The national day Down Under is coming up again this Saturday, and last Australia Day, you'll remember, things got weird with in-water ping-pong at Bondi Beach. Knowing those Aussies, anything could happen this year.

Wherever you are in Australia this weekend, there'll be some flag-waving celebrations to be had. In Sydney, there's a parade on Sydney Harbour: bring your boat and you could win the Best Dressed Vessel competition. In Melbourne, the Havianas Thong Challenge is what's caught our eye--thongs being the Australian word for flip-flops. This year's Australia Day world record attempt at St Kilda beach will be to have the longest line of inflatable air beds in water.

Most cities will hold large fireworks displays, and all kinds of contests will take place, like the 17th Australia Day Swim in Perth, Western Australia. And it's the biggest day of the year for new Australians to take their citizenship vows. Now if only they held the citizenship ceremony at St Kilda beach with everyone floating on those inflatable air beds wearing thongs...

Related Stories:
· Celebrating Our National Day [Daily Telegraph]
· Australia Day [Official Site]
· Google Earth: Spontaneous Water Beer Pong on Australia Day [Jaunted]

[Photo: kerfern]]]> amandak 2008-01-23T09:14:02-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2007/3/13/17338/9440

On Australia Day 2007 Google Earth did something a little different, they pre-announced when and where their planes would be flying over certain parts of Sydney. Furthermore, they provided a tracker so that you could plan your day around trying to live in Google Earth aerial photographic infamy.

The Australia Day event was different from usual Google aerial photography protocol, and naturally created quite a buzz in Sydney. The resulting images, which became available on Google Earth a couple weeks back, are some of the clearest shots we have seen from the mapping application.

Though there were plenty of attempts at staged promotion, a no fly zone, combined with Google editors seem to have thoroughly wiped out any examples of inevitable private mapvertising. We couldn't find any such examples, and we like to think our favorite image find from the day was purely spontaneous.

The folks pictured above were playing water pong out on Bondi Beach when the Google planes passed overhead. The photos are super high resolution, but you still can't make out the details of the players or what they might be drinking. That's OK, we know Australia well enough to know these folks were playing water beer pong on Australia Day.

Spend some time surfing around the Google Australia Day flyover shots and let us in the comments section if you happen upon anything cool.

Related Stories:
·Australia Day Flyover 2007[Google Maps]
·Australia Day Flyover[Google Sightseeing]]]> markj 2007-03-13T17:35:51-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/