What the Bloody Hell Did You Expect

While lunching one afternoon in Port Douglas, I read the following amusing piece in a local magazine on the new Aussie tourism ad campaign .

What the Bloody Hell Did You Expect?
By Diana Abiad

In their infinite wisdom our marketing gurus have hit the nail right on the head. If you’ve never said ‘bloody hell’ before you’ll certainly be saying it when you get to Australia. In fact, potential overseas visitors can start practising in the privacy of their own home when they go to check out the wiz bang web site set up for the promotion. Undoubtedly designed as part of the master plan to acclimatise tourists, the website serves up, in studding simplicity, our lack of finesse in service, timing and communication. Just like our workers, our council, and our politics, et al, the site is slow, keeps you waiting and never delivers.

Experienced travellers understand that Australia is truly a foreign country. Do not be fooled by the similarity of language and appearance. Underneath the veneer of familiarity lies an uncouth character living in blissful denial of history. In the family of humanity, we were the youngest child, naughty and precocious, sent outside as punishment and never allowed to come back.

We never came back because down the backyard was paradise. No Mum or Dad, no having to share, no chores and no rules. We developed our own set of manners, business ethics and social decorum and, while watching the cricket on TV at work, we became hypnotised by our own marketing campaign during the ad breaks.

The trouble with living in paradise is that everyone thinks they’re on holiday. Blessed with some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world and encouraged by the media to get in amongst it, we’ve been fishing, surfing, walking and throwing our prawns on the BBAQ while the government has managed to sell off our assets, stuff up the health system, get us all into debt and tax any incentive out of the workforce. While we were planning the weekend, or the grey nomad trip around the edges of our great land, the government made education so expensive no one went to school. Now e have to import skilled labour and keep our children employed in dead end, low paid jobs that are, luckily, provided by the tourism industry.

And to keep this panacea float, the government finally left the backyard, marched up to the big house and, in its own unique vernacular, invited them all to lunch by asking, “Where the bloody hell are you?”

The humourless Brits, staunch defenders of the English language, have taken offense at our abuse of it. IF they are offended at home, imagine what could happen once they arrive. They’ll expect us to be polite, helpful, informative and politically aware. They’ll probably want to discuss Kyoto, environmental impacts on the Reef and global warming. Bloody Hell. They will not understand why we really don’t give a shit about anything, least of all profanities; and by the end of their holiday they’ll understand that the marketing campaign could have been a lot worse.