The Greeks consider themselves the founders of democracy and mathematics. Now they've taken credit for one of Australia's most recognisable landmarks, the Twelve Apostles.

Greece's national tourism agency has been caught out using the picturesque rock formation to depict the Greek coastline in its new international tourism campaign.

Illustration: Matt Golding.

The embarrassing blunder has been compounded by "preposterous" claims by the Greek tourism ministry that the use of the images are justified because constellations seen in the sky above the apostles on the video "carry Greek names".

The controversy erupted after Australian astro-photographer Alex Cherney discovered that 15 seconds of footage from his award-winning time-lapse film Ocean Sky had been spliced without permission into an official Visit Greece tourism campaign video.