Bonalbo is charging ahead. Our attractions are legion. We’ve got the Bronze Dog Statue; the Hoop Pine Avenue; the Hidden Mural; the Piddling Pete water feature, the Bonalbo Bird Walk; The Waxy Noggins Bonalbo Beach Houses; the pub where horses are welcome in the bar; a community hall which came within an ace of hosting Lola Montez, Felix Mendelssohn and harmonica ace Horrie Dargie, plus a caravan park known and revered by travellers for its charm (and legendary Dump Point).
But we’re not stopping there, oh no, no. Our Disaster Resilience Mosaic (with community seat) is set for a gala unveilment any day now. It’s a real work of art and well worth a look.
OK, it’s true the proposed Nissan Cedric Museum has run into a funding roadblock, but it’s just a minor bingle – easily solved with the injection of a couple of mill from somewhere or other. In a way, the delay is fortunate, because Dannielle De Andrea, legendary fifty per cent of the melodious Nissan Cedrics, is off around the world touring with guitarist Joe Bonamassa and won’t be able to get back to Australia to sing at the opening for some time.
Anyway, the big news is the Rationalist Precinct. The what? The Rationalist Precinct: a celebration of life free from superstition. The centrepiece will be a ginormous leaning ladder, linked by a pathway to a mammoth black cat and a stupendous broken mirror. The numbers 4 and 13 will feature profusely in the concrete pathway, and there will be plenty of cracks to allow visitors to not break the devil’s/the witch’s/your Momma’s back.
The idea is for visitors to walk under the leaning ladder, encounter all the other bad juju stuff and emerge unscathed. They can then write their names and the date in the Visitors Book so researchers can keep track and find out just how many of them have subsequently combusted spontaneously/been driven stark raving mad/broken up with their hot boyfriend/been consigned to the flames of Hell.
There will be a Blaspheming Well: a sort of aquatic Swear Jar. Punters can toss a coin into a fountain and really go to town with the hot damns, the Je**$ Freakin’ Chr*&$ts, the By the Buddha’s Bums and the Holy Smackin’ Pope’s pajamas. Actors will name the Scottish Play and say “Good luck”. Names will be recorded, and researchers will be able to track just how many end up basted with Spicy Sulfur Sauce in the Eternal Barbecue.
Now the Ladder itself will be stupendously huge. I’m hoping to hit up an Australian ladder manufacturer so it won’t cost Bonalbo a cent. I want the rungs way, way apart so the little kiddies don’t start climbing it and fall to their dooms. Safety first. Of course, it would soon become a Mecca for adult daredevils, who would come by the Kombi load to summit (“Top Rung”) it without oxygen. All sorts of records could be set: first ascent with a cat; first ascent carrying a capybara and a barista; first wedding; first thirty-metre-high club; first ascent carrying a ladder, or first ascent carrying a Nissan Cedric hubcap, etc.
I know what you’re thinking: “Thirty metre high aluminium ladder? Think of the lightning strikes!”
Look, you don’t hear Everest mountaineers going, “Boohoo, lightning strikes, I’m going home!” No way! It’s all part of the fun, like cerebral and pulmonary edema, frostbite or falling to your doom, tethered to seven other screaming climbers.
Have you seen Everest Base Camp? It’s one big toilet. That’s all it is. I swear half the climbers only make it to the summit because they’re driven there by the stench from below. It’s an eyesore, a nostril scourer and a blight on our planet. I mean, how many of those alpinists put “do my business in the world’s highest crapper” on their bucket list?
Wouldn’t it be way, way more sensible for all those adventurers to come here and do their thing on the Bonalbo ladder? Ok, we’d have to send regular dough to the Sherpas to make up for lost trade, but honestly, wouldn’t most of them prefer yak rodeoing and bitcoin mining anyway? Plus they’d get their sacred mountain back.
Climbers could acclimatise at Bonalbo Caravan Park. The Everest Crap Fiesta would be a thing of the past because we’ve already got the legendary Dump Point. You know it makes sense.
A lesson to us all.
Bullgoose.
and then