ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Down by the banks of the French Quarter’s largest artificial lake, local bankers congregate at a popular licenced premise to socialise, talk about money, laugh at by-the-hour workers pouring money into cryptocurrency and above all, sigh in relief that the Joyce saga has relegated the Royal Commission into banking back to page seven.
They called it ‘The Rowing Shed’ well before it was officially named that.
Prior to Mike Watson-White buying the waterside pub, it was called Miguel’s Bar And Grill – that name never stuck.
“We [a consortium of ex-rugby union players turned ‘agribusiness analysts’] renamed it The Rowing Shed because it’s next door to the Whooton School’s boat shed and a lot of the finance workers in town went to that school,” said Watson-White.
“It’s always been a popular spot for the upper-middle-class as well as though who were born into the plain old middle-class that aspire to one day be upper,”
“The old money doesn’t come down here, though. They drink at the Country Club. Anyway, the mood was kinda [sic] down for quite a while because of this Royal Commission into Banking business. But now that the Joyce saga has shifted the public interest away from it, everybody is happy again.”
One local finance worker who told our reporters that he’s ‘chuffed’ is Tom Robinson, a 28-year-old former state rugby player who got a job through his network established at The Whooton School.
However, he feels that the timing of the whole thing is a little funny.
“If you ask me,” he said, taking the top off his sixth pint yesterday afternoon in the Rowing Shed beer garden.
“This whole thing with Barnaby Joyce is a false flag. I reckon Malcolm and his mates from Goldman have cooked this whole thing up as a distraction. Mate, I’m telling you. We’ve pulled so much money out of the blue-chip banking sector and put it into mining this quarter,”
“We’re already up 25%. Fuck-ing cheer-ing! Mate, open your eyes and smell the cheese. Nothing is what it seems. This reality has been entirely manufactured for us and it’s ripe for the picking. Now that the newspapers don’t care about the Royal Commission, it’s back to normal for us.”
A long pause began at that full stop, followed by two more big sips.
“Oi, do you want some cocaine? I bought it with my Tron,” he said to our reporter.
More to come.
