Googleing `Crocodile Dundee´

Then came the phrase  'Kangaroo Court'. It sent me scurrying for its meaning. I found the likeable lovable Kangaroo image - icon of all things good about Australia and life - have been spun into a new ghastly meaning - fixed up courts, sham judgments, make believe - I mean, show and tell legal proceedings, etc. And the world around me changed for ever. Now I had to upload two differing meanings associated with kangaroo in my cache memory. The Good and the Bad. But then came the movie "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly". Another level of badness was thrown out towards me, just like 9/11 threat levels....and I was expected to deal with all of them.

I did so, as 'robotically" as picking up fallen autumn leaves, stashing them into brown paper bags and lining them up against the curb for the township's highly paid recycling workers with their trucks to pick them up - and then add dollar values to my fallen  leaves...all at my expense with no returns.

That's nonsense. I haven't figured it out yet why an average American lets such things  slide. You know why? I think, they are too busy paying their plastic card bills, drinking beer, shoveling snow and hoping to get lucky with a nice home made dinner followed by humping. Nice Pipe dream no? But that keeps all of us going here and anywhere, whether it is Australia or the United States.

The recent Arab bashing in some parts of Australia made me google for Australia and 'Crocodile Dundee'. It  delivered to me some very interesting information and images. For example:

1. The Kangaroo; 2. The Big Banana; 3. The The Ayers Rock Roadhouse; 4. Sydney Opera House; 5. Crocodile Dundee.

But the major deliveries were the Anzac story and the road-kill tally phenomenon - pretty common in the land of the Oz they say.

Here they are:

" Being Australians on a road trip, we had to keep the mandatory road-kill tally. For most of the drive the level of carnage was almost non-existent. Then, just when we'd given up hope, we saw it. A beacon of light for the road-kill tally, it was road kill like no other, it defied existing categorization - it was a road-kill cow. Moo.

There was something tragic and yet highly amusing about a road-kill cow. In an effort to depict some semblance of good taste, we didn't stop and take a photo. We did, however, engage in many impressions of tortured cows for the remainder of the drive..."

And of course the legendary story of the Anzacs: Australians celebrate ANZAC Day on April 25th every year:

" Professor Manning Clark in his opus A History of Australia, suggests a contrasting image to that of the bronzed and noble ANZAC. From a range of sources he provides evidence of the ANZACs' bad behavior. As recruits, before being shipped to war, some indulged in sex orgies with an 18-year-old girl at the Broadmeadows camp, others confronted police in violent scuffles on the streets of Melbourne. Their behavior in Egypt was no better - they burned the belongings of local people, brawled, got drunk and rioted, and spent sufficient time in the local brothels for many of them to suffer from venereal disease.

On 25 April 1915 Australia and New Zealand were at war. Along with the Allies (the major Allied Powers were the British Empire [Britain and her colonies and dominions], France and the Russian Empire), the ANZACs were fighting against the Central Powers (Germany, Turkey [then known as the Ottoman Empire], and Austria-Hungary).

In response to a request for help from Russia, which was being battered by the Turks in the Caucasus, the Allies decided to begin a campaign which they hoped would distract Turkey from their attack on Russia.

The plan was for the Allies to attack and take the Gallipoli Peninsula, on Turkey's Aegean coast, from which point the Allies believed they could take control of the Dardanelles - a 67 kilometre (42 mile) strait which connects the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara - and lay siege to Turkey's main city, Istanbul (then Constantinople).

As part of the larger British Empire contingent the ANZACs were brought in from training in Egypt to participate. The ANZACs comprised the 1st Australian Division and the composite New Zealand and Australian Division. On 25 April 1915, the ANZACs landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Instead of finding the flat beach they expected, they found they had been landed at an incorrect position and faced steep cliffs and constant barrages of enemy fire and shelling. Around 20,000 soldiers landed on the beach over the next two days to face a well organized, well armed, large Turkish force determined to defend their country - and led by Mustafa Kemal, who later became Atatürk, the leader of modern Turkey. Thousands of Australian and New Zealand men died in the hours and days that followed the landing at that beach. The beach would eventually come to be known as Anzac Cove.

What followed the landing at Gallipoli is a story of courage and endurance, of death, and despair, of poor leadership from London, and unsuccessful strategies. The ANZACs and the Turks dug in - literally - digging kilometres of trenches, and pinned down each other's forces with sniper fire and shelling.

Pinned down with their backs to the water the ANZACs were unable to make much headway against the home-country force.

Eventually it was decided that the Allied troops would be withdrawn from the Peninsula; the attempt to control the Dardanelles had failed. The ANZACs were evacuated and returned to the Middle East and the Western Front where they were involved in other battles.

The Gallipoli campaign was an enormous failure, a failure bought at the cost of an enormous number of lives, and the failure led to the resignation of senior politicians in London. Thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers had died, and thousands of other Allied troops from France and Britain also died.

An Anzac commemorative location has been built at Gallipoli in conjunction with the New Zealand government and with the approval of the Turkish government."

Lastly: " Dr Frank Bongiorno, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New England, when asked to write a short piece on the Anzac tradition, said:

Australians are particularly inclined to make heroes of noble failures, such as the defeated Eureka rebels, the suicidal Jolly Swagman in 'Waltzing Matilda', and Ned Kelly. Gallipoli seems to fit this pattern. On the other hand, long before the evacuation - and therefore before the Gallipoli campaign was called a 'failure' - many Australians had come to recognize 25 April 1915 as the day their young Commonwealth had come of age. This notion was fuelled by reports from journalists such as Ellis Ashmead Bartlett, an Englishman who described the Australians as a 'race of athletes', and the Australian war correspondent C.E.W. Bean.

