I spent past two weeks in Australia and it was great.

[Salt Jones]

Sidney, Cairns (the Great Barrier Reef), Uluru (Ayers Rock), Melbourne equals great sights and great food and no American news. Other then Rodney King dying.

 

[waltky]

For Noomi, from Uncle Ferd, putting Australia in the proper light...

Australia: What the rest of the world gets wrong
16 January 2013 - Familiar images spring to mind when one thinks of Australia, but how many of them accurately reflect what the country is really like?

The year 2013 is not yet three weeks old but already it has provided a barrage of images, broadcast globally, that have buttressed the standard preconceptions about Australia. New Year's Eve saw the customary pyrotechnics on Sydney Harbour - this is a lifestyle superpower that enjoys a party. New Year's Day witnessed an ocean-emptying shark warning at Bondi - hedonism comes with risks. The New Year's test, played between Australia and Sri Lanka under immaculate blue skies at the Sydney Cricket Ground, revealed all at once the competitive, patriotic and playful sides of the national personality.

And the bushfires in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales have reminded us of the harshness of this sun-dried landscape and the toughness of the people who inhabit it. Small wonder that "Assumed Australia" is a kingdom of the mind that has come to be rendered in high definition. My sense, though, is that few countries in the world are so commonly misunderstood. This is partly because we feel that we know and comprehend Australia already, hence there is little need for further inquiry; and partly because we misunderstood the country in the first place. The quest for understanding rarely gets past stereotypes and clichés, even though few of them withstand close scrutiny.

Australia itself is culpable. Efforts by Tourism Australia to persuade potential holidaymakers to take a fresh look at the country have proved commercially less successful than peddling images that are familiar and easily digested. The country has a tendency to typecast itself. In shoring up stereotypes, soap operas are also serial offenders. Despite the massive demographic changes that have overtaken this country which have made it so richly multicultural, Neighbours has only recently introduced an Indian family, the Kapoors, into the mix. Let us hope they last longer than other Asian characters, none of whom survived more than a year. In terms of understanding Australia, then, Ramsay Street should be seen less of a cul-de-sac as a blind alley.

No, this is a land of surprises and contradictions, some subtle, some glaring, in which I am often reminded of what the American economist JK Galbraith once said of India: "When you think of what is true in India, the opposite is also true." The same could be said of the "Land Down Under," a phrase which itself highlights the problem of misrepresentation. It first appeared in the 1880s when Britain was the geographic point of reference, and thus seems redundant at the beginning of the Asian century, when Australia looks increasingly to Washington and Beijing. Indeed, among the reasons why the UK Foreign Secretary William Hague is in Sydney and Perth this week, for talks with the Australian government that have now been put on an annual and thus more meaningful footing, is to preserve the umbilical link with the UK.

More BBC News - Australia: What the rest of the world gets wrong

 

[waltky]

Ned Kelly's body was thrown into a mass grave after he was hanged in 1880...

Memorial service held for Australian outlaw Ned Kelly
18 January 2013 - Descendants of Ned Kelly have held a memorial service for the Australian outlaw, more than 130 years after he was hanged for murder.

The private service, attended by hundreds of people, took place in Wangaratta, north-east Victoria, ahead of his burial on Sunday. The commemorations end a wrangle over the remains of the outlaw, who led a gang in Victoria in the 19th Century. Kelly was hanged at Old Melbourne Jail in 1880 for killing three policemen. His remains were thrown into a mass grave, then reburied inside Pentridge Prison in Victoria in 1929. The bones were then exhumed in 2009 and identified using DNA testing in 2011. The outlaw's skull remains missing.

The site's developers wanted to keep the remains in a museum or memorial, but Kelly's family wanted the bones returned. The Victoria state government decided in favour of Kelly's relatives last year. "This is something that has been needed to be done for a long time, so here for us it's nice to see a close to the chapter, so to speak, and right an old wrong," Anthony Griffiths, the great-grandson of Kelly's youngest sister Grace, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation before the ceremony. "He (Kelly) especially requested it the day before he was hanged that he... be given to his friends and family so he could be buried properly."

Kelly will be buried in a cemetery in Greta, not far from the site of his gunfight with police in Glenrowan. Ned Kelly was seen by some as a cold-blooded killer and by others as a folk hero who fought colonial authorities. The exploits of the outlaw and his gang have been the subject of numerous films and television series. "Of all Australians, Ned is without doubt one of the most famous, some would say infamous, and therein lies the great divide in society," said Monsignor John White, who led the service in Wangaratta.

BBC News - Memorial service held for Australian outlaw Ned Kelly

 

[B. Kidd]

Sidney, Cairns (the Great Barrier Reef), Uluru (Ayers Rock), Melbourne equals great sights and great food and no American news. Other then Rodney King dying.

GOOD!!!

Now move yer' ass there and stay off the 'puter........................

 

[Huey]

They eat roaches there too,like norleans.