Spit and split the grave sites, the bitumen curls up plenty on the hot Christmas and New Year's holiday road toll to cut the advance where a tree trains a wreck. Once more to the hills and the toll on the nation's road renders a smoking heap of 50 corpses, bodies and other mangled skeletons.
New South Wales takes out the holiday road toll three-peat for the 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons. Champions of the coroner, but at 18 for this season's round, it's enough to question. And does it ever with "more than double last year's figure" equating to at least 20. No reports on chalk lines scratch that number on the leader board. Unless the number 19 is now greater than 20. The times, they are a changing bit integers.
Queensland and Victoria far out in the dust, a tenner's worth behind in the windshield rubble with 10 and 9 respectively. Their numbers on the whole with the rest just up a little, pulling the weight of the dead beans that come as usual on the lower rungs of the ladder. You can't just drive a car into a house and be done with it, people.
Western Australia proves to be no slouch, the last of the big tippers and improving their legs from the last season to clock the docks at 8, six more than the previous showing.
And then comes the stragglers, the same cud chewing faces, and in a sweep, all down on their numbers. A veritable swoop of the alluvial plains of Bowra to level out the kinds of numbers we see at the tail.
South Australia peeling back from the pack at 3, down two of the handful and the head of the rounders.
The Northern Territory and Tasmania both running singles six feet into the ground, a losing ground bereft of death from four wheels.
Not a soul again but for the wooden spoon three times going for the sad state of the ACT. Their game rocked by the shattering records, going in with a 50 year low on their roads, a tough statistic to contend with, a momentum at times hard to shake into broken glass. They may have had six on the year, but not when it counts for the summer Christmas holiday screams and shards.
Slight discrepancy on the reports on the leaders. ANZPAA claiming 50 total, ABC News and the AAP-fed Sydney Morning Herald at 49 (one extra for NSW, one less for both QLD and VIC). We'll see how many rolls shore up on the tally at the Department of Infrastructure and Transport. The first Friday after 31 December landing on 6 January 2012. Someone's missing a body or two.
Written on Wednesday, 11 January 2012