The extinction of Australia's fridge cigarette
Alison Watkins knows what she did to Diet Coke.
Cruising down Hastings Street, Noosa around 6:45am on Easter Sunday, I had to rub my eyes as I passed Aromas. There on the forecourt, locked in a daybreak tête-à-tête, were arch-rival travel agents Jamie Pherous and Graham "Skroo" Turner. That was April 5. Corporate Travel told the ASX in February that its mysterious "UK forensic accounting review" would be completed in March, and yesterday (April 22), we finally got yet another implausible version of events from the company (more on that another time, no doubt).
Pherous – who "retired" as Corporate Travel CEO on February 2 – didn't appear rapt to see me later that Easter Sunday at another Hastings Street venue, Bar Capri. He departed, scowling under his hat, minutes after I plonked myself down at the next table. I must've offended him somehow.
I was well into my thirties before I ever set foot in Noosa, a town whose name hangs heavy in the Australian lexicon with aspersion and bogan privilege. I've gone from extreme sceptic to religious convert. I came originally for schooners by the dozen at the Surf Club TAB with my friend Hedley Thomas (who I'm hereby outing as "Max" in my old AFR Weekend column):
