236 – Victoria Victorious Over Rest Of Australia
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“I used to work in a library and an old gentleman came in with it”, is about as much info as Jayson Emery can offer up about this map that he sent me.
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What is obvious nonetheless is that the map is an advertisement of the self-aggrandizing pride taken by inhabitants from the state of Victoria in their constituent part of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is somewhat reminiscent of this map, projecting a similar boastfulness about Texas.
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Victoria is Australia’s smallest, but also its most densely populated state. Just over 5 million people live in the state, out of a total of 21 million Australians. Clearly, these 5 million Victorians have some issues with their 16 million compatriots.
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This parody map shows Victoria taking over the largest part of the country, pushing all other states to the periphery of the island-continent. Victorians, it appears, hold a lot of records, including ‘World’s most generous people’, ‘World’s best beer’, ‘World’s woolliest sheep’ and even ‘World’s highest taxes’. The other states are markedly less attractive.
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Western Australia contains ‘Head hunters’ and is therefore ‘No good for white man’.
nThe Northern Territory (NT; or Not Teetotal, as it’s called here) holds the ‘World’s savagest crocodiles’ and the ‘World’s biggest mosquitoes’.
nQueensland offers ‘Cannibals’, ‘Impenetrable jungle’ and the ‘World’s worst weather’.
nSouth Australia is mainly marked as ‘Desert’ and ‘Unexplored’.
nParticularly spiteful is the minuscule rendering of New South Wales, which is marked ‘Incomplete surveys’ and ‘Rabbits only’.
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Antagonisms like these translate to other countries, with for example the aforementioned Texan example; other well-known animosities exist between the northern and southern Italians, the English and the Scottish (not to mention the Irish), the Catalans, the Basques and the rest of Spain, etc. All of which proves, quite ironically, that regional chauvinism is quite a universal trait.
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