Awesome Aussie

SAXTON HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALE!

"That's not a knife. [pulls out a ten-inch Bowie knife] That's a knife!"

— Mick Dundee, "Crocodile" Dundee

A close mate of the Dashing Hispanic, the Ragin' Cajun and the Imperturbable Pom, and sometimes can be applied to New Zealanders.

Since the Land Down Under has earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous countries on Earth, due to its harsh environment and myriad of highly dangerous creatures, many authors have reasoned that anyone who can survive there must be quite a bit tougher than your ordinary human. Australians (especially Anglo-Australian men) in fiction are often portrayed as über-masculine rough-and-tumble supermen, champion outdoorsmen who tear up the outback in their Jeeps and have never met a crocodile they couldn't wrestle. Expect a fondness for large knives. Some also like to mention the fact that Australia was founded as a penal colony to emphasize how tough they are, as if this is ever taken as a compliment. Obviously not 100% realistic, but there's some truth here. It is notable, however, that the majority of depictions of this trope date from before the first Iraq war.

However, compare that to the typical depiction of Aboriginal Australians. They are usually depicted as slender and easygoing; they don't need to be physically tough to survive the Outback considering they know the land inside and out, and know to how to live in it without blundering through it.

For more completely true information on Australia, see Land Down Under and The Bogan.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Parodied on the "How to Speak Australian" campaign for Fosters Beer. For example, a man who goes "ow" after being crushed by a boulder is a "crybaby".
• The guy in this Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercial.

Anime & Manga

• Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow takes place in the 1800s and is about a British family that immigrates to Australia. In one episode, when Lucy-May falls into a river, she's saved by an Aboriginal Australian man she nicknames "Hercules", and he also teaches her how to fly a kite.
• Arnie 'Crocodile' Gregory, from Hajime no Ippo.
• Kiddy Phenil of Silent Möbius is an Australian policewoman who was rebuilt into a powerful cyborg after an encounter with a cyborg serial-killer in Tokyo. Now, she fights demons with fists and big guns.
• Adventurer Archaeologist Jim Cook from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. He seriously plays the part, having a pet crocodile that he carries around (not a pet to him; to Jim, Shirley is family), and his Duel Disk is shaped like a boomerang.
• It's not played up, but Australia from Hetalia: Axis Powers can swim for 10 kilometers (about 6 miles), and apparently doesn't feel accomplished until he's swam the length of the Dover Straight.

Comic Books

• Sydney Savage from Danger Girl: a former member of the S.A.S. who is an expert with the bullwhip. Her sister Sonya also qualifies being a former member of A.S.I.S and a Master Archer whose skills with the bow are compared to that of a deity by world-class archers.
• Captain Boomerang from The Flash and Suicide Squad is a massive deconstruction. Nobody likes him, not that he ever gives anyone any reason to. At one point, another Australian tells one of his teammates that most Australians think he's an American pretending to be an Australian. That said, he is deceptively dangerous, and has a shockingly high body count even if it's usually through trickery rather than the brute force associated with the trope.
• Mammoth and Jinx from the Fearsome Five, a band of Teen Titans villains, are a Siblings in Crime team from Australia. He is a Dumb Muscle with Super-Strength and Made of Iron, she is a sadist with the power of Transmutation.
• Boomerang, the supervillain from Spider-Man and The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, is much more affable than his DC Comics Alternate Company Equivalent Captain Boomerang above, if not as dangerous or competent.

Fan Works

• The natives of Meridia in Codex Equus are these, due to Meridia being a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Australia.
• Zack in Total Drama Legacy. While he's mostly just a Conspiracy Theorist, the episode "Did Somebody Say Pancakes" and the sequel Total Drama Worldwide both showcase his badassery.

