OZ Is Short For Australia?

And why?
Due to the way the country is sometimes pronounced?
Or is there more?...

I have discovered from reading up on many of today's hidden and shameful histories that they actually nicknamed the country OZ because of the droves upon droves of unruly Munchkins shipped there in the mid 1940s and later Ooompa Loompas in the early 1970's. Both were due to Hollywood labor strikes for incredibly poor wages and having completely no access to the best and most thrilling rides at carnivals and fairs.


*The following has been quoted from the Australian weekly publication "The Boomerang Beacon"

"At this time Australia was still struggling with its own convict and strife oriented background, so they quietly, without public knowledge, set up the Lollipop Kids Penal Colony on the very rocks of the Great Barrier Reef. It was later renamed The Brick Road Brats & Wonka Riff-Raff Refuge to include the rising number of Ooompas, who were being constantly looked down upon by the Good Witches favorites and were jeeringly called The Chocolate Charlie Castoffs. They mostly ignored this moniker and calmly referred back to them as 'Those fuckin' Munchkins.'

To this day if you dive, attempt to swim or boat past the area you can still hear the eerie ghostly words of the distraught dying munchkins 'Follow us to the yellow brick road...follow us to the yellow brick road...dippity-doo…'

At last count over 97 boats and jet skis have crashed into those reefs with zero survivors. All following the tiny squeaky voiced siren song of an over the rainbow candy filled paradise.
Those lost souls went looking for magic and an everlasting gobstopper and found only a mundane everlasting death.”


Well, no matter what, OZ short for Australia makes way more sense than lb. being short for pound.
Of course that's just one of the wacky fun ways of working with the empirical system.