Here’s another story about clash of cultures.

In the late eighties I worked on the newfangled Macintosh computer in a print workshop in Annandale. It was just off Parramatta Road where six lanes of deafening madness joined Sydney with the western suburbs.

We had a great silk-screen printing workshop where artists from all parts of Australia could come and work along side the regulars. Osmond and Neville were two Aboriginal teenage boys from Bathurst Island, north of Darwin, who had come down south to make some artwork and see it printed.

First time in the big smoke for these two boys it was and we were keeping an eye on them. Osmond went off cruisin’ on Parramatta Road one lunchtime but came racing back breathless and highly agitated.

“I was in the clothes shop looking at what they had and then the man came from out the back,” gasped Osmond as we all gathered around. “He told me to piss off and chased me down the street.”

Well, you might imagine the tiz that developed. Here we were making posters about tolerance and justice for all and right on our back doorstep is blatant racism! Osmond was young, tall and black and there was no way we were going to let the good burghers of Annandale treat our friend this way.

A posse headed off to right the wrong with Osmond tagging along to point out the offending establishment. When we arrived, what did we find? A drycleaners of course. A type of business completely foreign to a visitor from a small island.

Osmond had been shuffling through the clothes waiting to be collected when he was interrupted by the equally startled shop owner. So, after a bit of a laugh all round, it was another case of all’s well that ends well.

But I’m not at all sure that the current ‘shock and awe’ assault in the Northern Territory will end well.

In fact, our whole ‘lucky country’ shebang may well go belly-up if good people of courage and conviction don’t speak up soon. It sure is depressing to see the Federal Opposition sitting on its hands, desperate not to rock the boat, as it waits for its turn in government.

Is there anyone left in public office in Australia who doesn’t believe we’re all a mob of mindless morons, glued to the box or the latest gizmo and obsessed with money over all other considerations?

Yes, yes, I know; my call has been placed in a queue and will be answered by the next available operator.

As a postscript, what about this for an idea? Palerang Council, what with its legal fees and infrastructure costs and all, is more or less skint. I read in this paper recently that the cost of a roundabout at the supermarket corner could be $200,000 or so.

Why don’t we have a Saturday get-together and knock it up ourselves? A few signs and a big concrete circle couldn’t be that hard, could it? It would mean $100 off the rates for 2000 people.

It would, of course, have to be a Georgian roundabout with a nice statue right in the middle, perhaps of one of our venerable local councillors. He could be holding a clipboard of DAs and looking wistfully into the distance.

The plaque could read, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free – and bung ’em on that hillside over there”.