The stereotypical images of Australia are so well-known that the
reality can come as a big surprise.
Cherise Town, a student from California, knew what she expected to see - beaches, sunshine, native animals.
"I did a paper for a class in media studies about how the movie "Mission Impossible 2" (which was filmed in Australia), features kangaroos racing across arid Outback landscapes and other typical Australian images.
"And then I came here and couldn't find a kangaroo." She felt cheated.
"I did eventually see kangaroos when I went camping. Maybe if I was right in the middle of the country, I'm sure it'd be more common, but in Melbourne? No."
That mysterious 'other'
Tourism researcher Jeff Jarvis doesn't think the tourism industry needs to apologise for relying on the sun and sand images.
Yacinta Kurniasih, Indonesian-born Australian resident
"We know, by living in Australia, that there are lots of different aspects. "We're not just the Opera House, the Barrier Reef and Ayers Rock. But to attract visitors from around the world, we need to talk about what makes Australia different," he says. "If we go into the European marketplace and talk about multiculturalism, or our arts festivals, people are going to say, 'Well, why should I fly all the way to Australia?' "I can go to Vienna, or I can go to Prague, and get very similar experiences."
A curious mix
Mikhael Stoebel did some study on Australia before he left his native Sweden. Apart from that, the little he knew about the country came from television.
"It had to do with sport, or the (television programs) "Crocodile Hunter" and "The Flying Doctors". But Australia still turned out to be a surprise. You feel that Melbourne is fairly European in one sense, and if you walk around a street corner, it's like you're in Asia all of a sudden. So it's very multicultural.
Exploring niches
University lecturer David Dunstan would like to see the promotion of Australian tourism move beyond the standard images.
"We tend to think of tourists as a one-dimensional commodity, but they're not. People travel in different ways and with different preconceptions. As our very skilful marketers know, you can turn them on, or turn them off, by a range of different images."
Misinformation
In fact, Australians themselves don't always get a true picture of their own country. The power of advertising can mislead locals almost as much as it can visitors. Lynette Russell holds the Chair in Aboriginal Studies at Melbourne's Monash University. She believes tourism advertising often perpetuates the negative influence of mass tourism on traditional cultures.
Mikhael Stoebel, overseas student from Sweden.
She gives the example of the didjeridoo, the traditional musical instrument fashioned from a hollow tree-branch, or the hunting tool called the boomerang.
"These are quite specific to the Aboriginal communities of Central Australia. But they've been used so much to symbolise Aboriginal Australia that, as a result, tourists expect to see them wherever they go."
A matter of perspective
Central Australia, she says, is also an enormous drawcard and it is obviously a visually spectacular part of the world.
"It disturbs me, though, when I see advertising campaigns that consistently refer to it as being ancient and timeless - 'Come and experience 60,000 years of culture'. These types of phrases for me have echoes from the 19th century. (They evoke a time) when Aboriginal people were talked about as being stone-age, primitive people who were the ancestors of modern man."
For author Bill Bryson, the Australia experience was a little more comforting. The author of travel books on the United States, Britain and Australia says arriving in Australia felt like discovering life on another planet.
"It was as if I had privately found a parallel universe where life was at once recognised to be similar but entirely different. I can't tell you how exciting it was.
"Something about it just agreed with me. It helped that I had spent half my life in America and half in Britain, because Australia was such a comfortable fusion of the two. It had a casualness and vivacity that felt distinctly American, but hung on a British framework.
"With their optimism and informality, Australians could pass at a glance for Americans, but they drove on the left, drank tea, played cricket, adorned their public places with statues of Queen Victoria and dressed their children in the sort of school uniform that only a Britannic people could wear without conspicuous regret."
