South Australia is known for many great things – food, wine, OK there’s two – but its reputation as, if not Australia’s murder capital, its creepy murder capital, is something the state would sooner we all forget.
Which is why it strikes the Prick as odd that Tourism SA has launched a new $6 million campaign to promote the state’s Barossa wine region built around a farily eerie TV spot which features Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand“:
Take a little walk to the edge of town
Go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms,
like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires,
in the humming wires
Hey man, you know
you’re never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge,
past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes
a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with
a red right hand.
As these things go, this is right up there with every bank or cruise line that’s ever used Iggy Pop’s heroin anthem “Lust for Life” to sell home loans and holidays.
Prick With A Fork 
Discussion about this adv has been going on for a month or so now with about a 50/50 reaction from the punters. It’s an individual thing, most people I associate with don’t recall the murders, particularly those in their 20’s (a hell of a lot younger than I) and think the adv is cool. I quite like it. I was there in May doing the wine thing and the adv makes me want to return. I know a lot of Barossa locals don’t like it but maybe they are too close to the action. Interesting that an Adelaide adv agency put it together.
People don’t recall the murders… implying ritual rape murder isn’t still going on right now. There’s a bit of a lead time between commission and discovery of sick murders in SA, what with so many judges and police being involved.
Is this what they meant by the “Bodies in the Barrels” murders?
I didn’t know they were referring to wine barrels!