Even the pot plants at the Holiday Inn were irradiated for our SAFETY!
Dear reader we begin, where we left off, our prisoners corralled inside the Holiday Inn, and then from the proverbial frying pan, flung into the midst of Australia’s first every quarantine based suburban subdivision, “Avalon -Land”. “Australia’s most hygienically cleansed address”. We’d become the face of a newer, cleaner, safer, Australian Dream. As the brochure said, “Read on if you have LASTING PPE protection…..
Mr Whu, inscrutable as ever. But HAPPY.
We were prawns on a barbecue of Lindsay’s making, with Mr Whu the cheerleader. In the background we knew that Jamie and Eddy lurked, to what evil end, we knew not. We had become famous, for all the wrong reasons. Our faces and the ‘Avalon-Land’ logo appeared on bus stops, tram stops and disused airport lounges. Our faces beamed on Sky News, Fox News and on the cover of associated media, Prison Monthly, Detention Centre Weekly, and the highly circulated, flagship from Transurban, “Tax- Free” , and “Highway- Man’. WE had become memes and synonymous with the jingle,
‘Welcome to Avalon-land, Avalon-land, Australia’s No 1# residential Address’
.It’s germ free, and certified antiseptic, and arguably (insert drumroll) the BEST!
Voted the worst jingle since, ‘the World of Saba” it had infected the psyche of an ENTIRE NATION.
Avalon Land community club rooms ” all 100% hygienically and antiseptically CLEAN!
It was a dreadful jingle, but it captured the hearts and minds, with the P.M, and the Test team doing a special ‘Onya Boys’ conga in his fashionable Aussie flag ppe face – mask.
Avalon-Land staff wear colour co-ordinated rubbish bags to ensure PUBLIC SAFETY!
Families had decided to call their kiddies either “Cecil” or ‘Quentin’. A little Sri Lankan family abandoned to rot on Christmas Island for being poor and dark- skinned had twins, and they were christened Ces and Quent. For evincing patriotism and being able to recite all of the Don’s batting statistics for the 1937-38 Cricket season, they were given a pardon by the Gauleiter of Brisbane, his excellency Sir Peter Dutton. Even the Australian idiom had changed, to ‘do a Quent and Ces, (abbreviated to ‘Quent-n-ces’), was short-hand for escaping a nasty situation to find oneself in less than a slightly nastier situation. We’d single-handedly captured the spirit of the Aussie Under-Dog.
Being famous you’d think would bring great personal benefits. But sadly, from our Nissen hut, ‘the worlds first prototype remote quarantine, suburban sub division module’, we were like two freaks. Kiddies and families buying off the plan units that promised “full and completely computerised hygienic and safe aerosol spraying toilets, “ The Fresh flush system” would stare at us, in our cell. We’ were encouraged to wave to the passers by, like circus Chimpanzees in our matching Holiday Inn Safari suits and pretend to enjoy watching Alan who was beamed nonstop to us on our wall sized telly. After all, Alan deserved credit for saving us and giving us such favourable coverage on Foxtel.
WE were prisoners, and feeling completely ‘Julian Assanged’, but were yet STILL ALIVE!! They clearly had one last trump card, and we knew, come hell or high water, we’d be used once again to ensure total and absolute control over all Australians, by the aforementioned.
Marketing GOLD! the little reffo family that made ‘Avalon-Land” a speculators PARADISE!
Just as we were settling into exciting back to back episodes of ‘Border Watch’, ‘Dole Bludger’, and ‘Refugee Crimes Un- Covered’, all excellent documentaries focusing on how the poor and indolent were getting away with BLUE MURDER, there was a knock on the door. Mr Whu put his pudgy wing- nut headed face , (Lindsays words, not ours) through the door; ‘Cmon boys someone to see you, and he’s really looking forward to helping you out of this, and ensure that you never break quarantine and put my government in suspicion ever again’..
‘What the!!”
We meekly followed.
There was a podium
MATES!
At the desk, surrounded by microphones, our so called associates, Jamie, Lindsay, Andrew, (formerly “Mr football”) and Mr Whu. In the middle sat Eddy. Eddy was beaming, he winked at us through the corner of his eye. He was wearing a black and white Collingwood footy jumper in which the black bits had been scrubbed out with Dettol, Napi- San and Pine ‘O’ Clean. It was off white and white, as Ces put it like the old black and white telly when the vertical shift blurred on World of Sport.
Eddy turned on the mike; “Here they are! The boys who’ve made good and saved us from this debacle’.
What debacle? Which debacle? And the plaintive cry from within, “Why Us’?
What will happen to our duo? Stay tuned for the next excruciating episode, “Dial L for Lumumba’, or “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to look, but Facebook?”