24 Apr '13 02:32>1 edit
"[A]fter mulling over the most up-to-date census data, the country's Bureau of Statistics has come up with its own stereotype-busting definition of the so-called average Aussie."
Interesting article, the rest here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22213218
What are the lingering stereotypes and "changing face" of where you live?
Suffice to say, we are not dealing with some ocker on the veranda of an outback watering hole, raising a schooner of ice-cold beer with one hand and swatting away flies with the other. Nor has the Australian Bureau of Statistics plucked a character from the teenage cast of an afternoon "soap", or some blonde Adonis from the surf at Bondi.
No, the "average Australian" is evidently a 37-year-old woman, married with two children, who lives in a three-bedroom house in a suburb of one of Australia's capital cities. Its average Australian is a wholly different character from the imagined Australian.
Any attempt to define a nation by one person is bound to be met by scepticism. But in a country where the prime minister, the governor-general and the richest person - the mining magnate, Gina Rinehart - are all women, the latest data confirms what demographers have long known: Australia is becoming a more female country.
Another excerpt:
The "average Australian" is still born in Australia, as were her parents. But in this polyglot nation, with such a rich multicultural flavour, that is likely to change soon. Over a quarter of Australians are already born overseas - 26% - and only 54% have parents who were both born within these shores.
The changing face of the Australian cricket team illustrates some of the demographic shifts. Blonde and gelled, its captain and vice-captain on the recent tour of India, Michael Clarke and Shane Watson, look like they have stepped, bat aloft, from central casting.
But the next generation of stars is starting to look more like modern Australia. Consider the promising all-rounder, Moises Henriques, who was born in Lisbon, Portugal, or Usman Khawaja, the talented - if underperforming - batsman, who hails from Islamabad.
The notion that cricket, one of the few sports which arouses the same level of passion throughout the land, should be regarded as the average Australian sport is also being challenged. In terms of ethnicity, football - or soccer as it is known in Australia - has arguably become the country's most representative sport.
The A-League can boast players from 56 ancestries. The Socceroos, the national team, is populated by players with names like Schwarzer, Aloisi, Ognenovski, Bresciano. Its star player, Tim Cahill, was born in Sydney of a Samoan mother and an English father of Irish descent. In a settler nation, it is the migrant game.
Interesting article, the rest here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22213218
What are the lingering stereotypes and "changing face" of where you live?