CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

A boozy few nights in the big smoke of the Brown Snake has finished quite uniquely for one central highlands backhoe operator.

With one more sleep until him and his mates head back to work, local man, Steve “Pine Cone” Burcone (31) has made an executive call.

He’s doing the butter chicken.

After coming steaming back to his short-term accommodation in Milton following a big night at the Regatta, Pine Cone has decided he’s not done yet.

He needs a feed, and a late night kebab just isn’t experimental enough. Not for someone whose lucky to get some sweet chilli sauce at the bain-marie back home.

With only 24 hours in the multicultural heart of Queensland, Pine Cone has woken the rest of his mates up and told them the score. He’s going night-walking for a feed if anyone wants him to bring them back something ridiculous.

A couple blocks from his unit block he finds what he’s looking for, a suburban Indian joint.

Despite the fact that, when you really think about it, tonight’s meal is basically being kept warm in the exact same type of steel apparatus as a beef strog at the BP roadhouse in Emerald, the fact that it’s bright orange has Pine Cone salivating at it’s exoticness.

He presses his index finger against the glass shield, pointing directly at the mildly spicy chicken curry that’s bubbling front and centre.

“You don’t get this in the junction of the Capricorn and Gregory highways” he says out loud to the non-English-speaking Nepali 457-holders behind the counter who are trying to figure out why he’s smoking a cigarette inside their workplace.

“Yeah and can I get a small fried rice with that?” he asks, with the nonchalant, casual tone of someone who knows his South Asian cuisine back to front.

“Maybe some dimmies”

The venue manager nods, disappointedly.

The sounds of a plastic bag of snap-frozen Mekong river shrimp being torn open rings out from the kitchen, as Pine Cone asks a table of late night diners if anyone is using that chair.