What The Fence? | Stuck on bin stickers | A royal engagement
This week, InSider gets an exclusive interview with a Facebook troll in the Great Unley Oval Fence War, goes wheelie over bin stickers (again) and critiques brands that jumped swiftly onto a wedding announcement.
What The Fence?
InSider finally managed to relax this week.
Yes, we got our bi-monthly massage last night, but the real moment of zen came on Monday night.
After what seemed like the longest year of all time, the City of Unley decided it would build a fence around Unley Oval.
While mostly a lesson in how not to approach building community infrastructure, the Unley Oval fence debate brought InSider so much joy.
Call it schadenfreude if you want, but for jaded journalists, there’s little better than watching issues you’re interested in being debated ferociously in community Facebook groups.
Case in point: The Great Community War over the Unley Oval Perimeter Fence.
After being assigned this story back in mid-2024, InSider did what any tragic local newshound would do: scour Facebook for community reactions.
InSider first came across one group: The Friends of Unley Oval.
Back in 2024, when the question was just whether Council should investigate the potential of installing a fence, that group was already a hotbed of debate.
It was concerned residents vs the Sturt Football Club for the most part, though the latter wasn’t directly involved in the group’s discussions.
InSider can empathise with the safety concerns raised, but some of the dialogue from the ‘Antifencers’ was getting extreme, to the point that at Tuesday’s Council meeting, one resident outrageously said an Unley Oval with a fence would look like “an empty concentration camp”. I mean, come on…
But then, out of the blue, Facebook started recommending InSider with the tantalisingly named group The Real Friends of Unley Oval.
The Real Friends of Unley Oval.
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We couldn’t believe our luck; the community was so fractured that there was a splinter group dedicated to trolling and bashing the FOUO! A journalist’s wet dream if there ever was one.
So we joined RFOUO and discovered a whole new world, but quickly realised there was a very clear ringleader in this group.
Enter: Bob Dobalina.
The man, named after that silly Del tha Funky Homosapien track from the early 90s, was an anonymous troll seemingly formed out of pure cynicism and disdain for FOUO.
He would post memes about prominent FOUO members in RFOUO, he would debunk their claims, he would encourage pile-ons and post Camus quotes. In short: a man after InSider’s heart.
He would sometimes acknowledge the InDaily stories about the fence, but mostly to criticise us for not including any pro-fence commentary. InDaily probably had more fans in FOUO!
So for this entire year, during which the Unley Oval fence debate has become InSider’s personal Roman Empire, we’ve dreamed of hitting up Bob Dobalina.
Now, with the decision made about the fence, InSider felt brave enough to hit up Bob on his home turf: Facebook Messenger.
Below, read through this InSider EXCLUSIVE interview with the one and only RFOUO resident troll and fence fan, Bob Dobalina.
Take some of his claims with a grain of salt, and enjoy the immersive Facebook experience.
Back on the bin sticker beat
Last week we made our grand return with a mea culpa and gave you the story of how a humble bin sticker became another one of our Roman Empire’s for the past fortnight.
Just when we thought we would wipe our sticky hands clean of the bungle, we received an email from a dear reader with the subject line “ATTENTION INSIDER RE WHEELIE BIN STICKERS”.
Oh, you’ve got our attention, alright.
It seems the bin stickers didn’t just catch the attention of the InDaily offices and the Liberal party.
Our tipster told us that when they last year tried to produce their own wheelie bin stickers for the community, they learnt all about bin sticker rules.
Turns out, such stickers, by law, “shall not show or propose a speed limit, in either text or as a number with or without an annulus”.
They also shall not “be or resemble or be construed as a traffic control device” and “the installation of a sticker that resembles a traffic control device is an offence in accordance with section 21 of the Road Traffic Act”.
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So, with renewed energy, we went back to Dunstan MP Cressida O’Hanlon and asked how her bin stickers don’t fall foul of this legislation.
O’Hanlon said the stickers are above board.
“I sought advice from the Department for Infrastructure and Transport on the design of these stickers prior to their distribution and am very confident they are appropriate and in accordance with requirements,” she said.
But we can’t help but wonder, do they pass the pub test?
Shadow Government Accountability Minister Ben Hood MLC, a key character in the original bin chase, doesn’t think so.
“Instead of focusing on taxpayer funded self-promotion, perhaps Ms O’Hanlon could focus on delivering proper road safety infrastructure for her community,” Hood said.
“The local community doesn’t want to see confusing Cressida speed signs nailed to trees.
“They want official and legal signage placed appropriately by the real road authority.”
We should reiterate that O’Hanlon is not responsible for rogue signs that ended up nailed on trees, something we well canvassed last week – along with the cost of the bin sticker ($9 each, excluding GST).
In the original email from our tipster they said O’Hanlon’s stickers were “very useful warning devices” but might need further consideration given the wheelie bin rules.
We’ll leave it up to you to decide. At the very least, we’ve now stretched the bin stickers into two weeks of column fodder, and we have a new decoration for the newsroom.
Capitalism does it again
On Tuesday, Australians woke up to the news that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged, so naturally, InSider didn’t have to do any other work that day (or so we hoped – what should have been declared a public holiday for Swifties actually turned out to be a stacked day for local news, sigh).
As expected, brands started jumping on the celebration train – much like they did with her recent Life of a Showgirl album announcement, putting some orange sparkle on their Instagram feeds – and trying to profit off the love story.
Dan Murphy’s dubbed it “the wedding of the decade” in their media release, and has curated a range of drinks “as iconic and memorable as the couple themselves”.
They recommend an elegant and playful white for Swift’s “sophisticated yet playful style” while Kelce’s “power and precision” earned a red such as a Penfolds Shiraz “for the Gridiron King”.
It caught our attention, but was lacking in lyrical references for our taste.
The winner in the attention economy of my Instagram feed has to be local jeweller Gerard McCabe, who took the chance to examine the detail of Swift’s ring, and show off their range that can emulate it. After all, vintage jewels never go out of style.
Next up, Krispy Kreme slung free Original Glazed doughnuts to everyone visiting a store between 12–2pm and played Swift’s discography all day long. Now, I get it was short notice, but come on Krispy Kreme, you can do better than that.
Where is the orange glitter? Miss Americana and the Superbowl Prince? How hard is it to draw a football and a microphone in icing? Even a lover-era heart would have done the trick, I know you have a pink strawberry glaze that would have worked.
If all the fences and bin stickers drive InSider over the edge, at least I know I have a future as a strategic doughnut designer.
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