Amazing Australian Bullshit

Wall painting in the pub at the Burke and Wills Junction in Queensland
Photo by Katrin Holmsten

With most Aussies having a sense of humour and enjoying a bit of a laugh, they may try to play a joke on you and tell you a bit of bullshit, luckily you have been to this website and now know about bullshit like dropbears etc. so they are not going to fool you with their bullshit !
Aussies that are particularly prone to bragging, fantasizing, or just telling people absolute nonsense, are known as Bullshit Artists, we'll start this page with an introduction to some :

B.S.A. Scott Wright

Shark attack at Bondi Beach!!! Yeah, right.....

34 Year old B.S.A. Scott Wright rose from anonimity to national news headlines in a flash when he claimed to have been attacked by a shark while swimming at Sydney's Bondi Beach in December 2007.
This would have been the first shark attack there since 1929 but very soon doubts arose about his shark attack story and not much later it was revealed that the deep cuts on his right arm were not caused by a shark but by broken glass while he was breaking in to a building in Hobart!
After cutting himself he had bandaged the arm, jumped on a plane to Sydney and then made national headlines telling the world he had been attacked by a shark and several days later he ended up in jail for stealing wallets and a car from the backpackers hostel where he stayed.

B.S.A. Nigel Bevan, Australia's kangaroo testicle chef

Some Aussie by the name of Nigel Bevan (or so he said) bullshitted the organisers of the World Testicle Cooking Championship in Serbia to believe that he was Australia's leading kangaroo testicle chef.
As they normally only get European chefs competing in this amazing event they were very excited to get a contestant from such a distant country.
The WTCC organizers bought a large amount of kangaroo testicles from an address supplied by Bevan, (they were happy with his advice as there are not a lot of kangaroo testicle shops in Serbia) but they remained uncooked in Nigel's absence.
Thanks to the Aussie competitor not showing up gourmet testicle chef Dejan Milovanovic from Belgrade won the 2005 World Title with wild boar and bull testicles.

The Australian Cow Fan Bullshit

In 1999 when I was working as a tourguide driving a bus full of backpackers through the Gulf from Cairns to Darwin a young pommie bloke asked me about the windmills that we saw like above. I told him that as Australia, and especially the outback where we were at the time, was too hot for the European cows, the farmer would on hot summer days turn on the fan for his cows so they could come and cool down. And what do you know, this guy believed me!

Story by ex Gulf tourguide

Disaster Relief Fund Payments

When in early 2011 Queensland was struck by floods and cyclone in quick succession the government announced in no time at all that everybody who was affected by these disasters would be eligible for a payment of $1000.- per adult and $400.- per child.

That was a generous move and I commend the government for coming to the aid of people in such a difficult situation.

But what got my back up, and why I am writing this article on the Amazing Australian Bullshit page, is the criteria they used to determine who was eligible for these payments.
You did not have to suffer any serious damage to your home or your personal circumstances, no, as long as you only had no mains electricity for 48 hours you were eligible for a thousand dollars! That is how important they consider electricity to be to peoples lives!
Residents of the Daintree area north of the Daintree river have suffered major expense and inconvenience for years as their (now ex) mayor Mike Berwick and subsequent governments have stubbornly denied them mains power for decades.
I calculated that as a Daintree resident I had in 18 years of residency suffered about 3200 periods of 48 hours without mains electricity, so I was eligible for a payment of $3.2 million. I emailed Julia Gillard to make my claim but no reply as yet....

Drop Bears Bullshit

Click to buy your drop bear T-shirt

Many Aussies have delighted over the years in warning tourists not to go into the forest at night to avoid the drop bears. These are supposed to resemble a koala but about five times the size, and when frightened run to the outer branches of the tree that will then break off under their weight, resulting in a 50 kg. bear landing on your head causing injury. This is an old joke but they may still try it on you. It is said that having forks in the hair or spreading Vegemate or tooth-paste behind the ears keep you from their attacks.

