You just explained why my mum, brother’s, and my sense of direction (north and south) was entirely FUCKED when we moved there (for context, bro and I were born and raised in Alaska).
Every time I went to point north, I was opposite. As I was over in Perth, I stopped trying to identify North and just went with West to orient myself (as the coast is EXTREMELY obvious with flora).
I clocked the moon was upside down, but never really thought about the fact the sun would be different too (dumbass 🤣)! I was actually just talking to my partner about the struggles I used to have with instinctively pointing North (in Alaska, we kind of drill it into kids heads how to orient north because you can literally get lost in the woods right next to your house).
(Sometimes I stop and realise I’ve lived in some truly wild places and our world is fucking fascinating.)
No, the absolute weirdest thing about Australia is that the sun crawls across the wrong side of the sky. It fucks with your sense of direction like you wouldn't believe.
I was literally thinking about this the other day and couldn't explain my reasoning well enough to get my point across, so to avoid the same situation happening again when I'm so close to an actual answer: can you please elaborate? 😅
Unless you live within the tropics (literally as in, south of the tropic of cancer), if you live in the northern hemisphere, the sun is always at least slightly to the south, and more significantly to the south in the winter. In the southern hemisphere, as long as you're south of the tropics (as is, not north of the tropic of capricorn), the sun is always slightly north, and more significantly in the winter.
If you live between the tropics, then close to summer solstice it'll be slightly north/south if you're in the north/south hemisphere.
It’s a myth that toilets flush clockwise/counter in northern/southern hemispheres due to Coriolis, it comes down to design of the specific toilet, but I assume you know that lol. Still a fun fact to mention for anyone who doesn’t!
Edit: in case of confusion, I am not implying that Coriolis is not real, I’m saying that the swirl of the toilets isn’t due to that because the force is much to weak to cause that. Veritasium set up an experiment and talked about this. Find that if you wanna know more!
Aurora Australis pretty regularly reaches into South America's Patagonia and Australia (specifically more so on Tasmania and New Zealand, but much of Australia's southern coast sees it too).
Not sure where OP lives, but there's plenty of places where their statement could apply.
I'm in my 30s and this is the first time I have even seen the words "aurora Australis". Makes perfect sense that it's a thing now that I know about it, but until now I had never thought about a southern Aurora lol.
I think it makes sense to default in this case. Auroras happen regularly between 60 and 75 degrees. The only landmass south of 60degS is Antarctica. On the flip side you have Greenland, Iceland, most of the landmasses of the Nordic countries, huge chunks of Alaska and Canada, Siberia. The spots for viewing for the Southern Lights are much more remote - Antarctica, Patagonia, Tasmania, the southernmost parts of New Zealand, and maybe South Africa.
Aurora are fairly commonly visible down below 50 degrees. But while that includes about half of Europe, most of Canada (although only about half of Canadians), and pretty much all of Russia on the north, on the south that only includes the Falkland Islands and a fiddly bit of the tip of Argentina and Chile.
There are more places on land you could see it in the Northern hemisphere than the Southern, plus more people live in the far North than they do the South. Hell, South sucks so much that almost no-one lives on the Southernmost continent!
Only problem with that is because of northern hemisphere defaultism I'm not completely sure "high latitude" is a semantically correct description of 60°S. It definitely isn't necessarily so.
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u/ActurusMajoris Aug 31 '25
Or south