THOSE of an unkind nature, might think that Australian culture consists of cricket, rugby and blokes called Bruce in shorts drinking cold tinnies served by Sheilas at never ending barbies.

This, of course, is simple national stereotyping and totally wrong. Not all blokes are called Bruce and not all girls in Australia are called Sheila.

Mind you, Bruce was a bit suspicious when Sheila didn’t come home one night. She said she had stayed at a girlfriend’s house but he thought she might have been seeing another bloke and rang her 10 closest friends, but none of them had seen her.

The next week, Bruce didn’t come home one night. He said he’d got a bit drunk at a mate’s place and thought it was safer not to drive and so had crashed out there.

Sheila thought he might have been seeing another woman so she rang his 10 best mates. Eight of them said he’d spent the night on the sofa and two claimed he was still there.

Fortunately, the Aussies can laugh at themselves. Just don’t make any jokes about who won the Ashes this year.

Still, they must have been a bit surprised to discover that the University of Sydney has a Centre for the Mind.

What would Monty Python have made of that?

“There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya

Bout the raising of the wrist.

Socrates himself was permanently...”

Yes, well.

They were perhaps even more confounded to discover that the learned scientists at the centre had created a thinking cap.

It is a strange piece of headgear that suppresses the left side of the brain – the logical thinking side – by zapping it with electricity, to encourage the more creative right side into action.

They tried the cap on students taking a maths test. Three times as many of those who wore the cap completed the test, compared to those who tried without.

“We know that from certain types of brain damage and abnormalities or injuries, people who suddenly have damage to the left temporal lobe will burst out in the arts or other types of creative activities,” said Allan Snyder, director of the Centre.

Snyder said the goal was to suppress habits and opinions gathered through life experiences to help users see problems and situations as they really appear.

“You wouldn’t use this to study or to help your memory. You would use this if you wanted to look at a problem anew,” he said.

“If you wanted to look at the world, just briefly, with a child’s view, if you wanted to look outside the box.”

Of course, there have been attempts for years to do exactly this by suppressing the logical side of the brain, both in Australia and here in the UK and Ireland.

This has involved consuming large amounts of alcohol.

While this method has had limited success – releasing the ability to speak fluent rubbish, for instance – the creative side of the brain is usually too drunk to take full advantage.

The news of the scientific breakthrough will, of course only stimulate the search for an alternative way of releasing creativity, in the bars and pubs both here and down under.

“Keep the tinnies coming, Sheila. We’ve got some serious thinking to do.”