There are a lot of similarities between California and Australia
Except we're right-ways up, the water goes down the plughole counter-withershins, and most of our immigrants became criminals after being transported.
Hmm. Perhaps I should send you a copy of MacArthy's Universal Corrective Map of the World (it has Tasmania and Tierra del Fuego at the top).
Between 1718 and 1776 50,000 convicts were transported to the USA, but I don't suppose California had been invented then? It's your fault we started out the way we did, because after 1776 the Brits had to find somewhere else to export their troublesome underclass - if you hadn't dumped that damn tea in the harbour you'd still be importing England's most notorious! All in all 165,000 convicts came to Australia, but by the second half of the 19th century transportation was rapidly outstripped by immigration. Today most Australians are not descended from convicts (though I have two in the tree), and their surname is just as likely to be Iemma, Popov, Nguyen, Chen, Al Mazri, or Kirkyasharian as Smith or Jones.
