Tag: Australia

Australia is so dry

Today will be the last in my series of cartoons about Australia. That is unless I think of something else inspiring before Wednesday. If you look up the driest countries in the world, Australia doesn’t even pop up anywhere in the top. But when you talk continents, Australia is the driest inhabited continent. The prize for overall driest continent would be Antarctica but only a few people who want to do tortuous research live there.

This joke is actually a homage to our tour guide in the Daintree Rainforest who came up with this joke saying we love people to immigrate but please bring your own water.

January 20, 2013
Australian Hotel Bill Extra Charges

Today is just a small example of some of the funny hotel charges we incurred while in Australia.

First, I find whether in the States or in Australia, if a hotel charges you for internet access, it will suck. I almost always have that issue when staying at an Embassy Suites for work. Don’t nickle and dime me on internet especially if you can’t get some blazing speeds.

Second, as usual when you eat in a hotel, they always charge you crazy prices. I have learned how to order ala carte or find a coffee shop near the hotel to save money. However, my wife had her first encounter with Vegemite and I can be sure there probably won’t be a second.

GST, or as we in the states like to call sales tax. But of course where I live it is 6.5%. There it is 10%. However, counties and cities in the US add a whole bunch of taxes to hotel stays so as far as overcharging goes, I think we have the Aussies on that.

Sunday/Holiday upcharge. OK to be honest this wasn’t at a hotel but rather a restaurant. See image below:

I might be able to see a Public Holiday Surcharge but a Sunday one. Does everyone get paid time and a half on Sundays? It’s not like they couldn’t have a day off another day of the week.

Finally the biggest real peeve of mine was the surcharge for using a credit card versus cash or ATM. I get it at a small retailer but a HOTEL? This was a first. I would prefer you surcharge everyone and then tell the people who pay cash, you will give them a discount. I know it is the same but it seems a bit more honest.

So any crazy surcharges any of you encountered when traveling?

January 13, 2013
Australian Beer Tastes Like Piss

Today’s cartoon is an homage to the beer of Australia. In America we get Foster’s as pretty much the only import of Australian beers. You know the commercial “Fosters, Australian for Beer.” However, you won’t find it anywhere in Australia and if you ask an Aussie, they will tell you that Fosters is crap they can and market to foreigners (typically “piss” is used in the sentence as well.

Now I am not a beer connoisseur like another in our travel party. I like pilsner and lagers. Don’t like wheat beer, don’t like ales, don’t like Guiness. Hell most of the time a Miller Lite is good enough for me (got to keep my figure you know). The beer whiz in the party thought all Australian beer tasted like piss. Compared to the microbrews all over the United States, it definitely was a much weaker taste. And trust me we went all over. In fact, here is a little taste of what beers I drank.

Tooheys and James Boags (OK I know it is Tasmania not Australia) were probably my favorites. Four X was one my least favorite though it is the most popular beer there.

Sadly there was one Australian Beer that I didn’t get to try… PISS BEER.

From their website:

Aussies have been on the piss, getting pissed, drinking piss, drinking more piss and, most definitely, taking the piss for the past two hundred years. The amazing thing is none of us thought to bottle it earlier. (Too busy getting pissed, probably.)

January 9, 2013
Australian Recycling Efforts

So the story I am told is that there was a Kangaroo farmer in Australia. Of course you could find use for Kangaroo pelt and meat but what about all the by product? So he decided to take the kangaroo balls and make Kangaroo Scrotum Bottle Openers. Now he is a multimillionaire.

Don’t believe they exist? Well my friends take a gander.

Imagine if this guy got rich off this what the rest of us might come up with to give new “life” to typically discarded things. Ideas?

December 30, 2012
Australian Taxi Cab Drivers
Today’s cartoon is an ode to the wonderful men and women who drive the taxis all around Australia. I am sure most of them are very competent. So why the heck did you send the others to us? It was if someone had installed Apple Maps (notorious for getting people lost) in their brains. We walked most of the time but in our trip we probably took 6 cab rides. Here were the facts:
- 4 out of 6 drivers had no idea where we were asking them to go (even with cross streets mentioned)
- 3 of those 4 even had GPS
- Only one tried to use it unsuccessfully
- 3 of the 4 lost drivers were in Sydney
And it wasn’t as if we were going to some obscure place. But in Sydney, where we had most of the issues, it wasn’t limited to cab drivers. Walking one day without my map, I got a little disoriented on Sydneys spoke and wheel system of streets. I asked a cop how to get back to my hotel. He pointed in a direction that I knew was wrong even when I told him what street it was on.

Actual Cab Conversation:

Us: We would like to go to Nick’s Seafood

Driver: (blank stare)

Us: In Cockle Bay Wharf?

Driver: (bigger blank stare)

Us: Darling Harbour??

Driver: (puzzled look)

Us: Here on the map!

Driver: OK

Us (after many minutes of driving): I think you are on the wrong side of the Bay. The restaurant is on the other side

Driver finally uses GPS. Puts in a restaurant none of us ever mentioned and started off.

Us: That isn’t the restaurant. And I think we are driving in a big circle.

Finally the driver stopped about 1/4 mile from where we were going and pretty much gave up. Thankfully we were only charged half the meter rate.

