I travel tens of thousands of kilometres every year from one end of the country to the other working on stories for all you good people to read and see. I know, I know, it’s a tough job, your sympathy is noted and appreciated. The places I go are amazing, the things I see are every Australian’s dream but there can be pain between these moments of gold.
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The pain mostly comes in the form of displays of bureaucracy brought to life by some poor soul who has been convinced that he is there to save our lives and believes he does save them every day. A modern-day guardian angel/ superhero who no longer needs a cape to save our lives, just a high vis vest and a stop/go sign.
Now I know you think I’m being a little hard on old mate right now but bear with me and I’ll let him off the hook in a minute. He is doing a great job and a very important one but there’s one act that he carries out in his duties that really gets on my goat.
Picture this, I’m sure we’ve all been in this position where a piece of useless information is passed on to us by ‘stop and go man’. You’re at the front of the line of stopped traffic, in front of you is stop and go man, behind him one entire lane of the highway excavated a few feet deep so the whole lane can be replaced from the base up. The only thing between you and sure death is stop and go man single-handedly holding back hundreds of tons of car and truck with his sign that says stop. Up to this point stop and go man has done a magnificent job, he’s alerted me to the danger ahead, stopped me a safe distance from the excavation and held me there safely until the oncoming traffic has cleared the roadworks so he can let me get on my way and this, this is where he blows me away sometimes.
The excavated lane is not only clearly a bloody big hole but it’s also marked with everything from bunting to witches’ hats to flashing lights to concrete barriers and I’ve clearly seen the oncoming traffic drive safely down the lane that’s not excavated but still stop and go man sees the need to gaze into my eyes with a look of authority and point me to the lane that’s not dug out like a future backyard pool.
They refer to it as the nanny state when legislation is there to wrap us in cotton wool but it seriously eats at me then legislation forces a fellow Aussie to treat us like idiots. So my tip of the day for you all is, let’s all stop driving into big holes full of road workers and save stop and go man one job for the day. Be careful, apparently it’s dangerous out there.
