Ditto in Australia. In fact we even have a saying about it: "Australia: where you call your mates cunt and you call cunts mate".

Obviously context and tone play a lot into it and both "cunt" and "mate" can be friendly or threatening/derogatory depending on delivery and circumstance, but I imagine it would be remarkably difficult for people who aren't immersed into Australian culture to figure out which is which based on text alone