Not everyone needs to be royal to get cancer, but anyone can still answer the call of the crackle and smoulder during the Easter holiday road toll. Let’s count them at 25 for the period, with more empty seats at the table. Close enough, but not quite an April Fool.
Threading through a bridge still standing, and four ahead of the pack, New South Wales holds aloft the top spot with 8 dead on the roads. A state that mixes the wildlife with off-roading into the action during Operation Easter 2024. Into the sunset goes but one on an ATV, flipping out after dodging a kangaroo. One hop and we’re out of this life but of many.
Second atop the broken eggs, Victoria with, let’s count them at 4. While officially Operation Nexus calls them at three, a Rutherglen woman getting bounced on the first day of comparison is good enough to push them into the silver spot. Though, we may even hint at five since dogs can be people too.
Squeezing through a meat grinder, a four state tie with the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia all pushing with 3 to gristle their way into the slippery third gear.
Northern Territory sent three into the flames west of Jabiru on the Arnhem Highway, but away walked one. Nhulunbuy, though, went cleaning up for that trio and down goes a pedestrian in a haze of “will they or won’t they lay it on the booze”.
Two Fords and a Tesla walk into each other in a clash of makers in South Australia. Out of that whole scene of knees, elbows and possible titanium hips, only two never saw the rest of Operation Safe Holidays - Easter edition. The pickup taking down a tree.
Queensland plays it like a dream with an Escape waltzing into a Mirage. And then they count the spinning hubcaps rattling off the loose nuts and bolts, and the car was stolen from a charity in Pialba.
Western Australia scrapes in one for each decade, at least in terms of 30s, 40s and 50s representing a slither on the board and tolls.
Seventh sees Tasmania with 1 during the reach of Operation Safe Arrival. One late in the game is still one on the charts. Five more crashes spin into the ring, but the time is off and they limp away from the flames of Easter falling off for another year.
Smoking out on the exhaust pipe, ACT nets zero, even in the face of double demerits, none took up the offer. At this point you can’t get anyone to stick around long enough in the nation’s capital to want to veer off chasing bilbies and melted chocolate.
Counting the remains between 00:01 Thursday 28 March 2024 and 23:59 Monday 1 April 2024. With a considerable bump of malignant ooze, it’s well up against 2023, a return to form in a way. And we haven’t even switched back the clocks.
Written on Saturday, 6 April 2024