GOING FOR BLOKE

We have baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. They have Aussie Rules, meat pies, pavlova and Holden.

They have Ayers Rock, the Sydney Opera House and the laughing jackass kookaburra. We have The Rock, Staples Center and Jim Carrey.

We have Pennzoil, Quaker State and STP. They have Vegemite.

They have the platypus, a rather bizarre creature that, it has been said, looks as if it were created by committee after a few too many coldies. We have the Clippers.

We have annoying Muzak droning in the background everywhere from supermarkets to elevators, systematically numbing our senses and killing off once-valuable brain cells. They have Kylie Minogue.

They think “Crocodile Dundee” is a hackneyed formula comedy overloaded with outdated cliches about their culture. We think “Crocodile Dundee” is the great Australian documentary.

Pathetic truth be told, we Americans know precious little about the real Australia on the cusp of the Sydney Olympics. (Although, being Americans, we think we know it all.) Evidence? The Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games has loads of it, too much of it, in the form of e-mails collected over recent months from dull-edged Yanks--and saved, apparently for blackmail purposes.

As if Atlanta ’96 weren’t enough.

Some sorry samples, as they were dispatched to the official SOCOG Web site, accompanied by obligatory smart Aussie retort:

Question: “Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street?”

Answer: “Depends on how much beer you’ve consumed . . . “

Q: “Which direction is north in Australia?”

A: “Face north and you should be about right.”

Q: “Can you send me the Vienna Boys’ Choir schedule?”

A: “Americans have long had considerable trouble distinguishing between Austria and Australia.”

Q: “Will I be able to speak English most places I go?”

A: “Yes, but you’ll have to learn it first.”

Q: “Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia?”

A: “What’s this guy smoking, and where can I get some?”

Yes, we are clueless. We amble off the plane and start to cackle about Aussies driving on the “wrong” side of the road and amuse ourselves by ordering the seafood chef to throw another shrimp on the barbie--highly linguistically incorrect; Aussies call them prawns, never shrimp--and inquiring at the front desk about the nearest boomerang-tossing competition. Yet our Australian hosts politely indulge us, smiling and nodding and keeping their bush knives in their sheaths, partly because they consider Americans enviable if occasionally irritating relatives, partly because, at the moment, they are exceedingly eager to please.

The real Australia? At the start of the 2000 Summer Olympics, it is doing a fairly passable imitation of the United States. Three of the four most popular television programs in Australia last week were American imports: “Friends,” “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” and “Spin City”--with only the Super Bowl of Australian Rules football, the AFL Grand Final, crashing the all-American party. Leading the Aussie box office charts were “Scary Movie,” “Road Trip,” “Hollow Man,” “Shanghai Noon,” “High Fidelity” and “The Patriot,” which is a tale lifted from the American Revolution but, as locals are quick to remind, does star an Australian, Mel Gibson.

Two hundred thirty years after Captain Cook landed in Botany Bay, McDonald’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken have stormed the beachfront. Trend-of-the-minute restaurants line the streets of Sydney serving risotto and sushi, not swagman’s damper. Bar patrons step inside to sip merlot and cappuccino, with not a tin of billytea boiling over an open fire in sight.

Even the old Aussie slang ain’t what it used to be. Cable television, cinema and the Internet have conspired to blunt the rough edges of the native dialect, homogenizing some of the quirkiest twists ever inflicted on the English language. Many American tourists will be crushed to discover that no one here calls women “sheilas” anymore, “fair dinkum” is now considered old school and “goodonya” is starting to give way to the bland American-dude “go for it.”

Thankfully, some differences survive. “I don’t know,” the catch phrase of the Atlanta Olympics, has yet to be uttered by a volunteer, tour guide or concierge clerk in Sydney. If a question does not immediately illuminate a light bulb, maps are pulled out and phone calls are made. It’s the 21st-century incarnation of the traditional Aussie can-do spirit, leavened with the country’s storied friendliness and hospitality.

Aussie-Americans?

Amer-Australians?

There are still a few ways by which you can distinguish between the two (see box at right).

SOCIOLOGY

From the Web site www.jokedujour.com:

Americans: Seem to think that poverty and failure are morally suspect.

Canadians: Seem to believe that wealth and success are morally suspect.

Brits: Seem to believe that wealth, poverty, success and failure are inherited things.

Aussies: Seem to think that none of this matters after several beers.

And . . .

Americans: Will jabber on incessantly about football, baseball and basketball.

Brits: Will jabber on incessantly about cricket, soccer and rugby.

Canadians: Will jabber on incessantly about hockey, hockey, hockey and how they beat the Americans twice, playing baseball.

Aussies: Will jabber on incessantly about how they beat the Brits in every sport they played them in.

TALL POPPIES

Running deep through the Australian national psyche is an admirable trait known as Tall Poppy Syndrome. Tall poppies are citizens who are rich and powerful, successful and well known, and for those reasons are not to be trusted. They deserve skepticism, not adoration, and they are to be weed-whacked down to size at the first sign of becoming too big for their britches.

Tall Poppy Syndrome dates to old Australia’s convict era, when prisoners locked up in Sydney Harbor entertained themselves by spreading vicious gossip about their jailers. It manifests itself today in the Australian media’s relentless lampooning of such public officials as Australian International Olympic Committee member Kevan Gosper, vilified for pulling strings to position his daughter as the first carrier of the Olympic torch. A popular local TV show called “The Games” satirizes SOCOG in wickedly funny style.

Tall poppies, however, grow wild and free in America, where fame and fortune are worshiped without question, explaining our continued fascination with Donald Trump, Michael Eisner and Al Davis.

