Fair suck of the sauce bottle mate, get it right!

By ROBERT LOWE

Two American tourists checked into the Windsor in Melbourne, a grand old hotel in the city centre.

A hotel staff member, a one-time Sydney resident, said the couple had an unusual request: could they have a room with a view of the harbour bridge and the opera house?

The reason that was not possible was explained to them, politely.

While the snippet raised a chuckle when it was made public, it highlighted one of the pitfalls of travel - being misinformed.

Australian tourism expects a record year this year with the boost from the Olympic Games, and the opportunity for misinformation appears to have grown correspondingly.

Australian Tourist Commission managing director John Morse said the worldwide attention was on an unprecedented scale, with 1500 overseas media organisations sending representatives to Australia.

While the commission can organise what visitors under its wing can see and do, it has less control over the mass of data that flows out through different sources.

One Australian newspaper did a survey of Websites for foreign tourists and found some surprising hints being handed out.

Based on the advice from one site, Victorians shouldn't be too surprised to be greeted with, "G'day, ya gum suckers," by overseas visitors believing they are using a term of endearment.

Those living in New South Wales are apparently "Ma Staters," although few Ma Staters would have heard of the term or could guess at its origins.

Similarly, many Australians would be mystified if, after a few beers too many, they were described as Adrian or Quist - apparently rhyming slang for "pissed" (Adrian Quist was an Australian Davis Cup tennis player).

Another site gives an extra public holiday on January 10 but forgets about Australia Day on January 26.

The site also has advice that would no doubt upset many local restaurant staff - tipping is not compulsory but diners should simply round up the bill to the nearest dollar.

While most people accept that the Internet is unregulated, the unwary can also be victim to misinformation from official sources.

An article in the latest Australian Geographic Studies, an academic journal, has debunked the traditional belief that Australia, despite being the Earth's flattest continent, is a nation of large waterfalls.

Until now, Australia boasted having seven of the world's 50 biggest falls, with the Encyclopaedia Britannica listing five of them at 300m high.

Geomorphologist Dr Mark Mabin, from Queensland's James Cook University, said their reputation was built more on the "wow" factor than on scientific measurement.

Wollomombi, in northern New South Wales, has long been referred to as Australia's tallest waterfall at 482m, but according to Dr Mabin it measures just 220m. Using his theodolite, he has similarly downgraded other sites.

"In the old days they must have gone, 'Wow, that's a thousand feet tall,' and then over time converted it to its rounded metric equivalent of 300m," he said.

So where can people turn if they want fact, not fiction? The Sydney Olympic organising body, Socog, has been fielding some bizarre inquiries on its Website, among them: "Where can I learn underwater welding?" "Do you have perfume in Australia?" "Are there places where you can make love outdoors?" Socog's responses are not known but the answer to the last query could be: definitely not in Queensland - at least not yet. Some visitors to the Sunshine State have again been made firmly aware that public nudity is banned.

Over Easter, police mounted a crackdown when officers in swimming trunks targeted nudists in and around sand dunes on the Sunshine Coast. Queensland is the only Australian state in which it is illegal to appear in public places without a swimsuit or other clothing.

Free Beach Association spokesman Les Hodgkin said Queensland's climate and beaches were the best in Australia and were a big drawcard for tourists, yet none of the country's 24 legal nude beaches was in the state.

Not everyone supports a change to the legislation, and the local tourism industry has reacted cautiously. The industry agreed the ban on public nudity was costing market share in one sector, but at the same time didn't want families to be put off visiting Queensland's beaches.

- NZPA