DrumEatDrum
Platinum Member
Where is OZ?
The land of Ozzy Osbourne!!!!!!
No, just kidding.
And while I know where OZ is, I've never quite understood WHY they call it Oz.
So I looked it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia
Oz is often taken as an oblique reference to the fictional Land of Oz in the film The Wizard of Oz (1939), based on L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).[327] Australians' "image of Australia as a 'Land of Oz' is not new, and dedication to it runs deep".[328] The spelling Oz is likely to have been influenced by the 1939 film, though the pronunciation was probably always with a /z/, as it is also for Aussie, sometimes spelt Ozzie.[329] The Baz Luhrmann film Australia (2008) makes repeated reference to The Wizard of Oz, which appeared just before the wartime action of Australia. One reviewer writes: "You even nod with approval at Luhrmann's audacity for cribbing from 'The Wizard of Oz' in his depiction of his Land of Oz, Australia, as a magical place over the rainbow."[330] Some critics have even speculated that Baum was inspired by Australia, in naming the Land of Oz: "In Ozma of Oz (1907) Dorothy gets back to Oz as the result of a storm at sea while she and Uncle Henry are traveling by ship to Australia. So, like Australia, Oz is somewhere to the west of California. Like Australia, Oz is an island continent. Like Australia, Oz has inhabited regions bordering on a great desert. One might almost imagine that Baum intended Oz to be Australia, or perhaps a magical land in the center of the great Australian desert."[331]
I thought perhaps that after too many Fosters, Austrailia gets shorted to Aus, and then after a few more, slightly slurred, Aus becomes Oz. But I'm sure Polly will set this one straight!