ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Jindabyne local has confirmed today he’s furious about the arrival of snow tourists, despite his job existing solely because of them.
Tommy Lacey, a twenty-nine-year-old fourth-generation Jindabyanese man, works full-time at the BP on Kosciuszko Road. He says he knew it was snow season the moment he saw someone wearing in a clean puffer jacket trying to use the toilet without buying anything.
“Straight in. Didn’t even make eye contact. I said, ‘Greetings, this isn’t a Westfield, good sir! You want to empty thy loins, you must purchase some of my handsome wares. My liege, can I offer you a cheesy bacon pie? A gaytime to go with your BMW?'”
Lacey says the annual influx of visitors brings nothing but traffic, mess, and what he describes as “weak energy”.
“They have not the experience needed to tame the mountain passes! [laughs] Weary travellers, they are. Weird and odd creatures of the north, they are.”
He says most tourists lack the resilience required to be in the mountains.
“One fair young lady asked me where the meat in the sausage roll came from, if it was local? [cackles in an anti-social manner] I told her, ‘My lady, it’s got a greater change of being dachshund meat than made from the flesh of a world famous Snowy Mountains beast!’ and she recoiled in disgust!”
Lacey, who lives rent-free above his grandmother’s garage in East Jindabyne, says tourists wouldn’t last a day working in retail.
“It takes a thick skin to work here when the Earth tilts on thine [sic] axis and the winter months come. Some days, I roll the preverbial 20 on charisma, others I do not. Such as telling a, hmmm, pretty young lady that the sausage rolls in my service station may or may not contain dog meat. In hindsight, a foolish thing to say. But there will always been more fine maidens in European soft roaders for a humble merchant such as I to meet and perhaps, touch on the hand if they’re paying cash!”
He spends his spare time playing Dungeons & Dragons and identifying as a necromancer.
“I work alone and I cast spells. That’s who I am.”
When asked what the town would do without tourism, Lacey sneered.
“I would be fucked!”
More to come.
