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8 April, 2021

Quarantine cowboy: Aussie traveller transforms hotel room into scene from the Wild West

An Aussie art director has made international headlines after transforming himself into a quarantine cowboy using food packaging while undergoing mandatory hotel quarantine.

David Marriott, who is isolating at Rydges South Bank hotel in Brisbane, has kept himself busy during his 14-day quarantine after travelling to the UK following the death of his father from COVID-19, he told ABC Radio Brisbane.

Marriott said he brought a stereo and an art kit to keep him entertained and was inspired to make a cowboy hat out of a cardboard poke bowl.

“I kept all my bags and I thought, ‘I’m gonna make myself a hat for that brown paper cowboy I’ve been talking about’, so I got my scissors out and my glue and started making a hat,” he said, according to ABC News.

“Then I thought, ‘Oh, I need a jacket’, and then I made a jacket and a waistcoat and then a gun and then chaps. I made some chaps and then I made the whole outfit and thought, ‘Well, I need friends.’

Image source: ABC News/David Marriott

“I found in my cupboard an ironing board and I dragged it out and put a desk lamp on it and I thought, ‘My God, there we go — there’s the skeleton of a horse’.

“From there it was just like sticking and cutting, sticking and cutting until I got myself a beast, a pony.”

But everyone knows that all good cowboys have an arch-enemy, so Marriott also crafted a costume made from plastic bags called the Cling Film Kid.

“Every cowboy needs a nemesis, so I figured one is all-natural and recyclable and the other one is the nasty plastic single-use guy — he’s the baddie … he’s gonna get shot … there’s a narrative going,” he said.

Image source: ABC News/David Marriott

Marriott said there is a “mandatory quarantine group” where he has been posting pictures of his creations to cheer people up.

“It’s cheered up the hotel staff because they’re having a hard time having all these guests they can’t see or talk to,” he said.

“It’s cheered my mum up because she’s obviously having a hard time coping with what she’s just been through.”

Featured image source: ABC News/David Marriott

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