This distinction (although I know it) has never made logical sense to me.

I only have four wheels. If all the wheels are driving, and I only have four wheels, then...

Again, I do know what the conventional difference is. But it's just that: convention. Unless you memorized the convention beforehand, there's really no way to decipher why 4WD/AWD has any meaningful distinction, nor which of the two specific names maps to which mechanism.

Country differences (the writer seems to be Australian), plus some subtle technical differences few people know or care about.

Suffice to say, in British parlance any vehicle with four driven wheels can be called a "4×4"

My first guess was a RAV4 as well from that description