average australian

Are you an average Australian? | National News | News.com.au

BY definition, the nation should be brimming with average Australians, so how do you stack up?

The Sunday Telegraph has sifted through a stack of academic research, government statistics, media surveys and online polls to discover the attributes of the average Aussie.

We found the average Australian is aged between 35 and 40, has a mortgage of $359,000 and a credit card debt of $2108, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The ABS says Mr Average is married and will live to blow out 77 candles on his birthday cake.

He earns $1260 a week and works on average 38 hours each week before retiring at 65.

When he is not at work, Mr Average will spend 12 hours of his week watching television on one of the three TV sets in the average

Aussie house and 16 hours on the internet, according to a study released this year by Nielsen Online.
He will dedicate more than three hours each week to cooking and cleaning and just 35 minutes to doing his dirty laundry, says the ABS survey.

The Average Aussie man spends 3000 hours of his lifetime shaving and enjoys two cups of coffee a day.

As far as appearance is concerned, the ABS says Mr Average is about 174cm tall and weighs 83.6kg.

Rob Stanley-Jones, from Sydney's Miranda, fits the profile for Mr Average in more ways than one, but confesses he is below par in the cooking and cleaning department.

He wears his size 34 jeans to work each day at the Cronulla pub, Northies, and admits to watching an average 12 hours of TV each week on one of his three TV sets.

He is a family man with a wife and three children and his values are heavily based on mateship and community spirit.

"My belief has always been the publican should be the centre of the community. I suppose it's old fashioned but I like to think it's a way for the community to connect and unite," Mr Stanley-Jones said.

The Average Aussie woman is 37 years old, married and will live to 83.

She earns $1063 each week and will work around 28 hours each week until she retires at 63.

Mrs Average dedicates 15 minutes each day to applying make-up, according to Napoleon Perdis make-up artist Rebecca Prior, and will spend that same amount of time styling her hair, which means the average woman spends at least 3.5 hours looking in the mirror each week.

An average week for Mrs Average involves eight hours of cooking and cleaning and three hours doing the laundry. Like Mr Average, she will enjoy 12 hours of TV each week and eight hours of listening to the radio.

Her mobile phone will be used mostly for calls to family and friends, according to a survey conducted by the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association.

She is a healthy size 14, 163cm tall and fills a C cup. She will marry at 29 and have her first child at 30.

Heidi Brooks from Albury-Wodonga is proud to be the average Aussie, but admits she has four televisions in her house.

"I am a born-and-bred Australian, I'm married, have two children and I think there is always a television switched on in our house," Ms Brooks said.

She concedes she works slightly under the average job hours clocking in 24 hours each week as a human resources adviser.

But she said she makes up for it by doing at least 10 hours of cooking and cleaning weekly.

Each morning, Ms Brooks spends 15 minutes applying her make-up and 15 minutes on hair care before slipping into a size 14 outfit from her side of the wardrobe.

But she admits, like the average, she hardly wears the majority of the clothes in her wardrobe.

"At least half of the clothes I own are never worn, honestly I don't even consider putting them on."

Just before bed Ms Brooks enjoys her third cup of tea for the day, which she thinks is pretty average - considering nationally Australians consume 22 million cups of tea each day.