Qantas held a promotional campaign recently where they asked the public to name their new fleet of 787-9s and, despite Electric Blue being a much better name, one of the planes has been named Great Southern Land.
Of 60,000 name suggestions, eight planes have been given Australian-centric names such as Skippy, Quokka, Boomerang, Waltzing Matilda, The Great Barrier Reef, Dreamtime, and Uluru.
Iva Davies seems pretty happy about the aeronautical nod.
“I’d like to thank the people who voted and Qantas for honouring me by naming one of their planes after the song I wrote back in 1981,” he wrote in a statement.
“At the time I was attempting to write a new song about the country we love and wanted a new name and new way of describing it. I was aware that early European explorers described it as the ‘Great South Land’ but I wanted something new, something more streamlined and singable. So I created the phrase ‘Great Southern Land’, which became the signature of the song.
“Over 35 years later I find it remarkable how far that phrase has spread and now it seems set to travel even further.”
Still think Electric Blue would have been a cooler name.
