grumpy interlude

On our walk through the city we wandered past an opal store that sells said rocks to tourists. Tourists love that shit, apparently, and Australia is famous for opals, apparently. Guess that's why "The Opals" is the nickname of the netball team. Anyway, check out the picture on the side of the store.

At first I saw the contrasting colours and the lovely blue sky. I stopped and stared. Then I saw what an absolute fucking mess had been made of the landscape. A big truck in the background, general construction junk to the front and piles of rubble, that was once part of Australia, in the middle. Lovely. Kinda equivalent to a diamond store having a picture of dead African conflict victims out front, or as Ruth pointed out, somewhat akin to housing developments named after what was there before the whole lot was concreted, like 'The Cherry Orchard." So where is the cherry orchard? Oh, we had to bulldoze it to put these nasty, cheap, homogeneous homes here.