Ben Pobjie > Quotes

“It is the fate of all great tourist spots to become terrible tourist spots because as soon as everyone finds out they’re great tourist spots, they fill up with tourists.”
― Ben Pobjie, Australia - What Happened?

“The team then prepared for climbing big mountains by climbing a few small mountains, much as a heavyweight boxer prepares for a title bout by beating up several children.”
― Ben Pobjie, Second Best: The Amazing Untold Histories of the Greatest Runners-Up

“The great thing about crime is that, like aquatic tube worms, it can thrive in almost any environment.”
― Ben Pobjie, Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts: The Colourful and Captivating Histories of Australia’s Other Bushrangers

“Australia has a rich and proud history of… well, of everything, really. That’s what makes us such a great country: you name it, we have a rich and proud history of it.”
― Ben Pobjie, 100 Weirdest Tales from Across Australia

“It’s amazing how often this happens: an altruistic statesman does his civic duty by advising voters of the sinister forces seeking to attack them, and completely by accident the voters become convinced that this statesman is the right man to keep them safe and vote for him in massive numbers.”
― Ben Pobjie, Error Australis: the reality recap of Australian history

“Cook’s travels paved the way for the British settlement of the southern land: in particular, the lush surrounds of Botany Bay, which Cook judged the ideal place to build an airport.”
― Ben Pobjie, Error Australis: the reality recap of Australian history

“Transporting several ships full of live humans halfway around the world is an expensive undertaking. Transporting several ships full of corpses halfway around the world is considerably cheaper, and although the government was absolutely strict on the point that the trip needed to start with the former, they were agreeably flexible when it came to giving a shit whether it finished with the latter or not.”
― Ben Pobjie, Second Best: The Amazing Untold Histories of the Greatest Runners-Up

“The identity of the first discoverer of gold at Bendigo is disputed: some say it was stationmaster’s wife Margaret Kennedy; some say it was shepherd Ben Hall; some say it was a roaming band of mischievous leprechauns.”
― Ben Pobjie, Error Australis: the reality recap of Australian history

“For centuries tales of the yowie have abounded, and although there is little irrefutable evidence of its existence, there is plenty of refutable evidence, which is almost as good.”
― Ben Pobjie, 100 Weirdest Tales from Across Australia

“Ben Hall was one of those lucky men who are blessed with a true nemesis: most of us never acquire a real singular lifelong enemy, and our lives tend to lack satisfactory focus as a result.”
― Ben Pobjie, Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts: The Colourful and Captivating Histories of Australia’s Other Bushrangers

“Railway workers in the 1930s heard the bunyip bellowing and growling in the swamp and ran away in terror, wisely following the old aphorism, 'Nothing that bellows in a swamp is good for you.”
― Ben Pobjie, 100 Weirdest Tales from Across Australia

“If history has taught us anything it’s that everyone who lived in the past was a huge idiot.”
― Ben Pobjie, Australia - What Happened?

“As a country that had a cricket team before it had a government, Australia has always rejoiced in the magic of sporting success and its ability to make a person forget that genuinely important things exist. If there’s one thing that Australians pride themselves on living vicariously through, it’s sport: some consider it an even better expression of Australian identity than warfare.”
― Ben Pobjie, Error Australis: the reality recap of Australian history

“Many men would have been ruined by the events that transpired on the Bounty, but William Bligh was not many men: in fact, most experts agree that he was, at most, one.”
― Ben Pobjie, Error Australis: the reality recap of Australian history

“The main aim of the assault on the Dardanelles was to dig a series of trenches in which to die in enormous numbers over the course of a painfully protracted stalemate. In this, the allies were spectacularly successful.”
― Ben Pobjie, Error Australis: the reality recap of Australian history