Conservative Queensland?

Last Sunday I was very surpised to learn there's an "adult film" cinema in the centre of Melbourne. Ten minutes later I walked pass a brothel just a hundred metres down from the Uni of Melbourne. At the time I was walking with two international students who were a little amazed by my surprise. I tried explaining to them I was not aware of any cinemas of that nature in Brisbane, and that brothels had only become legal a couple of years ago - and then only in industrialised areas.

Is Queensland that conservative? Did Old Joh really leave that much of a mark? For a while I've had my suspicions. I noticed a couple of years ago most of the morning evangelist TV-shows seemed to have their offices in Mansfield, Brisbane. Then some one told me there was a high number of strong religious groups on the way to Toowoomba. Shortly after I discovered that the British evolutionist Richard Dawkins had been scammed in his own house by a bunch of creationist film-makers from QLD.

Pretty scary, eh? Gets worse. Last year I watched a creationist vs evolution documentary filmed in America. I nearly fell off my chair when a creationist started preaching in a true-blue Aussie accent. The creationist was none other then QLD-borned Ken Ham. And now I discover this:

Next week, an Australian will jet into Heathrow for a lecture tour that will gladden the hearts of the small but dauntless band of British creationists, believers in the biblical account of the origins of the world.

John Mackay, a former science teacher from Queensland, whose photograph shows him looking not unlike Indiana Jones, grinning in bush hat and open necked shirt, is one of Creation Science's speaking stars. He will console believers that Genesis is true, that the Earth is not millions of years old but only a few thousand and that science proves it, rather than the Darwinian theory of evolution accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientists for more than a century.

What's wrong Queensland? Where did all these religious nutters come from? Surely we're not alone? Do other states have this problem? I feel so ashamed. Ah, stuff it. I'm having another beer.