Awesome Aussie

SAXTON HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLEEEE!

(chuckling) That's not a knoife. (pulls out a ten inch Bowie knife) That's a knoife!

—Mick Dundee, Crocodile Dundee

A cousin of the Badass Spaniard.

Since Australia has earned a reputation as one of the most dangerous countries on Earth, due to its harsh environment and myriad of highly dangerous creatures, many authors have stood to reason that anyone who can survive there must be quite a bit tougher than your ordinary human. Australians (specifically, Anglo-Australian males) in fiction are often portrayed as über-masculine rough-and-tumble supermen, champion outdoorsmen who tear up the outback in their Jeeps and have never met a crocodile they couldn't wrestle. Expect a fondness for knoives. Obviously not 100% realistic, but there's some truth here.

For more completely true information on Australia, see Land Down Under.

Examples of Awesome Aussie include:

Advertising

• Parodied on the "How to Speak Australian" campaign for Fosters Beer. For example, a man who goes "ow" after being crushed by a boulder is a "crybaby".
• The guy in This commercial for Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.

Anime and Manga

• Adventurer Archaeologist Jim Cook from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. He seriously plays the part, having a pet crocodile that he carries around (not a pet to him; to Jim, Shirley is family), and his Duel Disk is shaped like a boomerang.

Comic Books

• Sydney Savage from Danger Girl.
• Captain Boomerang from Suicide Squad is a massive Deconstruction. Nobody likes him. Not that he ever gives anyone any reason to.

Film

• Mick Dundee, Paul Hogan's character in Crocodile Dundee, is the Trope Codifier (much to many Australians' dismay). Something of a subversion, since his famous claims turn out to have been substantially exaggerated, and he's a bit clueless when out of his element. Still decidedly tough, though.
• The Drover in the film Australia was clearly designed with this stereotype in mind, complete with the use of "Crikey!" As such, he references several other famous Badass Australians.
• Mad Max: "Mad" Max Rockatansky.
• The globe-trotting hunter Robert Muldoon is portrayed this way in Jurassic Park, though most of his badassery is informed. He's said to have traveled the world, hunting the most dangerous animals there are, though he's eventually caught and devoured by velociraptors.

Literature

• Jack West from the series named after him, by Matthew Reilly.

Live Action TV

• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is clearly the most badass Australian out there.
• Jim Taggart from Eureka.
• The entire 8th Battalion AIF in ANZACs a five part mini-series from the 80s set during the Great War. Truth in Television.

Video Games

• The Sniper from Team Fortress 2, as well as his deranged cousin.
  • Exaggerated to hilarious extremes with SAXTON HALE, pictured above, the "loose canon" inventor / adventurer / asskicker.
• Ian "Hunter" St. John, from Wing Commander.
• Kid, the fiery teenage thief from Chrono Cross.
• Dingodile from the Crash Bandicoot series.

Web Comics

• Liam Williamson from This Is the Worst Idea You've Ever Had. He kills monsters for a living, and even the creator admits he's badass.

Western Animation

• Monterey Jack, The Big Guy from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers.
• Jake from The Rescuers Down Under, a kangaroo rat and champion outdoorsman with whom Bernard battles for Bianca's affection.
• In Codename: Kids Next Door, Numbuh Four is often portrayed as the toughest and most courageous of the team. However, to balance things out, he's also about as intelligent as a dirt clod.
• Dee Bradley Baker voices every Clone Trooper from Star Wars: The Clone Wars with an Australian (allegedly New Zealand) accent—an entire army of awesome Aussies.
• Wolverine is so much of a badass that in the cartoon pilot Pryde of the X-Men they gave him an Australian accent.
  • Which is Hilarious in Hindsight with Wolverine being played by (actual) Awesome Aussie Hugh Jackman in the X-Men films.
• Jetfire in Transformers Armada, Energon and Cybertron. (Although in-universe it's called a "Nebulan accent".) Outback from Transformers Generation 1 qualifies as well.
• In Total Drama Revenge of the Island, one of Mike's alter egos is an Australian wilderness adventurer named Manitoba Smith.
• Dan Vs.. gets one in Dan vs. the Dinosaur, to help them track down said dinosaur.

Real Life

• Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, the ballsiest animal rights activist ever to walk the Earth. As his nickname implies, Irwin was mostly known for wrestling crocodiles, which he had done since the age of nine. He based his persona on Crocodile Dundee.
  • The whole Irwin family counts. Steve's wife, Terri, even became an Australian citizen.
• Albert Jacka
• Billy Sing, Australia's greatest sniper in WWI. Born in the state of Queensland, and notably unusual (in terms of this trope) for being ethnically half-Chinese. General William Birdwood, commander of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), told Lord Kitchener that "if his troops could match the capacity of the Queensland sniper the allied forces would soon be in Constantinople." The enemy forces specifically assigned a champion Turkish sniper to assassinate the man. When said sniper had Sing in his sights, Sing shot first, and was the only one of the two to walk away alive.
  • Along similar lines was Caleb Shang, a Chinese-Australian soldier and something of a soldierly jack-of-all-trades, worked as both advanced scout, sniper, machine gunner, stretcher bearer, anything the regiment needed him to be. He was the most highly decorated non-white soldier of the ANZAC forces, including Billy Sing.
• Just about every dangerous animal from that continent. Tawny Frogmouths, huge birds with red eyes and wide, reptile-like mouths. Dingos. The Inland Taipan, the most venomous snake in the world. And, of course, saltwater crocodiles.
  • Huntsman spiders.
    • Huntsman spiders may be giant and hairy, but they're really quite gentle... Or maybe that's just what they want us to think. These are, after all the same spiders as the 'giant crab spiders' and 'rain spiders' of Brazil, Florida, and many other equatorial to temperate regions. Presumably named so due to their tendency to drop out of the sky like giant man-hunting, parachuting crab-spider ninjas.
• Edward "Ned" Kelly, famous Irish Australian bush-ranger, outlaw and now firmly entrenched figure of folk-lore.
• 'Sir' John Monash, World War I General and last man ever knighted on the field of battle. Held responsible by King George for winning the entire damned war. One notable quote: King George commented that they just 'might' win the war using Monash's tactics. Monash's reply, a single incredulous 'might?'