Maybe that's because Australia was settled in a time of air travel, over the last 120 years or so. Whereas the U.S. developed in a time where travel across long distances was more difficult, and therefore developed more isolated regional cultures and accents.
I understand that most of Australia's population is concentrated in a few major cities, as you describe above. It's kind of wild that Australia is about the land area of the lower 48 United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), but has a population only slightly larger than that of just Florida.
I replaced the first link above for the HELL OF AN INNOCENT story, the 12comic.com site seems to be down permanently. So I replaced it with the comiconlinefree.com link, which also seems to be temporarily down.
Hopefully it will be back for your reading pleasure soon.
In the meantime, I discovered this other 300-page black-and-white graphic novel,
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE.
https://comiconlinefree.com/a-history-of-violence/issue-Full/12I'm unfamiliar with any other work by the writer. The art is by Vince Locke, who I only recognize from some issues he did of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN series. Very brisk reading, very cinematic, and a rather dark story, but with very likeable and human characters.
In some ways it reminds me of the movie
Goodfellas.
