I hate to tell you this, WAV, but having listened to you on Myspace, your accent is just as much a mess as mine. Appropriately, given that I've lived almost half my life in one place and half in another, my accent is a complete mishmash. Yours is, too. But it's still a lot more Australian than Geordie.

The difference is that mine has got this way organically, because I don't care how I sound. And even if I spoke with a typical accent for the place where I now live, it would not make me any more English than I am. I've got a bit of English ancestry somewhere - again, that doesn't make me English any more than my Italian or Irish heritages make me Italian or Irish. I grew up in America and within that culture - whether you like it or not, you are culturally Australian, just as I am culturally American. The past 18 years have added another dimension to my cultural identity, but they do NOT eradicate the first half of my life. Even if my parents had been English, I would still have had all of my formative cultural experiences in America - just as yours were in Australia.