Films — Animation

• Back to the Outback: Chaz Hunt appears to be a clear-cut example of this trope, presenting himself as a Steve Irwin-esqe, fearless bushman who has accomplished many dangerous and impressive feats prior to the events of the movie. Subverted when it turns out he's not this at all.
• Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths had a villainous example in the form of Johnny Quick, an Australian-accented speedster who is the Evil Counterpart of the Flash and one of the founding members of the Crime Syndicate. He's also the only one of them to undergo a Heel–Face Turn to pull off a Heroic Sacrifice to help the Justice League save the entire multiverse.
• The Rescuers Down Under:
  • Jake, a dusky hopping mouse and champion outdoorsman with whom Bernard battles for Bianca's affection.
  • The villain, Percy McLeach, is an evil version of this trope, an Evil Poacher and trader in Australian wildlife who keeps a pet goanna and is able to fight off a horde of hungry crocodiles.
  • And Cody is a kid version of the trope; despite being 8 years old, he scales large cliffs with ease, travels around the outback all by himself, and isn't the least bit impressed by McLeach's tactics to try and make him reveal Marahute's location.
• The Easter Bunny, of all characters, is portrayed this way in Rise of the Guardians. It requires an Australian accent to make the line "I'm a bunny" sound badass. Helps that he's voiced by Hugh Jackman.

Films — Live-Action

• The Drover in the film Australia was clearly designed with this stereotype in mind, complete with the use of "Crikey!" As such, he references several other famous Badass Australians.
• Bennet from Commando is another evil variation. Ax-Crazy, in charge of a team of Private Military Contractors, a Blood Knight, and one of the rare characters able to go toe-to-toe with John Matrix. Being played by actual Aussie Vernon Wells doesn't hurt.
• Mick Dundee, Paul Hogan's character in "Crocodile" Dundee, is the trope codifier (much to many Australians' dismay). Something of a subversion, since his famous claims turn out to have been substantially exaggerated, and he's a bit clueless when out of his element. Still decidedly tough, though. They also meet an aborigine friend of Dundee who is an urbane city dweller who is just happening to be in the bush for a visit and they can hear him stumbling about in the dark complaining that he hates being there.
• The protagonist of Dakota Harris singlehandedly foils a Nazi plot to change the outcome of the war using an alien artifact capable of time travel.
• Mad Max: "Mad" Max Rockatansky. And many of his friends.
• Roger Wesley from The Other Guys is another evil version of this trope. He's a highly skilled mercenary who ultimately serves as The Heavy for the film's plot.
  Roger Wesley: There are three things I love in this world: Kylie Minogue, small dimples just above a woman's buttocks... and the fear in a man's eyes who knows I'm about to hurt him.
• Boomer the Kangaroo from Our Lips Are Sealed.
• In Pacific Rim, the Australian Jaeger, Striker Eureka, is the most advanced and most powerful Jaeger, being a Lightning Bruiser armed with thermal Sting-Blades, brass knuckles, and chest missiles. It also has the most confirmed Kaiju kills, with 11. And when their Jaeger is disabled, the pilots climb outside and take potshots at a Kaiju with flare guns to keep it distracted and away from civilians. Basically, it's surprising they don't challenge Kaiju to games of knifey spooney.
  Herc: [grabbing the flare guns] Now, we have a choice here: either we sit and wait, or we take these flare guns and do something really stupid.
• Most of the cast of The Proposition, a very dark Australian western film.
• In Savages Crossing, the Hero Antagonist Mory is a Gunslinger and trucker who can take down a drug-crazed serial killer and fight toe-to-toe with a mercenary Bounty Hunter.
• Subverted with Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder. He's an Australian method actor who had won five Academy Awards for his work...and because of how intense his method acting is, he is going through an identity crisis, and for most of the movie, he acts and speaks as a stereotypical black man for his role in the Film Within a Film, going as far as to get skin pigmentation for the role.
• Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek is an evil take on this trope, being essentially a Serial Killer version of Crocodile Dundee.
• Erin in You're Next was raised by a Crazy Survivalist on a compound in the Outback before moving to the US. This background makes her very well-suited to fighting off a home invasion.

Literature

• The Ahriman Trilogy gives us Caitlin Reid, a veteran of a survivalist camp who uses her knowledge of chemistry to create weapons specifically tailored to Eldritch Abomination physiology. And she does it while giggling.
• Jack West from the series named after him, by Matthew Reilly.
  • For a period of time between the first and second books Australians become unkillable. Involves bullets inexplicably missing or the guns that fired them exploding.
• In The Last Continent, Rincewind meets some Awesome Fourecksians, including his somewhat more self-assured counterpart (not that that's saying much) Bill Rincewind and a talking kangaroo.
• In the Newsflesh universe, Australians are widely respected for the survival abilities and considered highly desirable as employees (especially in jobs involving travel) and as spouses.