Now to be fare, all of our tour bus drivers and the drivers as part of our transfer shuttles never got lost for a minute. This actually was the opposite of our experience in London several years ago. The cab drivers knew every little pub and alley everywhere. The guy who brought us from the airport got lost.
December 23, 2012
Tipping in Australia

To commemorate my trip to Australia (yes that is where I have been) I am going to do a series of cartoons that give you and idea of what it is like to experience the great Down Under. The Series is “Ken Groo with the Low Down on the Down Under”

Obviously the first in the series has to do with tipping and what is customary in Australia. You read the guides and ask people that have been there and you find out that tipping is NOT customary in Australia like it is elsewhere in the world. That is because they charge more and therefore pay a higher salary to waiters, clerks, etc. Well that is what they tell you.

What actually happens is that you are bombarded by Tip Jars everywhere. As an American we are accustomed to tipping for any service such as throwing in your change to the coffee shop clerk or putting in a percentage of the check for a meal as a tip. So it becomes confusing Down Under. Am I looked at as a cheapskate if I don’t throw in a tip? Or am I looked at as a sucker if I do because I don’t know any better. Luckily for me I don’t have a conscience so I went with the guides and screwed everyone out of extra money.

_________________________________

I thought it was the end of the world already as my site crashed for about 6 hours. Something over my head with a php something so I updated it to the most recent version and then I could see the site but not get to the admin page. So I dropped it back to 5.2 and finally got back online. So sorry if anyone had trouble getting in. All that to say that just in case the world really comes to an end before my update on Sunday, remember when you see all the memes/cartoons about the end of the world, back in 2009, I was the first.

December 19, 2012
Happy Australia Day

Ok so I am over a week late to wish my Aussie friends a Happy Australia Day but other posts came up first. Long time Bearmaniacs might remember a similar cartoon that I did in 2009 (see post here). In that post it was all about how Aussie men confessed to not changing their undies for days and the fact that, like their American Brothers, are an obese bunch.

Someone on G+ found it and linked to it and then Dunken Bliths used his magic to animate and change the word balloon just in time for Australia Day.

For the uniformed what we call Speedos are known as Budgy Smugglers in Australia. A Budgie is a small parrot native to Australia and the look of some guy wearing this bathing suit is like someone smuggling a Budgie in their pants. Some guys decided to make a brand called Budgy Smugglers (mispelling Budgie but not wanting to change it).

February 5, 2012
Editorial Cartoon: Libya

Up until this past weekend, some conservatives have been upset that the United States hasn’t been more proactive militarily with the issues in Libya. While I abhor the things Ghadafi is doing to his people, why does the responsibility to be the world police always rest on the United States.

Whenever there is military action needed around the world, the United States is always seen as the big bad aggressor in foreign affairs while the UN tends to get bound in ineffective resolutions. The US is blamed for interfering in affairs of other countries and blamed if they don’t . As my dad used to say “You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t”.

So for once, the U.S. has decided to take a back seat to the United Nations, fully supporting the efforts but not taking the lead. I, for one, support that tact. They have commited fully to the military operation of a no fly zone while allowing Britain and France to take the lead on the resolution.

Now I am sure I will get an earful from my Australian friends but let’s contrast this with the Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd. Like some American Conservatives, Rudd was blaming the G8 nations for inaction yet after the UN Resolution said that there would be no Australian military assistance (though he did pledge humanitarian aid).

The world doesn’t need any more armchair quarterbacks. (Ok except for me)

March 20, 2011
Bearman Cartoon: Aussies and Racism

Now my Australian readership (which is about half the visitors on this site) might take offense to my latest editorial cartoon, but remember I poke fun at Americans all the time.

It seems that when some guys did a blackface version of the Jackson 5 on an Australian Gong Show and guest judge Harry Connick Jr found it offensive, some (not ALL…some) Australians responded that blackface isn’t offensive like it is in the United States.

Then when KFC put out an ad where a white guy gets a bunch of black folks to sit down so he could watch the game by pulling out a bucket of chicken, some Australians responded that Americans took it wrong and it isn’t offensive like it is in the United States.

Now it seems that an Indian cartoonist got upset that Victoria police were slow to indicate that the murder of an Indian student in his belief was a race crime. So he published a cartoon in the Delhi Mail Today of a Victorian Police officer in a Ku Klux Klan outfit. Now the Acting Prime Minister of Australia has come out and said that the cartoon was offensive. Really?? The KKK as I understand is strictly an American racist organization so clearly it can’t be offensive like it is in the United States.

Thanks to the Daily Cartoonist for turning me onto this story.

or help share the post by clicking below…

January 8, 2010
SFTH: Aussie Undies

Thought I would start a new periodic feature to supplement the traditional Bearman Cartoons. SFTH or Straight From the Headlines will have me perusing local newspapers from around the globe and posting that which I find interesting or humorous.

Given that I am more popular in Australia than America, my first stop was the Australian papers. I was going to do something on the Prime Minister being “soft” on immigration violations, but then this article about Aussie men and their underwear habits caught my eye. (The Friggin Loon also picked up on this story. I think because she has a google alert on “men’s undies”.)

Australian men were surveyed and half stated that they wait 2 or 3 days (which means 3-7 days) before changing their underwear for a fresh pair. If that wasn’t funny enough, I went on to read this blurb:

Adelaide stylist Filip Odzak said men should pick flattering and attractive undies over name brands. “What every man needs for the best result is a pair of basic black jocks or jock briefs – they always look great,” he said.

This got me thinking. Do Australian men all look like Hugh Jackman? Nope. Seems over 60% of Aussie men just like their chubby American cousins are overweight or Obese. So black jocks on heavy men? I know I long ago switched to boxer-briefs. It is very slimming.

Follow me via TWITTER updates. or help share the post by clicking below…

November 9, 2009