I dislike graffiti, but often admire the wit that inspires the funniest examples, and I share some with you today.

Each was spotted about the Salisbury campus of the modest teachers’ college I attended back in the outrageous 1980’s. It’s now the University of South Australia, although having visited several of its sites over the years, I’ve seen nothing as worthy.

In my degree there were a number of compulsory units, and frequently these were forgettable, horrid affairs. Like caged zoo creatures, we had no choice about our environment nor our diet. We did a term of educational psychology in one of the scattered theatrettes and had a stream of prominent thinkers to consider such as Piaget, Dewey and Bloom. I enjoyed learning about these.

Flipping down my personal desk one March afternoon I knew instantly Paul had written it. He was hilarious, and sometimes cruel.

Every Friday at 1pm we’d finish English in one of the large auditoriums and make our way home or to the library or to the bar and as we bounced off, laughing and chatting, Paul would yell out to one of our geeky, socially desperate classmates who so wanted to join us, “Hey Xavier!” Xavier’s eyes would widen with hope. Perhaps today would finally be the day they’d ask me to the bar! Paul would then enthusiastically kill his dream with a single dismissive sentence: “Have a zany weekend!”

But back on that autumnal afternoon in the psychology theatrette I spotted his unique handiwork on the aging laminate-

When I was Jung I used to eat Freud eggs

*

In another pointless educational moment I signed up for an introductory computing course, thinking it’d equip me for my thrilling future. The lecturer was a ferocious Welshman. He never smiled. I was a bit scared of him, and learnt nothing that helped me beyond that semester.

During this forbidding episode I saw in thick black texta the following character assessment of my computing lecturer, fittingly, on a cubicle door. Please, enjoy with me, the sharp juxtaposition of Biblical language with a, let’s say, rather frank Australian tongue. The fact that I found myself nodding in agreement also helped me to commit this to eternal memory-

And the Lord spake to the shepherd saying, “Fuck that Jim Davies is a wanker.”

*

It was in my third year at college that I first saw a condom-vending machine. A simple white metal box, it was mounted, as it were, on the wall of the men’s toilet across from the bar. Given the Friday night cover bands hosted in that bar, this made sense. All that youth, all that disposable freedom, all those 50 cent beers during happy hour! It was tremendous fun.

Yes, it was a plain vending machine- not one of those lurid truck-stop equivalents with their hot promises of good vibrations and pleasuremax©. It hung there innocently, quietly performing its role, but within minutes of it being erected, as it were, this appeared on the front, right where Xavier’s trembling fingers weekly inserted hopeful dollar coins-

This is the worst chewing gum I’ve ever tasted.