The Coast is fading like a flower

So it turns out last night that while I was innocently sleeping in my comfy comfy bed, a man was rampaging around Kingston at 2 in the morning in a souped up doof doof mobile (no doubt blasting Noiseworks) terrorising innocent BP workers with a replica pistol and getting involved in a hilarious car chase with pratfalls a-go-go. This is obviously significant because the angry rabble rousing residents now have another reason to ark up about the bottle shop plans, but also because we never have any crime in Kingston - sure, there's some mild prostitution from the girls in the swing park, and you can't put up a phone box bar it get smashed by a bunch of naughty kids but whenever I've got a taxi home, there's never been anyone out on the streets (just in the swing parks) at all, hence Kingstons reputation as a nice retirement village. I think if Kingston is going to start with crime, for instance if someone goes down and cuts down the "Fork In The Road" (quite literally, a big fork - what an attraction) it could be a fantastic way for me to start my career in community groups, petitioning against naughty kids. I thought this was really interesting, because I'm spent most of my years here thinking that one day I'd be standing up and demanding that Kingston got a night club - I spent one Boxing Day sitting on the beach with a carry out of West Coast Coolers with my cousins (the one I don't like, and my adopted Asian cousin, who basically said once without irony the trouble with Melbourne is it's full of Asians) because everything was closed by 4pm. We figured at that point, Kingston could really do with a nightclub - it's not fair to deny the home town the chance to be punched in the head by an angry Maori. The only night out I've had in Kingston was the one I wrote about before, at the RSL when the man and woman virtually got divorced on the spot - what I didn't mention was that we went to watch Richmond vs Collingwood at a fundraiser, and because the game was delayed, the big screen showed Burkes Backyard in HD Big Screen Dolby sound for an hour. Yes, I might not have been able to get a cheap drink or pick up anyone under 60, but I sure learned how to pot a petunia (if you don't grow petunias in a pot, it's the only flower I know, and as you'll see, mentioning flowers is a good segue)...

Yesterday I was so futuristically talking to a friend of mine about back home (I realise that could mean a few places for me, but in this case, it's the North West coast). Apparently, according to the Advocate, the local newspaper taking a rare break from insightful woman knits socks in football colours front cover they specialise in, I found out that instances of the STD chlamydia on the North West Coast have risen 300 percent in the last 5ive years. Obviously, this is a massive concern, if it's not overblown reporting like when the Mercury tells us to lock ourselves in the basement to avoid Asian gangs. I'm frankly stunned that the awareness campaign on the coast failed - a few years ago they basically plastered the streets with leaflets and stickers that said, quote, "chlamydia - it's not a flower" (under which someone put the graffiti "but it grows in a dark place"). I'm staggered that this campaign didn't work, especially at the target group of young North West Coasters who's main word is that word that rhymes with "runt" - incidentally, when I grew up on the Coast, our main awareness campaign revolved around Wally The Wombat (who isn't a flower), a rotund fire safety expert mascot who's stickers were highly sought after. Every year, along with the phone book and the footy season, a new dawn was signified by a new message from Wally, usually about fire, until the obtuse reference to clearing your attic in 1985 that preceded his demise. One year, someone told me once that at the Penguin football oval, someone had a Wally Wombat costume made and was mobbed by kids who for once didn't kick a mascot in the groin, and were paying rapt attention until Wally asked this ginger kid "Hey! Are you fire safe!" and the kid said "Nup! I nerfuckin burn shit!" - at which point, the kids probably kicked Wally in the groin. Yes...kids...other kids...certainly not me....whistles idly...

Anyway, the Coast seems to be in a little bit of trouble with the chlamydia spread referred to in in no way sensationalist terms in the Advocate as "WORSE THAN THE PLAGUE!" - probably. Not helping this plague is the fact that apparently the pubs up there (nice use of the word apparently) continue to serve beer well past the point at which a bouncer at Syrup would smash you in the head and throw you in the street, and nothing says bam-chikka-bow-wow like too much alcohol. A Burnie Dockers football official, he was stripped by his team, and vomited on a pool table, and still was allowed to keep drinking. He's not too happy about this, so the Advocate says, and he blames the pub for allowing him to keep drinking, naked, until he "almost died", spending 23 hours on life support,  to which I say...almost? What a lightweight! Boy in my day you were still plied with beer until Laurie from Laurie's pub called the coroner! Some of the drinking sessions of legendary cricketer/fat bloke Danny Buckingham would make your liver rot, and this bloke is whinging about almost dying? I don't have the stomach for a big chlamydia inducing drinking session anymore - my stomach aches after a few beers now, which is amazingly girly, but I am an old man. I've never almost died, but I did pass out on a nightclub step in London, and work up with an 8 foot Nigerian looking at me going "You want taxi?" - I thought he wasn't referring to the best work of Tony Danza, so I thought sure why not - which given my incredible fear of being stabbed to death, probably isn't the smartest thing, jumping into a taxi from a solicitous Nigerian stranger, but luckily, he was a taxi driver and not a crazy murderer. I for whatever reason have never had a massive drinking session on the NW Coast, but I do know that there are certain rules - don't beat the locals at pool, only play the Gambler and Khe Sanh on the jukebox, wait behind any locals to get served, even if they queue up for 10 minutes less than you, and most importantly, if you are in Penguin, don't go and pee on the local landmark, the Big Penguin. Someone told me once this bloke was having a cheeky pee on it at 2 in the morning, and he was caught and they tied him to a tree and left him there, sans his pants, until morning when some startled church goers got an early morning shock. I'm sure he learned his lesson...

So if the North West Coast is plagued with drinking problems and chlamydia - well, it's not all that different to when I lived there, although I am disgusted that men are winning the Queens Quest competition (what manner of evil is that!) but obviously, if I did move back there as a concerned citizen, to show some local pride, I'd have to move up there with a positive attitude and talk up the North West Coast. I'd be quite happy to don the Wally The Wombat costume if it helped and turn my focus away from fire safety to chlamydia prevention and warning about the perils of drinking. I don't really remember getting too many visits from local groups when I was at school, we got the odd visit from inspirational speakers telling us to stick in at school and work hard (I must have been looking out the window) and someone came in to teach us breakdancing once (I was doing the Running Man much to their disgust) but we didn't get many people telling us about local pride and events and things about our community. The best guest speaker we had at school was...well, me, so I was told. It wasn't so much a guest speech, I just talked this one time reluctantly for as little time as possible about my job at the ABC, and got some big laughs for the story about the broken tap. I don't know, but I suspect it was because if they encouraged me to talk for longer, they wouldn't have to go back to class, but it was the biggest laughs I got outside of my own Dad laughing at me when I had my tracksuit on back to front. It was probably an OK little talk, a bit of a snapshot about what you could achieve in Burnie with a bit of hard work - brought a tear to a glass eye. At least, in comparison the girl after me, quite a serious but flighty girl who told me once about angels and fairies got up and obviously threw her prepared notes away to try and crack some gags. She started with a gem of a story about working with a girl called Joelene..."we all sung at her!" she exclaimed to a compete murmur of indifference (it's all in the delivery). "The Dolly Parton song!" she said, tapping the mic impatiently. She then started singing the song, in a terrible off key warble, before wandering off in disgust, muttering something about "should have stuck to the Janice Ian material"...

So, stay safe North West Coast kids, stay away from the plague, stop drinking when you need to, and listen to the Wombat...he'll at least ensure your loft is flame resistant...