Every Saturday morning, you can see the netball courts and cricket/football/hockey fields filled with kids of all ages playing a variety of sports; and if you look harder, you can see their mothers and fathers ferrying them and their sports equipment around the suburbs and between country towns.
Australia has forged its identity, partly through sport. We are proud that we 'punch above our weight' in the various international competitions, in that we often have more top sports stars per head of population than many other larger countries.
Having been formally involved in sport ministry since 1982 I have had time to give some reflection on this subject.
Under the auspices of the Heads of Churches, I founded the Sports and Leisure Ministry which (among other things) placed chaplains into professional sports. I also served as the Australian Cricket Team chaplain for 17 years, retiring at the end of 2000. Since then, I have been involved in my own continuing faith-funded ministry, Well-Being Australia, which specialises in providing pastoral respite for young Australian Institute of Sport elite athletes.
My research on Australian history and sport provided some insights for my theses, which resulted in my attaining a Ph.D., (doctorate) in the mid 1980s. I have written two postgraduate theses on varying aspects of Sports Ministry, using my own personal perspective as a basis for these studies.
[The nature of a Ph.D., is to specialise and focus on a specific area of interest, hence the origins of the joke among academics themselves, that they learn more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.]
One of the areas I undertook to look at closely were the historical arguments as to why Australians have done so well in sport, earning results far above expectations according to the large number of high-achievers within our relatively small population. This is not a one-off, but keeps occurring in a wide range of sports, year after year after year.
For example, in 2009 there were 36 individual Australians or teams classed as world champions in their chosen sport. These range from the more popular team sports to many individuals from activities such as surfing, swimming, rowing, abseiling, and others.
Clearly there is something about the nature of who Australians are and their upbringing that helps our children achieve a very high sporting prowess. The research I undertook, even with those statistics available 'way back when', seemed to highlight three areas of performance-related associations.
These were: the nature of Australia's isolation from regional conflict where energies were directed into sport; the weather conditions that give rise to a physical orientation of social activities including sport; and the idea that Australians had something to prove to the mother country (England) and this expression came out in sport, even from some of the earliest years when cricket teams sailed back and forth across the globe to play each other.
Because of the happy coincidence of a sunny climate and mild winters in most of the country, and because of our small population of only 21 million, and because of the tradition of physical fitness and a can-do attitude of 'doing what needs being done for yourself', the school system has developed to give all children a compulsory half day's sport, and the society has developed in parallel to provide a wide range of sports so that most children will find something of interest.
In addition, talented sports people can progress from 'local' to 'district' to 'state' to 'national' competitions in their chosen sports, and the very good can be selected to attend summer camps and perhaps the Australian Institute of Sport, or other specialised coaching centres, as they get older. These routes are available to all children, not just the privileged.
On top of this, sports people from many different types of sport are respected and looked up to by the kids, and these people often reciprocate by conducting workshops or giving motivational talks at a range of schools.
I have tapped into this mentoring program in my Well-Being Australia mission, and I take numerous young sports stars and/or coaches on 'Country Town Tours' each year, to give isolated rural kids the same opportunities as those closer to town. Many other organisations do something similar.
So, in summary, it seems to me that Australian sports people excel above and beyond what is expected of them on the world scene because of the happy coincidence of climate and social development that encourages them and supports talented athletes.
This is further reinforced, or may be because of, some of the characteristics that have made Australian soldiers legends in all fields of war, from the Boer war to the most recent conflicts that unfortunately blight our world – that of being fit, strong, independent, willing to 'go the extra mile' and supporting the team.
These characteristics are also the stuff of the pioneering legends that have led to the strong 'mateship' traditions in our society.
The early Christians, too, needed to be fit, to support the team, and to rely on their 'mates' in times when they were a small and sometimes isolated population, in the days after Christ's resurrection.
So a fourth factor in the excellence of Australian sport may well be firmly rooted in our Christian heritage of doing our best to use the talents the Lord gave us, and also in supporting our mates in times of hardship, for the good of the whole 'team'.