Crocodile Dundee Exposed

Eric Ellis, Seville

05/16/1992

"WHEN is Australia going to stop selling itself as a beer-swilling nation of hooligans?"

It was a simple question from a Frenchman who had visited Australia to which an embarrassed Australian was found wanting for an answer. The Parisian had just spent 30 minutes touring Australia's $40 million pavilion at the biggest international exhibition ever mounted, the $13 billion Universal Exposition in the Spanish city of Seville.

He wasn't impressed. "It is not the country that I visited." He's right. If an Expo is about projecting a national image to the world, the Australia on show at Seville might have sprung straight from the creative department of John Singleton, advertising's High Priest of Ockerism ... a decade or so ago. To the visiting Spaniards, who will make up half of the 18 million expected Expo-goers over the next six months, Australia is a land of Crocodile Dundee-like frontiersmen, of sunburnt, mostly European faces, a place where the outback has been tamed by hombres who favour a brew called Bazza. It's an image that is dull, unimaginative and has had its day.

There is very little reference to Australia's Aboriginal heritage, our multiculturalism, our significant achievements in nation-building, be they social, scientific or industrial. That Australia is one of the world's most urbanised societies seems to have eluded our Expo organisers, and will elude Expo visitors.

Phil Hurst, the director of Australia's Expo, makes no apology for the exhibit, stressing the "relaxed, casual national attitude comes across very strongly". He says the display was designed after "considerable market research" with the potential European tourist market in mind (last year, 4,000 Spaniards visited Australia).

Nevertheless, that relaxed, casual attitude seems at times to be laid on a bit thick. Attendants in the gift shop greet customers with "G'day, cobber"and instruct non-English speakers in some of the finer points of strine.

But our pavilion is outstripped in attitude by the Kangaroo Bar, about four blocks away.

Originally supposed to be a trade exhibit mounted by the Department of Primary Industries, the site now harbours a 100-metre-long reproduction of an outback shearing shed replete with bush band, snags and sauce in bread and a souvenir glass of beer, Spanish cerveza because Australian beer is not allowed for sale.

Admittedly the bar has been very popular - it is shaded and has lots of seats - but is it really the type of modern image Paul Keating might approve of for one nation, one people? The country on display at the pavilion, or at the Kangaroo Bar, is not the one being marketed by Canberra - an ethnically diverse centre of industrial excellence playing a full and vigorous role as an integrated member of the Asia-Pacific community.

Australia has missed an opportunity to sell and consolidate that new national character on a global stage. The theme of the Expo - An Age of Discoveries - gave Australia a unique chance to mount an imaginative exhibition entirely in keeping with that theme.

Australia is a new nation where, like the United States (the Americas are the subtext of Seville's Columbian theme), discovery and innovation are constants that have marked our national development.

True, the Antipodes weren't discovered by Columbus, but that hasn't stopped other nations, most notably New Zealand, from adapting the general Expo theme to their own experiences.

The thoughtful Kiwi exhibit emphasises discovery in several ways: European discovery of the land mass and of Maori culture, Maori discovery of European culture and, more recently, a rosy view of an enriched culture going forth to rediscover the outside world to the wider nation's benefit.

New Zealand mounted its exhibit for half the cost of Australia's.

Some Australian officials recognise deficiencies in their exhibit, such as not stressing a multicultural theme, and over-estimating the provincialism of the Spanish.

"It's a difficult thing getting an image right. How much do the Spanish know about us? What if they don't understand it? You have to appeal to all comers and all ages, and it can be a fine line," explains one Expo official.

The big numbers attracted by a Maori dance troupe to the New Zealand pavilion, and to the Papuan mud men, suggest the Australian organisers may have underestimated the exotic appeal indigenous performers from the other side of the world have for culture-craving Europeans.

The band Yothu Yindi is set down for Expo's designated "Australia Day", but regular Aboriginal performances are not central to the Australian agenda in Seville.

A bright spot for Australia is the impressive recreation of a North Queensland rainforest, which organisers have included to "contradict the impression that Australia is a desert nation".

Overall, the Expo is a stunning piece of work, and Spain deserves every credit for an exhibition that is well-designed and organised, if a little expensive (a three-day entrance-only ticket costs $A130 plus extras).

Of the other national pavilions, Czechoslovakia wins the most incomprehensible award for its spaghetti-like array of pulleys and lighted micro-tubing that bears little relation to the nation, its achievements, or its cultural make-up.

Cuba wins the lost-touch-with-reality award for its display of pineapples and banana plantations, happy workers, modern transport and industrial goods, none of which exists in today's country as Fidel Castro struggles to survive the passing of international communism.

The Sri Lankans and the Chinese share the most vigorous junketeer award with seemingly more staff enjoying their six months in Seville than actual visitors.

The most stylish award goes to Chile for a smart pavilion staffed by incredibly good-looking youngsters, who seem to have stepped from a Chanel or Hugo Boss advertisement. The iceberg shipped from the Chilean Antarctic is a respite from the 42 degree Spanish summer.

Russia and Yugoslavia probably should get awards just for showing up.

The Yugoslav officials didn't really know what they were representing. A young Serb said the pavilion was "Yugoslavian" but he was contradicted by his Slovenian colleague, who said she was simply "passing time".

Lacking any achievement of note in recent years, the Russians turned to their old favourite in international exhibitions, space travel, with Yuri Gagarin much in evidence, and pavilion officials thanking Expo organisers for pursuing a theme of discovery.

The Russian pavilion shop leaves a bit to be desired, selling only matrouschka dolls (not the Gorby ones), thus confirming the lament of every traveller to Moscow that you may get lots of roubles for your hard currency, but there's nothing to spend them on.

The ASEAN pavilion wins the business-first award with low-key but effective displays emphasising its economic achievement in recent years.

The all-dressed-up-andnowhere-to-go award goes to the group from Kiribati, Fiji and Tonga, who - thanks to a British welder - saw their pavilion go up in flames less than a week before the Expo opening on April 20.

Visitors to the Pakistani pavilion might be mistaken for thinking all that country has to offer are carpets.