When Australia went to war in 1914, many white Australians believed that their Commonwealth had no history, that it was not yet a true nation, that its most glorious days still lay ahead of it. 'She is not yet', proclaimed James Brunton Stephens in 1877. In western culture, sacrificial death - blood sacrifice - was widely recognized as the foundation of nationhood, and Gallipoli seemed to fit the bill.

At the same time, Gallipoli expressed Australians' sense of a dual loyalty: to Australia and to the Empire, of which Australia was a part. Australians were fighting for their Commonwealth, but they were also fighting for their Empire. They were 'independent Australian Britons'.

The perception of the Gallipoli campaign as the beginning of true Australian nationhood was also consistent with Australians' self-image as the Coming Race: the physical superiority of Australian soldiers to their English counterparts was a prominent theme in much of the contemporary writing about the ANZACs.

This idea confirmed some popular Australian self-images about masculinity and nationhood: notably, that the typical Australian was a bold white male. The major features of an ANZAC legend were discernible very early in the campaign: Australians were bold and ferocious in battle but were unwilling to bow to military discipline. An ANZAC never flinched in battle - if he died it was with a joke, or a wry smile on his face - yet nor would he salute a superior officer.

In the popular imagery, the ANZAC hated military etiquette and held the British officer class, and even the subservient 'Tommy' (English soldier), in contempt.

In the legend, the Australian Imperial Force was a democratic organization, in which there were friendly relations between officers and men, and anyone could rise from the ranks to a commission. This image was able to withstand evidence of contrary behavior by Australian soldiers, not least because the ANZAC image was an adaptation of the image of the bushman, which had been so popular in nineteenth-century Australia.

In this sense the Gallipoli campaign was a defining moment for Australia as a new nation, but also a key moment in the evolution of a particular image of Australian masculinity."

And of course the 'Crocodile Dundee':  A movie based on the story of an an American reporter who goes to the Australian outback (Aussie wild west) to meet an eccentric crocodile poacher and invites him to New York City.

"Crocodile Dundee" is said to be one of those Fish Out of the Water tales; the innocent outsider thrown into the frustrations of modern life. Or is it the Croc out of the Water? Whatever it is, it's one of the best of its genre.

"Crocodile Dundee" is about a newspaper journalist ( ) who travels out to the Outback (Australia's wild west), where she meets with Mick Dundee, better known as "Crocodile" Dundee. After wandering around in the Outback for a few days with Mick, writing her little story about surviving in the Outback, she decides that it would be interesting for her (or her newspaper?) to bring Mick back to New York City, where she lives. Mick reluctantly agrees, and travels to New York City clad in his croc-skin vest and Australian hat. Now Mick will have to adjust to modern life if he wishes to survive in New York.

"Crocodile Dundee" is, in a way, very typical of its kind. For example: Mick walks off the plane to NYC and steps onto an escalator, dressed in his Australian attire. Now, no matter how innocent and inexperienced a guy is, you can't tell me he's not going to realize he looks a bit odd in his clothes. The first thing I'd do is try to change to fit in better. But, you see, this is half the fun of this films, and all Fish Out of the Water films for that matter. If the main character did adapt straight away to his new surroundings, not only would it make for an awfully boring tale, but it would not be a proper Fish Out of the Water film.

Not only is Paul Hogan completely convincing in his role as Mick Dundee, he is utterly likable from the start. He's a nice, innocent Outback man who learns what the fast life is like, yet sticks to his old ways. As we can see from the less-successful sequels, Mick never really adapts to his surroundings. He learns how to survive, but he never buys fancy clothes or such: he sticks with his croc-vest and hat.

While "Crocodile Dundee" isn't exactly a great comedy, it's one of those that can be remembered for being very funny, and it is easy to watch. It has a certain charm to it, like many of those eighties' comedies. It makes it hard to hate them. Just yesterday I wrote a review for "Opportunity Knocks" with Dana Carvey. That movie wasn't great, but it's hard to dislike it. While "Crocodile Dundee" is about ten times greater than "Opportunity Knocks," it still isn't an excellent comedy. But because of its likable charm and great sense of humor, it's definitely one to see and watch many, many times.

There have been a lot of these kinds of films: "Blast From the Past," "Bubble Boy," to name a few recent of the genre. But "Crocodile Dundee" ranks as one of the best of its kind. "

Tailpiece: I enjoyed every second clicking, copying, saving, resizing and pasting Linda Kozlowski's still from 'Crocodile Dundee'. I saved it in the highest resolution Photoshop would allow. I don't care what any one says or what an Aborigine says about the ozzies. She is a treat..!


By the  way who is an Aborigine ?

"An aborigine is a person who has 1/16th aborigine ancestry. That is, only one of their great grandparents needs to have been a full aborigine. This rule upsets both whites and aborigines.

It is often the case that a white person with blue eyes and blond hair will say they are an aborigine. They may look whiter than most of the white population. It is difficult to prove that they are not telling the truth and hence they are accepted as an aborigine. Why do they want to identify as an aborigine? Money is the answer. An aborigine gets free medical aid, free legal aid, free housing, free education, and just about everything else free too. This situation upsets many whites because their tax money is going to fund these benefits for aborigines but they really resent white people freeloading along with the aborigines.

Many Aborigines are not happy with the definition of an aborigine either. Some aboriginal councils are redefining the rules and refusing to acknowledge some people who claim to be aboriginal. They also resent the white freeloaders."


THANKS to GOOGLE.. Surprisingly they googled only one image for me when I googled for Aborigine images! Was my spelling wrong? May be. When I plugged in "Aborigine", the result was impressive. It's Queen's English versus the American English. Google knows the difference! You bet!