CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A group of well-built young blokes in their twenties who are pounding through rounds of VCRS in the front bar of a discreet regional pub, suggests that there might be an army base nearby.
Or they could just be childhood mates and therefore allowed to make wildly inappropriate comments about each other’s ethnic backgrounds – and get away with it.
While their exotic choice of lolly water (VCR – Vodka, Coke, Raspberry) gives them an air of out-of-towner – they make up for it with their unflinching heckling of one another which is more suited to low country pubs like this one. Although their visibly close mateship suggests that it’s all love – the type of love either forged in the sand pit or the barracks.
While the excitable ‘back in the day’ yarns suggest they could just be civilians who grew up together in the diverse outer-metropolitan suburbs of the big smoke – the shortest odds point to them being army boys, given the aura they give off that suggests they can handle any physical confrontation they encounter.
Their G-Shock watches and respectable haircuts only add weight to the theory that these patrons might be servicemen. As well as their conservative but casual RM Williams boots and chino trousers,
The suitably regional attire is contrasted with the multiculturalism of this group, which is made up of an array of nashos and accents not historically associated with such rural dress codes.
With the Filipino mate going by the nickname ‘China’ and the two black mates referred to as ‘Ace-A’ and ‘Midnight’ – these young men have even managed to come up with a suitably offensive nickname for the white boy – ‘Semen’.
This kind of impregnable political incorrectness occurs right around the country in different patches of regional Australia.
Namely in West Wagga Wagga, South of Townsville, the eastern Suburbs of Darwin, and every pub on the New England highway 40km either side of Singleton.
However, one thing that is for certain is that it’s probably not a good idea for anyone else in the pub to direct any similarly casual racism towards this table – out of fear of being met with the understandable double standards that will result in extreme physical agony.
