Australia - land of Steve Irwin and 1000 ways to die of poisonous critters. Fun fact. Australia has the second most venomous land snake in the world. It's called "the common brown snake." Can you guess why? That's right! Because it's brown, and it's common. As it happens, Australia also has the first most venomous land snake in the world, the inland taipan. Don't worry, though, because the inland taipan is not particularly aggressive. As opposed to the THIRD most venomous snake in the world, the coastal taipan, which is very aggressive and is ALSO IN AUSTRALIA. I didn't even get to the spiders, and I'm not gonna.
Australia is kind of odd in terms of population density. Clocking in at 3.3 people per square kilometre, it's one of the three least dense countries in the world. But, in the way that statistics don't always tell the whole story, almost everyone lives in a city on the East coast, with Melbourne having a density as high as 21,900 people per square kilometre. When Googling around about this, one of the more commonly asked questions is apparently "Why is Australia's population so low?" I didn't check the answers, but if one of the reasons isn't "all them snakes," well... I'll just pretend its because of all them snakes.
Culturally, Australia is split between the cities, founded mostly by British colonies, and Aboriginal tribes. The cities are among that group of countries, including the US, Canada, and Great Britain, which share enough words we can pretend we all speak the same language. It is common knowledge in the US that Australia was settled largely as a penal colony, but like most popular histories, this is only part of the story. One part that is often missing is, England settled Australia as a response to losing the American colonies after the Revolution. The implication is, the American colonies must have also been, at least in part, a place for England to dump their overcrowded prisons. This will give me some pause the next time I feel like ribbing Australia for their raison d'être.
Like a lot of indigenous peoples post-European contact, the Aboriginal tribes are in rough shape. Disease, warfare, and the arrival of various invasive species (dogs, cats, rats, and mice) proved disastrous culturally and environmentally. Lately, however, it seems like the Aboriginal and European peoples have reached something of an accord, if tenuous, and co-exist more or less peacefully. While Aboriginal peoples do speak English, native languages are also in use, although the diversity of languages is much reduced. Of the 250 or so languages recorded by the first European colonists, only 130ish are still in use, and only 13 of those are not considered endangered.
While the Aboriginal people are also somewhat present in US common knowledge, the Torres Strait Islanders are not. The Torres Strait Islands are located off the North coast between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Two main language groups are in use: Kalaw Lagaw Ya, and Meriam Mir, with a Torres Strait Creole used to facilitate trade. The tribes' cultures share an overlap with Papuan and Australian Aboriginal cultures. Song and dance is central to the Torres Straight Islander's sense of history, being the main storytelling medium.
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Because of the sharp division between the European and indigenous cultures in Australia, I wanted to write about a couple of different musicians. From the indigenous side is the Warumpi Band, an Aboriginal country group founded in 1980. Their debut single, "Jailanguru Pakarnu," was the first rock song to be written in an Aboriginal language, in this case, Luritja. Another hit of theirs, "My Island Home," achieved global reach during the 2000 Summer Olympics closing ceremony when it was sung by Christina Anu, a Torres Strait Islander.
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