... and life goes on

The flipside to all my pretentious analysis of the meaning of the election according to Lewis Carroll, is what I actually did through it all.

I had high hopes of going out to vote early in the morning, but in the end the sun moved past vertical before I wandered up the hill. There was quite a queue, and it took me 20 minutes or so to actually get in to vote.

I was surprised that I didn't have to supply ID (not sure if I have in the past). The woman asked if I had voted before today, and I said "yes", which surprised her until she realised that she really wanted to know if I had voted already today. While I was waiting for her to look up my name, the person next to me was having the voting procedure explained: a number next to every house candidate, and just a 1 above the line for the senate. When my turn came around, there was again no mention of voting below the line, which I found really very strange. I had to ask, and she seemed shocked that I might want to vote below the line. Very odd.

In the evening, I had some people around for a barbecue and to watch the count: Mick, Paul, Julie, Jesse and Ali. The boys had kangaroo - sausages, skewers, and fillet - while the girls baulked at eating Skippy and opted for lamb skewers. A shame, because Jesse did a masterful job with the BBQ, and the kangaroo skewers were really good, and the fillets were perfectly cooked and really delicious.

Anyway, we drank home brew, ate barbecue, laughed at politicians still repeating sound-byte phrases, and watched Antony Green decide the election for us, and everyone went home pretty happy.