Who’s Really Down Under?

With the ongoing Australian Open tennis tournament, I keep hearing about Australia being the “Land Down Under.”

Of course, we/they say that because – when you look at the globe – Australia is positioned south of the Equator. So from the perspective of the cool kids who live north of the Equator, it is DOWN and UNDER (the northern hemisphere).

But think about it: Why IS Australia “down under”?

Isn’t it just because we more advanced people living north of the Equator (just kidding) say it is?

Consider: Every globe and map used by everyone in the world looks at the Earth from a position in space that arbitrarily has the U.S. and Canada and Europe and Russia and China and Japan on top, while Australia and South America and Africa and Antarctica are on the bottom half of the globe/map.

And now that I think about it, WHY aren’t South American and African nations also considered “lands down under,” as many of them occupy the same latitude as Australia?

If you turned the Earth upside down, then we Northern Hemisphere countries would be “down under” relative to Australia and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere.

In space, there is no “up” or “down.” So why do we pretend there is?

Sometime along the historical path, globes and maps were made as they now are – with the generally more sophisticated, more technologically advanced and yes, more warlike, expansionist nations – on the top side of said maps and globes.

There are things that the peoples of the world have just had to accept to get along and somehow live together. That includes accepting time zones and directions and days of the week and months of the year and the numbers of years (although some nations still hold onto local time-naming traditions).

And one of those “things” that people across the planet have had to agree on – geographically – is which way is up, which way is down, which way is north, south, east and west.

It’s really all in one’s perspective. If I was traveling in space and flew by the Earth, how I would perceive Australia's position would depend entirely on how it looked from my spaceship, right?

I know this all may seem a little silly, but it IS kind of interesting, isn’t it?

And don’t get me started on where the Western Hemisphere ends and the Eastern Hemisphere begins, OK?