The series of Aussie tourism commercials I showed you the other day were made for the American audience. This one’s made for the Brits. And it features some great moments that speak directly to Australia and England’s long-standing love-hate relationship.

The whole commercial is written around Aussie icon Kylie Minogue who is proudly, unapologetically Aussie but has lived in England for many years.

Kylie sings, “You can play backyard cricket.” Followed by Aussie bad boy cricket star Shane Warne looking straight into the camera and saying, “But get ready to lose.”

Kylie sings, ”We speak your language.” Followed by an Aussie broke saying, “Except for the vowels.”

Kylie sings, ”Sisters and brothers.” The same bloke sings, “We know you think you’re above us.” And Kylie responds with, “But deep down you love us…”

Another fun commercial. Great job by Tourism Australia and its ad agency. (Although Jamie is not an aficionado of TV commercials, she seems particularly impressed with the shot of the lifeguards’ asses located, appropriately, as the back end of the commercial.)

We were FaceTiming with god daughter Stella the other day and all agreed on one crazy quarantine phenomenon. We have time enough to do everything, but just can’t get motivated to do anything.

When this whole thing started we thought we’d accomplish so much. All those long-delayed home improvement projects would get checked off the list. The garden would look like something out of Architectural Digest. And dining? We were all going to make Gordon Ramsey seem like an amateur.

So how’s that going for you? Probably about as well as it’s been going for Jamie and me.

Want to feel like a real slug? Consider what 23-year old Sir Isaac Newton accomplished while he was quarantined during the bubonic plague outbreak in 1665:

In the 18 months he spent in isolation, Newton laid the foundations for calculus, investigated optics, and determined that white light consisted of all components of the visible spectrum. The revolutionary law of universal gravity was also born at his home in Woolsthorpe Manor.

… Newton eventually returned to the university after the Great Plague, and he went on to become a professor. His discoveries during the quarantine, though, served as the foundation for some of the greatest scientific innovations.

Newton’s not the only one who accomplished more than I have during self-isolation. During later plagues William Shakespeare wrote King Lear and Mary Shelley created the entire sci-fi genre when she wrote Frankenstein.

Me? I write a daily blog item. Sometimes I take MLB.com’s baseball trivia quiz of the day.

What a loser.

South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent. And this lack of liquids has clearly driven our friend Ken insane.

Ken is the former owner of our little cottage on French Street. He claims that when he sold the cottage he retained the right to take water from its water tank. About once a week we find him in our back yard filling half a dozen or so half gallon jugs with water.

A brief word of explanation: Because South Australia is so dry, virtually every home has a big water storage tank like the one behind Ken. Elaborate gutter systems ensure that every drop of rainwater is captured in those tanks. It’s as if Frank Herbert’s famous sci-fi novel Dune had come to life.

What does Ken do with all the water he takes from the tank? This is where it gets crazy.

He drinks it.

He claims the tank water is the reason he is so healthy, that it’s full of vitamins and minerals that have made his immune system virtually indestructible.

But here’s the problem.

It may be full of vitamins and minerals, but it’s also full of lots of other stuff. Nasty, nasty stuff. When rainwater falls on the roof, it flows down into the gutters and then into the tank, taking with it everything that had been on the roof. Including bugs. And dirt. And excrement from every animal that’s ever lived in or migrated through the Barossa Valley.

And that’s not even the worst part.

There’s a hole where the gutter meets the tank. A small hole, to be sure, but certainly large enough for a possum or a bird or a lizard to crawl through, fall into the water and die. And rot. And then the whole noxious olio steeps under the blistering Australian sun until it transforms into a hellish witches’ brew.

It’s disgusting. Jamie and I wouldn’t drink that water if we were dying of thirst. Neither would Ken’s wife Sue.

I have given Ken’s unsavory sludge a name. An appropriate name.

Bugweiser.

So sad that the same mixture that has boosted his immune system has simultaneously destroyed his brain.

Our neighbor Scottie has me a bit worried. He admits that he’s quite smitten with Jamie and has told several neighbors that he has a foolproof scheme to do away with me and then take my place.

He has been understandably hesitant about sharing the details with me, but informed sources say it has something to do with stabbing me in the back with an icicle so that all the evidence melts away.

I’m pretty sure that the only thing that’s kept me alive so far is the Barossa’s temperate climate.

One day Scottie was carrying on about his future with Jamie when I said, “Hey, you gotta get in line, buddy. There are about eight guys in front of you.”

His response? “At least I’m in the queue.”

This is what happened when I handed Scottie my phone and asked him to take a photo of Jamie and me.

No new cases of coronavirus in the Barossa Valley for two weeks. No new cases in the state for six days. So they’ve officially announced that we’re back to life as usual as of May 1.

Here’s the first sign that things are, indeed, returning to normal.

