Let's talk about Australia.

[KhanadaRhodes]

i wanna go to laneway but that's so much money. i'm spoiled, i'm used to how much cheaper it is to see stuff in memfiz.

 

[The Sad Punk]

I couldn't name a Sufjan song. Im going to see De La Soul and possibly Primal Scream as well in Feb.

I was thinking of going to see De La Soul again too, we'll see how things go.

I wish shows weren't so expensive here. Sufjan tickets are a bit cheaper than I was expecting, though.

 

[cobl04]

Are they good live? They're playing ...is Dead in full, which I haven't heard (but it's critically acclaimed).

And yeah our ticket prices suck. Lolla & Coachella tickets were half the price of Splendour tickets and their lineups featured pretty much every good act under the sun.

 

[bono_man2002]

Though if we want to talk Triple J stereotypes, this is pretty much on the money: How to be a J-fag - Rate Your Music

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I hate exclusive Triple J listeners. The ones who say, "oh, I love Florence + The Machine" but only know You've Got the Love and Dog Days Are Over because they only listen to Triple J and won't actually go out and buy the album.

Yeah that annoys my heaps. The same goes for any other band that has a breakout song or a band who gets a lot of airtime on commercial radio....."I F'ing love *insert band* how good as that *insert song* song!

 

[cobl04]

ABC News - Brisbane floods: before and after

 

[The Sad Punk]

^ Fuck, that's unreal. They look like they've gone through a really awful Photoshop effect.

Danny, De La Soul is probably the best concert I've ever been to. It was just non-stop fun from beginning to end. And ...is Dead is a great album, definitely listen to it first.

 

[cobl04]

yeah it's pretty amazing. there's more pictures up now on page two of that link.

awesome, i'll definitely go then. i love that Rollerskating Jam song.

 

[bono_man2002]

Elvis Costello is coming!! Does anyone wanna come?

 

[cobl04]

i'm really enjoying these Oprah specials. i think anyone who complains about the money we spent is really cynical.

 

[Tania]

Elvis Costello is coming!! Does anyone wanna come?

We are getting Elvis Costello (and the Imposters), Bob Dylan, Grace Jones, Blind Boys of Alabama (with Aaron Neville), Gurrumul, Mavis Staples, Michael Franti, The Cat Empire, Rockwiz and a host of others at the blues and roots festival.

Best bit - we can walk there as it is just down the road. Gotta love living in Freo

 

[Axver]

i'm really enjoying these Oprah specials. i think anyone who complains about the money we spent is really cynical.

I'm just utterly sick of hearing about that bloody woman.

And why on earth should we have spent any money on her visit here anyway?

 

[Earnie Shavers]

And why on earth should we have spent any money on her visit here anyway?

If you think of it purely as advertising (which it is), then for that amount of time, during that show, to that market - $4 million is a fucking steal. Seriously. It's all cringeworthy, but it is a master stroke. Tourism Australia has bungled around forever, they got this investment right. And this from someone with a pretty strong Oprah gag reflex.

 

[cobl04]

Oprah effect ups travel bookings to Oz | The Daily Telegraph

Another travel company Tourism Australia has been working with said enquiries had been up 75 per cent on last year because of the extra publicity before the first of Oprah’s four shows featuring Australia even went to air.

but also i found the specials pretty entertaining. and i by no means watch her standard shows. fuck there's going to be Australians watching these specials who travel in their own country because of them.

it's like people who say "why do we have fireworks on NYE when the money should be going to schools and hospitals?" i think it's okay to spend money to make people smile.

 

[Axver]

Oh yay, a bunch of people are coming to Australia not because they're genuinely interested in it, not because they have an enduring fascination with its natural beauty, not because they wish to experience its society and culture - but because Oprah endorsed it. Forgive me if I'm not leaping with joy. The Oprah endorsement factor's been bad enough for literature.

