This page explores a varity of topics of general interest:

• A volcano 50 kilometers wide!?
• Australia very nearly became a French colony
• 20 years hard-labour for stealing a loaf of bread
• Where does the Australian accent come from?
• Are Australians culturally inferior?

A volcano 50 kilometers wide!?

Visitors to northern New South Wales will see the volcano's core as Mt. Warning. The crater is now known as 'The Scenic Rim', clearly visible surrounding Mt Warning. The Rim is perhaps 50 kilometers in diameter (a big volcano by any standards). Mt Warning was so named by Captain James Cook the legendary English navigator who charted the east coast of Australia in the 18th century, thus helping to assure Britain's claim over the continent. Terra Australis (Southern Land), as it was then named had been visited by explorers from France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Russia around the time Cook made his voyage, though the harshness of much of the continent probably was responsible for those countries not making permanent settlements.

Australia very nearly became a French colony

A Frenchman, Jean-Francois La Perouse came very close indeed to claiming Terra Australis for France. In 1788, he sailed into Botany Bay (just to the south of Sydney Harbour) only to find the British had arrived barely hours (by some accounts) or days earlier, and had set up camp. A tense confrontation ensued, and the outcome is history.

20 years hard-labour for stealing a loaf of bread

The British established a penal colony in Sydney in the 18th century, and it was here that they transported the hapless inmates of their overcrowded prisons. Some were as young as 10, having been imprisoned for crimes no worse than stealing bread to feed themselves on the streets of London. The basic problem facing Britain at the time was that its cities were overcrowded, and in the absence of a suitable war, locking their unwanted citizens up in overflowing prisons or in so-called prison hulks, permanently anchored derelict ships where conditions were little better than the slave transports. Sanitation and rations were extremely poor, and not surprisingly there was a high death rate.

Clearly something had to be done, and the British government at the time looked about for a suitable location for a penal colony. Newly discovered Australia was attractive not only because potential as a future colony but also for its remoteness from England. Convicts sent to Australia could be considered permanently disposed of, since an exhausted malnourished convict was unlikely to ever escape and make his or her way back to England, given that it was a hazardous six month voyage even if they did survive in the harsh alien landscape long enough to find passage. In today’s terms, it would have been similar to being sent to Mars.

Where does the Australian accent come from?

The typical Australian accent derives from the cockney English spoken by many of the early convicts. The Irish were also present in large numbers and had their influence on the developing Australian accent as well, but it is the cockney that has had the defining influence. Australian's call each other 'mate' in the same way that East-end Londoners do. Its a general purpose term of address that can be used with friends, acquantances and complete strangers alike. It simply indicates good will toward the other.

While it is fading out with the onset of a flood of American expressions, until recently it was common among working class Australians to use ryhming slang similar to cockney rhyming slang, but with a uniquely Australian flavour. Expressions like 'let have a butcher's hook' or 'have a Captain Cook' (both meaning to have a look), 'have a dig in the grave' (to shave), and 'on my pat malone' (to be alone).

Another point of similarity between the Australian and Cockney accent is the tendency to pronounce the 'th' sound as 'vv' or 'ff' as in 'farver' for 'father', or 'ffursday' for 'thursday'.

It is also interesting to note that the Canadian accent was influenced by Scottish emigres, the US accent from the Irish, and the South African accent from the Dutch Afrikaans.

Are Australians culturally inferior?

Given the nature of Australia’s first European inhabitants, it is hardly surprising that Australia is considered to be culturally inferior by some British. This view conveniently overlooks the fact that the vast majority of those emigrating to Australia, as with America and New Zealand, came voluntarily to start a new life in a wide-open land. Australians shouldn't feel discriminated against because of this. Those same Britons look down upon American, French, German, Italian, New Zealand, in fact just about everyone else in the world. Fortunately the majority of Britons do not think this way. So pervasive was the perception among Australians of being culturally inferior that the term 'cultural cringe' was coined in the 1970s by the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to describe this collective low self-esteem. Since then, Australians have rightly shaken off this perception, reinventing Australian culture to be one of vibrancy and confidence, as seen in the Sydney Olympics.

When Queen Elizabeth II of Britain visited Australia in the early 1990’s, the then Labour Prime Minister Paul Keating created a furore in the British press when he placed a hand on the small of Her Majesty’s back to guide her through a crowd. There was nothing improper about this in the normal sense, being the gesture of an attentive host, but the breach of protocol earned Keating the epithet the Lizard of Oz in Britain. This venom may have been in part a response to Keating’s working class Irish Australian background. This is perhaps borne out by the mild reaction of the British press to the Governor General repeating the same gaffe when the Queen was visiting Australia in 2002. The Governor General had been the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane before his appointment to be the Queen's representative in Australia. Hollingworth resigned from the Governor-Generalship in 2003 after a damning report from the Anglican Church concluded that he knew of and permitted to continue over a long-period the sexual abuse by priests and teachers of children in Anglican Schools and church-run institutions.

An Austalian Republic

Australia retains the British monarch as its ultimate head of state, a situation which many Australians find innappropriate, even absurd in the 21st century. A concerted effort was made by the Republican movement in 2000 to bring about an Australian Republic in 2001, exactly one century after the Federation of the states was declared. A referendum was held and the monarchists won, largely because there was disagreement among the republicans as to what republican model to use. One camp wanted a president to be directly voted in by the Australian people, the other wanted a president who was appointed by the Prime Minister. More people wanted the former model, while the Prime Minister (John Howard) wanted the latter, saying that the President should not be a politician, as it would create a new political force to rival the Prime Minister. Added to that is the fact that Mr. Howard is an avowed monarchist himself.