Follow the flame
I too have had an episode with the Olympic torch. Like so many of my land-based colleagues I have stood and watched the carbon based life form pass into view. That it very soon passed out of eyeshot is perhaps neither here nor there. At least I can say I've seen it.
All things being equal I should hereon be able to tell the tale of the day I stood outside the offices of D.W. Grout Plumber and Drainer and saw with my very own eyes the Olympic flame.
I need to tell you all that it looked like any other flame. While I only caught a glimpse, the luminescence reminded me of the left back gas jet on my own kitchen combustible. Mind you, if my own flame were to up and leave for an all expenses paid sojourn around Australia I would be most put out. I like to think that at my domicile the home fires keep burning ... at home.
I guess that if the Olympic flame were to drop in some time I'd be the first to snap up the opportunity to toast a couple of crumpets or boil the billy. In this day and age of economic rationalism, even a passing torch needs to pay its own way. Methane doesn't grow on trees you know! If I were to take the family sedan along the same route this little spark has travelled, at the current price per litre I'd very soon go bankrupt.
When money's tight you gotta ask these questions. At the end of the day someone has to pay the gas bill.
I also think that the route the flame followed, crisscrossing the nation, perhaps didn't reflect the ethos we try so hard to project. Opportunities went begging while the whole world was watching.
For instance, why didn't the torch go via the migrant detention centres such as Port Hedland or Woomera? That would have put the wind up 'em.
We missed a golden opportunity to make a point about how one should go about coming to Australia if one had a mind to relocate here. A few wogs ferrying the flame up and down the exercise yard at Woomera would have been just the thing to go out on CNN.
The trouble is that they're not using their loaf in Canberra. Where's the imagination? The panache? It's about time we put this burning thing to work.
Rather than being shepherded hither and yon we could have got it to defrost a chicken or burned off the undergrowth it preparation for the summer bushfire season. Like the unemployed, it needs to do something worthwhile — earn its keep. It even gets a prime seat at the Olympic Games but doesn't pay a thing!
That's not what Australia is about! Not nowadays.
I tell you, the torch isn't all it's cracked up to be. Trust me. I've seen it.
BY DAVE RILEY
<http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dhell>