Miracle of turning boredom into cash

Press, 25 February 1988, Page 13

Miracle of turning boredom into cash

IN SYDNEY

Judy O' Connor

Australia’s most boring entrepreneur is about to cross the Tasman and set up shop in New Zealand. Guaranteed to produce yawns, sighs and total tedium wherever he goes, Pat McGeown, aged 32, can’t wait to get started. He has chosen Wellington as his first port of call but intends to extend his cloak of dullness to Christchurch and Auckland by the middle of the year. Pat is successful in his neverending pursuit of the dull and uninteresting. He even gets people to pay him for it.

His gimmick? Travel tours with a difference. Instead of the usual bus tour with people politely driven around the city’s high spots in luxurious, air-condi-tioned buses, looking like goldfish in bowls, Pat McGeown specialises in conducting uninteresting, boring tours in rundown, noisy buses. The crunch of gears regularly hyphenates the commentary, and his voice bounces harshly off the back seat of the bus through a hand-held megaphone, rather than over the soothing lines of a modern public address system. Instead of visiting the usual collection of scenic delights, famous monuments, camera-snapp-ing views, cathedrals, galleries and souvenir-laden refreshment spots, Pat’s bewildered herd get to see such low spots as sewage depots, cemeteries, venereal disease clinics, gqfcbage collection spots for thfe local fish markets, empty multi-storeyed

car parks and rows of taxis standing at deserted cab ranks. Sometimes he includes a visit to a bleak railway station in a suitably unattractive industrial suburb, where his passengers can enjoy the forgettable experience of standing in the middle of nowhere with a panoramic view of burnished orange lights shining through polluted sky, accompanied by black smoke belching out of chimneys. If a train comes along, he adds to the monotony by herding everyone on board, getting off at the next station and making them all walk back. In Darwin, it is said that his itinerary includes the local leper 1 colony.

In Sydney, one of his is, worst) attractions is Sydney’s only blue traffic light; "Unfor-

tunately, it’s getting too interesting, so we’ll have to drop it,” he says. If, by some chance, the bus has to pass anything attractive or, heaven help, beautiful (for example Sydney’s Opera House or harbour), on the way to a worthwhile eyesore, passengers are given plenty of warning to cover their eyes, or to look in the opposite direction where there is usually a boring row of parking .meters or a graffiti-covered hoarding more suitable to Pat’s taste. The success of these bizarre tours in Australia has led Pat to cast his eye across the Tasman. He recently sneaked into Wellington and stealthily carried out an experimental boring tour around the national capital.

“It was magnificent,” he says. “It took me only a couple of hours to work out a great boring tour for Wellington. The potential is unlimited.” Even though the trip was unheralded, word of his visit got - around and the national tele- - vision programme “That’s Fairly

Interesting” taped an interview with him which is due to be shown in New Zealand in March. What boring delights did he find in Wellington? “Well, going to the railway station and staring at the signs, especially the Hutt Valley ones, was good, and we all yawned ourselves to sleep looking at the back of the airport. “When we got to the sewage outlet at Moa Point, everyone’s eyes glazed over nicely, but we were disappointed to see them flash open with expectation when we announced we were serving refreshments. “However, when we set up our portable hot dog stand and handed unappetising food around, everyone was suitably dejected again.” Echo Point looked like being a problem, Pat says, until it was discovered there was no echo. Then it became suitably unattractive. “Cemeteries gave us a lot of trouble,” he says. “There just aren’t very many in Wellington. It seems everyone goes to Auckland to die.” He was tight-lipped about the boring lowspots he has in mind for his Christchurch tour which he confidently expects to have up and running within a few months. “All I can say is even longterm residents will never look at their city the same way again.” His only trouble is that his tours are usually so boring people can’t stop laughing.

TV interview in March