Comments on: I Got Your Sydney Opera House Right Here

I Got Your Sydney Opera House Right Here

Vaska — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 12:26:43 -0800

Bask in the glory of one of Australia's greatest tourist attractions.

By: kamylyon

kamylyon — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 12:42:51 -0800

Thank you Vaska, for bringing back a memory of early gradeschool. In the second grade, for whatever reason, I developed a fascination for all things 'down under' and scoured the library of the teacher's college up the hill from the K through 12 school that I attended for anything on Australia. From Waltzing Matilda to the poor dog on the tuckerbox, to the laughing kookaburra, I soaked it all in. For a little country girl I had what amounted [at that time] to vast amounts of knowledge about a place that was little more than a myth to most of the kids I went to school with. Heck, i could even tell you what a tuckerbox was!

By: asok

asok — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 12:54:03 -0800

Cane toads. Reminds me of the cane toads documentary. Regarding the decision not to build a cane toad statue- 'I just felt we missed the boat there. It could of been like the dog on the tucker box at Gundagai.'

By: cosmonik

cosmonik — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:11:16 -0800

I never understood the dog on the tuckerbox...it's not like it's big or anything. what is this Australian fetish with oversized novelty items, anyway? kamylyon - besides being a strange obsession, most cosmopolitan Australians would know less about those things than you do!

By: oliyoung

oliyoung — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:16:15 -0800

I'll see your Dog on the Tuckerbox, and raise you a 14 metre high Koala made of steel and plaster work (Image). Resplendant with souvenir shop and cafe, it graces the main road between Melbourne and Adelaide just outside Stawell in the Grampians. It's not just the US with great road-side attractions you know.

By: Vaska

Vaska — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:43:55 -0800

Oliyoung : I'll see your Koala and raise you a landlocked submarine.

By: Vaska

Vaska — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:21:26 -0800

Kamylyon : I'm glad you liked it! I was actually driven past the attraction by my sometimes girlfriend who resides in Australia and felt impelled to inflict it upon me. Sadly, my picture of the dog itself didn't come out but I do have a photograph of the huge sign for the place if anyone is interested.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:44:18 -0800

get the fuck. *nobody* - no matter how much of a bloody drongo galah - goes out of his way to see the dog on the tuckerbox. even if lost and forced to pass through the gundagai level of hell, you sure as hell don´t stop (that´s for fear of being bored to death, not becoz of anything interesting like bushrangers or baby-eating dingoes).

By: Pinback

Pinback — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:19:42 -0800

Vaska : More interesting information on your landlocked submarine. Of course, being from Queensland, I have seen more than my fair share of big monuments. Though I think the Big Scotsman in Adelaide takes the cake, if only for the potential to answer some oft-asked questions. Interesting to note that the dog didn't originally "sit" on the tuckerbox; it did something definitely more scatological...

By: sotonohito

sotonohito — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:38:16 -0800

All right, in the spirit of statues of dogs, I give you Hachiko who famously waited for his dead master at a Tokyo train station.

By: DirtyCreature

DirtyCreature — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:40:32 -0800

Kind of embarassing how modern countries' early history is inevitably written by a bunch of boys named Sue.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:51:11 -0800

What about the giant sheep? (QT)

By: spock

spock — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:03:27 -0800

I got a chance to visit Australia a couple of years ago (saw both the submarine and the tuckerbox dog on the way from Melbourne to Canberra). But I can tell you the thing that I was most impressed with was The Twelve Apostles. Too cool. Melbourne is the coolest city that most Americans know nothing about and the Sydney Observatory was excellent.

By: Prince Nez

Prince Nez — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 22:27:41 -0800

I've always been rather fond of The Big Turd. More big things here.

By: oliyoung

oliyoung — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 16:25:05 -0800

Vaska: I see your sub, and raise you the Bathurst Class Anti-Sub vessel HMAS Whyalla, the largest landlocked ship in Australia