Kit sheds Bullshit

Aussie blokes love their sheds. And the webmaster of this site is no different, he also wanted a shed.
So an online search quickly found a website that sold Absco sheds, and according to this website it was really easy and fun to erect these sheds in minimal time with only two people because thanks to pre-punched holes that always line up and various other ingenious features it would be a breeze. In the online instruction movies with boppy background music two blokes put one up in no time without a drop of sweat in sight.
Yeah right...... Wait till I get some time to add my full story with photos about my experience!

Koala Bear Fat Bullshit

Bullshit artist Klaus Schneider sent us this beauty;

I made up this story to my sister in law in Germany and she took it hook, line and sinker:
Wick Vaporub, the cold medicine is basically Koala bear fat.
See, all the eucalyptus leaves they eat, are full of eucalyptus oil and the koalas store that in their body fat.
Professional Koala hunters pick the big ones, shoot them skin them, scrape the fat of their skins, render it down and bingo, there you have Wick Vaporub.
TIll today, she doesn't know that I had her on big time !

P.S. Koala Bear is bullshit on its own, it is a koala, not a koala bear, they are a marsupial that is not related to bears who are mammals.

Ooi Ooi Bird Bullshit

This is a less commonly heard story, it is supposed to be a bird whose testicles are bigger than its legs, thus resulting in painful landings filling the night with "Thud! Ooi! Oooi!" sounds.

Plastic Bag Farms Bullshit

Ever wondered where plastic bags come from? Well, from the plastic bag farm of course!
In north Queensland between Townsville and Cairns you will see many plastic bag farms next to the highway.
Some farmers specialize in blue bags, others in yellow bags, and the one on the picture grows a mix of orange and white.

Solar Power In The Rainforest Bullshit

Rainforests are known for rain and clouds but the powers that be in Queensland decided that instead of providing mains power or a mini-grid they would subsidize stand-alone solar power systems for residents of the area north of the Daintree river.
TOTAL BULLSHIT! say many residents of the Daintree. Solar panels in a rainforest are like hydro power in the desert. Sure there will be a couple of weeks a year where it works but what about the other 50 weeks of the year?
To add to the bullshit factor the (recently sacked) Mayor of the shire Mike Berwick lives on the north side of the Daintree river with a cable across the river that feeds mains power to him and his neighbours, but at every meeting over the years where provision of power to other residents was discussed he always voted NO.
So now residents and businesses of the Daintree region have no other choice than to run expensive fuel-guzzling generators to have some electricity to make their houses livable, something that everybody else in the western world, and a lot in the third world too, takes for granted.
Tour guides that take tourists up to the spectacularly beautiful Daintree region tell people bullshit that this is the largest renewable energy community in Australia, while there is a steady stream of fuel trucks carting up millions of litres of generator fuel every year, that all gets blown into the World Heritage National Park as exhaust fumes, and hundreds and hundreds of old and used lead-acid batteries are piling up, an environmental disaster in which ex-mayor Mike Berwick has played a major role.
Read more about this bullshit of pollution in the Daintree.
And to add yet another dimension to this bullshit the government handed out $1000 per person to anyone in the rest of Queensland who had "suffered" 48 hours without electricity, while Daintree residents who have gone for years without got nothing, other than big fuel bills! Read more...

The Dish Movie

The Australian movie 'The Dish' is based on a true story of ingenious Aussie bullshit.
In the Australian outback there are several satellite tracking stations, that are based there because of the absence of interference signals that normally emit from cities.
During an American Apollo mission to the moon it was the job of an Australian base in the town of Parkes in the New South Wales outback to track the Apollo space craft. Unfortunately the power dropped out, and their computers crashed. Normally a backup generator would start but somebody had forgotten to put fuel in it! After the generator was fuelled up and they got the electricity supply restored they turned on their computers again but now they had lost the location of the spacecraft. They could have contacted NASA for an approximate location and then homed in on that but they decided this would be too embarrassing and someone with pen and paper and calculator went to work. Meanwhile NASA was on the phone to check that everything was going well with their multi million dollar mission and astronauts floating around the moon and the Aussies bullshitted them that everything was fine and under control! Nearly a day later the man with the calculator finally figured out where the American spacecraft was and they locked on again and kept bullshitting the Americans that everything had been under control all the time!!!

