Ah, fair Blacktown, a typically riveting place where political intrigue and excitement, much like a wet blanket, snuffs out any remaining trace of joy. A place to breathe in gloomy air, to bathe in the merest possibility of political change, and to inhale the heady mix of mourning, lusty vigour, and utter despair that pervades the electoral district. There, in that sordid abyss of by-elections, a tragic tale unfolded on the 18th of August, 1945. The Blacktown By-Election Blues, a ballad of which even the most melancholic souls would weep, emerged from humble beginnings. A woeful prequel, spun out of the sudden silence of a once beating heart - the late Frank Hill, our Labor candidate extraordinaire. A higgledy-piggledy mix of values and verbosity, he left us bereft and bewildered, searching for meaning in the cruel universe that snuffed out his life in the name of a by-election. And so the Blacktown By-Election Blues was born, crooned in the half-hearted laments of the voters, wheezing out from beneath the sable shadows cast by every leaden cloud hovering above the horizon. The people trundled to the polls like defeated soldier ants, crawling over cracked pavements in a desperate search for some measure of solace. They swirled in a cacophony of black-coated misery, stamping their ballots - or perhaps their souls - into the great abyss of the election box. There was tumultuous laughter, the kind of laughter you get when you accidentally kick a metal table leg and pretend you didn't feel the pain shoot up your foot to hide your own shame. No, not because it was particularly funny - oh no, no one finds sad songs of by-elections funny - but because it was the only antidote to the oppressive grief settling on everyone like shrouds. Even the politicians were not exempt from the melancholy that spread as quickly as an unknown plague. Each of them would take their turns to pay tribute to Frank Hill, wringing every last hidden ounce of sadness from their spirits like a practiced necromancer. Resplendent in their mourning finery, they too joined in the cacophonous parade that marched merrily into the depths of despair. But wait! Could they ever hope to find solace? With their voices raised in a haunting dirge for the lost hero, they clamoured for some measure of redemption, some semblance of meaning, some tiny fragment of vindication for their doomed lives. Instead, all they found was the ghastly spectre of Hill's successor, grinning toothily from atop the mound of dusty laurels. Would that be enough to sate their appetite for lament? No! By-elections are not a place for the resolute, nor for the hopeful, nor for the foolish dreamers who flock to the Kumbaya circles of policy changes and sensible debate. They are places of shadow, turmoil, and despair where people gather with heavy hearts and puffed-up faces, to vote with the sombre certainty of doom. That is the dirge of the Blacktown By-Election Blues, the song sung forevermore in tribute to Frank Hill. So let us remember, dearest reader, the woe wrapped in the musky arms of the Blacktown By-Election Blues. Let us not forget the melancholy ode it represents, carried on the wind as a melancholic reminder of that fateful August day in 1945. Long may we honour what it stands for: grief, the boundless well of sorrow that even the bitter joy of voting can never hope to quell.