In Men At Work’s “Land Down Under,” the strange lady made the narrator feel nervous.
The song follows an unusual travel encounter: the narrator meets a strange woman on what sounds like a hippie journey, and she invites him in for breakfast. Her mysterious behavior makes him uneasy before she asks whether he comes from a land down under.
“Down Under” was written by Men At Work members Colin Hay and Ron Strykert and became one of the defining Australian pop-rock songs of the early 1980s. It appeared on the band’s 1981 album Business as Usual and reached number one in several countries.
Listeners sometimes remember the later vegemite-sandwich scene more vividly than the opening encounter. The song’s lyrics also use Australian slang, including “combie” for Volkswagen Kombi and “chunder” for vomit, helping create its deliberately eccentric portrait of Australian identity.