Live-Action TV

• ANZAC Girls, suitably for a drama about Australian nurses serving on the front lines of World War I, has four; Grace Wilson, Olive Haynes, Alice Ross King, and Elsie Cook. (The fifth main character, Hilda Steele, is equally awesome, but she's a Kiwi.) Grace Wilson and Alice Ross King in particular are practically Australian nursing royalty; the former won the Royal Red Cross and was eventually knighted, and the latter won the Military Medal for courage under fire.
• The entire 8th Battalion AIF in ANZACs, a five part mini-series from the '80s set during the Great War. Truth in Television.
• Arrow gives us Slade Wilson and Billy Wintergreen, two renegade Australian Security Intelligence Service agents who can catch arrows and love swords. Slade is frequently depicted as a One-Man Army, whether fighting alongside or against our hero Oliver Queen.
• Zigzagged in the Australian-made parody Danger 5. Tucker, the only Australian member of the Multinational Team, is a prissy dandy and only the leader of Danger 5 because no-one else can be bothered to challenge him. On the other hand, he's usually pretty good in a fight—at least, when the story needs him to be.
• Jim Taggart from Eureka.
• A mild example in House. Chase is eating a sandwich when Thirteen decides to squick him out by narrating the contents of the Patient of the Week's most recent meals, including testicles, cow brain, and - her personal favorite - "pig rectum, with a side order of sphincter". Chase just looks at her defiantly and takes another bite.
  Taub: I think they call that "breakfast" in Australia.
• Hank and Roy Spim in Monty Python's Flying Circus, two Australian insect hunters who use excessively destructive means to kill their tiny quarry. They're first introduced opening fire on a mosquito with a machine gun, then skinning it with a massive knife. They go moth-hunting with a helicopter to distract the moth, and a Lockheed Starfighter with air-to-air missiles to kill it. They even go fishing with dynamite! Basically, the Spim brothers are Egomaniac Hunters Played for Laughs.
  Roy: A lot of people have asked us why we don't use fly spray. Well, where's the sport in that?
• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is clearly the most badass Australian out there.
• Zigzagged in Star Trek: Picard. Major character Elnor, a Warrior Monk Master Swordsman, shares the Australian accent of his actor, Evan Evagora, who's from Melbourne. However, Elnor is a Romulan with no connection to Australia whatsoever. This is notably primarily because it departs from the long speculative fiction tradition of giving all English-speaking aliens British or American accents, because, of course, only those accents are neutral.

Toys

• Outback from G.I. Joe, in the British Action Force comics continuity. The A Real American Hero continuity has him coming from Wyoming.
  • On the COBRA side, Major Bludd was born in Sydney, trained by the Australian Special Air Service, served with that regiment in Southeast Asia, left to join the French Foreign Legion and saw action in Algeria, all before becoming a mercenary. He is one of the few non-ninja character cabale of going one-on-one with Snake-Eyes.
• Gen. Arak Attack from The Grossery Gang is a villainous variant. A giant tarantula (well, giant compared to the living food that makes up the Grosseries) befitted in combat gear, he tries to play a chipper demeanor, hiding his true evil nature. He slips into Australian slang so much, especially when he's angry, that he might as well be speaking Javanese with all of the slang he drops. His combat bugs, Crikey and Chunder, also share this accent and boisterous nature, but are much more reserved and polite compared to their boss. The franchise they come from is an Australia-oriented company as well.
• Johnny Thunder, the LEGO character.

