by Michael Schiavello

About a week after altering the Shell logo at the entrance of the Hamilton Downs Youth camp , Russell came up to me and said " kevin asked if the Shell sign can be restored to its original state before we depart "

I said " no way " meaning that there's was no chance of me even trying to reconfigure the mutilated logo which I had hacked away at for a few hours to transform it into a littlle creature somewhat resembling a turtle alien with "h e l l o " replacing "Shell".

I promised that I would have a chat to Kevin about the replacing of the logo.

" Hey Kevin ! "

" here he is. The sign man "

" Listen , I am going to be in Alice for a couple of days and I can possibly arrange for another logo to be sent out to you. "

" Nahh. Don't worry bout it . I know the fella in there and I can get one miself"

Are you sure?

Yeah, he's mi main sponsor so I gotta have his sign up there."

"sure"

On the morning of our departure I went up to say goodbye to Kevin and to apologise to him if I had caused him any personal grief.

" Don't worry bout it, I just tell them that it blew away in the wind, not that a grafitti merchant had his way with it "

we laugh together. " OK . I hope you can keep the old one up there too "

You can take that way with ya if you like, but you probably got a whole lotta other shit to carry home "

no laughs

A couple of hours later he was there to greet us as we were loading up the bus to move on.

" Hey Kevin, what do Shell actually sponsor you for?

" what's that? "

" What do Shell give you for sign to be displayed? "

" They give mi the diesel "

" what for? "

" To run the truck , 'bout a 44 gallon drum every month. Works out to about two and a half thousand dollars a year. Yeah don't you fret about it ."

Over the few days that my altered sign was up someone unidentified person or persons turned the " h " upside down to make a " y " so it read " y e l l o ". by the time we had to leavi the " y " sticker had lost all of its adhesive and dropped off so it read " e l l o "