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On a conventionally oriented map, south is always down, and north is always up. "Down south" and "up north" are also very common phrases when discussing relative geographical locations, due to the same reason.

And if you turn around, left and right change places... woah.

Snide comment aside, it's obviously in reference to standard map orientation. Maps had to be oriented somehow, unless you're advocating for the chaos of arbitrary individual map orientations.

Up a wall? Why not down a wall or across it?

And yet you know exactly what they mean when they say it, indicating maybe it's a useful convention, even if imperfect.

Having trouble with figures of speech has been linked to schizophrenia. e.g. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0067...

I'm Australian and don't know anyone here who wouldn't consider North America "above". Can't imagine having the time to be that pedantic. Using "north of $50k" to describe something more expensive than $50k is very standard here too.