Yeah We Got Culture

The Commercial Hotel ("The Commie") is the town lounge room; I've joined in the local habit of popping down for a drink or two after dinner to catch up on gossip & news and to try and kidnap any spare workers to help with the house. But it's not all trade talk & swearing!

I was introduced to Scooter, the fencing guy. "Oi yer name's a whatsit, oxymoron, yer know same backwards as forwards."  A pause as blokes beerily wonder if he's calling me a moron. Then Scott pipes up. "Nah, yer mean a palindrome mate. Oxymoron's when yer got two words that conflict in their meaning in an ironic way."  Very long pause. Truckie:  "Oh! Yer mean, like...'dad'!"  "Yer mate."  "So what the fuck's an ox, oxley, what yer said moron thing?"  Me:  "Like if you say 'military intelligence' or 'organised chaos'."  "Eh?" We ended up in hysterics with Scott & I googling palindromes on our iphones and now "oxymoron" is a running joke on Scooter whenever he turns up at the pub.

In addition to these highlights of culture at the pub we also had the kids' Christmas concert, which was gut bustingly funny. There are only about 100 kids at the school, ranging from kindy to Year 12 , and ten teachers. Most of the kids are aboriginal and it was good to see how many of the girls got awards & seem to be on the road to getting out of here with some career goals. The concert, which I would describe as a noisy shambles, was held at the shire hall; thankfully it's right next to the pub because we all needed a stiff drink after three hours of Wombat Wobble and whatever it was the older kids were enthusiastically playing out of tune with their reggae ensemble. Because some of the class groups only have three or four kids, parents and random volunteers from the audience hopped up on stage to help with performances, with the teachers holding up cue cards for the lyrics. The teachers were exhausted from doing all the dance steps at the front of the stage to help the kids, while half the kids stood there smiling, waving, occasionally remembering to do some of the steps, and one or two of the little ones just wandering off with their wombat heads falling over their eyes.