Light up Opera House and everyone’s off key

AT THE risk of agreeing with certain radio shock jocks, I can’t understand the kerfuffle over projecting an image onto the Sydney Opera House.

It was a six-minute light projected advertisement for a horse race, The Everest – talk about making a mountain out of a mole hill.

It’s not as if someone used spray paint to graffiti the Opera House, yet thousands turned out to protest.

We have an ice epidemic, national debt that’s spiralling out of control and an Australian cricket team that’s an embarrassment to the Baggy Green, yet this is what gets people out onto the streets?

“Some things are sacred,” one television commentator screamed. “Sacred”? Give me a break. The Sydney Opera House is less than 50 years old and I’m old enough to remember the controversy that surrounded its design and construction. It had plenty of detractors.

And, you know what the Poms call the Sydney Opera House? “Turtles having sex”.

Of course, they don’t actually say “turtles having sex” but I can’t very well report here the exact expression.

Here in Toowoomba, we’ve just had the inaugural LIT Festival during which a number of city buildings and even the “sacred” trees in Queens Park had images projected onto them.

LIT was much in the mode of Vivid, a similar festival of colourful light being projected onto buildings and parks in Sydney – including the Sydney Opera House.

Of course, this was an advertisement for a horse race so certain of the population gets upset.

What crap! Whether you like it or not, horse racing is the national sport in this country. (It used to be cricket, but let’s not go there.)

The one thing in Australia that

‘‘ PANICKED CALLERS WERE SCREAMING THAT THE NIGHT SKY WAS BEING LIT UP AND THAT THE ALIENS WERE ABOUT TO LAND.

“stops a nation” happens to be a horse race. The only thing these protesters stop is traffic flow and rational debate.

I’d be more than happy to have our sacred sights lit up with images and advertisements.

Just like Commissioner Gordon flashing the Batman image up from Gotham City’s Police Headquarters when things go south and he needs Batman, we could flash up an image of Paul Antonio in a cape onto City Hall whenever controversy befalls us.

What’s wrong with promoting Weetwood (our Everest Cup) by projecting an image of Bernborough onto the Heritage Bank building – it’s all money!

It wouldn’t be the first time Toowoomba has had a controversial light show advertising a business.

I remember working late one Friday night back in the 1990s when the newsroom’s phones starting ringing off the hook.

Panicked callers were screaming that the night sky was being lit up and that the aliens were about to land.

I took a look outside and the night sky was lit up with laser lights. The clouds were flashing beams of light and it really did look like something out of a movie.

I called a less than impressed shift sergeant at Toowoomba Police Station.

“Yeah, we’re getting calls too,” he barked. “Bloody idiots, they think it’s the end of the world!”

It was in fact a laser light show beamed from the roof of the National Hotel in Russell St. The beams of light bouncing off the low cloud made the night sky look like something out of the movie Independence Day.

The police shut it down. However, as I said, I can’t see the problem with promoting a race, business or anything else by projecting images onto buildings – as long as they pay for it.

I’ve been lobbying Castlemaine Perkins for years to sponsor me, they could flash anything they liked onto the back of my shirt as long as they provided me with their product at a reduced price.

Remember Freddy Fourex who sat atop the Castlemaine Perkins Brewery in Milton?

I’m about the same build and I’d have no objection to walking about in a three-piece suit and branded straw hat while giving the occasional wink.