(Belated) Random Oz recollections #3:

A few nights into the Roquefort Files' inverted holiday, we wandered along to a predictably sprawling pub/restaurant for some marvellous pub grub. The Brisbane river festival was due to begin a few days before I left, and this pub (the Regatta) was hosting its own warm-up mini-festival called, inevitably, Regattafest.

The most mind-boggling thing about this, for a wide-eyed naïf like your correspondent, was the fact that they were holding a beauty pageant in the bar. Tossing aside for the moment the incongruity of bikini-clad girls strutting up and down a catwalk in what was essentially an Australian-based Wetherspoons, this was an uncomfortable thing to witness. It's possible to get away with just about anything in the name of ironic social comment, but there is just nothing remotely ironic or postmodern about a load of smashed blokes hooting at semi-nude women competing for the loudest cheering.

Pity we forgot to take a camera, mind.