John Donegan / foreignminister.gov.au
Australia would like you to think that it is a vast outback, populated primarily by kangaroos and koala bears and men with large knives and other men with larger knives who refuse to acknowledge that the men with less-large knives even have knives at all. In other words, an antipodean frontier country being tamed by the descendants of convicts.
The truth, sadly, is a little different. Australia is one of the most urban countries on the planet on a per-capita basis. Kangaroos do not actually exist. And one look at Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tells you that there is no way his ancestors were criminals…unless their crime was being adorable. (Or possibly this.) Rudd looks less like a criminal or an alligator hunter than he does like a junior high social studies teacher. And not even a tough, disciplinarian teacher, but a nice one who would get taken advantage of by his students if they didn’t like him so much. Everything about him is benign, from his moon-shaped face to his glasses to his crinkling eyes to his thin blonde hair. Kevin Rudd is exactly the kind of person you would like to meet in a darkened alley. Because you’d mug him.