ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

On Sunday night, the West will become an island within a country.

Those were the words of Western Australian Premier, Mark McGowan. In the moments after he made that announcement, he pulled a hot pink kazoo from his suit pocket.

“This is the state kazoo of Western Australia,” he said.

“I call upon all people of the West to come home.”

With that, the Novocastrian-by-birth took a deep breath and blew as hard as he could into the kazoo – the fresh slither of baking paper in the soundbox buzzed to life.

The Advocate spoke to people of the West all over the world who said at that point, something inside them began to ache.

One of those was Greg Spears, who works in our town’s Financial District at investment bank Debit Ecosse.

He told our reporter that he was napping on the couch when all of a sudden, he was ripped from his slumber back into reality.

Greg spoke briefly to The Advocate from an Alice Springs petrol station where he was filling up his 2002 electric blue Hyundai Excell.

“It was like someone threw a bucket of water on me,” he said.

“I woke up and there was my Premier blowing the Kazoo of the West on TV. The airport was shut, there were no flights. I only had 3 days to get back into the West. So I got my keys and left. I didn’t even pack,”

“I’ve got about 36 hours left. The shortest route would be through the APY lands but this little Korean billycart wouldn’t make it, so it looks like I’m doing a high-speed burn down and across the Nullabor. I’ll sleep when I get over the state line. I’m coming, Mark. I’m coming home.”

More to come.

