ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Local man Tom Hastings has outdone himself this Valentine’s Day, arriving home from the gym this morning with a dozen perfectly preserved red roses, purchased last-minute from the Ampol on Greens Road.
“Happy Valentine’s, babe,” he said as he presented the slightly damp bouquet, still wrapped in the same plastic sleeve it had arrived in from Nairobi earlier this week.
Despite spending up big on the $29.99 servo special, Hastings was, by his own admission, largely unaware that his grand romantic gesture was the result of a logistical operation larger than most humanitarian aid efforts.
Unbeknownst to many, the majority of Australia’s Valentine’s Day roses are cultivated in high-altitude greenhouses in Kenya, harvested by underpaid workers, snap-frozen, and placed in a cargo hold alongside imported seafood and lithium-ion batteries, before being trucked from an international tarmac to petrol stations across the nation.
“These flowers have traveled further than most Australians,” said local florist Sharon Malone.
“It’s actually mind-blowing how much jet fuel is burned just so blokes can pretend they thought about today more than three hours ago.”
Experts say this particular shipment of flowers left Kenya over a week ago, racking up an environmental cost equivalent to a round-the-world flight, before being hastily unloaded at Brisbane Airport and distributed via wholesalers to retail outlets such as Woolworths, Coles, and the Betoota Heights Ampol.
Despite the ecological catastrophe in his hands, Hastings remained proud of his efforts.
“They didn’t have any cards,” he said.
“Bit of a bummer. But it’s the thought that counts, yeah?”
The recipient of the roses, his partner of six years, nodded politely before placing the bouquet next to last year’s Valentine’s teddy bear, still sitting on the shelf.
She got him nothing.
More to come.