That being said, Qantas is still grounded. Virgin Australia has gone belly-up. American Airlines has cancelled all its flights out of Australia until October. United has cancelled all its flights until June 6. We’re hoping to fly home that week or early the next. But who knows?

Here’s a guy who lived his life the way he wanted to live it. And you gotta say he died the way he wanted to die, too.

Good luck to you, Scott Howard Woodson, wherever your next adventure takes you.

I thought you might like to see where we’re quarantined. Our little cottage at 7 French Street was built back somewhere in the 1890s. It used to be owned by our friends Ken and Sue and now it’s owned by our friend Hamish.

He is letting us stay here while the coronavirus has us stranded in Australia. So we’ve returned the favor by overseeing some painting and redecorating projects. And Jamie’s also been killing time by working in the garden.

This is the living room. Or as they said in Australia, the lounge. We’re spending a whole lot of time lounging these days.

Love the old foot-powered sewing machine in the corner. The wrought iron Wertheim logo is such a beautiful touch.

Love the two antique metal suitcases stacked to provide an accent piece in the lounge. Jamie found this old silver urn in a local antique store. It cost laughably little.

Hamish wanted to expose the bricks in the old master bedroom fireplace, so I got out a hammer and chisel and did what I could.

Dame Edna Everage, the world’s most famous Australian, cries out, “Hello, possums!” to members of her adoring audiences. Until today that was the full extent of my familiarity with Aussie possums.

Then I got a phone call from one of our neighbors. “I caught a brushtail possum in a trap last night,” he said. “I’m going to take it out into the country and turn it loose. Want to go with me?”

Damn straight I did. I’d never seen an Aussie possum before. The neighbor picked me up about two minutes later and off we went.

Despite their cute little pointed faces, pink noses, long oval ears and bushy black tails, Aussies are not very fond of possums. With good reason.

The nocturnal, cat-sized marsupials climb up on your roof in the middle of the night, run back and forth from one end of the house to the other, and make a hell of a racket while you’re trying to sleep.

But that’s the least of the problems.

They love to pull off roof tiles and squeeze through the smallest of holes to get into an attic where they demolish insulation and ductwork. They raid chicken coops and eat the eggs and defenseless chicks. They strip the fruit off trees. They work their way into trash cans and spread the debris far and wide. They mark their territory with stinky scent glands and even stinkier urine. And they poop anywhere and everywhere.

We drove about ten miles out of Angaston to a beautiful, isolated area dotted with stately eucalyptus forests and manicured stud farms, pulled off the road, set the trap down and opened its door.

I thought the possum would slowly waddle away like one of his lethargic American cousins, but he took off faster than a Jamaican sprinter, leaping over fallen trees and weaving around the standing ones.

I barely had time to say, “Goodbye, possum” before this little guy disappeared over the horizon.

There’s nothing funnier than an Australian bogan (redneck) being interviewed on national television.

This guy, for example. You cannot possibly get any more Australian than this neighborhood hero who was interviewed on the Aussie version of The Today Show. Good luck understanding a word he says.

Karl Stefanovik is the funniest morning TV show host in the world. There’s nothing he’s not willing to say, nothing he’s not willing to do, nothing he can’t get a laugh out of. He got fired from the Aussie version of the Today Show a couple years ago, but ratings tumbled so they just hired him back.

Here’s Karl and his former co-host interviewing two other very Aussie heroes.

You’re going to need an Aussie-American translation guide for this one:

“A stubbies and singlets party.“ A stubby a 375ml bottle of beer and a singlet is what an American bogan would call a wife beater.

A “servo” is a gas station.

“Busted my plugger” means he broke his sandal.

But the best comment comes when Karl compliments Ross-Munro on his physique and asks if he goes to the gym. Ross-Munro responds, “Mate, I don’t go to the gym, haven’t been to the gym in years. The only gym I go to is Jim Beam.”

The advertising industry prints awards faster than the U.S. mint makes money. It hands out awards for creativity like normal people hand out Halloween candy. 

I am allowed to make that criticism because no one loved picking up those awards any more than I did. A New York agency guy once told me, “They’re cheaper than cocaine, easier to score, and the high lasts longer.”

But for every truly creative commercial there are a thousand derivative ones that rip off the originals. That being said, I am truly embarrassed by this video.

Here’s the kicker: An Australian retirement fund organization called Industry SuperFunds has for many years used the advertising slogan “We’re all in this together.” They said it long before the first bowl of bat bouillabaisse was cooked up in a Wuhan wet market.

But now every commercial for every company uses the exact same words just to show what serious, caring corporate citizens they are during the Wuhan Flu crisis.

Every.

Single.

Commercial.

Industry SuperFunds should sue all of ‘em for copyright infringement. Or maybe for felonious unoriginality.