REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Wednesday, May 30, 2007

TOURISM Australia snubbed the Gold Coast again by leaving Indy and the Magic Millions off its annual list of major events.

The oversight was criticised by the Queensland Events Corporation as ‘unforgivable, ‘crass stupidity’ and a reflection of TA’s lack of commitment to major events.

The international yabby races at Windorah and Australia Day cockroach races in Brisbane rated above the Gold Coast’s two premier events, which generated about $150 million for the city’s economy.

Predictably, Canberra, arguably the country’s most boring city, got a guernsey with the Canberra balloon festival in April 2008.

The latest snub followed TA’s controversial ‘Where the Bloody Hell are You?’ overseas advertising campaign which did not include a single image of the Gold Coast.

Despite failing to hit the mark, the Government now wanted to press ahead with the campaign in the UK, after pulling the ads off the air in Japan because the Japanese had no idea what they meant.

That expensive flop followed a similar drab campaign, costing $120 million, titled See Australia in a Different Light, which sank without a trace.

Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said she was happy with the campaign.

“It is working well,” she said. The snub was all the more painful for the Sunshine State because Ms Bailey grew up in Queensland.

The new $2 million website that TA had launched, called Australia.com, listed one of the city’s former premier events, the Australian surf lifesaving titles as an attraction.