Minister Fer Roads

Minister fer Roads

_______________

I live in South Morang near Melbourne, Australia. What’s interesting about that is there isn't a Morang; no North Morang and no East or West Morang just South Morang and while I’m talking about whacky suburb names, how about this one: Just up the road from here there’s Whittlesea. True. Whittlesea. Nearest bit of coast is over an hour’s drive away. Can’t you feel sorry for the poor bugger who bought a boat and moved there?

So today I’m drivin’ me an’ Crabs down to Geelong for a job an’ I’m fumin’! “You wait! When I’m Minister fer Roads there’s gunna be some changes! I’m gunna stand fer parliament and get into government an’ I’m gunna get Minister fer Roads an’ then there’s gunna be some changes!”

Crabs turns the radio up cos he’s heard all this before. “Ya wanna know what I’m looking forward to?” he asks me.

“What?”

“Alzheimers!”

“Alzheimers? Old-timers?”

“Yep. Because then when you waffle on with that shit again it’ll be like hearing it fer the first time!” Crabs starts readin’ the paper. He reads us the quiz questions and we get 18 out of 36. Well, what do you expect? Half of ‘em are about things I don’t know. I know how Crabs got his name tho – an’ it’s not cos he used to keep them in his fish tank. That’s just what he tells You!

We’re on the freeway an’ I’m gunnin it at 45 in the 40 construction zone and I’m pissed cos nearly half the trip down to Geelong is nothing more than open-air storage for orange cones. What I reckon is: orange cones was ‘On Special’ and the roads minister bought up 10 years supply and then said “Oh shit, where can we keep them cos there’s no money left for a big shed. I know let’s put them all up and down the freeway cos then it’ll look like we’re doin’ sumpthin and nobody’s gunna pinch ‘em from there! Yeh!”

Crabs lives in Doreen. I swear to god it’s a place, not a fantasy. And we’ve had road works from here to Sunshine for the past 3 years. It’s 130ks to where we work in Geelong and 60k of ‘em are road works and 40k of those are just lines of cones to fuck with my brain. There’s orange bollards takin up perfectly good road space for no good reason other than it needs a sweep! Then there’s this big life-sized poster of a bloke with a hard hat and a fluorescent vest and he’s grinning and it says: ‘You can’t see me but don’t forget I’m here’. Bugger me! I reckon the photographer must have got his trainin’ with David Bloody Attenborough cos if there’s a rarer species than a construction worker on this freeway then it’s a Panda crossin’! Bollards! That’s what I reckon.

I’m just workin’ me position to slip between two trucks that are crowdin’ the lanes when this pink roller-skate slips between me and them. Have you seen them things? It’s a smart-car. I ask you: What is smart about drivin’ a crush-me-quick between two movin’ mountains with 36 wheels between them and each of their wheels are bigger than it? I have a goggle at the driver. It’s a chick with the biggest pair of boobs I’ve ever seen. The seatbelt hardly makes it across them mountains! Wow! It’s only the sound of me whackin’ a bollard with me fender that drags me back from shock overload. Whatthefuck! Crabs shoots me an edgy look an says, “Mate, did ya see the size of those airbags?” We both nod wisely and I pay more attention to the road.

After Werribee, the road clears up. I’ve worked out that the exact halfway point of the trip is the picture of the yawning hippo outside the Werribee Zoo. Yeh – don’t tell me this is a long borin’ trip. Waaaaaay ahead of you! I like this bit. The road is nice and straight and the council are gentlemen cos they’ve put the cameras on the bridges facin’ you so’s you’ve got plenty of time to slow down and all the other time you can cruise at 110. What’s really good is you don’t have to concentrate too hard. So my minds off & comin up with its favorite pastime: how to make money.

“Craaabs…”

“Yep.”

“Y’know we’re goin’ up to Queensland next month…”

“Yep.”

“I got an idea how to pay for the trip.”

“Yep?”

“You’ve got a Hi-Vis jacket with you, haven’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Me too. It’s in the back. Y’know they make you invisible?”

“No. What? They make youse stand out, you nuff-brain.”

“No. They make you invisible. See, when yer wearin them, nobody takes any notice of you. An’ that means that whatever you do, nobody notices. Cos when yer wearin’ a fluoro jacket, then yer supposed to be doin’ whatever it is yer doin’! Right?”

I don’t usually make speeches but Crabs isn’t too bright so you have to make allowances. He was still confused, so I laid out me plan. I spoke slowly. “On the way back, what we do is this: Put on the Fluoros. I’ll drive along real slow, you walk behind me and collect all these bloody fucky orange bollards. You put ‘em in the back of the ute. We do everyone a favour by opening up the extra lane and we collect ourselves a couple of hundred bollards. We’ll take ‘em up to Queensland with us, flog ‘em off cheap to some councils up there, you know, hardly used, as new, stuff like that – then we have some money and they have the bollards and we have an extra lane on the Freeway! Win! Win! Win!”

Tell you what, when I’m Minister fer Roads, there’s gunna be some changes!

Hon. Barry Dagman, MP.