Well, not all of them but certainly the majority of them think that.

My OH is Canadian but his parents lived and worked in the USA for many years and his late brother's family still live there.  Even after a number of visits to Australia over 30 odd years they still had some misconceptions about the country.

The best I ever heard was when a seller kept telling me that the reason my parcel had not arrived was because there were floods in my area.   The floods were in Brisbane...I am in Sydney.   Things got very heated before my parcel finally arrived...she just would not believe that we were not in any way affected by floods in another state.