Is Kalgoorlie Near Parkman?

Krayton Kerns
10.18.06

For months I have been peppering the labels conservative and liberal throughout my columns and I know many readers are confused by those terms.  In Tuesday’s Gazette a news story exemplifies the difference between conservative and liberal thought. 

A 22-year-old Australian man lost the forward gears in his transmission outside a restaurant in the Outback town of Kalgoorlie.  He was en route to Perth which was 300 miles away.  So…he turned around and continued his journey in reverse.  He was stopped by the state police outside Perth roaring 40mph backwards down the highway.

This self-reliant guy has to be a conservative.  If he was liberal he would have abandoned his trip in Kalgoorlie, blamed his misfortune on the inequities of capitalism, racism, discrimination, and waited for the government to create a new program that addressed transmission problems of uninsured Australians.  While waiting curbside for the solution, he would have been joined by Cindy Sheehan, Barbra Streisand, and Jane Fonda and the four of them would have held hands and sang protest songs about President Bush.  Michael Moore would have produced a documentary film very, very, loosely based on the event. 

But, that isn’t what happened.  He had a job to do, so he did the best he could with the tools he had…no government assistance…no whining…just results. Any chance he was driving a mangled ’72 Chevy pickup with a six-inch hole burned in the passenger side floorboard from the exhaust blast where the bent muffler used to hang?  Our old feed truck did the same thing but we were never brave enough to drive 40 mph in reverse.  (How did this Aussie ever see around the hay bale?)