Video Games

• AMC Squad: Micky C is an engineer from Australia who joins the titular Squad to fight off aliens and other enemy factions before they ravage Earth. His backstory, as detailed in the Episode 3 mission "Micky Begins", shows him fighting off a Cycloid invasion in his university by himself, complete with a showdown between him and the leader of the invasion force, a Cyber Enforcer. His gameplay revolves around him utilizing turrets and laser absorbing devices to fend off enemies and recharge his armor, respectively, and his special ability lets him reuse toolboxes for as long as he can, which all makes him a capable and resourceful combatant.
• Apex Legends Season 8 introduces Fuse. Besides channeling the typical Aussie manliness by sporting a burly mustaches and ripped body, Fuse is also an explosive expert with a robotic arm that doubles as a grenade launcher and hauls around a napalm mortar he calls "Wally". Apparently Fuse is so badass that in his default headbutting finisher also works on robots made of solid metal.
• Kid, the fiery teenage thief from Chrono Cross. Probably the most strangest example since Australia doesn't even exist in the game's world, but it's there.
• Dingodile from the Crash Bandicoot series. The bandicoots and the other mutant bosses such as Ripper Roo, Koala Kong, Pinstripe Potoroo and Tiny Tiger all count due to being Australian animals as well.
  • Crash himself in his Skylanders Academy counterpart.
• Lord Raptor from Darkstalkers is an Australia-born zombie rock star. In the English dub of Night Warriors: Darkstalker's Revenge, he is even given a thick Aussie accent.
• Dead Island has the likes of Purna who can go toe to toe with the horrifying zombie horde just as well as her international allies, Ryder who does so without being immune as well as a number of survivors, in stark contrast to other Zombie Apocalypse works where those still alive can be counted on one hand. Dead Island: Riptide gives us Wolverine, here he goes by the name John.
• Dying Light continues the tradition from its predecessor Dead Island by giving us Harris Brecken, the leader of the Tower and the parkour instructor who taught the people in the quarantine how to survive.
• Implied in Doom Eternal, where the entire world has been ravished by the demonic invasion... except for Australia, which remained completely untouched.
• Bambi "Buck" Hughes from Far Cry 3 is a villainous example. A former Australian soldier kicked out of the military for being a Sociopathic Soldier, he now works as a Psycho for Hire on the Rook Islands, selling slaves, killing people, and getting main character Jason Brody to collect a rare Chinese knife for him. The worst part? He's also a Depraved Homosexual who is keeping Jason's friend Keith captive in his sex dungeon for... you can guess what. That said, Buck's not "Awesome" enough to prevent his Knife Fight with Jason from being a Curb-Stomp Battle in Jason's favour.
• Boomer from Far Cry 5 is a straighter, though non-human example. He's an Australian cattle dog owned by a farming couple who the Project at Eden's Gate decided to murder prior to the events of the game. Boomer is one of the Deputy's Fangs for Hire, who can pull Peggies to the ground with his teeth and savage them to death, and collect their guns and bring them to the Deputy. He's also the only Fang for Hire to be a domesticated animal, in contrast to Cheeseburger the bear and Peaches the mountain lion.
• Deke from Fear Effect.
• While Australia doesn't exist in Final Fantasy XIII, it has a parallel in Gran Pulse - and since both Fang and Vanille come from Gran Pulse, they fit this category easily.
• In the original Halo trilogy, recurring Marine NPC Private Chips Dubbo became a Memetic Badass thanks to having some of the best dialogue in the series and a kickass attitude.
• Mass Effect 2: Miranda Lawson is voiced by an Australian actress, and her father is named after an Australian poet, so she's probably Australian. While Miranda lacks things like the crocodile-teeth hat, an extravagant moustache or muscle development like a bad-tempered house, she's still an extremely useful teammate with a counter to every kind of defence, whose loyalty power is to hoist enemies up with her biotics and slam them into the ground with phenomenal force.
• Brûz the Chopper from Middle-earth: Shadow of War is an Olog (basically a Genius Bruiser Troll) from the Warmonger Tribe, who speaks with a distinctly Australian accent, as opposed to the thuggish Cockney accents used by most of Middle-Earth's Trolls and Orcs. Brûz is an Affably Evil Boisterous Bruiser who's exactly as powerful as you'd expect, being a Troll, as well as a powerful warrior and skilled tactician. He's also immune to Branding and Domination, as Talion finds out later in the game.
• Kano from the Mortal Kombat series was given a Race Lift from Japanese-American to Australian following the first movie, leading to him becoming a villainous example of the trope.
• Overwatch has Junkrat and Roadhog, two criminals on an international crime spree together. The former is a trigger-happy explosives expert with a very hammy accent and the latter has the most hit points of any hero in the game. Although considering that in the Overwatch universe the Australian outback has become an irradiated wasteland where only hardened scavengers can survive, it's somewhat justified.
  • Overwatch 2 introduces the Junker Queen, the leader of the gang Junkrat and Roadhog used to be a part of. She wields a shotgun that she reloads by pulling out the entire magazine tube, a big knife, and an even bigger axe, and has a magnetic gauntlet that lets her attract the knife back to her hand after throwing it and spin the axe around like a sawblade.
• Red Alert 3: The Allies' Multigunner IFV (a buggy with a missile rack that can be swapped out for different weapons depending on the rider) is piloted by a relentlessly cheerful Australian. It's actually noted that the pilots are universally friendly (which is important when your main function is to amplify said soldier's weapon), a good way to justify them being able to load infantry from the other factions.
• Fighting game Schwarzerblitz introduces us to Wally Alba, an Aussie sentient velociraptor with a minigun who was raised in the outback and works as a Bounty Hunter.
• Team Fortress 2 provides the trope picture with SAXTON HALE, who fights apex predators and yetis for fun. He also invents weapons and runs a company based off of it in his spare time.
  • Everyone in Australia is like this in TF2 canon, turning it into a futuristic metropolis where surviving a neckSnap is no big deal and even the women sport burly mustaches. This is because the awesomeness is entirely from exposure to Australium. The Sniper gets mocked for being only a regular example of this trope, lacking the muscles and preferring to pick fights from far away. This is because he is actually from New Zealand, which in this universe is a bizarre mix between Krypton and Atlantis, and is full of mad scientists and other intellectuals like him.
  • While Sniper is downplayed in comparison, he is an example himself, in the style of "Crocodile" Dundee. Although it was later revealed that he's a New Zealander by birth.
• Chloe Frazer from the Uncharted series, first introduced in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, is a mixed-race female version. Born to an Indian father and an Australian mother, Chloe is an avid treasure hunter like old flame Nathan Drake, but she's a lot more unscrupulous and self-serving than he is. As for "Awesome", she's the playable character in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, so you get to show off her formidable combat skills as she competes against Indian terrorists as a One-Woman-Army. Bonus points for being voiced by Claudia Black!
• Ian "Hunter" St. John, from Wing Commander.
• WipEout gives us the racing team Triakis Industries, born as a weapon-manufacturing conglomerate and boasting the best-shielded craft in the competition. If they're described in their bio in This Very Wiki as "the result of Saxton Hale getting warped into the far future and running a racing team", it has to count for something. Bonus points for their name being inspired by the leopard shark.^note Which, amusingly, can't be found in Australian waters.

