>The only thing I've worked on from Australia are large cans of beer,
>so I conclude they don't actually do anything except drink and bitch.
That's not true, Australians are great inventors of labour-saving and recreational devices like the lawnmower and the scuba. (And, you guessed it, mechanical refrigeration for keeping beer cold.)
But, presumably on the principle that actually manufacturing these things ourselves would defeat the purpose, we tend to sell the idea cheaply to work-loving Americans who make them for us. Please, don't thank us, we're allies aren't we, its the least we can do.
This tradition pre-dates Europeans of course. Australian Aborigines invented the boomerang, a sort of stick for throwing at things which doesn't require fetching back if you miss. And the Woomera, a spear launcher for speeding missiles towards game with the minimum of exertion. Aborigines had no beer for tens of thousands of years though, which is why no-one else bothered to ever come here until the English devised the 'Pacific Solution'. Which involved the fiendish punishment of deporting the unemployed to a place with no beer. The early settlers had to make do with only rum for many months, while back home in mother England the working class were whipping themselves into a fury of work to avoid the ghastly fate. Thus accidently causing the Industrial Revolution.
I didn't realise Australians invented the beer can though, I assumed that this was just something that always been. I know we invented the wine cask. Which is a device to make it easy to stack cheap wine in non-fragile containers in the back of a recreational utility vehicle (another Aussie invention) in case the beer runs out.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas