The Fossil Fool Crime Walk

Fremantle Carnevale revellers and Fringe World folk storm the streets of Perth

Last Friday, 13 February 2026, as part of Perth FRINGE WORLD Festival, Fremantle Carnevale, in the tradition of all famous Carnevali everywhere, took feral folk on a merry dance, actually a Fossil Fool Crime Walk through the streets of Perth, starting out from Perth Magistrates Court in Hay Street at 6 pm.

Revellers had earlier been advised that they would meet ‘some of WA’s most notorious real life eco-criminals during a fun-filled satirical stroll through the heartland of the Western Australian petrostate (the world’s third largest exporter of LNG gas after Qatar and the US!)’.

And that Fremantle Carnevale’s Fossil Fool Crime Walk would ‘feature a CSI team, roving clowns and harlequins, a range of (extremely well-known) expert witnesses, and a live Carnival soundtrack pumped out by Junkadelic Brass Band.’

As Carnevale’s Impresario and corrupt WA heritage consultant Dr Dodgy Steve explained to all and sundry, ‘Carnevale is a season of masquerade, transgression and mockery of the established order’, so everyone attending was urged to get into the Carnival spirit by disguising themselves in their best Carnival finery.

Here’s one side of the Carnevale flyer that advertised the event.

And here’s the other side announcing the ‘eco crimes’ various entities would face in The Carnival Tribunal of The People’s Republic of Fremantle.

Fossil Fool Crime Walkers were guided by French New Wave Director Jeanne-Luc Badarse who directed the FOSSIL FOOL CRIME WALK with her red megaphone from a rickshaw (following the unfortunate injury caused by excessively high-spirited Carnival dancing the week before). Participants halted briefly at the Alexander Forrest statue on the corner of Barrack Street and St George’s Terrace to hear Greens MLC Sophie McNeill’s diatribe against this founding father of Western Australia who used to advocate in State Parliament for state terrorism measures against First Nations peoples in the Kimberley in order to protect his family’s cattle interests (as well as passionately opposing women’s suffrage).

Although FSN has not been able to independently verify all of Dodgy Steve’s claims, by all accounts the Walk was a great success with expert witness evidence being provided in the Fremantle Carnival Tribunal by Professor Fiona ‘Finebrain’ Stanley, serial ecopest Jo Valentina, Sophie McNeill MLC and First Nations expert witness Professor Desmond Blurton.

What Dodgy Steve described as ‘inexpert evidence’, was provided by Mrs Gina Minehard who later in the Walk dramatically revealed herself as none other than notorious ecopest Kristen O’Flaherty, and complained that Perth Fringe had bullied her against her will into playing Gina Minehard.

Dodgy added that with assistance from Junkadelic Brass Band, a harlequin flash mob and a posse of fossil fool clowns, MC Paddy Stokes (the well known WA media entrepreneur) kept the crowd amused with a witty commentary in rhyming couplets.

Dodgy told us that the mystery 2026 Fremantle King of Carnevale was announced by the Carnival Herald outside Woodarse Energy to be … 🥁…Sir Charles Court, ‘founding farter’ of the Northwest Shelf LNG project. In accordance with ancient Carnivale tradition, the King of Carnivale expired half way through proceedings.

Dodgy Steve reported to us that the very eminent Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Smelter SJ then led the funeral procession attended by Sir Charles’ grieving widow, Ms McSmell, to Sir Charles’s statue around the corner, where the Cardinal and Professor Blurton decommissioned* both him and his Northwest Shelf project after an ‘unwelcome to country’, before retiring for a joint wake for Sir Charles and farewell party for Ms McSmell around the corner at the Terrace Hotel.

Here are more pics from the Walk.

Surviving Carnevale participants were invited to attend the traditional Shrove Tuesday Carnival wind down at Clancy’s in Freo the following Tuesday (the last day of Carnevale) and many did. Sister Quenda of the Sisters of Perpetual Sustainability and Cardinal Smelter were both on hand to hear Carnevale confessions thereby enabling them to enter Lent on Ash Wednesday, the following day, with a clean slate.

* FULL TEXT OF DECOMMISSIONING CEREMONY

Cardinal George: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to offer the last rites to the Northwest Shelf project and to decommission its creator, Sir Charles Court, that great founding farter [SFX FART], I mean father, of the WA petrostate, who urged pioneers to venture forth and rape and plunder the whole of the north (as well as recycling over 5000 pieces of ice age Burrup rock art as ballast for the foundations of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf LNG plant).

In nomine carboni et lignorum et sancti nubis fossilis [making sign of the cross]

In the name of the exploration licence, of the mining lease and of the unholy gas emission….

Abracadabra Abracadoo, I don’t give a fuck and neither should you!

Sir Charles, with these Woodside acid gas emissions [sprinkles ‘Unholy water’ from acid gas canister labelled ‘Woodside Acid Gas Emissions’] I now decommission thee…

Rock art scientists interjects: Wait! Wait! But won’t those acid gas emissions eat away [ironically] at this lovely statue of our petrostate’s founding father?

Cardinal Smelter: Not at all: independent (Government and industry-funded) scientists have assured us repeatedly that ‘heritage and industry can coexist on the Burrup’ and that there is absolutely no evidence that Woodside’s daily semi-trailer load of acid gas emissions are having any effect on the Burrup rock art whatsoever.

Look: it’s all in the Murujuga Rock Art Mismanagement Report commissioned by Reece Shitby and the WA Government!

[holds it up and hands to rock art scientist].

Sir Charles won’t feel a thing!

Jo Valentina [holding up BULLSHIT sign] we call bullshit!

Rock art scientist: Well if the findings in that report are true then let’s try to test it on this Burrup rock art now once and for all!

[ROCK ART SCIENTIST POURS FOUL LOOKING LIQUID IS POURED OVER THE PETROGLYPH IMAGES WHICH DISINTEGRATE]

Rock art scientist: The rock art is dissolving before our eyes! This is scientific fraud! This report isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. [tears it up]

Des [pulling his gag off]: I knew it! The WA Government has cooked the books again! Well it’s time to decommission you Charlie, and your poxy Northwest Shelf!

[POURS LIQUID FROM A CANISTER LABELLED ‘WOODSIDE ACID GAS EMISSIONS’ OVER STATUE AND COVERs IT WITH A BLANKET.

Cardinal Smelter`

And now, by the power invested in me by the Fremantle Carnival Authority, I send thee, Sir Charles, off to that great methane cloud in the sky [SFX FART]

Photographs by Nancye Miles Tweedie

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