On several occasions while on holiday in the Outback I came across an empty wine cask squashed into the red dirt with a single thong lying next to it.

It’s strange that drunk people lose only one shoe. So who belonged to all these single thongs?

Was it the Aboriginal locals; a Dreamtime on drink and a stumbling home at dawn?

It’s unlikely to be the white locals as they prefer to smash long cans of Woodstock Bourbon & Cola (“So go out there and enjoy life with a Woody!”, chortles the uncouth distillery).

Drunk people aren’t the only ones losing their footwear.

A stranger phenomenon is the scene of serious car accidents and the tragic sight of a single white runner that has been ripped off the foot of one of the victims by the force of the impact.

The latest television advertisement on drugs and driving depicts a weed affected bloke jumping out of his 4WD – sorry, AWD – only to be cleaned up (a strange expression for someone being made a mess of) by a passing car. As the distraught girlfriend runs towards his steaming fresh carcass and various detritus scattered across the road, most of which only moments before had been inside the boyfriend, we notice (yes. you guessed it) one of his cross trainers.

One day I noticed a toddler’s shoe, a cute replica of an adult runner, at the top of a shopping centre escalator. It was being pushed by the escalator onto the standing platform only to be knocked back onto the top step by the feet of uncaring shoppers.

As a child I always feared approaching the top of an escalator. So I imagined the owner of this shoe, the poor kid, being sucked underneath the platform; the metal teeth shearing off the shoe, drawing him in like a sausage extruder and dumping his remains – pitter, patter, plop – into the carpark underneath.