Dear god no.

Some of you may have seen my previous post about the abomination that I'm betting will be Australia the movie. At that time I predicated that there would be a subplot that featured a "warm and loving friendship" with a "small and non-threatening Aboriginal child". Well lo and behold, apparently the film " introduces to the screen Brandon Walters at Nullan, the boy who steals Lady Ashley's (aka our Nicole) heart".


Exhibit A:



OK, so he is a really cute kid but I still reckon the film will be a dud, worthy of naught but our best cultural cringe.

Disturbingly I can find out all about the "phenomal buzz" that will surround this film on the Tourism Australia website, a site which, on its face, appears to be less about Australia the country, and more about Australia the movie.

This may be because our Baz Luhrmann (director of "Australia") has created a new tourism campaign for this wide brown land, apparently based on the feelings evoked for him during shooting. Baz has said that he hopes to "convey an emotional experience that is possible from going the extra distance" which is a big call from a man who has described the remarkably and increasingly wax and ice like Nicole Kidman as a "life force to be reckoned with".

This leads me to wonder what these ads might be like. I'm guessing that they might feature one or more of the following: charming little bush urchins grinning at the camera (aka young Brandon above), sunsets, Bill Hunter, blokes tipping their hats at the camera and/or women in bikinis, didgeridoos, waterholes, waterfalls, lots of water generally which you won't actually find as Australia is in a long term drought, kangaroos, women in inappropriate makeup and weird costumes, men with inappropriate makeup and weird costumes, dancing, red petticoats, emus, stoic blokes, girly women, red dust, Utes, crocodiles. Pretentiousness, unrealistic and a tad scary - tick.

We could trust Tourism Australia that this new campaign will turn out alright, but then they were the lot responsible for introducing the world to Lara Bingle, and then having her banned in the UK.

I, for one, don't predict a huge upswing in international tourism.