Airport Mort

It's been a week when death was big in the news. Author Colin Thiele died at the week's beginning, and was buried on Thursday. Then Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin was skewered by a stingray and landed up becoming some sort of local secular saint, with two days of large hagiographic supplements in the local press.

Irwin now looms, larger-than-death, from a billboard on Brisbane Airport's approach road to posthumously greet arriving travellers and entice them to his zoo near Landsborough.

It's probably not a wise thing to grab your camera when you're about to enter the city's most dangerous intersection, so I didn't get a photo of the motorcade that entered Airport Drive just before me.

The first car was a gleaming white Fairlane flying a red flag from its grille, followed _very_ closely by two security service Holdens.

The red flag was a Tongan Royal Standard, and the car was evidently carrying one of the Tongan Royals to the bedside of King Taufa'ahau IV, who died late Sunday night.

Somehow, I've got a feeling that there won't be any supplements in the Brisbane newspapers telling us about the late King's 88 years on earth.

It turned out to be a decent 16-hour shift, anyway, with a total of $687 being added to the meter.

The second last fare for the shift was a pilot heading from his hotel in the city to the international airport terminal. He was flying an airliner chartered by the Australian government, taking troops to East Timor.

Just another quiet, and relatively secretive, deployment of Australian troops overseas -- another sign of the worrying secrecy that's infested the country in the last five years.