Our last stop in the ‘Garden State’ of Victoria was Beechworth, a goldrush-era town made famous by the apparently infamous Ned Kelly. I say ‘apparently’ because, I’m afraid that I didn’t have much of a clue about who he was.

In the impressively-stocked local confectionery shock, we bumped into Mr. Brumby and his security entourage and journalists. As with Ned Kelly, I didn’t have the faintest idea who Mr. Brumby was so I asked a policeman.

“Are you serious?”, said the shocked officer.
“Erm, nope. We’re tourists and just arrived in town”, I blushed.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t get the accent. He’s the Premier of Victora; the Head of State”, the officer explained.

A snappily-dressed young man appeared and thrust his hand into mine, introducing himself as the Premier’s chief secretary. He explained that the Premier was in town in a push to increase tourism in the recently bushfire-struck region and, seeing as we were international tourists, would we mind having a quick chat with the Premier. Even though we were kind of busy buying confectionery, we agreed to a short televised chat…

In a flurry of excitement, the TV cameras rolled and the press photographers snapped away, the Premier introduced himself:

“It’s a good job you’ve met me: I’m the top man”, he opened and looked at me, “so what brings you to Beechworth?”

In a moment of catastrophic PR, Blabber Mouth Bartlett opened his mouth and began to roll-out the well-oiled “well we flew into Perth, drove to Exmouth, where it was too hot, then drove the Nullarbor, where it was too hot, then got to Melbourne, where it was too hot, so we flew to New Zealand where…”. The cameras sighed and drooped. The Premier turned to the cameras and blamed me for the weather and looked to Claire to provide a better sound bite about the town and the state Victoria. Which she did, expertly.

Naturally, I spent the whole day regretting not delivering a shorter, sweeter, more intelligent sound bite and ‘Sound Bite Squiffy’ spent the rest of the day calling me ‘Blabber Mouth Bartlett’ and giggling about my hopeless PR campaign. With a bit of luck, the TV crew used only the images, with the newsreader talking over the top of my useless verbal diarrhoea.

What a klutz I am!

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