Which reminds me - Mark Twain advised against believing everything that locals tell you about their country. He said that after a visit to Australia, during which a helpful local had explained that the Blue Mountains were blue because of the gases given off by the millions of years' worth of kangaroo droppings that made them up.

Something that intrigued me was that Mark Twain wrote that he found it difficult to tell Australians apart from Americans, even down to their speech. Have Americans changed since then, or Australians, or both, I wonder? Or did Mark Twain just have a tin ear?