Don’t you just love it when you find yourself holding onto the perfect gift? And better still you unwrap it and it’s all for you???
I’m totally into it… and am thrilled to be on the receiving end of this little perler from my buddy Shoe…
It’s a book. A really old book, older even than me given that it was published in 1959. She bought it on a whim and it has been sitting in her library for a couple of years just waiting on the perfect recipient!!
Me!
Hurrah!
It seems to me only fair in having received such a bounty that I share some of the very important information therein with you. Just in case any of you were thinking of becoming an Australian.
In truth, I’m wishing I had read this BEFORE I signed on the dotted line…
So, this entry, the first extract from this tome of great import, I thought was very timely, given the stirring that’s been going on as a result of recent bloody efforts to sell Australia to the world…
How to Sell Tourism
Just leave it all to the Phascolarctos cinereus.
As you will discover if you study Australian travel publicity overseas, the only reason why American millionaires prefer a long journey to Little Coogee to a little journey to Long Island, or why English milords holiday in Murwillumbah rather than Menton, is because of the irresistible phascinations of the Pfascolarctos C. – which means to you and me “native bear” or “koala”.
Just as Australia, as a whole, lives on the sheep’s back the Australian tourist industry lives on the koala’s back. But the koala (average weight 12lb) has a much smaller back.
This accounts for its worried look.
The relative economic, social, and cultural importance of the koala family is fully recognized on Phillip Island, Victoria where notices on the main road warn motorists to…
New Australians often ask why this rare, anti-social and comparatively insignificant marsupial, rather than the proligerous and impressive kangaroo has come to symbolise the Australian Way of Life on travel-posters, calendars, and Christmas cards.
The reason is that no other living creature large or small, so closely approximates in its private life and social habits to the behaviour of the typical Australian male.
And, of course, only males matter.
While to touch circumspectly on more delicate matters the koala’s love life might well come straight from a Kinsey report on the Sexual Habits of the Australian Male. “The male during the mating season utters a call that has been compared to a harsh cough…”
The name koala comes from an aboriginal word “implying the animal seldom drinks in the wild state”. This of course, is what makes it wild.
Just as it would any decent Australian.
Extract from ! So, you want to be an Australian by Cyril Pearl ©1959 – slightly abridged…
Doesn’t it just make you blush with Australian Pride??
It did me…
Dee, you put me to shame. I was there for 12 years with an Australian husband and Australian children and I was just too damn lazy to become an Aussie myself. But I would never be able to barrack for the Aussies against England in the Ashes so maybe I would have been refused anyway.
Ms Mac, you have the advantage of an Australian husband to [ahem] fall back on… I have no such security and should I ever move back to NZ could well lose the opportunity to have both my options covered…
That’s the REAL reason I did it… shhh
I must find another gem by Nino which I have in the archives … "They’re a Weird Mob Mate!" … also truly excellent!
Oh my goodness… I guess Aussie humour has changed a bit in 50 years.