Townsville manners
People in Townsville are friendly (as tourists seem to say of all Australians) and somewhat selfish (not the people I ‘know’, more the ‘other’ people if you know what I mean - this has been dealt with before) !
I come to this conclusion, not as a mere throw-away line, but through several months of thought on the matter, bought to a head by a string of recent events.
Allow me to elaborate…
People in Townsville love to tail-gate. There are so many incidents of people “going up the back” of others that it’s not funny.
So much so, that the tow-trucks wait on the main road leading away from the Army barracks and the uni! It’s like they’re guaranteed to see an accident (I’m not sure if that violates the Poisson distribution).
The selfishness of this tail-gaiting is reduced only slightly by the insurance rule that if you are hit from behind it’s their fault. Whatever… the point is that this is interesting for two reasons:
1) on the whole drivers in Townsville don’t “cut you up” on the road, so I’m not sure that they are too interested in ‘getting there first’; and
2) it creates serious problems in carparks!
On Sunday I was cruising the supermarket car park for a spot. I spotted a guy leaving, stopped and put on my left indicator. However, because the girl behind me was tail-gaiting me she couldn’t go around me. I then put my car in reverse gear (without moving) to suggest to the girl that it might be a good idea to move back a bit before I rammed her Hyundai Excel with my fat Pathy-e-boos . When I turned around to reverse properly, I was met by the TWO middle fingers of her boyfriend in the passenger seat. “Fuck you”, I thought and returned the favour out the window, before reversing speedily at her car.
We then went inside for display of the innate selfishness of Townsvillians. As Zoe was pulling a trolley out of the stack of trolleys another chick walked up behind us. Zoe pulled out the first trolley and pushed it towards her saying, “Here you go”.
The girl was literally stunned that someone else might actually do something for her! She stood there like a bump on a log with her mouth open, as though she would never think of doing something so outrageously nice for someone else. The whole world’s going to the dogs!
Speaking of dogs, if you intend on voting for Howard at the next election, piss off and get some alternative information:
1. John Howard Lies.
2. Sydney IndyMedia.
3. The Greens
4. Sorry day
5. Mirrar people (Jabiluka Uranium Mine Traditional Owners).
Or check out his very funny diary instead!
Actually, that’s unfair… dogs are rather nice.
