Brett and Laura Down Under (Prologue)

The story goes something like this:

I was in grade 3 and the end of the school year was quickly approaching. The class was buzzing with anticipation at the prospect of two full months off from school and the idea that we would be free from the harsh tyranny of playground politics and math tests for a short while at least. Actually, back in those days, there was no finite way of quantifying the length of summer vacation as any notion of time seemed to evaporate as days spent riding bikes, catching grasshoppers, drinking Slurpees, reading MAD magazine and staying outside until it was dark all tended to bleed into one another after awhile.

Overcome with the sense of frenzied joy that can only be experienced when the last day of school has arrived (a feeling that never diminishes, by the way), the topic of what we were going to do for our summer holiday was naturally at the tip of everyone's tongue. As students shared one dull anecdote after the next about how they were going to spend the holiday, my good friend (and next door neighbour) John grabbed the attention of the class by announcing that he and his family would be spending most of the summer in Ireland. Upset at the fact that John would no doubt upstage me and become a hero in the eyes of all the girls in the class who would consider him to be an adventurous world traveller (and consequently, making my family's plan to spend a long weekend at my grandpa's cottage a few hours north seem inconsequential), my eight-year-old brain conjured up a brilliant plan that would usurp John's moment of glory and shift that spotlight back to me.

The basis of my logic was this: if John was going to go to Ireland, I needed to be going somewhere even further and more remote. And of course, there was only one place far enough away from Milton, Ontario that could possibly meet that criteria: Australia.

So as I left E.W. Foster Elementary School in June, 1988, I walked away knowing that all my classmates, as well as my teacher, firmly believed that I was going to spend my summer in the coolest place on earth. Why was it the coolest place on earth, you ask? Simply put, the 80s were Australia's decade. Australia was everywhere, proliferating every form of media from film to radio (I know there are a few of you out there who still get excited when they hear Men At Work) to TV to comic books.



Hands down, the biggest Australian influence in pop culture for me and just about every other person in the Free World (which is a term in and of itself that makes me feel nostalgic), was Crocodile Dundee. To me, Mick Dundee WAS Australia. Not only did he have a wide-brimmed hat with crocodile teeth around its band, but if everyone in Australia was like him, which the film seemed to imply, then everyone in Australia was living in the outback, they were all capable of wrestling crocs, and they could all find water just by tapping the ground and listening for some kind of cosmic vibration. All that, to me, was pretty cool.

Of course, the Crocodile Dundee fad didn't die there. The film, of course spawned a sequel, and Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee himself) became the spokesperson for Fosters beer and appeared in a number of commercials on TV promoting Australia's finest lager (which, I'm told, no one in Australia would be caught drinking. This leads me to wonder why some Canadians still drink Labatt's, but my guess is that they haven't been able to find another country willing to import the stuff, so they're stuck forcing it down the throats of their own population). The influence of Crocodile Dundee could also be seen in other facets of pop culture, appearing as a spoof in MAD magazine, and of course, in the form of 'Crocodile Kermie' in the cover of the much-loved 'Muppet Magazine' (which I still own to this day, natch):



And of course, without Paul Hogan, the words and phrases 'G'day,' 'Mate,' 'Sheila,' and 'Throw Another Shrimp On The Barbie' would never have entered our vernacular.

The Aussie influence didn't end with Crocodile Dundee, however. In fact, it seemed like everyone wanted to get in on the craze. The X-Men for instance, in an editorial move that still has me scratching my head, were suddenly transported to the Australian Outback, where they spent the next couple of years hanging out in the desert with a mystical Aborigine who would occasionally transport them elsewhere since there wasn't much to do other than battle the occasional cyborg or two.




Walt Disney Pictures also got in on the action and released its first theatrical animated sequel in the form of 'The Rescuers Down Under,' where the heroic mice Bernard and Bianca are joined by a boomerang-throwing kangaroo mouse in an attempt to save a young boy who, it is revealed, lives just beside Ayers Rock.



With Australia on the brain, I entered grade 4 with a wealth of knowledge about the country gleamed from just about every source imaginable, misinformed as I might have been. Regardless, I had all of my classmates convinced that I had in fact been there, and impressed them with my knowledge of random facts and geography about the country.

All was going according to plan, however, until my Mom joined the class for a field trip to the public library, and was asked by my teacher how we could afford to go on so many fantastic trips (we were scheduled to go to California a month later). Of course, my Mom had no idea what she was referring to, and was more than a little surprised to find out she had gone to Australia the previous summer without having known it. Needless to say, I was mortified to find out that my con had been exposed, and I waited in dread for the moment when my teacher would get up in front of the class and reveal to the everyone my deception.

To give her credit, however, she never said a word. I guess it was enough that I knew she knew. She also probably realized that my mother would never let me live it down, and would be guaranteed to bring it up at least once a year for the rest of my life.

But what really brought the event full circle was when I returned from California, and I had to read aloud, in front of the class, some of the entries I had written in the journal my teacher had me keep during my trip. After sharing what I had written, John shot his arm in the air and with a wide grin, shouted: "What about Australia?"

Jerk.

Next: I really do go to Australia, with pictures and a witness to prove it.