Web Original

• This thread on Tumblr discussing how odd humanity and the borderline Death World planet they live on would come across to extraterrestrials. The nickname "Space Australians" comes up to describe humanity, naturally leading to some amused reflection on how humanity would then explain Australia — basically a Death World within a Death World — to the rest of the universe. It naturally culminates in a short story about a powerful alien its gambling opponents with a terrifyingly venomous alien spider-thing, with all the other extraterrestrials reacting in terror at what is clearly one of the most horrifying life-forms in the cosmos and three out of the four humans present not recognising the creature but clearly picking up on the signs that it's bad news and reacting warily... only for the fourth human to nonchalantly slam an upside-down glass on top of it, trap it inside, and cheerfully take it away to dispose of it. She is, of course, an Australian.

Webcomics

• Curse Quest: Parodied with the Owl Hunter. He shows much bravado and pride of himself, wrestling an owl-bear when Walrus is in danger. He proves to be quite scrawny and incompetent however.
• In El Goonish Shive, the koala-like Aberration dresses like he's Mick Dundee and talks in Australian slang, using terms like "stickybeak", "Sheila" and "gator". Though the author has stated that he's never actually been to Australia.
• Steve and Terry from Irregular Webcomic!, as they're based on Steve and Terri Irwin.
• Australia from Scandinavia and the World, naturally.
• Liam Williamson from This Is the Worst Idea You've Ever Had!. He kills monsters for a living, and even the creator admits he's badass.

