Race relations at Royal Randwick

The Royal Randwick racecourse, to the east of Sydney, looks empty and abandoned. It is empty and abandoned, except for a few gardeners. The fences and gates are locked to both horses and punters, because of a scourge of contagious horse flu, from the Centennial Park stables, across the road.
Next year the stands may well be overflowing with 500,000 pilgrims in place of punters. The Catholic church wants to hold a Papal mass there, celebrated by Benedict XVI as part of World Youth Day celebrations.
This will be the fourth papal mass there, following similar events in 1973, 1986 and 1999 with John Paul II and Pope Paul VI.
The 2008 mass is expected to shut down racing at Randwick for 10 weeks. After been closed for the flu, that's a lot more disruption to the flow of bets and prize money, and horse trainers and owners want compensation, reported to be in tens of millions. That’s not to be sneezed at.

Don't fence me in

A huge concrete and wire fence, a"ring of steel", is to be built around Sydney's CBD for next month's APEC meetings. I guess this is to keep demonstrators away from the heads of state, but it also keeps Sydney-siders out of their own city.

The photo shows the start of a security fence being built at Circular Quay, across from the Opera House. What can we call it?

Security plans so far make the fence sound like the Berlin wall or the Iron curtain. Australians don’t have walls in the open air, we have fences, such as the rabbit proof fence or the dingo fence. Named after its cuase, this could be 'The Bush Fence'.

What will this fence look like? Will it be drab austere blank concrete base, or water-filled plastic tubs. Will it have the menace of a Jeffrey Smart painting such as ‘The Cahill Freeway’?

Or will it be any match for the brilliant Melbourne gateway installation, know as ‘cheesesticks’.
And what will happen to graffiti paint on the concrete, under laws in the time of the fence? At present there’s a fine of $2 000 or 6 months imprisonment for wall art. Will heavy fines be imposed for the inevitable graffiti on the APEC fence? If we can’t have a bit of Aussie disrespect painted on our own Sydny fence, will the town council pay to have flowers hide the concrete, or pleasant murals painted on the surface to take away some of the draconian concrete and wire austerity, and keep away the even more depressing and inevitable hip–hop 'tags'.
There’s plenty of precedent for murals on concrete barriers. See some of these examples show the way Sydney might go if fence mania is unchecked:

Muralists add beauty to Baghdad

Graffiti artist Banksy has painted some irreverence at the West Bank barrier