Who remembers Disneyland? Every week we sat in front of the black and white television, eagerly waiting to see which land Tinkerbell would zap into our lounge room with a flourish of her star-scattering wand. Frontierland, Tomorrowland, Adventureland and the best of all ... Fantasyland. The cartoons were the best.

But tonight we’re starting with Adventureland – a story from Far Western Queensland.

In 1994 when our little family had almost reached the Northern Territory for the first time by road, the trusty old Valiant let it be known that Camooweal would do nicely as a rest stop for the night.

The missus, the baby and I ventured tentatively into the only hotel to enquire about accommodation. At the bar was a young bloke who fixed me with the cheerfully malevolent stare that seems to go with a few litres of beer and a big hat. His target radar was warning, “Useless cityslickers, beep beep beep”. He got straight to the pint, sorry I meant point.

“Done a nard daze work fer yer cunnry ave yer mate?”, he asked with a beery leer. Gulp, what’s a bloke to say. “We’re ... er ... just on holidays,” was the best I could manage.

Of course it all turned out OK when after we’d had a drink or two, one of the other big-hatted drinkers came over and reassured us. “Don’t worry about him, he’s just a useless effin wanker. He wouldn’t work in an iron lung”.

And now it’s off to Frontierland. This is the story of an avaricious lumber company wanting to clear a vast amount of native forest, the lungs of the very planet that is our only home, so it can turn the trees into cardboard packaging products. See the politicians of all colours dive for cover in a shameful display of cowardice. Wild figures are tossed about with gay abandon. The logging company says it’s losing a million dollars a day not chipping irreplaceable forest on a project not even approved yet ... sorry, how’s that?

Forwards to Tomorrowland – the ‘promise of things to come’.

A government not far from here, lucky to have faced a useless Opposition, was recently re-elected and is now planning to sell our public assets for a once-only capital gain. Power stations, public transport and State forests are all up for grabs.

Hey, wait a minute.

All this belongs to you and me. It’s our legacy from the workers and taxpayers of the past. How can they sell it off to private equity raiders, from goodness knows where, who eye off our public services as return on investment opportunities and our public assets as tradable commodities?

So that just leaves Fantasyland – the 2007 Federal election campaign. Cartoon characters are not nearly so much fun when you have to vote for them. What a fantasy our democracy has become when we must choose between Wily Winston Mouse and Kevin Quickly Duck.

Come back Tinkerbell. Wave your wand once more and make another place called ‘Possibleland’. Show us how it could be if we told all the drongos to rack off and only gave our support to people who can demonstrate courage, conviction and common bloody sense.