April Fools
Sophie Cunningham
April 01
One April Fool's Day in the early Seventies I watched Bill Peach, of the ABC's This Day Tonight (TDT), report on the failure of Spaghetti crops throughout the country. I fell for it (hey, I was 7) but I was not the only one . Apparently TDT ran regular April Fool's hoaxes - such as 'Dial-O-Fish' (an electronic device attached to a fishing rod that could be set to catch any desired species), a story alleging that the Sydney Opera House was sinking into the harbour, and a bogus report about the supposed abolition of the 24-hour clock and the introduction of a digital time system.
It seems, however, this particular hoax had a fine tradition that stretched back to Dan Webb in the early Sixties on HSV 7:
And beyond that to the BBC's Panorama April Fool's Day hoax of 1957 on the Swiss Spaghetti crop. (Apologies for poor quality of video below).
Our Friends
- Overland
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- Ben Eltham
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Fly the Falcon blog
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- HEAT
- Island
- Killings blog
- Literary Minded
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wet Ink
- Wheeler Centre
Comments
02 Apr 10 at 10:16
The Canberra Times used to run April Fool's Day stories, which they'd often have on the front page. One I remember very clearly: a 'geographer' had 'discovered' that Canberra had been built on a flood plain and the 100-year flood level was over Parliament House. Wonderful, on so many (flood) levels.
...