A Gift of Great Value
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 March 2006 10:27:55
Don't you just love it when you find yourself holding onto the perfect gift? And better still you unwrap it and it's all for you???
I'm totally into it... and am thrilled to be on the receiving end of this little perler from my buddy Shoe...
It's a book. A really old book, older even than me given that it was published in 1959. She bought it on a whim and it has been sitting in her library for a couple of years just waiting on the perfect recipient!!
Me!
Hurrah!
It seems to me only fair in having received such a bounty that I share some of the very important information therein with you. Just in case any of you were thinking of becoming an Australian.
In truth, I'm wishing I had read this BEFORE I signed on the dotted line...
So, the first extract from this tome of great import I thought the following entry very timely given the stirring that's been going on as a result of recent bloody efforts to sell Australia to the world...
Just leave it all to the Phascolarctos cinereus.
As you will discover if you study Australian travel publicity overseas, the only reason why American millionaires prefer a long journey to Little Coogee to a little journey to Long Island, or why English milords holiday in Murwillumbah rather than Menton, is because of the irresistible phascinations of the Pfascolarctos C. - which means to you and me "native bear or "koala".
Just as Australia, as a whole. lives on the sheep's back the Australian toursit industry lives on the koala's back. But the koala (average weight 12lb) has a much smaller back.
This accounts for its worried look.
The relative economic, social, and cultural importance of the koala family is fully recognized on Phillip Island. Victoria where notices on the main road warn motorists to
New Australians often ask why this rare, anti-social and camparatively insignificant marsupial, rather than the proligerous and impressive kangaroo has come to symbolise the Australian Way of Life on travel-posters, calendars, and Christmas cards.
The reason is that no other living creature. large or small, so closely approximates in its private life and social habits to the behaviour of the typical Australian male.
And, of course, only males matter.
While to touch circumspectly on more delicate matters the koala's love life might well come straight from a Kinsey report on the Sexual Habits of the Australian Male. "The male during the mating season utters a call that has been compared to a harsh cough..."
The name koala comes from an aboriginal word "implying the animal seldom drinks in the wild state" This of course, is what makes it wild.
Just as it would any decent Australian.
Extract from ! So, you want to be an Australian but Cyril Pearl ©1959 - slightly abridged...
Doesn't it just make you blush with Australian Pride??
It did me...