For our anniversary, I gave the Complimentary Spouse a scuffed, well-worn postcard from one of our favorite places in Sydney: the Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument.
Some interesting facts about the Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument:
- The earliest known mention dates back to 1995.
- Britt and I have never seen it in person.
- It doesn’t exist.
I probably should’ve led with that last one.
Our Hallowed Mound
A long-lasting marriage takes love, work, and commitment. It also takes inside jokes. Lots and lots of inside jokes.
The Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument is one of our oldest inside jokes. It makes sense, given Britt’s love of all things Australian and my love of the Golden Age of The Simpsons. It comes from a throw-away line in “Bart vs. Australia,” a perfectly cromulent episode from 1995.
The monument is never mentioned again in the 672 epsidodes since “Bart vs. Australia.”
Never mentioned in The Simpsons, that is. Mentioned more times than we can count by Britt and me.1
Gift of the Gag
Naturally, the traditional gift for a seventeenth anniversary is a fake postcard based on a long-running inside joke. You may not have known this because it’s something I just made up.
As my artistic skills are limited,2 I used ChatGPT to create the faux vintage postcard image.3
I had the postcard printed on heavy linen paper and distressed it by hand with sandpaper and tea, plus some crumpling and a few folds. The finished result is the framed postcard in the photo above.
I also used ChatGPT to create a pre-distressed fallback image in case the sandpaper-and-tea approach didn’t work. I didn’t need it, but it looks pretty cool.
But … What If?
Britt and I have joked about the Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument so much that, two years ago, he wondered if it might actually exist. He was sitting in a cafe in Manly Beach and wondering what he should do that afternoon.
“I suddenly realized that after all the jokes, I never really considered if the Simpsons were making fun of a real place,” he said. “Or maybe someone saw the episode and created one for fun.”
He googled “Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument” and found a few monuments with Woolloomooloo in the name—but, alas, none made of dirt. Oh well. He went to the New South Wales Teachers Federation building that afternoon because Icehouse’s “Electric Blue” video was filmed on the roof.4
A Meaningless Place That Means the World to Us
Can a fake pile of dirt based on a Simpsons reference be a foundation for a strong marriage? Yes, indeedly-do.
Inside jokes, like ours about the Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument, aren’t just about the laughs. Marriage experts like psychologist John Gottman say a shared sense of humor is a hallmark of a lasting relationship.
The Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument may not exist in the real world, but it’s part of the little world Britt and I have created for ourselves—one with its own language and landmarks.
And memes!
Whew. I’m glad I remembered the memes — what kind of schmuck ends a blog post about dirt monuments on that ponderous note!
Here are some of the memes I sent Britt the last time he was in Sydney. Enjoy.
Putting the Woolloomooloo Dirt Monument on the Map
Here’s a larger version of the map at the top of this blog post.
[Update: I’ve just realized I put a huge pile of dirt directly across from 10 Downing Street!]
Footnotes
- On our first trip together to Australia, I kept trying to slip the dirt monument into our itinerary. “Maybe we can go there after lunch?” “Which metro stop is closest?” “Can you see it from the Harbour Bridge?” ↩︎
- I can barely draw a stick figure. ↩︎
- I have mixed feelings about using AI to generate content and images (as opposed to reviewing or enhancing them), but this seemed like an acceptable use case. ↩︎
- Not because he’s an Icehouse fan, but because the views from the roof in the video were spectacular. I should point out that Britt didn’t actually go to the roof. He just saw the building from street level. ↩︎