Phillipe More writes "You can hear the Brits guffawing over plans to recreate Stonehenge on a beach in Western Australia."
THE town of Esperance, Western Australia, either deliberately or inadvertently has decided to create the biggest monument to "cultural cringe" since the phrase was coined in 1950 by A. A. Phillips in Meanjin magazine. I am not clear as to who is cringing from what but let's accept the general view that it meant we colonials instinctively felt inferior to British culture – except in sport, where the Brits once tried to kill us with cricket balls, which was unmanly.
As has been gleefully and widely reported in the British press, this town plans to build a $1.2 million replica of the about-4000-year-old Stonehenge on Twilight Beach as a tourist attraction. This is taking pandering to our former colonial masters to the extreme. Can you imagine the Brits building a replica of Uluru in Wiltshire? Will we now build Buckingham Palace in Perth? Perhaps the Sydney Harbour Bridge should be replaced with a London Bridge and the Opera House replaced by a Tower of London.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/build-it-and-theyll-come--for-a-laugh-20100508-ukra.html
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road