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 "