Andrew Bolt: Time for Australian travellers to forget Bali and recall national outback vision
THE new Tourism Australia ad starring Chris Hemsworth shows a fine country, but it’s missing one thing: more Australian travellers, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
Don't miss out on the headlines from Andrew Bolt. Followed categories will be added to My News.
SOMETHING’S missing in the new Son-of-Crocodile-Dundee advertisement we’re told was a hit.
It’s the ad in which Chris Hemsworth takes Danny McBride to hypnotise buffaloes in the Top End, catch barramundi, chat on an ochre outcrop and fly over a spectacular outback gorge.
It screened in the United States, and news stories last week said its impact was huge, helping to lift spending here by Americans by 4 per cent.
Yet meanwhile, spending by Indian tourists rose 14 per cent, and by Chinese tourists 13 per cent, without that Dundee sell.
But what’s missing most from that ad is not the extra Americans but the Australians.
Take that gorge it shows. It’s Queensland’s Lawn Hill Gorge, where the main camping ground has room for just 14 caravans and six tents. So how many Australians — especially the 9 million crammed in concrete in Melbourne and Sydney — could have been there?
Likewise, how many have seen wild buffaloes, fished for barramundi, or even wandered through the Olgas?
See, the bush and the Outback, along with the Reef, most set Australia apart, yet now seem to have vanished from our culture.
HOW THE WORLD REACTED TO DUNDEE TRAILER
Once they were celebrated by almost every great artist — Streeton, Drysdale, Williams, Boyd, Namatjira, Roberts and Nolan. The works of bush artist Pro Hart are still the most traded.
Now, there are only a couple to match our greats in memorialising the landscape: William Robinson and Tim Storrier.
Once we had poets of the bush: Henry Lawson, and Banjo Paterson, who wrote: “And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended.”
Now who even reads poetry?
Once a migrant in our cities could see the great lure of the Outback every week on TV.
It was shown by the Leyland brothers, Bill Peach, Malcolm Douglas, the Bush Tucker Man, Troy Dann, Harry Butler, and Steve Irwin, the last of that breed.
But now?
Once the bush starred in TV dramas: Blue Heelers, The Flying Doctors, McLeod’s Daughters, A Town Like Alice, A Country Practice.
Now? It’s gone from free-to-air TV since A Place To Call Home went to Foxtel.
For most of us, the country has disappeared.
And when we go on holidays, it’s often not to the bush but to Bali.
Yet that Tourism Australia ad shows a fine country.
Maybe it’s time to go see what’s so great about us.
Lockdown will kill Victorians — but not from coronavirus
Politicians are destroying Australia — throwing a million people out of work, causing suicides — because they’ve fallen for two great weaknesses, both of which will extend crippling lockdowns much longer than necessary, writes Andrew Bolt.
Record day proves crude bans on freedom don’t work
Victoria’s new record of 725 infections is more evidence that the government’s hard line policies on masks and lockdowns aren’t working as planned, writes Andrew Bolt.