Sydney Harbor Iceberg
Dick Smith was well known throughout Sydney in the 1970s not only as a multimillionaire businessman but also as a local adventurer. He had this crazy idea that few people believed that he could actually pull off. He said that he planned to tow an iceberg all the way from Antarctica to Sydney. Smith touted it as a brilliant business idea. He would moor the iceberg near the Sydney Opera House and then he would carve the iceberg into little cubes and sell them for the bargain price of just ten cents each. He claimed that these cubes that traveled through the seas all the way from Antarctica were guaranteed to improve the flavor of any drink. He had even come up with a brilliant name for them…Dicksicles.
Some truly believed that Dick Smith would pull it off, others had their doubts. But on April 1, 1978, sure enough there was a large iceberg floating in Sydney Harbor. Local residents began phoning in to radio stations and newspapers, they had to know what it was they that they were seeing. Ferry skippers who traveled the Harbor dubbed the floating iceberg Dickenberg 1.
Boats who came close enough to the iceberg were given free cubes. Everyone waited eagerly for the large iceberg to dock…until it started to rain. The rain revealed that the “iceberg” was little more than plastic sheets covered in firefighting foam and shaving cream.
The whole prank was based off the genuine idea of Dick Smith to bring an iceberg to Australia. When faced with the impossibility of the task, one of his staff members suggested faking the iceberg for April Fool’s Day. So that is what they did, in the wee hours of April 1, Dick Smith and his team worked to transform a simple barge into a floating iceberg. The whole stunt cost him about $1,450 which Dick Smith admitted was very cheap for the amount of publicity he got from it.