...
Winter Olympics may be good for the occasional "Bradbury moment" but barring that....
I sure hope we continue to get Bradbury moments. He may have won his medal by good luck and the mistakes of others. But the sheer fact that he was competing at such a high level in his sport is proof that he is no mug.
...
Unfortunately whilst we cheer and embrace Bazza MacKenzie, Dame Edna Everidge, Sir Les Patterson and Crocodile Dundee for the aspects of "real Australians" they portray there is also the risk of them being seen without the biased and "Ocker filters" as uncouth idiotic slobs. So we are caught in a difficult position. A love/hate relationship and polarised perspectives that exist in the same cultural identities.
Does that make any sense? 
Yes, it's like a family-loyalty thing where you might tease and torment your brother at home, but if anyone
else dares start in on him, they're in for a blue.
Aussie ancestors were captured by British authorities and for generally minor misdemeanors (performed in an effort to survive in a country that could not and would not elevate their dire social or financial standing) shipped them off to an inhospitable as punishment. To toil to the rest of their days and die. It was supposed to be the greatest punishment.
What happened was these tough and resourceful bastards did the unthinkable. They found a home. They served their time and with true frontier mentality found a land of opportunities that did not exist for them back home. Their peer's descendants back home may have be doomed to a lack of vocational or social choice but the descendants of those unwanting immigrants became whatever they could be because there was no bar to anything because your father or grandfather was a prisoner (whose wasn't). The values and humour developed and we found beauty in this land. Hell we don't care if we have the nastiest spiders and snakes and sharks and crocodile because we have beaches and countryside and wide open spaces.
They sent us off to die and we lived and lived well and continue to prosper. Stuck with what we have? Sort of. Proud? Hell yeah!
A few years ago, I went to visit the ruins of the old prison barracks at Port Arthur, Tasmania. Unbelievable that children of 14 could be sent away for things like stealing a hanky from someone's pocket. But as you say, it suited the British authorities to rid themselves of an entire stratum of society that was no longer economically useful.
For me, one of the best things about this country is the "have a go" mentality: Never assume that you can't do something just because you've never done it before. Have a lash at it, and if it succeeds, great; and even if it doesn't, at least you've made the effort. This is so much better than giving in to hopelessness simply because of your social origins or your financial status.
