Gahhh .... where is all that vitriol I was courting? That, Jason, was a measured, rational and civilised reply, when all I was doing was stirring the pot.
And in reality there is no way anyone will see more than, oh, perhaps about 300 of those Australian species without some serious travelling. If you restrict yourself to the birds you can reasonably expect to see within, say, weekend-trip distance (by car - not counting the Qantas 767 method), you'd not see more than half of them at the very most.
Essentially we have two wet tropical areas (with substantial species overlap), two cool, temperate areas (also overlapping to some extent), and a vast semi-arid zone in the middle. Plus the seabirds and waders, of course. Wherever you live, you really can't access more than one or at most two of them - let's say about 300, maybe 400 species.
On my trip just completed, I had the theoretical opportunity to see maybe 500 or 600 of the 800-odd species (i.e., much of the continent but no pelagics and no visit to Western Australia), but that involved 13 thousand kilometres worth of driving and if you did the same on the map of Europe I guess you'd start in Glasgow and wind up somewhere in Russia.
