What's So Unique About Friendship Anyhow?

CANARY WHARF: So it turns out that's it almost impossible to sleep in my third floor tower room. With a security light shoving rudely through the curtains and the constant cough of traffic I'm finding myself waking up at four in the morning and then not getting back too sleep. When I do catch myself in the morning mirror I look like Ed Norton's character at the start of Fight Club.

So when I trudge home from work I'm more than a little bemused to find Dishonest John spruiking the uniqueness of Aussie mateship (vis a vis the succesful miner's rescue) in The Guardian. Joy of joys that he would trot out his most time worn cliche in the midst of a moment of so much genuine happiness. If mateship was truly unique to the Australian psyche then we must imagine that our neighbours in the global community would have acted so much differently. Or would they? Would the Dutch, the Kiwis, the Koreans or the Bolivians have abandoned the miners to their fate?