Australian local dress styles are different from Australia's fashions. Dress has been influenced by the experience of living in rugged country as well as modern leisure activities such as swimming, surfing and beach culture. This is reflected in different fabrics, such as moleskin and drill cotton, developed for more practical wear.
The cut, cloth and style of beachwear and bushwear have been adapted to localised street dress, as have the colours of the Australian landscapes, flora and fauna to the extent that there is a recognisable national dress style. The creation of a national dress style reflecting on the outdoor beach experience and the native flora in the Sydney Botanic Gardens are used, for example, by dress designer Sally Smith, as inspiration for her dress designs as recognisably authentic modern Australian dress.
Surf board shorts have been adopted successfully as dress across Australia. If you move from the beach to the bush, then clothing is usually adapted to follow suit. A test of how far inland you could travel from the beach wearing only brief racing bathers, though, is only a bus ride from Bondi to the central business district in Sydney. (The Chaser, ABC 2007). The closer you get to the bush, the more likely you are to be wearing tough clothes, a felt hat and elastic-sided boots, as well as adopting a language of mateship and equality.