If you think of it purely as advertising (which it is), then for that amount of time, during that show, to that market - $4 million is a fucking steal. Seriously. It's all cringeworthy, but it is a master stroke. Tourism Australia has bungled around forever, they got this investment right. And this from someone with a pretty strong Oprah gag reflex.

Because she's so poor and couldn't have funded it herself.

What are we now anyway, just a brand to be hocked off? Are we that desperate for the approval (via tourist dollars) of others?

 

[coolian2]

she also endorsed qantas. i wonder if she'll be a party in the lawsuit when a bunch of slightly overweight middle americans are scared by another a380 losing an engine over batam.

 

[Tania]

Could be a way to pay for the devastation most people are feeling as a result of fire/flood/famine/invasion of four small irish guys. Say 100 000 extra people per year came to Australia, charge them an extra $10.00 in taxes - that's a million that we don't have to find.

Honestly, I haven't seen any of the shows bar five minutes last night. Saw the guy talking about learning how to swim so he could go snorkle on the Great Barrier Reef. If he goes home and raves about it and thinks about looking after this planet a little more and encourages other people to do so, then, hey, it's not all bad.

Let's face it, Australia is huge. We have all climates here. We have a range of natural wonders like nowhere else which are spread all over the country - how you fit all that into a 4 episode set of shows is almost impossible.

I think we are getting our money's worth and I think that we will be reaping the benefits for a long time to come.

I don't know if they did in the shows, but I would have been interested to hear the preconceptions the audience had of Australia.

 

[Saracene]

Oh yay, a bunch of people are coming to Australia not because they're genuinely interested in it, not because they have an enduring fascination with its natural beauty, not because they wish to experience its society and culture - but because Oprah endorsed it.

I'm pretty sure that not everyone who watches Oprah is some kind of slavish fanatic who blindly follows their idol and people might get genuinely interested and fascinated by Australia after watching those specials. Does it really matter if they hear about it from a "wrong" source? (BTW I don't think there's anything wrong with Oprah.)

 

[cobl04]

Oh yay, a bunch of people are coming to Australia not because they're genuinely interested in it, not because they have an enduring fascination with its natural beauty, not because they wish to experience its society and culture - but because Oprah endorsed it. Forgive me if I'm not leaping with joy. The Oprah endorsement factor's been bad enough for literature.

that's pretty damn cynical, i'm sorry. buying a book is not the same as spending thousands on an overseas holiday.

if you don't like her, that's fine (i can't stand her normal shows either) but i really fail to see the problem. i didn't see the problem with getting Tiger Woods to play in the masters either.

 

[Earnie Shavers]

Oh yay, a bunch of people are coming to Australia not because they're genuinely interested in it, not because they have an enduring fascination with its natural beauty, not because they wish to experience its society and culture - but because Oprah endorsed it. Forgive me if I'm not leaping with joy. The Oprah endorsement factor's been bad enough for literature.

Because she's so poor and couldn't have funded it herself.

What are we now anyway, just a brand to be hocked off? Are we that desperate for the approval (via tourist dollars) of others?

I wouldn't suggest that this is the beginning of cheap competition for tourism dollars. It's worth a lot. Countries fight for it. Just a brand to be hocked off? Well, yes. Tourism has forever been about branded, cliched imagery, for every country. It's certainly nothing new. Name any country on earth and their tourism campaigns are entirely about base cliche imagery.

And this was definitely one of their smarter investments. I mean, they could have easily dropped a lot more than $4m on US advertsing placement for another Where the bloody hell are you type of campaign for likely 1/100th of the impact. And the coverage on the shows has been pretty good. Better than I expected. The cliches, stereotypes, cheesiness - sure. But as I said, that is what top level, mass tourism campaigns are all about, and the shows have covered quite a lot, fit quite a lot in.

