BULLSH

$5.40 – $15.00

You can take five locals virtually locked out of their Outback pub by a bunch of city-slickers up from Sydney who, deep into the grog, start offering money for the best local yarn. You could take it that these five, gathered around Pop, are used to being virtually locked out of their pub even in the best of times, and have their own jealously-guarded places out on the back porch. So you might wonder why they have their backs up this day.

The answer to all their resentment is not so much being kept out from their local by the up-‘emselves city-ites, but is mainly because what tomorrow is going to bring is more than a man can bear… Tomorrow, the bulldozer is coming to tear down their beloved drinking-hole. And it’s not the extra half-a-block walk to the next pub as you might think; it’s the principle of the bloody cow of a thing… one of their own mates is going to be driving the bulldozer! If that’s not total sacrilege, then it’s still enough to drive a man to drink that he can’t afford until next payday.

And if that wasn’t enough to get on a bloke’s goat, the cold beer’s running out on this last of all days to end days because of the great gutzing of the city slickers inside. How about that for coming the ruination of the environment? To come the raw prawn worse, what with all the city-slicker money being bandied about, Shirl the barmaid is turning her own tap off for the locals and turning it on for the Sydneysiders. Even the sacred bottle stash for tomorrow’s breakfast isn’t sacrosanct from their own selves’ thieving hands. How desperate can a human being get?

APT