The World’s Longest Continuous Cultural Delusion

Australia is a land of superlatives, most of them having to do with death. The dry continent is home to the world’s deadliest snake, the world’s two deadliest spiders, and the flightless but ferocious cassowary. Its surrounding oceans are filled with man-eating sharks, toxic jellyfish and even (sorry, Nemo) a killer octopus. If the saltwater crocodiles don’t get you, the venomous cone snails will. It’s no wonder that the largest cemetery in the southern hemisphere is in Australia, or that an even bigger one is being planned in (where else?) western Sydney. To be constructed in Wallacia—current living population: 1700; proposed dead population: 800,000—the proposed cemetery would be just a ten-minute drive from the long-anticipated airport at Badgerys Creek. That raises the prospect of a new export industry for Sydney’s far west: permanent migration.

As with international students at Australia’s universities, bodies coming in are recorded in the national accounts as…