From down under to down south? About 9,000 miles.

That was the trip James Burnip made two years ago when the Australian punter left his home country to enroll at Alabama, beginning a tour of the SEC that has taken him from The Swamp to Rocky Top.

But one American institution has eluded him to this point: Outback Steakhouse.

The Australian-themed restaurant has almost 700 locations in the United States, including one only a few miles away from campus in Tuscaloosa that is among 12 in the state of Alabama. Outback sponsored a bowl game in Tampa from 1996-2022, and has inked dozens of college football players to NIL deals.

Burnip, an authentic Aussie from the Melbourne area, wants to see what it’s all about.

“I’ve never eaten at an Outback,” he revealed Dec. 31 after Alabama’s Sugar Bowl win over Kansas State. “I’m still waiting for someone to take me.”

There are only eight Outback locations in the entire country of Australia.

“I’ve heard the bloomin’ onions there are good, but I had never heard of what a bloomin’ onion was before,” Burnip said.

Burnip’s inevitable trip to Outback will be one of many firsts for him in America, like playing the game of football. That happened on Sept. 4, 2021 in front of 71,000 people in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

“I walked in there and was like, ‘Damn, that’s a lot of people,’” said Burnip, who was made available to reporters in the New Orleans Superdome locker room for the first time since joining Alabama.

The 6-foot-6 Burnip played Australian rules-football and trained to become an American football punter at ProKick Australia, while also attending Victoria University in Melbourne. He initially committed to a three-year scholarship from Ole Miss and then-special teams coordinator Coleman Hutzler. But Burnip flipped to Alabama in June 2021 after the Tide offered him four years, and later reunited with Hutzler when the Tide hired him before the 2022 season.

Burnip arrived in the capital of college football with anything but a lifelong passion for the Crimson Tide.

“I never watched American football my life,” he said. “I watched probably parts of the Super Bowl.”

What were once crowds of about 2,500 for his Aussie rules games swelled to more than 100,000.

“Went to Kyle Field — had a 110,000 or something there. It’s just crazy, insane to think about,” he recalled. “I don’t really pay attention to the crowd anymore. I just block it out, just focus on what I got to do to be the best to help my team.”

After losing the consistency of J.K. Scott to the 2018 NFL draft, Alabama spent the next three seasons bouncing between five different punters. Burnip has steadied the position in attempting all 91 punts the past two seasons, for an average of 41 yards.

He is hardly alone among Australian punters in college football. Six of the past nine winners of the Ray Guy Award given to the nation’s best punter have been Aussies, with Sporting News counting 56 punters from the country among FBS teams two seasons ago. This season, every Division I team in Florida had an Australian punter on its roster.

Burnip and his counterparts might not have grown up peeling bloomin’ onions, but they know how to kick a ball.

“By the time an Aussie Rules player reaches 18, he is probably going to have kicked the ball two million times,” Prokick director Nathan Chapman told Fox Sports in 2021.

And by the time an Australian reaches 18, they are able to buy a beer. By moving to the United States, Burnip lost that privilege.

“I came over when I was 20,” he said. “I was just used to be being able to go out to the bar, have a couple beers with my friends. All the sudden I’m not of age. That was a bit strange.”

That was all part of what Burnip acknowledged had been a significant adjustment in his life.

“Obviously, packing my stuff up and moving across the other side of the globe — it was difficult to leave my friends, family, everything I had back home for the past 20 years of my life,” he said.

Burnip developed a friendship with kicker Will Reichard over the past two seasons, one that will continue in Tuscaloosa for another season after Reichard announced his return earlier this month for a fifth year.

“Will’s been, like, my biggest mentor,” Burnip said after the Sugar Bowl, before Reichard’s announcement. “I’ll come into work every day, and just feed off him. Especially in that first year — what he did, what he prepared for. Stretching, pre-meetings, watching film — I gained so much knowledge from him. Looking toward the future, I’m hoping I can do the same thing to the next kicker that comes in.”

Alabama, it turns out, is starting to feel like home.

“I love it here,” he said. “Everyone’s been welcoming. My teammates have been welcoming. Haven’t skipped a beat yet.”

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.