You know it's really funny; I grew up in the eighties and I must've never actually seen the video for this (either that or I forgot about it). And I didn't have MTV I had MuchMusic and MusiquePlus.
On a street in Ecuador I heard a shitty techno remix of this. I was suddenly so homesick I ran in and demanded the CD without even listening to the rest. The little girl minding the shop was confused.
It's one of those incredible things, isn't it? I haven't been back to Australia in 5 years - I don't have a sentimental disposition - but every time I hear this song (or Yothu Yindi, or MGF, or TISM, or anything played on JJJ ever...) I'm suddenly transported to a magical world where the western suburbs aren't as bad as I thought they were, the cafes aren't infested with English backpackers loudly bitching about everything and living out country is a mildly tolerable ordeal. Fuck you, crippling poverty of the burban VB-drinking rusty car on the front lawn underclass from which I managed to crawl - I have VEGEMITE. National heritage! Shit yeah! Ocker and bloke and chunder and g'days all around!
Being Australian is a complex and weird thing and the cultural archetype never seems so hollow as when you're overseas and kicking about nations with Grand Schemes and Manifest Destinies. We're the last of the post-colonials, the mostly-exiles and the Bastard Children, and I have no clue whether songs and artifacts like "Down Under" succor that wound or just re-open it.
This really isn't the format for this speech. Still, 5 stars.
I don't recall ever seeing the video, but this song got played constantly when I was growing up. I never learned what vegemite was until many years later.
Somewhere in some old, OLD VHS tapes I have a Men At Work concert taped off HBO circa 1983-84...and this video is playing on the Big Screen while they play the song.
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