mate, a bit warm ay?" He grins and shakes his head slowly, the sweat had saturated the tee-shirt and Stubbies (very short shorts, ) and was running down his face in rivulets. "Air conditioning" he says, glancing at himself. "I'm as dry as a nuns naughty bits." meaning he needs to re-hydrate. He wanders in to the shop. "Might get warm later" says the shopkeeper."Nah" says the local. They both laugh, big outback laughs, like a rumbling sound.

When the country was flooded with 10 inches of rain in a few hours the local greeting will ideally your own composition and style, but will be something like... "She might get a bit damp later on ay mate?" That scores about a six out of ten, and your welcome to it. Greetings are usually delivered with a big conspiratorial grin. If your delivery is good and funny, you get local brownie points in the outback.

Humor is a funny thing. (sorry could not resist the silliness of that.) Australian humor is often self deprecating, irreverent, laconic and exaggerated.There is a good reason for that.

Living in the outback, sooner or later you are likely to confront this harsh land. This year or next you could be watching your house float by with only the roof showing in a river 100 miles wide, were there hasn't even been a drop of rain for years, or be stuck in the dessert with a broken vehicle, or flooded in with no way out for weeks or even months. You may get washed away by the floods or die of thirst if your four wheel drive breaks down in one of the many remote parts of Australia.

A lot of Australians are very proud of our world sports hero's and entertainers who have succeeded on the world stage in almost every sport and entertainment area.Barry Humphrey's 'Dame Edna Everage" character is world renown, our great larrikin Poet Banjo Paterson who is among the worlds best, and very funny too. Nicole Kidman and many other movie stars who you will already know if you are a movie buff which I am not.Hollywood does not move me often.

It's absolutely true that we have more of the best bloody motorcycle racers, golfers, cricketers, basketballers, actors and ratbags in the whole bloody world! Yet somehow we can spoil it by being immodest about it at times....

Sport.

Sports humor is a bit nationalistic for my liking.

"Go home yer pommy bastards" is a common greeting familiar to our British cousins at the famous MCC. (Melbourne Cricket Club)

We beat the English cricket team and beat them consistently.

Nicknames.

Australian nick-names stick and are often very insulting.

Porky (not nice, but Porky doesn't seem to mind. (My mate's pet pig)

"The singing budgie" Kyle Minogue. For those who don't know Kyle she is a very famous, if somewhat diminuative Australian singer/performer.

"The silver bodgie" Our prime minister Robert or "Bob" Hawk copped that one for pretending to be one of the boys too many times. Bodgies were a teenage group who followed a particular dress code and are way uncool today.

John Howard another prime minister got called a lot of unflattering nick names, like "Teflon John" because nothing stuck to him.

Anyone with "dodgy" in their nick name should be avoided.

Gunna. An old bushy I know who is always going to do or gunna do something, but never gets it done.People call him gunna to his face, he thinks it's a compliment!

Gyro. After Gyro gearloose a Dysney character who is a mad scientist.

Gyro is a local hero and can repair anything.

Nicknames are very different to America and other English speaking countries.

We have nicknames not just for all our mates, but just about everything else, so learning the language can be harrowing even if your native tongue is English.

We have a big Agricultural output for a country that is bloody tiny when it comes to arable land.We grow a lot of fruit like oranges, apples, peaches Apricots and a big range of nuts. Tasmania is also known as the apple state.

We have a lot of other fruit and nuts, so I will write more about the people later!

If you have a real fair dinkum long term Aussie friend you have hit the jackpot.

Australians value loyalty, as we are used to not being able to visit each other all the time due to the distances we need to travel. That and the fact that we work pretty hard generally and are very productive.

Aeroplanes are great to reduce travel time but a bit hard if you want to take your pet kangaroo or the kids and dogs want to come.

It has to do with this big country teaching you that what works best in any one situation is not always obvious.

Mate.

An Australian mate does not just mean female or male partner.

It has a specific meaning for each occasion.

My mate down at the hardware store can mean just about anything from I went there once, to the guy who owns it is a business friend of mine, but the implication is that he either has something that you want, or has an opinion you may want to hear.

If I say I am your best mate I mean that I will mortgage the house for you, share my last food and shelter with you, or lend you the Holden or let you babysit my kids, use my credit card, anything you need that I have is yours for the asking if you are in trouble.The whole family will join in supporting your best mate in a pinch.

F**k you too mate! is used frequently whenever someone gives you the bird and has a totally different meaning to "she'll be right mate" which is used to indicate all sorts of agreeable daily encounters.

She'll be right mate.

The delivery bloke may help you carry a heavy parcel up the stairs without being asked.

We don't do tips for deliveries and he has done this usually because he likes to be helpful. he gets paid pretty well, so we say good onyer mate with a friendly smile, he replies "she'll be right mate, which means you are most welcome!

Although we do not tip for most deliveries and services, we do tip the food delivery man as we know his pay stinks and it is a lousy part time job.

Many races make up Australia, as I have said elsewhere in one suburb of Melbourne the people speak 180 languages.Yet the Australian's who have been here a while integrate and take up the way of life and strange language we call "strine" with great enthusiasm.

I adopted a boy from North west China in 1996 when he was six.

His most common phrase when he learnt English was "She'll be right mate!"

I trotted him off to a good Aussie school where he soon got the local input needed to indoctrinate him.

We do not always say things in ways that are intelligible to outsiders.

"Strine" is an elitist language.

If you understand the word strine, then you already have a glimpse of the self deprecating humor that is our trademark.

When an Australian says the word "Australian" it sounds like the word "Strine" we leave out any sounds that are unnecessary, and some wags would suggest it is because if you open your mouth to speak the flies will get in, so try saying Australian with you lips closed and almost still. See? You have a head start!

Now you will be able to read my hubs!

You will see Asian, African, European, American, Canadian, Greek, Italian, Dutch, German, Iranian, Iraqi Australian kids speaking with the same Australian style that is so entrenched in the whole culture of this country.

Within one generation many new Australians are pretty laconic and have soaked up the lay back lifestyle.

We do not generally worry too much about what others think about us, we know who we are, we are a group of migrants who share a common culture that is irreverent, pliable, and easy going.

Those who have been here a generation or two wind up being uniquely Australian no matter what we look like or were we came from. The country itself seems to create a culture that is tolerant and fun to live in, no matter that your black, yellow, purple or boring old white like me.

I have, like many Australians lived and or worked in other countries and the word is this is the best country to live in on this little blue green planet, even if we do look like we are defying gravity hanging off the bottom of the globe.

We have strange looking animals, a pretty dense bush and a shipload of sand.

We have Nicole Kidman, a city named Darwin (who visited Australia as a young man) sun surf oodles of coastline and....sand.

Did I mention the desert? Sand, lots of sand.