CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Western Australia Health authorities have today dismissed the possibility of a positive Omicron case within the transport industry.
This comes as two new local cases have been recorded in the West, both related to the ongoing Cockburn cluster linked to the Omicron variant and involving massage parlours.
However, there were fears that the virus may have finally spread beyond the Perth and Peel regions, after a Geraldton truckie reported that he had lost his sense of taste at the back end of a three-day-long haul from the Margaret River to Broome.
40-year-old Wally Marsellus says it was around 7:30pm (AWST) on Sunday night when he realised that he couldn’t taste the golden nector of the Emu Export can that was served to him at the Kimberley Region’s iconic ‘Ten Men Den’ Hotel – a venue made famous by their weekly ten-on-ten bareknuckle fights.
Upon accidentally letting it slip to the bartender that he’d lost his sense of taste, Marsellus was immediately ordered to leave the venue at gunpoint, after the publican pulled out at sawn-off shotgun that was hidden underneath the cash register.
From the nature strip of the hotel, he was then sprayed down with sanitiser gel by officers from McGowan’s Democratic People’s Republic Of Western Australia (DPRWA) special forces, before he was ordered to put on a hazmat suit and medically-evacuated via helicopter to a quarantine compound on Rottnest Island.
Following 24 hours of intense waterboarding, DPRWA contact tracers were unable to identify a link between the truck driver and the Cockburn cluster.
However, by Tuesday morning, it became clear to the officers present that the potential carrier’s sense of taste had returned – after he complained about the taste of the fluorinated Perth water used in the torture methods.
It was then revealed that his lack of taste buds were in fact caused by an overdone curried steak pie he had consumed in one bite after visiting a truck stop in Marble Bar on Sunday morning.
Upon release, Marsellus was given a muesli bar and told to swim to Cottesloe beach, he has since begun his arduos journey of hitchhiking back to his truck, which remains parked in the back of Broome.
The Ten Men Den has since been torched to the ground, in keeping with the WA government’s policies surrounding exposure sites.
