Highway to Hell
Cartoon Pen & Watercolour 8″ x 12″
Copyright 2008 Jean Burman
My good friend Elinor Mac emailed me from Scotland this week. It’s always such a treat to open my inbox to find her there. She always has something entertaining to tell me… or to forward… and the other day was no exception!
After reading her email… a quick google search confirmed the terrible truth.
According to a report in The Scotsman… police caught and charged a man with drink driving whilst six times over the legal limit at the wheel of his motorised wheelchair… (the fact that he was also asleep at the lights in the turning lane on a busy four lane highway probably added to their ire and brought the essential element of “circus” to the news story!)
Where? A little red faced I confess this happened in downtown Cairns. My town. Half way around the world from Tignabraich Scotland. In fact… if you were to fly for 24 hours in a straight line from pretty much anywhere on the planet you would eventually get… well… here.
Newsworthy yes… and indeed the incident did make front page news here too. But what surprised me the most was that the Scottish newspaper was not the only one onto it. India news… Hinduonline… Congo news… Reuters… even the NYTimes and the Huffington Post all got a hold of this one. And in a matter of earthshattering minutes too. Breaking news of the weirdest kind (apparently) travels fast. I gave up counting at page 9 on Google for the news sources carrying this story!
Why there hasn’t been such a commotion online or off since that bloke up in the Top End was bitten on his Rear End by a taipan… as he crouched for a comfort stop by the side of an outback road in the Northern Territory. Front page world news for over a week… but that was more than 3 weeks ago!
Amazing how quirky news travels fast… but why the fascination with such things when there is so much other “serious” stuff going on out there? But I guess that’s the point isn’t it? Where on earth would we be without a good laugh… especially when we get the chance to laugh at ourselves! ( ~grin~)
I have no idea what the rest of the world must think of this place where we 20 million odd Aussies live (odd being the operative word here ~still grinning~) This vast brown land all green around the edges just gets more entertaining by the minute!
Kangaroos bounding around our streets (oh yeah right)… crocodiles on the beaches (uhuh?)… snakes in places you could never imagine (well okay maybe)… should all make for one of the most exciting tourist destinations on the planet. So “where the bloody hell are they?” (to caption the late great ill-fated tourism ad campaign that crashed and burned)
Visitor numbers are down…. and can you blame them with all this crazy stuff going on? I mean… “why the bloody hell would they?” *wink*
But no… it’s not the front page news of reckless runaway motorised wheelchairs or the belligerence of our (oooo scarey) wildlife that has tourists running scared.
Nope. It’s all that rather stupid trivial stuff on page 3 that’s got them all stumped (and staying home). Incidentals… like the burgeoning cost of fuel… the world economic crisis… political social and religious unrest across the planet… terrorism… war in the middle east…and the threat of climate change… jihad and global catastrophe.
Tsshhh… details details…
Oh come on over… she’ll be right mate! (((chuckles)))
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