Hot plate or petrie dish.?

I don’t know if it’s a universal experience… but public parks in Qld usually have several gazebo type shade structures erected in them and nearby there will almost always be public BBQs nearby.  Sometime they’re wood BBQs which mean the men get to stand around feeling all manly in a ‘me light fire’ kinda way (lighting fires is somewhat of a novelty if you’re from Bris Vegas).  Sometimes they’re gas jobbies and they’ll be free or insert coins or what have you.

So on any given weekend, parks across the country have families milling about throwing around the cricket ball / frisbee / RC aeroplane / stomp rocket / piece of outdoor sporting equipment of choice while the ‘Mum’ type person readies the food until the ‘Dad’ type person comes in at the last minute to do the actual cooking/burning of the meat bit and returns caveman style to the waiting brood who are at this point trying to balance on the industrially strong yet uncomfortable out door furniture provided and are about ready to eat their paper/plastic plates because the facilities provided are almost always provoke unreliable timeframes.

My problem with this familiar little facade of familial contentment???

Well…. I just don’t want to have anything to do with the whole gig.  It all stems from an old friend who used to work for the council –  JT.  I knew JT from my old cadet days and when we all left school he went into landscaping for a while before taking on a role with the local council which is the governing body responsible for maintaining all those parks and aforementioned BBQs.  Anyway me and JT used to hang out on Friday nights for tequila and beer chasers down at the local Tavern at the ‘Big Kahuna’ Bar (I know a surf themed bar is tragic but it was the early 90s and besides it was totally out of my control).  And on the weekly drunken stumbles home from the Big Kahuna to my place we usually went via firstly the local bakery who often gave us pies at 3am and secondly a public park with swings, gazebos and BBQs.

At which point in our meanderings, we’d be scoffing down hot pies while playing on the swings and JT would regale me with stories of whatever  particular horror had greeted him in public parks that week.  These ‘horrors’ ranged from – syringes found in bark chips or sand under children’s play equipment, junkies found dying or dead in public toilets, used condoms stuck to the walls outside the men’s room and worst of all… stories about the public BBQs.  JT and his co-workers had the joy of fixing them if they were broken, maintaining the equipment and …eewwww… cleaning them.

Vomitus, sputum, fecal matter (both canine and human), blood, semen, condoms, smashed glass, various drug related paraphenalia and on occasion small dead animals or birds are all on the list of things that JT and his buddies have had to clean off public BBQ hotplates in the greater Bris-Vegas area.

So when the family says ” Gee Mom!  Lets go have a BBQ in the park” … you can imagine how keen I am on that concept.