Cab cavalry opinion When i was a kid i used to love those old blackandwhite westerns. I remember one that opened with a rickety stage coach rattling across the badlands, brushing past rolling spinifex and hissing snakes as it pushed on relentlessly across a dry, featureless landscape.The the homepage here credits ended with the driver pulling back on the reins and growling 'whoa, up there' as the horses reared and dug their hooves in, and the coach shuddered to a stop in a thick cloud of desert dust. He hardly has a chance to slap the dust off his chaps with his battered tengallon hat before the driver whips his horses energetically and swings into an acute uturn, galloping frantically in the direction he came. As the stage coach disappears dre beats solo hd into the shimmering desert heat, the cowpoke looks around him to a squat, adobe hut.From one grimy wall hangs a bulletriddled sign that reads 'contrition, new mexico.Population:6'. It was a great opening.No audience could help but realise immediately their cowboy hero had left all civilisation far behind him.The stage coach driver's unholy haste had said it all;This was a lawless, dangerous place to be the end of the line. In the 1960s you could sometimes be reminded of contrition, new mexico, if you took the last tram home to mount gravatt on brisbane's southern outskirts late on a saturday night. In those days mount gravatt was a farflung suburban outpost, and the mount gravatt terminus was the end of the tram line. Stepping off a deserted latenight tram at the end of the line sometimes felt a little like neil armstrong stepping on beats by dre pro the moon. The mount gravatt boys hung out at the terminus, sitting in their soupedup cars drinking tallies of fourex beer, and playing pinball in the local burger bar.Once the lights went out in the fishandchip shop the boys had nothing much to do but look for trouble, and if you were unlucky enough to be the last one off the tram, there was a fair chance you were going to end up in it. Your best chance was to make sure you got yourself off that tram fast enough to grab a taxi, but since there was never more than one taxi for the taking, there wasn't too much margin for error. Of course, the civilised world eventually found its way to brisbane's outer suburbs, and even mount gravatt became a safe and wholesome place to be. But now, it seems, there's a new town of contrition, and it's right here in our own backyard. This week robina mp ray stevens claimed the combination of allnight dre headphones drinking venues and what he calls the 'disgracefully inadequate' number of taxis servicing the gold coast late at night on weekends has given surfers paradise that lonely, lawless 'end of the line' feeling. There might be something in it.Not so long ago, i took a latenight stroll down orchid avenue to inspect the scene of a recent violent confrontation between beat police and one of my clients. I have to say at that hour surfers had a very dodge city kind of feel to it.As i passed a long line of obviously intoxicated and increasingly impatient punters waiting at the taxi rank, i was comforted to know my car was parked nearby ready to whisk me from all the gunslingers, gamblers and dancehall girls. If i wasn't such a chicken i would have tried passing out business cards to the waiting lineup, because it was pretty plain to see someone was likely to be needing a good lawyer very soon. So i wasn't much surprised this week when i read ray stevens' claim that regent taxis, the gold coast's sole taxi operator, has only 300 cars to service the city at any given time. He says that's not nearly enough, making the point that sydney, a city of about eight times our population, has a fleet of more than 5000 taxis, which means we should have about 650 on the coast. The member for robina has unveiled a plan to introduce 100 'weekend warrior' taxi licences to meet the high demand for taxis on a weekend and help clear the streets of drunks in the early hours. It could be well worth looking at. The extra competition might not thrill the taxi company too much, but it would sure help to get a lot of ornery cowpokes off the range and out of trouble in the wee small hours and it just might stop the latenight streets of surfers paradise looking like the set of a bgrade western. dre beats solo hdinto the shimmering desert heat

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