Wayne Thornton, a 46-year-old truck driver, told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper that he felt ambivalent about the polo shirts “It was slightly embarrassing at first,” he said. “Because they are so bright, I felt a bit silly.”Mark Hall, another long-haul truck driver, said nothing could beat his old blue singlet “When I started driving, I was transporting meat,” he said. His record still stands, and his trademark blue vest, worn by many rural workers, is still referred to as a Jackie Howe singlet.Many Australian men are reluctant to change. Howe became an Australian legend after shearing 321 sheep in just under eight hours, all with hand shears, on a farm in 1892. “It is not actually a law, but over the past couple of years many major companies have phased in bright shirts for drivers.”The dark blue singlet – usually stained with sweat and teamed with rubber flip-flops and ill-fitting trousers, was popularised by Jackie Howe, a circus acrobat turned stockman. “It’s a safety issue,” Mark Crosdale, an official with the Transport Workers Union, said.Mr Crosdale said it was important to “visibly enhance” truck drivers (known here as “truckies”) when they stepped out of their vehicles at building sites.

In 2000, an Italian nun was shot dead and a Burundian nun travelling with her was wounded as they travelled to Mass in Gihiza, 56 miles east of Bujumbura.. The blue singlet, for decades the favoured sartorial item of the Australian working man, is in danger of being replaced by fluorescent polo shirts. But the FNL has refused to negotiate and has continued to fight. African leaders have given the FNL three months to join peace talks or be branded as outcasts.Dr Courtney is not the first foreigner to be caught up in the Burundi unrest. The Misna missionary news agency said Dr Courtney had been travelling by car with three other passengers when gunfire from a nearby hill sprayed the vehicle. He was shot in the head, the shoulder and a limb, while another priest in the car was lightly injured. The driver and a hitchhiker were unharmed.”The assailants had planned to kill him,” said Anicet Niyongabo, governor of Bururi province.

“They first fired into the tyres and then approached to execute him. They could not mistake the car for another one because it was flying the Vatican flag.”The announcement in 2000 of Dr Courtney’s appointment as Burundi nuncio described him as “one of the church’s most experienced diplomats”, with more than 30 years of work in the church. He was born in Nenagh and briefly studied economics and law at University College Dublin, then moved on to Rome where he prepared for the priesthood and a varied diplomatic career for the Holy See. He was ordained in 1968, and worked as a parish priest around Ireland until 1976. He then moved back to Rome for postgraduate studies, and entered the Pontifical Diplomatic Academy. Beginning in 1980, he was a papal representative in South Africa, then in Zimbabwe, Senegal, India, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Egypt.Before going to Burundi, he worked for five years as special envoy in Strasbourg, France, monitoring the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights.About 300,000 people have been killed in the civil war, in which rebels of the majority Hutu ethnic group are fighting to end the political dominance of the Tutsi minority. The main rebel group, the FDD (Forces for the Defence of Democracy), has signed a peace deal with the government, which has awarded ministerial posts to rebel leaders.