Oz in a new Light.

AN American friend of mine once admitted that everything he knew about Australia came from the movies. He had seen them all: My Brilliant Career, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Crocodile Dundee.Films, in his case, weren't just a window on Australia, they were Australia.
What, I wonder, will he make of us after seeing Wolf Creek?
The much anticipated horror film's successful opening in Britain last weekend - it earned its entire production budget in just three days - suggests it may become our biggest international hit in a decade.
This is great news for the local film industry. But does this ghoulish tale about the gruesome experiences of three backpackers, two of them British, at the hands of an outback killer bode well for the fortunes of our tourism sector? That the makers of Wolf Creek say they were inspired by real events, including the widely publicised disappearance of Peter Falconio and the Ivan Milat murders, adds an unsettling air of verisimilitude to the film's more terrifying moments. And the unravelling of John Jarratt's Mick Taylor as a kind of evil incarnation of Paul Hogan's Mick Dundee sends a potent message to audiences at home and abroad: this isn't the Australia you think you know.
Crocodile Dundee was made after Hogan had already become a fixture on US television screens with his hugely successful shrimp-on- the-barbie ad campaign for the Australian Tourist Commission (now Tourism Australia). Like the ads, the movie is widely credited with helping launch Australia as an attractive tourist destination in the 1980s, with the Mad Max films and The Man From Snowy River.
Films showing Australia as an ugly and dangerous place may disturb those prone to cultural cringe. But far from killing off tourism, cinematic exploration of our dangerous characters - be they man or beast - can help attract more visitors, research suggests news of deadly encounters in the outback has the effect: tourism goes up $20 million in the Northern Territory every time there is a crocodile attack. Hehehehe......charming.

till next time, Michelle.