A lot of it makes me cringe, but Tourism Australia were going to spend that money on something, and they could have done a hell of a lot worse than this. I would assure you that the tourism arms of every other country on earth would be shaking their fists at this.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

yeah, given the fact that there's an amazing number of americans who couldn't find australia on a map if they tried, there's nothing wrong with increasing awareness and letting people know where the fuck it is and all there is to offer. as tania also mentioned, think of all the tax dollars these tourists will bring in that can help pay for all the damage caused by the flooding. oprah isn't some evil person - sure she wasn't using her own money giving people all the gifts she did, but who cares? the $4m spent will be given back a thousandfold by tourists.

 

[coolian2]

Sydney has been branded Australia's worst city - by its own residents.

Despite its obvious charms, ranging from the iconic Opera House, the beautiful harbour and ready access to numerous beaches, Sydneysiders say their city is the pits.

They hammered its natural environment, schools, housing, cleanliness, cultural integration and road network, ranking it bottom of the nation's eight biggest metropolises.

Adelaide is the nation's best city, followed by Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, Brisbane and Darwin, according to an Auspoll survey commissioned by the Property Council of Australia.

Sydney the pits, say its own residents

something about this whole thing seems flawed. and i'm not talking about sydney coming last - it is a city that loves to self hate.

 

[Tania]

There was a guy on the radio this morning who said that because he watched Oprah he found out that the Great Barrier Reef was in Qld not in the Great Australian Bight

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Ad'layd pride!

 

[cobl04]

Adelaide?!? Are you fucking kidding me? At least me and Inte know what's going on

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I'm sorry you're not as good as us.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

I'm sorry you're not as good as us.

though tbh this does kinda push adelaide up to the next city in australia i'd like to visit. i'd love to visit some time in the next couple months (though wellington will probably win out as it's cheaper and easier to do).

 

[Purplereign]

Can't be arsed multi-quoting (well, tis the Australian way right?

It has been interesting watching the Oprah version of us for sure ~ and I agree that as far as an advertisement for Australia goes, really, you can't go past the Oprah effect. She drives me bananas' but I have been fascinated by her take on it all ~ yes it is a little smaltzy and cliched but that is always going to happen anyway, and I agree with Earnie that all those $$$$ were going to be spent anyway and spending them Oprah style is going to be a lot more beneficial in the long run than some of the dross that we have been handing out on our own.
(Favourite moment so far was seeing the excitement on the kids faces when Jay-Z visited ~ smaltzy and contrived, maybe, but what an awesome awesome experience for them )

And yes yes yes, if some of those tourist dollars can be diverted to helping Queensland, north western NSW and Victoria reclaim what mother nature has taken from them these past few weeks then it is no bad thing indeed.

As for Sydney ~ I'm an unabashed fan of the place (who knew ) but it is a flipping mess on the infrastructure front ~ public transport is ridiculous (just ask anyone who lives west of the Anzac Bridge), our hospitals are completely over-stretched and education standards are slipping in comparison to the rest of the country; house prices are insane, (seriously, a teeny tiny red brick jobby in a can do suburb that needs to be completely gutted to make it habitable is currently on the market for just shy of $900,000 ) the rental market is an absolute nightmare if you want to live anywhere near a rail or bus route . . . and we need a new State Government NOW . . . one with some balls . . . I think I'll stop now . . . so the long and short of that ramble is that hopefully that report will give State politicians a kick up the butt . . . who am I kidding

All that said, I wouldn't live anywhere else . . . . .. but as Khan said, I would like to head back to Melbourne and Adelaide for a look see and one of these days, get across to Western Australia too.

 

[coolian2]

half of my university seems to have moved to perth.

based on the reports from people i already knew in the banana republic, i can understand why.

 

[The Sad Punk]

something about this whole thing seems flawed. and i'm not talking about sydney coming last - it is a city that loves to self hate.

I like that the NSW premier had to look up the city populations, like she had no idea how big Adelaide was at all. I really like that.

Ax, you're just angry she didn't go to NZ.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

I don't think NZ would have any room for Oprah.

/distasteful fat joke