Weird But True
This story is also reported in the book Australian Urban Myths by Amanda Bishop, ISBN 0 900882 50 6. But here is the story anyway as reported in a Sydney newspaper:
Two crew members from the yacht Italia, in Australia to compete for the America's Cup in 1986, went out one lay day to see a bit of the bush around Freemantle. A kangaroo jumped in front of their hire car and they couldn't avoid hitting him. The Italians were mortified and so was the roo, apparently. As they were examining the carcass, they decided that a couple of shots of Australia's national symbol dressed in one of the crew member's Gucci blazer would be fun. The Italians posed beside the dressed up kangaroo for the folks back home.
They had only taken a few photographs when the kangaroo, which had merely been stunned, came to and hopped back into the bush, taking with it the Gucci blazer and, in its pockets, two hundred dollars in cash, a passport and a membership card to an Italian night-club!
Amanda comments in her book that the story had been around for a while when she investigated it - various victims had featured, including members of a touring English cricket team in the fifties.
And an updated version: 21-July-1997
Thought you would be interested in the following clipping from today's issue of The Sydney Morning Herald. I hadn't realised, until I read this that there had been another version in Australia after the one I previously sent you!
ISN'T IT GOOD that our home-grown urban myths circle the globe? Bill Raine, of Kirribilli, says a Swiss friend saw on French TV a version of the Gucci Kangaroo (Column 8, November 18, 1996). In it, French tourists, driving a 4WD in our outback, hit a kangaroo and apparently kill it. They prop it against their car, one puts his expensive leather coat and hat on it, they take a photo ... and it revives and hops off with coat, hat, wallet and passport.
In the 1996 version, the roo left wearing a Yank's green Boston Celtics coat. Then, in 1986, the Sunday Telegraph earnestly reported a version with an Italian yachtie losing his Gucci blazer. But the French TV version must be true - they showed the photo.
Copyright ©, 1999-2000
Mike Boyle