About

"It's the vibe of it. It's the Constitution. It's Mabo. It's justice. It's law."

— Denis Denuto, The Castle (1997)

What is God's Country?

The British settlers of Australia arrived in a harsh and tribal land. In 200 years they built God's Country: one of the safest, wealthiest, and just nations on earth. Their secret? They were:

• True Blue: loved their country, their Anglo-Celtic heritage, and their Western traditions of justice, equality
• Family Friendly: prioritised and protected family life.
• Settled: built and invested in the community for the long-term.
• Lifters: were successful and self-reliant.
• Traditionalists: held conservative social views (by today's standards).

But modern Australia is feeling less and less like God's Country. The vibes are decidedly off. Finding it is getting harder, but this website can help.

How does this site help?

The goal of this website is to help Australians to find, appreciate, and preserve God's Country. It is especially useful for young Australians looking to buy a home, but also for those interested in Australia's rapid demographic and cultural vibe shift.

As Australia's history proves, the right people can turn any place into God's Country. The opposite is also true.

That's why we have defined God's Country by the inhabitants of a place and their values (i.e. rather than characteristics of the places themselves). These values were proxied using public data (including ABS Census 2021 demographic data, AEC 2022 Federal Election voting data, & NSW Gov School Enrolments), then mapped them across suburbs, districts, and neighborhoods. For example, you can find the most True Blue suburbs in NSW, or the most family friendly neighbourhoods in NSW.

How do the scores work?

We first define a few simple measures for each cultural pillar, like "% of residents who are Australian born" for True Blue or "% of residents in young coupled families" for Family Friendly.

Next we normalise each measure by stretching the 1st and 99th percentile scores to 1-100. This allows us to compare apples to apples across metrics, create combined scores, and show real distributions. If none of the neighbourhoods are scoring high for True Blue the map will look red, however we do also quote the percentile ranking for context in the tooltip and right hand side panel.

Finally we average normalised scores for category scores (e.g. True Blue Score), with the God's Country Score averaged across all metrics.

Tips:

• Zoom in to tiny neighborhoods (based on ABS SA1 boundaries) for pockets of God's Country.
• Scores are based on percentages, so they're fair regardless of population size.
• Not everyone shares the exact same definition of God's Country, so you can use the "Customise" tab to change the scoring live as you're exploring.

Limitations

• Most data is from the 2021 Census, so it's about 5 years old.
• The composite scores (e.g. God's Country Score) average across all the normalised category scores, which smooths out extremes.
• The composite score band labels (e.g., "As bad as it gets" under 20) are subjective
• Metrics are proxies: They underestimate (e.g., immigrants who embrace Aussie values) and overestimate (e.g., Aussies who reject them). But they give a solid overall impression.

Clarifications

• The measures in this site are useful at the population level for finding God's Country, not for judging individuals. Many immigrants love traditional Aussie culture, childless people love kids, renters commit to their communiiies long-term, the unemployed bounce back, and Labor voters are good people.
• This site affirms all peoples are created equal and in God's image.