Here we see Her Majesty the Queen in animated conversation (well, as animated as that famously self-controlled woman becomes) with some koalas. Perhaps they are telling her how badly they want Australia to become a republic.
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Back to talking koalas in a moment, but first we remind that Monday's column contained the delightful story of how during World War I, two Aussie soldiers in a canteen in France, not wanting to be "out-swanked" by two pommies talking in French at a nearby table, began an animated conversation in "Australian".
In fact, all they were doing was the reciting of strings of NSW and Queensland exciting sounding Aboriginal place names ("cunnamulla woolloomooloo wagga wagga" they nattered), but the naive poms, fascinated, were persuaded that the Aussies were speaking the language everyone spoke in Australia.
"A great story," a reader enthuses, explaining it reminds him of how "during during shore leave in the midst of Exercise RIMPAC '84 when serving in HMAS Parramatta, a shipmate and I convinced two American girls in a bar in Honolulu that we could speak fluent Koala!
"As this was only the year after the Star Wars film Return of the Jedi was released and because the Ewoks in that film resembled koalas, we mimicked their high-pitched squeaks and squawks. We engaged in animated conversation akin to the one of the two WWI diggers in France."
