Do Americans Know Squat About Australia?

Ozguru at G'Day Mate! suggested that I write a piece for his site and I accepted. It's been published and an interesting comment thread is developing. At the urging of a couple folks, I've decided to reproduce the post here on Interested-Participant.

Do Americans Know Squat About Australia?
I've been a little under the weather for the past week and haven't had much energy. Consequently, I experienced a general lull in creativity. My brain was coming up with no ideas for a post to your site that I felt would be interesting to your readers. I expressed my frustration to the gang at the local coffee shop who offered no help. In fact, one guy threw up his hands and said "Hell, Americans don't know squat about Australia!"

Well, when I heard that, I figured I should conduct my own unscientific survey. I came up with three simple questions to ask the folks.
1) Name three things about the continent of Australia?
2) Name three things about the country of Australia?
3) Name three famous Australians?

Of note is that the coffee shop where I was asking the questions is just a local blue-collar place with an everyday middle class clientele. It isn't a ritzy and pretentious shoppe that serves double foamy cinnamon organic Guatemalan cappuccino latte yadda-dadda ... for $7.50. So, it's safe to assume that the people I queried are not sophisticated world travelers.

In conducting the survey, I questioned a total of 14 people. A compilation of the results is as follows:

1) Name three things about the continent of Australia?
a - Other side of the world
b - As large as the US
c - Has many weird animals

2) Name three things about the country of Australia?
a - People speak English
b - Used to be prison colony
c - Has aborigines

These first two questions produced skimpy results. Even with coaxing, I got little response. The last question, however, produced a rather interesting variety of answers.

3) Name three famous Australians?
a - Crocodile Hunter
b - Sir Edmund Hillary
c - Crocodile Dundee
d - Nicole Kidman
e - Wayne Newton
f - Andre Agassi
g - Olivia Newton-John
h - Bruce Willis
i - Mel Gibson
j - Norah Jones

And there were others, including somebody named Alan Bergland. One truck driver said he invented something but he couldn't remember what it was.

To summarize, my survey was intended to provide evidence to conclude whether Americans DO or DON'T know squat about Australia. Considering that the survey was conducted in a small town in Ohio on an unscientific random sample of normal working Americans, it's probably prudent to ignore it. However, I won't and thus conclude that Americans DO know squat about Australia.

Agreed, this was a frivolous exercise and should be viewed as such. It is, however, my contention that, as far as foreign countries are concerned, Americans probably know more about Australia than most other countries on that side of the world. Even so, based on the silly survey, Americans still don't know a lot about Australia.

It's been widely recognized that there is a general disregard for the teaching of geography in American schools. The natural result is a lack of knowledge. The survey results are just hints of supporting evidence.