Western Animation

• Monterey Jack, the big guy from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers and his parents.
• In Codename: Kids Next Door, the Australian Numbuh Four (real name Wallabee Beatles) is often portrayed as the toughest and most courageous of the team. However, to balance things out, he's also about as intelligent as a dirt clod.
• Dan Vs.. gets one in Dan vs. the Dinosaur, to help them track down said dinosaur.
• Sheryl Goodspeed from Final Space is voiced by Claudia Black and is hands down one of the most badass Human characters in the entire show.
• Koala Man: Parodied with Big Greg, a buff blonde macho man who otherwise comes across as a bit of a blowhard. He's also voiced by Hugh Jackman to complete the image.
• Dengar from LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures has an Australian accent and wipes the floor with Rowan with ease. Although he does nap with an Ewok teddy bear.
• Opal of Pearlie is a fairy version of this.
• The Lion Guard has Jasiri, who's technically African by dint of being a hyena, but speaks with an Australian accent because her voice actress Maia Mitchell is Australian. As for the "Awesome" part, she's not only gifted in fighting against Janja and his gangs, but she's the first hyena in the entire The Lion King series not to be a craven evil scavenger.
• Wolverine is so much of a badass that in the cartoon pilot Pryde of the X-Men they gave him an Australian accent.
  • Which is Hilarious in Hindsight with Wolverine being played by (actual) Awesome Aussie Hugh Jackman in the X-Men films.
• The titular character of Rocko's Modern Life.
• Dee Bradley Baker voices every Clone Trooper from Star Wars: The Clone Wars with an Australian (allegedly New Zealand) accent—an entire army of awesome Aussies.
• Jetfire in Transformers: Armada, Energon and Cybertron. (Although in-universe it's called a "Nebulan accent".) Outback from Transformers: Generation One qualifies as well.
• In Total Drama:
  • Revenge of the Island, features Multiple Personality Mike, and one of his alter egos is an Australian wilderness adventurer named Manitoba Smith.
  • Pahkitew Island also features a rare female example, Jasmine, who is an Indigenous Australian and is literally labelled The Outback Survivalist.
• We Bare Bears has a one shot antagonist named Courtney, who is particularly noteworthy for being a rare aboriginal example.

