Oz school in homosexual kookaburra rumpus

Gay Fun your life must be...

An Oz primary school head is taking a bit of stick after insisting that kiddies should not follow the exact letter of Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.

Garry Martin of Melbourne's Lepage Primary decided it would probably be better if nippers substituted the word "fun" for "gay" in the famous ditty, penned in 1934 by Marion Sinclair for a Girl Guides Jamboree.

According to the Beeb, Martin defended: "I knew if we sing 'Gay your life must be' the kids will roll around the floor in fits of laughter. I wasn't trying to insult gay people."

He later added: "Seventy years ago when the song was written gay meant you are happy. Nowadays we know it's got all sorts of different meanings. I just suggested to kids, 'Nowadays that can mean different things, so let's just sing fun'.

"It wasn't any sort of school policy. It wasn't me being dictatorial or banning the word. All it was at the time was a behaviour management strategy... to stop them giggling."

Martin did manage to insult homosexualists, though, and a local rag report into the Down Under political correctness gone absolutely mad prompted protests from gay rights groups.

The aptly-named Crusader Hillis, from gay advocacy outfit The Also Foundation, said: "It sends a signal to people that just because a word has two meanings, that one of those meanings is unacceptable and that's really putting us backwards."

Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree is just one of Oz's many unofficial anthems. Another is Down Under by Men at Work, who allegedly took a bite of kookaburra on their way to Lucky Country unofficial anthem musical immortality. ®