Australia Day is, quite frankly, my favourite holiday of the year. It has all the fun elements of a holiday without any of the boring responsibilities.
You have parties, BBQs, and an excuse to get drunk, but you have absolutely no obligation to buy anyone presents, send cards, call your grandmother, or watch Love Actually.
And we all love being Australian, right? Whether your peeps have been on the island since the earliest times or you’ve just arrived, we’ve all got a good reason to be here, and we need little excuse to celebrate it.
Here are 25 ways to be Aussie as:
1. Have a strong opinion on whether BBQ Shapes or Pizza Shapes are the superior snack. There’s no right or wrong answer* but you passionately defend your preference whenever the conversation comes up. (*Pizza Shapes is the right answer.)
2. You’ll never really get over your first true love, which was one of the Playschool hosts.
3. Always have a city or town that you pay out. I’m not just talking Sydney v Melbourne, either. If you’re from Bundaberg, it’s your duty to make fun of Maryborough. If you’re from Bonniefield in WA, then you must automatically hate everything about Dongara. And so on and so forth across the country.
4. Make sure there’s at least one photo in your Facebook profile of you holding a humungous fish.
5. Use the word “but” instead of “though” on the end of sentences.
INCORRECT: He’s a good bloke, though.
CORRECT: He’s a good bloke, but.
6. Exaggerate the size of any spider, insect, snake, crocodile, or shark you see by at least 50 per cent when you tell others about it. If you woke up with a huntsman as big as your hand sitting on your bed head, tell your mates it was as big as a dinner plate. You didn’t even scream, but.
7. You use chicken salt as a sexual aid.
8. Several of your mates have nicknames of such complex etymology that it’s almost impossible to remember where they came from.
9. Your Vegemite game must be at least Level Four: Grandmaster. That means you don’t flinch at pairing it on toast with ricotta, cheese or avocado, but you’ve also experimented with numerous combinations which didn’t go so well (mayonnaise, hommus, tuna), but all get chalked off to experience.
10. You reckon the only interesting part of politics is when a Prime Minister gets dumped.
11. The ability to make the word “mate” sound like a friendly salutation or a venomous threat. Isn’t that right? Mate.
12. The only time you’re truly happy is when you’re girt by sea, i.e. at the beach. And no beach trip is complete until you’ve been dumped by a wave and ended up with blocked ears and sand in all your crevices and, erm, cracks.
13. The storms in other cities are nothing compared to the storms in your city. Tornadoes, floods, and dozens of houses destroyed? Pfft, pissweak. Those people are soft.
14. When a fly flies into your mouth you are disgusted but also a tiny bit proud.
15. Call any kind of short break a “smoko” even though you haven’t touched a ciggie in years.
16. Popping down to Coles or Woolies without shoes is nothing, you have no problem walking around a shopping centre for two hours sans kicks. That black sticky powder that ends up on the bottom of your feet helps your body built up resistance to germs.
17. You scream out “Magda Szubanski!” at the moment of climax.
18. When someone says “chips” you instinctively know whether they are talking about hot chips or chips in a packet, even if there’s no context to help you. This is a great gift, that no other nationality possesses, hence the need for them to, bizarrely, use different names for different things.
19. Whether you give a toss about cricket or not, you have a strong opinion on Michael Clarke.
20. The phrase “yeah, nah” is able to convey more information, sentiment, and complexity than the entire works of Dante, Shakespeare, and Homer combined.
21. You like your sporting chants simple. Very simple. Like, more than three different words is an over-complication. Oi!
22. When you get a new pair of sunnies your whole personality changes.
23. You know more about tea than the English and more about coffee than most Italians.
24. You develop a love for certain sports when Australia is doing well at them, before immediately forgetting them once they go off the radar. Remember Chumpy Pullin? Yeah, nah.
25. The more you like someone, the more shit you give them.
Image Credit: 9Jumpin