Oz is all in our imagination

Former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson copped flak last week after he claimed that an ‘‘embarrassed God’’ had set fire to Australia. According to Clarkson, God created Australia as far away as possible – only from a northern hemisphere point of view, obviously – so he could house all his experiments that had gone wrong, including the redback spider, the saltwater crocodile and a wide variety of snakes.

‘‘And to make sure people didn’t go there, he put a huge coral reef on the approaches . . . For millions of years, this big, sandy cupboard under the stairs went unnoticed,’’ he said. ‘‘But then along came Captain Cook and now the world knows all about Oz and its stupid, dangerous creatures.’’

Clarkson conveniently overlooked the tens of thousands of years of habitation by the indigenous Aborigines.

However, he went on: ‘‘Plainly, God is embarrassed. Because he’s decided to set fire to it.’’

His comments provoked outrage on social media but it’s not the first time Australia has been the subject of controversial, some might say stupid, claims.

A few months ago, a Flat Earth Convention in the UK asserted that Australia, far from being God’s ‘‘cupboard under the stairs’’, doesn’t even exist. Apparently, the ‘‘Australia is a myth’’ theory was first espoused by a Swedish Facebook personality, Shelley Floryd, who claimed the existence of the world’s sixth largest country was faked to cover up for mass murder by the British.

According to Floryd, under the guise of transportation to an imaginary Australian colony, thousands of criminals were in the 18th century shipped to the middle of the ocean and drowned.

Now as I have visited Australia several times I find this theory a little hard to accept but Floryd has an answer for me and the millions of people who believe they have been to Oz. She says: ‘‘Pilots are all in on this and have actually only flown you to nearby islands close by – or, in some cases, parts of South America, where they have cleared space and hired actors to act as real Australians.’’

And there was I not realising the Sydney Opera House is just a cardboard cutout and the Sydney Harbour Bridge is made of Lego and set up in a location on Norfolk Island.

Who is allegedly behind this huge charade that every Aussie – from Don Bradman to Kylie Minogue – has just been someone with great acting ability? According to Floryd: ‘‘All the things you call ‘proof’ are actually well-fabricated lies and documents created by the governments of the world.’’

So, there you have it, if this woman is correct, the horrific bushfires are probably no more than Steven Spielberg computer-generated special effects; the Black Caps’ recent disastrous cricket tour was a nightmare figment of Kiwis fans’ imagination and Scott Morrison was an actor who had his Hawaiian holiday cut short so he could play the villain in the antipodean equivalent of Towering Inferno.

But anyone who thinks Australia is getting a tough deal from people claiming it doesn’t exist should spare a thought for Kiwis, whose country really is often missing from world maps.

Flat Earthers haven’t cottoned on to this yet but New Zealand is surely a figment of someone’s imagination because it’s missing from the Pyongyang airport world map, the Risk board game, the water feature at Universal Studios, maps in Starbucks coffee houses and even the United Nations logo.

Far from calling ourselves ‘‘God’s Own’’ we should probably be better known as ‘‘The Land God Forgot’’ – even for his failed experiments.