Panning the bureaucracy
IT MAY well have passed unnoticed by the vast majority of you that this past Tuesday was International Toilet Day.
WARNING: Some readers may find following content unacceptably revolting. Get over it. Most Australians take for granted access to private, usually pristine facilities where they can perform their daily, digestive evacuations.
Public toilets are also usually readily available and far more hygienic than travellers may encounter internationally.
If not, there is an abundance of trees behind which one can relieve oneself with a modicum of privacy.
Privacy has never been a major consideration for army dunnies, or as the navy calls them heads and the RAAF, powder rooms.
Who can recall Chinese mortars, cylindrical galvanised- iron funnels placed narrow end in the ground where males could relieve themselves despite a lack of privacy?
Physiological reality suggests they were equally amenable for female use, but perhaps that is a step too far.
Before portaloos there was the age of multi- hole pit latrines, with metal thunder boxes upon whose ex- posed, black seats the relentless Australian sun placed its fiery kiss.
When individuals, their business finished, slammed closed the thunder box lid they created a rush of fetid air plus blowflies around the nether regions and dangly bits of those remaining.
Strategically placed, what they lacked in comfort was often compensated with spectacular views. Though not always. Some of us are of an age to recall late night trips to outdoor privies, unlit, unwelcoming and unpleasant, whose contents in a pan were removed weekly.
Australia is now generally well served in its public conveniences.
In France they are scarce, hard to find and often unserviced.
Some are what the French euphemistically describe as toilettes Turkish, a ceramic foot plate with a central hole flush with the floor over a deep drop.
These are squats.
Some French toilettes require a fee for use, where it is not unusual to find men’s urinals in the communal entry. No modesty there! The Old French public pissoirs, cast iron conveniences on public elsewhere known as footpaths with decorative metal lace surrounds, where men nonchalantly did their business while gazing into the passing traffic, have largely disappeared.
Females were not extended similar conveniences.
Now it seems Canberra’s defence headquarters, Fort Zinderneuf, where bureaucrats bored with searching new ways to straighten paperclips, have discovered a new intellectual challenge.
Apparently not content with separate toilet facilities for males, females and those with special needs, they have decided another category is needed for those who identify as gender non- specific or worse, “I actually can’t make up my mind”.
No doubt they will write position papers, organise international study tours and prepare lengthy recommendations as to how existing facilities may be modified or expanded to accommodate those sensitive souls who can’t decide whether they need to sit or stand to pee.
The simple solution would be to fit an “occupied” sign into existing cubicle doors as seems to work on international airline toilets. Get over it. Any other solution is simply bureaucratic crap.