TNT Bullshit

On the website of the well known courier service it says;

TNT Express is one of the world's leading providers of business-to-business express delivery services. TNT Express is able to offer its customers an extensive domestic and international network, integrated with the latest technology. This allows TNT Express to provide a unique combination of on-demand, time-sensitive, door-to-door services within Australia and around the world.

Time sensitive? Door to door? Yeah right.....
When I paid $172.- to get a parcel from Sydney to Cape Tribulation it took no less than six days until I got a call from a tyre shop in Mossman with the message "your parcel is here".
Huh? What do you mean? Look at the address label and tell me what it says on there, it does not say Mossman Tyres on there, it says Cape Tribulaton, you are a three hour return trip from here.
Numerous phone calls later, lengthened more by a long weekend when there is nobody available at TNT to help you, the message remained the same from all TNT employees; even though it may have your adress on the label TNT will only deliver it there when they feel like it, and reserve the right to dump your parcel at a depot which may be hours away from your house, and there are no refunds or reimbursements for your time and travel expenses to retrieve your parcel!
Several times I typed the parcel's reference number in on their website that claims to track all parcels; and every time it said the parcel had been delivered, even though it was sitting in a shed 1.5 hours away from me.

Miscellaneous Bullshit

Bullshit Artist Doug Bingham from Queensland sent us these little beauties;

In the Aboriginal wars of the 1700s they used to light up koala bears and throw them like handgrenades. The bears being full of eucalyptus leaves would create a build up of gas and explode. Hence there are not as many koala bears as there used to be.
Also in our area is a black and grey banded snake. If bitten you must count the number of white bands as you will throw a fit for each one over several years untill the poison is out of your system.
Emu oil is only good in two stroke engines.
Hoop snakes put their tail in their mouth and roll down hills. Nearly impossible to get away from unless you are on flat ground.

P.S. Koala Bear is bullshit on its own, it is a koala, not a koala bear, they are a marsupial that is not related to bears who are mammals.

Weather Forecast Bullshit

Wind speed forecast during biggest cyclone ever Yasi

If you want a reliable weather forecast then don't go to Weatherzone, while Super Cyclone Yasi was slamming Queensland with winds up to 290 km/h this was their weather forecast. For several days they showed bullshit like this, I emailed them but no corrections were made.
Which reminds me of a quote from the Ryan Air boss on the global warming issue; how can we trust all these "weather experts" to tell us that in 50 years time the temperature would have risen 1.5 degrees, if they can't even get the weather forecast for tomorrow right?

Bullshit or not?

Bullshit Artist Doug Bingham from Queensland sent us some info that goanna oil is so good if you put it in a glass jar and sit it on a shelf after a while there will be a film of oil under the glass jar as the oil works its way through. However, someone only known to us as B. emailed us that the story about Goanna oil seeping through glass is true. B. informed us that Goanna Oil is a trademark started in Brisbane that does not contain any real Goanna Oil at all, but if you were to kill a Lace Monitor or Goanna, which is illegal anyway, you could find strips of fat that get stored for winter when you cut a slit in it's tail. Real Goanna oil is then extracted from that fat in the tail. If you put that oil in a glass jar it can seep through it overnight. B. knows an islander who has done this.

Opinions are now divided one to one. Are there any other bullshit artists or real experts out there that can solve this mystery for us?

Bullshit bag

If you are a bullshit artist and got some good bullshit send it to us to add to this page!

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