I don’t know who wrote the half-page Cairns Regional Council Cairns Post newspaper ad for the Australia Day Celebrations, but it must have been either a backpacking pom on work experience, or an Australian who ought to be deported. Every Australian knows that ‘Aussie’ is spelt with two s’s, NOT z’s. But it really was the use of the hideous imported term ‘flip flops’, instead of ‘thongs’, in the heading ‘Auzzie Flip flops fun at the Lagoon’ that was most appalling (don’t ask me why the first ‘F’ in ‘flip flops’ was in capitals; that too is a mystery). The language butchery equivalent in the U.S. would be an American local government advertising a Thanksgiving celebration involving Thanksgiving ‘Chooks’ instead of turkeys.
Needless to say it went on in a hideously crass touristy style listing such cliched attractions as ‘pie and lamington eating’, ‘Auzzie BBQ with tea and damper’ and entertainment by the ‘Snake Gully’ Auzzie Bush Band. The fact that most Australians wouldn’t know damper if they fell over it, would have no idea that Snake Gully is from one of Steele Rudd’s books, and Katoomba and Freshwater is about as far west as they’ll ever venture, wouldn’t bother the tourist dollar chasing mecca of the north. Talk about cringe central.