"Shrimp on the barbie" is an often-quoted phrase that originated in a series of television advertisement

Television advertisement

A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...

s by the Australian Tourism Commission starring Paul Hogan

Paul Hogan

Paul Hogan, AM is an Australian actor best known for his role as Michael "Crocodile" Dundee from the Crocodile Dundee film series, for which he won a Golden Globe award.-Early life and career:...

 from 1984 through to 1990. The actual quote spoken by Hogan is "I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you", and the actual slogan of the ad was "Come and say G'day". It has since been used, along with some variations, to make reference to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 in popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

.

Details

The advertisement pre-dated Hogan's popularity in the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee

Crocodile Dundee

"Crocodile" Dundee is a 1986 Australian comedy film set in the Australian Outback and in New York City. It stars Paul Hogan as the weathered Mick Dundee and Linda Kozlowski as Sue Charlton....

and thus were not initially seen as celebrity advertisements, as he was relatively unknown in the United States, although the film somewhat increased the commercial's popularity.

The advertisements were developed by the Australian agency Mojo

Mojo (advertising)

Mojo was an Australian advertising agency formed in Sydney by Alan Morris and Allan Johnston in 1979. Its lineage can today be directly traced to Publicis Mojo, an Australian subsidiary of the French multinational advertising and communications company holding Publicis Groupe.Johnston, initially...

 in conjunction with American agency N.W. Ayer. The campaign was launched during the National Football Conference Championship Game in January 1984. Before the campaign, Australia was approximately number 78 on the “most desired” vacation destination list for Americans, but became number 7 three months after the launch, and soon became number 1 or 2 on Americans' “dream vacation” list, remaining in that position for most of the next two decades.

"Barbie" is Australian slang for barbecue

Barbecue

Barbecue or barbeque , used chiefly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia is a method and apparatus for cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of...

and the phrase "slip a shrimp on the barbie", for Americans, often evokes images of a fun social gathering under the sun. Australians, however, invariably use the word prawn

Prawn

Prawns are decapod crustaceans of the sub-order Dendrobranchiata. There are 540 extant species, in seven families, and a fossil record extending back to the Devonian...

rather than shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

. Because the commercial was commissioned for broadcast in the United States, the change was made to limit audience confusion.

See also

• So where the bloody hell are you?
  So where the bloody hell are you?
  So where the bloody hell are you? is a A$180 million advertising campaign launched in 2006 by Tourism Australia created by the Sydney office of the London advertising agency M&C Saatchi....
  
  
• Tourism in Australia
  Tourism in Australia
  Tourism is an important industry for the Australian economy. In the financial year 2009/10, the tourism industry represented 2.6% of Australia's GDP at a value of approximately A$34 billion to the national economy. Domestic tourism is a significant part of the tourism industry, and was...
  
  
• The Shrimp on the Barbie (1990)
  The Shrimp on the Barbie
  The Shrimp on the Barbie is a 1990 comedy film directed by Michael Gottlieb and starring Cheech Marin. In Australia this movie was released as The Boyfriend From Hell...
  
   - a romantic comedy starring Cheech Marin
  Cheech Marin
  Richard Anthony "Cheech" Marin is an American comedian, actor and writer who gained recognition as part of the comedy act Cheech & Chong during the 1970s and early 1980s, and as Don Johnson's partner, Insp. Joe Dominguez on Nash Bridges...