What if....

A column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 6/7/2008

In the movie It's a Wonderful Life, an angel shows a depressed Jimmy Stewart what the world would be like if he had never been born. It's a much grimmer place.

Australians are feeling a bit down at the moment, according to the latest Morgan poll, with a big drop in consumer confidence and only 48 per cent saying the country is "heading in the right direction". So I'm going to emulate the angel and update a list I started making at the turn of this century aimed at describing what the world would be like if Australia had never been born -- if there had been no large land mass for the Portuguese, Dutch, French and English to bump into when they sailed southwards ...

- There would be no cure for 80 per cent of the world's stomach ulcers (WA's Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered that antibiotics kill a stomach bug called helicobacter).
- Gwyneth Paltrow would have won the Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours. She would have married Tom Cruise but then he'd have divorced her and married Katie Holmes.
- The term "fatal shore" would refer to the east coast of Canada, where the British would have dumped surplus convicts.
- The world's strangest animal would be the giraffe.
- The Japanese would be free to hunt whales all over the Pacific (but there'd be a lot more ocean in which the whales could hide).
- The most beautiful coral reef in the world would be in the Red Sea, off Egypt.
- Olympic swimming events would include breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly and dog paddle, but no freestyle (originally called the Australian Crawl, in this universe).
- Tina Arena, Natalie Imbruglia and Vanessa Amorosi would be big names on the Italian music charts.
- There would be no rugby league and the world's best rugby team would be England.
- Peach Melba would be known as peaches with strawberry sauce.
- At least 60,000 more people would be deaf (Victoria's Graeme Clark developed the cochlear implant).
- Liza Minelli would have married a different homosexual.
- The Bee Gees would have recorded Stayin Alive, but not Spicks and Specks (which would not be the name of a TV show).
- Morningtown Ride and The Carnival Is Over would have been early hits for Abba.
- There would be no Fox network and hence no Simpsons.
- AC/DC would refer only to electricity.
- Timor and New Guinea would be part of Indonesia.
- Californians would always win the World Surfing Championships.
- There would be nobody in the world called Kylie, let alone Dannii.
- The animal liberation movement would have no bible (Victorian bio-ethicist Peter Singer wrote Animal Rights and Human Obligations).
- The only thing called a thong would be a form of underwear.
- The British would have to carry their wine to parties in glass flagons, because there would be no cardboard casks.
- The world's melanoma rate would be much lower.
- Mt. Kosciuszko would be in Nepal.
- Russell Crowe would have won an oscar for Gladiator, but never would have made The Sum of Us or Romper Stomper. Mel Gibson would have trained at the Julliard School, New York. He'd have made Lethal Weapon and Braveheart, but not Mad Max.
- Pavlova would be indisputably a New Zealand creation.
- The kiwi kiddy band The Wuggles would be a huge hit in America, as would a US sitcom based on the classic Auckland comedy Keth end Kum.

OK, now it's just getting silly, and we've barely begun. If you can think of any other ways the world would be different without Australia, go to Comments.

I won’t reprint other people’s comments but I’ll give you mine.. if Australia didn’t exist there’s a pretty good chance I’d still be in Paris!! ... and you would not read this blog!