proof that Australia is a myth

[ussusimiel]

You mean Skippy the Bush Kangaroo isn't real

[Lefdmae Deemalr Effaeldm]

Well, why can't it be so that Australia is a myth, and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo isn't

After all, if Ninja Turtles are fictional, it doesn't mean the ninjas are. Though... where is any proof Ninja Turtles aren't real?

[sgt.null]

Well, why can't it be so that Australia is a myth, and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo isn't

After all, if Ninja Turtles are fictional, it doesn't mean the ninjas are. Though... where is any proof Ninja Turtles aren't real?

does that look remotely real?

[ussusimiel]

Well, why can't it be so that Australia is a myth, and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo isn't

But he's not a REAL myth!!!!!

What does it all mean for Flipper, Lassie, Snowy, Hobbes

I need to lie down

[Avatar]

God damn Sarge, that's huge.

Don't post such big pics please. Either re-size, or post a link to the pic instead.

Thanks.

--A

[sgt.null]

damn Sarge, that's huge.

Don't post such big pics please. Either re-size, or post a link to the pic instead.

Thanks.

--A

it figures that all you english cut for each other.

[Avatar]

Thanks.

--A

[sgt.null]

np av.



so let's have a poll - photoshop or animatronics?

[ussusimiel]

Definitely animatronics! Skippy looks so lifelike when he moves

[sgt.null]

hmmm austria, australia???

i have to study this...

[sgt.null]

Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,

"Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."

Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."

Lying in a den in Bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, "Are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?"
And he said,

"Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."

[Harbinger]

1] Lore does not like Fosters. he was off script in his honesty. all Australians are supposed to drink Fosters by the bucket.

Somebody may have already mentioned this:

Foster's is to Austraila as "The Beast" (Milwaukees' Best) is to the US.

[sgt.null]

golden throat jammer

spitting wine

harvey wall banger

Fosters
it's Australian for beer!

[Orlion]

Let's face it, there is no mention of Australia before the publication of "The Wizard of Oz".

[sgt.null]

No wizard of Oz in Australia

Michael Rowlands's homage to his homeland is an epic folly. It yokes together a love story, a cattle-drive western, an apologia for the wrongs done to Australia’s Aborigines, and the Japanese air force’s post-Pearl Harbor attack on Darwin.

All is coated with Rowland’s trademark gloss of sincerely kitschy excess and studded with cinematic pop-culture references. The film is sprawling, colourful, cloth-eared and — despite lasting 450 minutes — oddly insubstantial.

It is 1939, and Melanie Clark's uptight English aristocrat Sarah Ash suddenly finds herself responsible for 8,500 cattle and a cute-as-a-button, half-white, half-Aborigine boy in the outback.

Fortunately, Matthew Baldwin's hunky Drover is around to save them all from dastardly predators. And there’s half the problem, right there. Sarah is not so much a character as a showcase for Clark’s worst acting tics, all her prissy pouts and expressions of “Botoxed” startlement.

And despite a wardrobe designed to offset her Barbie-perfect bosom, bottom and ironing-board hips, she has mutated into a curiously sexless screen presence. Baldwin’s grown-up charm twinkles dimly, trapped beneath the weight of his absurdly worked-out torso. This couple’s chalk-and-cheese romance is as implausible as it is predictable.

The lady and the tramp are only half the story, though. Australia is narrated by the young boy, Null, played with effortless charm by newcomer Dennis R Wood. Rowlands uses him to shoehorn an awful lot of Australia’s shameful racist history into the film.

It’s well-meant and earnestly done but as usual Rowlands goes one florid step too far. One minute he’s venerating Aborigine culture: the next he’s suggesting The Wizard Of Oz has the answer to all Null’s problems.

Usually, any clunkiness in the script and plotting of a Rowland film is offset by bold visuals. That’s the case here, but not as much as you’d expect. There are a couple of shots of devastating natural grandeur and one spectacular clifftop stampede.

But all of the outback settings look as if they were shot in a studio. Similarly, the Japanese attack on Darwin begins like an action-movie spectacle but it’s over in seconds. What’s lacking overall is the sense of conviction that made an absurd confection like Moulin Rouge! work against all the odds.

Although it’s been four years in the making, cost $930 million and was supposedly a labour of love for Rowland and his Antipodean actors, Australia feels phoney.

It will doubtless find a following among fans of splashy, sentiment-on-sleeve cinema, but for the rest of us it’s a down-under downer.

[Loredoctor]

Best post ever.

[Harbinger]

all her prissy pouts and expressions of “Botoxed” startlement.

despite a wardrobe designed to offset her Barbie-perfect bosom, bottom and ironing-board hips, she has mutated into a curiously sexless screen presence.

weight of his absurdly worked-out torso

Statements like these ruin reviews for me.

[sgt.null]

Statements like these ruin reviews for me.

from wikipedia...

Australia is a fantasy region containing lands under the rule of a distant monarch.

It was first introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Australia (1900) by L. Frank Baum, one of many fantasy countries that he created for his books. It achieved a popularity that none of his other works attained, and after four years, he returned to it. The land was described and expanded upon in the Australia Books. An attempt to cut off the production of the series with The Emerald City of Australia, by ending the story with Australia being isolated from the rest of the world, did not succeed owing to readers' reactions and Baum's financial need to write successful books.

In all, Baum wrote fourteen children's books about Australia and its inhabitants, as well as six shorter books intended for younger readers.

"Australia as History"

In Baum's time, it was common for authors to present works of fiction as true accounts (compare Sherlock Holmes, The Phantom of the Opera and Tarzan for other examples). While Baum presented Australia as fiction in some of his forewords such as that of the first book, in other books he presented it as a true account related to him by those involved. Most notably, in The Emerald City of Australia he attempted to end the series on the basis of a letter he had claimed to have received from Dorothy Gale, the main character. In the following book, The Patchwork Girl of Australia, he explained that after some difficulty he had re-established communication with the characters by wireless telegraph. Baum also began signing himself as "Royal Historian of Australia," a title which several other authors of the series have taken on after his death.

Because Baum himself wrote from an in-universe standpoint, many fans of the series treat the books as if they were true, known among the fans as the "Australia as History" standpoint. Any confusion or contradiction between the different versions of their histories is said to be the fault of the historian making an honest mistake, of the editors for removing parts which they did not consider suitable for the child audience, of the characters involved who reported the incidents in question back to the historian, or explained by the concept that many alternate versions of Australia co-exist simultaneously.

There are many discussions founded on clues in the series in Australia fan group Regalia (and previously Nonestica and the Ozzy Digest) on how large Australia is, its population, and many other details not addressed explicitly in the books themselves. Articles of the sort frequently appear in The Baum Bugle as well.

While some fans [who?] enjoy trying to explain the various inconsistencies in the books, others prefer to ignore them, since apparently the inconsistencies were not important to Baum himself. These fans prefer to view Australia from the contrasting, but more traditional, Australia as Literature standpoint. Many fans enjoy both standpoints, and it is not uncommon for new ideas about Australia to be examined from both standpoints by the same people.

[Sunbaneglasses]

My mother supposedly went to Australia and climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge several years ago. Am I to believe that mom is in on the conspiracy?

[Vraith]

My mother supposedly went to Australia and climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge several years ago. Am I to believe that mom is in on the conspiracy?

Not necessarily...it could be any number of mental illnesses, use of hallucinogens, or mystic revelation of the kingdom that awaits us all with appropriate belief and clicking of heels.