Real Life

• Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, the ballsiest animal rights activist ever to walk the Earth. As his nickname implies, Irwin is mostly known for wrestling crocodiles, which he had done since the age of nine. He based his persona on Crocodile Dundee.
  • The whole Irwin family counts. Steve's wife Terri, who hails from Oregon, even became an Australian citizen.
  • While not damaging to his legacy, Irwin's tragic death was something of a subversion of the trope, as he was killed by a stingray, which isn't even considered that dangerous among sea creatures.
• Albert Jacka
• Tom "Diver" Derrick
• Billy Sing, Australia's greatest sniper in WWI. Born in the state of Queensland, and notably unusual (in terms of this trope) for being ethnically half-Chinese. Dubbed 'The Assassin' and 'The Murderer', Sing's official record lists 150 kills ^note an official kill was recorded only if the spotter saw the target fall, but his actual tally was estimated to be closer to 300. General William Birdwood, commander of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), told Lord Kitchener that "if his troops could match the capacity of the Queensland sniper the allied forces would soon be in Constantinople." The enemy forces specifically assigned a champion Turkish sniper to assassinate the man. When said sniper had Sing in his sights, Sing shot first, and was the only one of the two to walk away alive.
  • Along similar lines was Caleb Shang, a Chinese-Australian soldier and something of a soldierly jack-of-all-trades, worked as both advanced scout, sniper, machine gunner, stretcher bearer, anything the regiment needed him to be. He was the most highly decorated non-white soldier of the ANZAC forces, including Billy Sing.
• Just about every dangerous animal from that continent. Tawny Frogmouths, huge birds with red eyes and wide, reptile-like mouths (which are actually pretty gentle unless you give them occasion to bite, which is when you discover that their beaks resemble a sharpened mousetrap in functionality.) Dingos. The Southern Boobook Owl, a small, brown, cute, fluffy little bird with talons like little black scalpel blades and a hair-trigger temper. The Inland Taipan, the most venomous snake in the world—and all nine of the next-most venomous. And, of course, saltwater crocodiles.
  • Huntsman spiders. The deadliest spider known to man, bar none: despite being docile and harmless they hide out in cars and have been known to cause numerous fatal crashes.
    • Huntsman spiders may be giant and hairy, but they're really quite gentle... Or maybe that's just what they want us to think. These are, after all the same spiders as the 'giant crab spiders' and 'rain spiders' of Brazil, Florida, and many other equatorial to temperate regions. Presumably named so due to their tendency to drop out of the sky like giant man-hunting, parachuting crab-spider ninjas. Interestingly, a favourite food of the aforementioned Tawny Frogmouth and Southern Boobook Owl.
  • The funnelweb spider is enough to cause grown men to freak out. The most venomous spider in the world, freaky in appearance, super tough, super aggressive and actively hunts prey and, when disturbed, humans. Also found in urban and rural areas alike.
• Ned Kelly, infamous Irish Australian bush-ranger, outlaw and now firmly entrenched figure of folklore.
• Sir John Monash, World War I general and last man ever knighted on the field of battle. John Simpson Kirkpatrick, a stretcher-bearer during the Gallipoli campaign, became an integral part of the ANZAC legend when he acquired a donkey and spent three and a half weeks tirelessly and fearless working to transport wounded British soldiers to safety under heavy fire until he was finally killed by machine gun fire.
• Hugh Jackman is renowned for playing particularly badass characters and... pretty much nothing else. This may or may not be because Hugh Jackman is arguably the world's most famous Australian actor.
  • Somewhat subverted, as when he's not playing a badass, he's playing in a musical or romcom, and was known specifically for these roles prior to breaking out into badass action roles. He's still a badass though.
• Pendulum is the most popular drum and bass band to ever come out in the planet. They now reside in London, but their hometown is Perth, Australia.
• Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor, two of the best Australian basketball players to ever play in America on the side.
• Andrew Ucles catches wild animals. With his bare hands.
• Tipsy Australian fights off crocodile with eye-poke.
• Clive James: An incredibly funny Dead Pan Snarker writer, journalist, interviewer and TV presenter.
• Less awesome in himself, but possessing an awesome job title was David Feeney, who in 2013 became "Federal Member for Batman and Shadow Minister for Justice".
• Surfer Mick Fanning encountered a shark while competing in an event in South Africa. His reaction was to punch it. Video and reactions can be seen here.
• How can we forget about AC/DC? Their response to losing their lead singer Bon Scott was to release the second highest album of all time.
• Montague Street Bridge in Melbourne. Yes, an inanimate structure has wrecked enough vehicles to qualify as a Memetic Badass. The bridge has an infamously low clearance of 3.0m, and drivers of trucks and the like often misjudge if they can pass under it safely.
• During World War II the Allies tried to quarter ANZAC troops in Cairo. The Egyptian government refused, saying that while New Zealanders were welcome, the city was still recovering from the victory celebration the Australian troops had there in World War I. One wonders what kind of epic party the Aussies put on that would have caused that much damage to a city and still left them personæ non gratæ nearly twenty years later.
• Trolley-Man, a Melbourne-based man who used a shopping trolley to ram a homicidal maniac in 2018.
• A similar act of heroism occurred a year later in Sydney when three men pinned another knife-wielder using a chair and milk crate.
• In 2019, Toni Doherty from New South Wales charged into a bushfire to rescue a koala.
• Ordinary Seaman Edward "Teddy" Sheean followed five of his older brothers into military service and was assigned to the corvette HMAS Armidale as an ammunition handler. While steaming off Timor on 1 December 1942, the ship came under attack from thirteen Japanese aircraft. Hit by two torpedoes and a bomb, the captain ordered the crew to abandon ship, but the Japanese then started strafing the men in the water. Despite being hit by two bullets himself, Sheean climbed back aboard, strapped himself into a 20mm Oerlikon autocannon, and kept firing at the Japanese (shooting down one plane) even as the ship sank beneath him, to the point that some survivors mentioned him still firing from beneath the surface. Appropriately enough a Collins-class submarine was later named after him^note Ship's motto: Fight On, and after numerous petitions, he was finally awarded the Victory Cross in 2020.
• Fred "the Demon Bowler" Spofforth, one of the greatest bowlers in 19th century cricket - the first bowler to take 50 wickets in first class Test Cricket, and also the first to score a hat-trick at that level. And frankly, the nickname alone qualifies him for admission.

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