WHAT the bloody hell were they thinking? Tourism Australia's latest advertisement for the global market, if you'll listen to its critics, casts us as a nation of tone-deaf bogans caught in a '70s time-warp in which kangaroos get around in herds rather than mobs.

''How cringeworthily embarrassing,'' sneers one post on the media website Mumbrella. ''Bogan pride at its best,'' writes another. ''I'm embarrassed to be Australian,'' says another. ''When will we shake these dowdy, 50-year-old stereotypes?''

Surf's up ... an image from Tourism Australia's new campaign.

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Launched yesterday, the 90-second ad features everyday Aussies singing (slightly off-key) There's Nothing like Australia as it scans the staple icons of Uluru, the Barrier Reef and the Opera House, on to the 12 Apostles and beyond, while they list all the things in this great brown land that there is nothing like: sunset from a camel, this billabong, this duck-billed mammal. ''There's nothing like this bear'', sings a woman holding a koala. ''That's not a bear,'' she is corrected. ''There's nothing like these furry things that bounce around in herds,'' a child sings. She refers to kangaroos, not hyperactive cattle.