I Got Your Sydney Opera House Right Here
January 10, 2005 12:26 PM   Subscribe

Bask in the glory of one of Australia's greatest tourist attractions.
posted by Vaska (14 comments total)
 
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!
posted by kamylyon at 12:42 PM on January 10, 2005


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.'
posted by asok at 12:54 PM on January 10, 2005


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!
posted by cosmonik at 2:11 PM on January 10, 2005


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.
posted by oliyoung at 2:16 PM on January 10, 2005


Oliyoung : I'll see your Koala and raise you a landlocked submarine.
posted by Vaska at 2:43 PM on January 10, 2005


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.
posted by Vaska at 3:21 PM on January 10, 2005


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).
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:44 PM on January 10, 2005


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...
posted by Pinback at 5:19 PM on January 10, 2005


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.
posted by sotonohito at 6:38 PM on January 10, 2005


Kind of embarassing how modern countries' early history is inevitably written by a bunch of boys named Sue.
posted by DirtyCreature at 6:40 PM on January 10, 2005


What about the giant sheep? (QT)
posted by dhruva at 6:51 PM on January 10, 2005


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.
posted by spock at 9:03 PM on January 10, 2005


I've always been rather fond of The Big Turd. More big things here.
posted by Prince Nez at 10:27 PM on January 10, 2005


Vaska: I see your sub, and raise you the Bathurst Class Anti-Sub vessel HMAS Whyalla, the largest landlocked ship in Australia
posted by oliyoung at 4:25 PM on January 11, 2005


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