RELIGION

With the possible exception of a few isolated stretches in New Mexico and Oklahoma, far more Americans believe in God than space aliens.

Not so in Australia.

According to a 1995 survey of religious beliefs by the Saulwick research organization, 74% of Australians claimed to believe in God, 20% considered themselves atheists and 6% described themselves as agnostics.

During the same year, a study by the Perth-based magazine REVelation found that 80% of Australians believed that aliens exist, 70% believed that UFOs are real and 10% said they had an “unexplained experience” they believed could be attributed to a UFO.

CRIME

Australia has one of the lowest crime rates on the planet, not counting ambush appearances by Air Supply on the radio.

The U.S. murder rate (8 per 100,000) is four times greater than Australia’s, with the most popular crime down under being unlawful entry with intent.

However, it is rare in the States to hear of anyone bludgeoning policemen with frozen kangaroo tails. In 1991, in the Australian outback, three police constables were attacked by 15 angry Aborigines brandishing three-foot-long frozen kangaroo tails they had purchased from a nearby store--with intent to eat, not assault.

According to wire reports, police believed “the attack stemmed from an earlier attempt by a police to move a man sitting in the middle of a highway in an apparent suicide attempt.”

The kangaroo tails could not be entered into evidence because they were eaten after the attack.

PRACTICAL JOKES

Aussies have an irascible sense of humor, going back to the days of Captain Cook. As the old story goes, Cook’s botanist, Joseph Banks, asked an Aborigine what the natives called that strange bouncing creature with the long tail and the plank-sized feet.

“Kangaroo,” the aborigine replied.

Banks wrote it down, not realizing what it actually meant: “I don’t know.”

A proud tradition was born, continuing to this day, rounding into peak form as foreigners flood into the country, expecting to hear “Waltzing Matilda” played every time an Aussie athlete wins a gold medal.

As a helpful guide to Olympic visitors to Sydney, Morning Herald columnist Peter Fitzsimons offered the following suggestions:

* “It is traditional to bargain with Sydney taxi drivers over the fare. On no account pay what is on the meter, as this will be sure to cause offence.

* “Money lost at the Star City Casino is refundable at the end of the night. Just have a word to one of the kindly security guards.”

* “If you want to see kangaroos, stand on George Street at 5:05 p.m. and yell ‘cooee’ five times--reminding them to come out of their burrows under the Queen Victoria Building.”

NATIONAL PASTIMES

Baseball being an Olympic sport, the Australian Associated Press sensed the need to dispatch a primer for Aussie fans unfamiliar with the game. Excerpts:

“Teams score a run when a batter, running anti-clockwise, reaches home base, passing first, second and third base. The batter can stop at each base for safety.

“The object is to score as many runs as possible in nine innings. An inning ends when three batters are declared out. Batters attempt to hit balls thrown by a pitcher standing on a mound 18.4 meters away.”

Three ways to get a batter out:

* “When a fielder catches a ball on the full, hit by the batter;

* “If a batter fails to make contact with three legal pitches [three strikes];

* “When a batter or baserunner fails to reach a base before a fielder touches it in possession of the ball.”

Explaining Australia’s favorite sport, Aussie Rules football, to Yanks is a much simpler assignment.

In 10 words or less: A Punt, Pass and Kick competition conducted in a Cuisinart.

OLYMPIC MASCOTS

Learning from past American mistakes, SOCOG is using three real Australian animals--albeit terminally cuted-up--as its Olympic mascots.

Syd (short for Sydney) is a cartoon platypus, that half-duck, half-otter cosmic mistake originally thought to be a hoax when the first one was shipped back to England .

Millie (stands for Millennium) is a cuddly echidna, which is a little like a huggable porcupine, which is rarely advised by outdoor enthusiasts in either country. But those Aussie animators, they’re on the cutting edge.

Ollie (short for Olympics) is a laughing kookaburra, just like the real-life kingfisher, which makes a loud obnoxious laughing noise to scare other birds away from its territory. Most Americans have never heard anything like it, except when Jay Leno laughs at his own jokes.

At any rate, SOCOG’s Gang of Three stands as a quantum leap over Atlanta’s sad Whatizit, which appeared to be a bug-eyed blue ringworm on steroids with bad sneakers, although no one really knew for sure. Izzy, as he (she?) was not affectionately known, was roundly despised, run out of the Games on a rail and last spotted at Sea World working for small change scaring little children.

BREAD SPREADS

“Skippy” has entirely different meanings to Aussies and Americans. In Australia, Skippy was a heroic kangaroo, kind of a marsupial Lassie, that starred in a popular television show during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. In the States, Skippy is a brand of peanut butter, longtime staple of grade-school bag lunches from sea to shining sea.

Aussies don’t do peanut butter. Their spread of choice is a vile black goo called Vegemite, which allegedly is a mixture of yeast waste products and salt--lots of salt--but to the American palate, tastes more like something you’d order at a gas station, unleaded or premium.

An Aussie friend vehemently challenged this opinion the other day over a meal of grilled kangaroo and fried crocodile. Vegemite is God’s vegetable extract, he argued. He loves the stuff. His kid loves the stuff. Can’t go a breakfast without it.

“All right,” he said, surveying the Aussie-American demerit meter. “We have Vegemite, you have drive-by shootings.”

All illusions of the ever-polite Aussie civility were shattered then and there. Although, it has to be said, he did have a point.

What else could a humbled Yank offer by way of retort, except . . .

Goodonya, mate.