G'day Giok/Jock,

I'm afraid the bells are just as faint for me as for Helen. From what part of this large and sparsely populated island continent did they hail?

BTW: Helen, back before we all became politically correct, every country kid knew damn well what the dog did ... and would never be forgiven for! The late John Meredith, folksong collector and godfather of the Australian folk song revival, told be that as a kid in Holbrook (southern New South Wales country town) he commonly say toy, cast metal "Gundagai Dogs" ... rough cast, squatting dogs that came with a little bag of chemical pellets.

These pellets were inserted into the appropriate rear aperture and set alight, whereupon the smouldering composition expanded, oozing out suggestive blobs of brown matter while the kids laughed so energetically they only narrowly missed emulating the display.

Anyawy Jock, the idea was not original to your singer and, far from parodying the statue, the statue is a monument to municipal squeamishness ... and parish pump rectitude.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Regards,

Bob Bolton