TL:DR

The Crime: A clerk named K. secretly eats a meat pie behind his hat during an 8-minute Southern Moreton Bay ferry crossing, breaking the "No Eating" rule and leaving him with a sticky plastic wrapper and intense existential guilt.

 

The Absurdity: He steps onto Coochiemudlo Island to throw it away, only to find the Redland City Council has removed the jetty bin. The bureaucratic logic: a non-existent bin can never overflow into the marine park

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The Runaround: K. looks for the alternative bins promised by the sign, but they’ve also been removed to "stop attracting seagulls." A tech-laden Waste Compliance Officer vaguely points across the ocean and tells him the nearest legal bin is the Reddy Bay rubbish tip, "about four klicks that way."

 

The Fate: Unable to board the ferry back without being caught as a pie-eater, and terrified of a massive fine if the wind blows the plastic away, K. is condemned to sit in the mangroves forever, cradling his own garbage behind his hat in a perfectly managed city.

 

 

The protagonist, a minor clerk known only as K., sat rigidly on the open bench of the ferry as it churned through the waters of Southern Moreton Bay. The crossing to Coochiemudlo Island was a mere eight minutes—an agonizingly short window that converted his sudden, desperate hunger into a frantic race against time and authority.

 

Because the ferry consisted of only a single deck, there was nowhere to hide. Looming directly ahead was the vessel's wheelhouse, and bolted to its white exterior wall was a prominent, unforgiving sign: "No Eating or Drinking Permitted on Board." To K., the windows of the wheelhouse felt like the blank, judging eyes of a high tribunal.

 

Overcome by guilt, he had spent the brief voyage hunched in a corner, shielding a scalding meat pie behind the wide crown of his felt hat. He swallowed massive, unchewed chunks in breathless, terrified gulps every time the Skipper glanced down.

 

By the time the engines reversed and the boat nudged the jetty, K.’s throat burned, his hat was faintly smeared with gravy, and his fingers were uncomfortably glued to the empty, sticky plastic wrapper. He felt entirely naked in his criminality.

 

Stepping onto the Coochiemudlo Island jetty, K. hurried past the disembarking passengers. He turned sharply to the corner of the jetty where the green rubbish bin used to sit, desperate to drop the evidence of his midday sin into its dark, forgiving depths.

 

The bin was gone. In its place, secured to the metal railing with heavy-duty zip ties, was a pristine, glaringly white sign from the Redland City Council.

 

These bins will be removed in May 2026. Please use the existing bins at the ferry terminal entry.

 

Rubbish from these bins can overflow into the ocean, putting our marine life at risk. This is just one example of how we are improving waste management across the city.

 

K. stared at the text. The logic was dizzying, yet undeniably beautiful. To ensure the safety of the Marine Conservation Park, the city had determined that the safest place for rubbish was directly in the hands of the citizen. A non-existent bin cannot overflow, K. reasoned, his mind spinning under the weight of the civic brilliance. By eliminating the receptacle, they have eliminated the waste.

 

But the sticky plastic wrapper remained attached to his thumb like a growth.

 

Conscious of his duty, K. walked down the length of the jetty to seek the "existing bins at the ferry terminal entry," just as the sign commanded. But when he reached the concrete plaza at the shore, he found nothing but empty space and sun-baked bitumen.

 

Sitting in the rotunda was a Redland City Council waste compliance officer wearing a hi-vis vest, loaded up with more tech than a server farm. He was having a coffee and looking at a video his body cam captured earlier that day.

 

"Excuse me," K. said, holding out his greasy, plastic-entangled hand. "The sign on the jetty directed me here. Where is the terminal bin?"

The officer didn't look up from his screen, where a pixelated litterbug was silently arguing in rewind. "Removed. To prevent it from attracting seagulls, which might drop the rubbish back into the marine park anyway."

 

"But the sign..." K. gestured back toward the water, his voice trembling. "The sign explicitly instructs me to use the bins at the entry."

 

"And you have complied with the sign by looking for them," the officer replied smoothly, his eyes still fixed on the body cam footage as he took a slow sip of coffee. "The initiative is a total success. Littering on the jetty has dropped to zero."

 

"Then what am I to do with this?" K. begged, thrusting the pie wrapper forward. "It is a protected conservation zone! I cannot drop it, yet I cannot keep it. I am harboring unmanaged waste!"

 

The officer adjusted a strap on his chest rig and looked over his shoulder toward the mainland. He raised a hand and let his index finger wave around in vague, lazy circles, hoping it sort of, kind of, ended up pointing in the rightish direction across the water.

 

"You'll want the Reddy Bay rubbish tip," he said nonchalantly, his finger still drifting through the air. "About four klicks that way. Give or take."

 

"Across the bay?" K. whispered, looking at the distant mainland shoreline shimmering in the midday heat. "But I just arrived."

 

"Then I suggest you hold onto it tightly," the officer said, finally pausing the video to look at K.'s grease-stained hat. "The wind carries things easily out here, and a Tier-1 environmental fine is a very heavy burden for a Sunday."

 

K. walked slowly down to the sandy shore of the island, the wrapper crinkling loudly in his fist with every step. He could not board the ferry back to the mainland; the master in the wheelhouse would surely recognize him as the pie-eater and deny him passage. He could not leave the beach, for fear the wind would rip the plastic from his sticky fingers and consign him to an eternity in a penal colony for endangering a sea turtle.

 

He sat down on a log at the edge of the mangroves, cradling the wrapper against his chest behind the cover of his hat, condemned to guard his own garbage forever in the name of a perfectly managed city.

 

Editors note

Once again, my AI collaborator and I have teamed up to tackle local government logic. This time, we’ve weaponized satirical pastiche to highlight the sheer inanity of the Redland City Council waste management strategy. I know I need to move on at some point, but modern bureaucracy practically writes its own comedy