Kings Cross Whisper Exclusive
As diamonds are rated a girl's best friend, pearls must come a close second. But mother of pearl shells are being affected by global warming and increasingly acidic oceans . According to pearl and fashion expert ,Gladys Mikimoto , of Broome , Western Australia , pearls , instead of being regarded as things of beauty and purity, are developing into something unsightly - like the fungal features of a certain television presenter who moonlights as a noisy fruit bat , soon to be sacked and thrown into the sea in a weighted hessian bag.
Mikimoto produced the above startling deformed cultured pearl from a freshly opened , badly stressed Coffin Bay oyster . She said Adelaide's large community of blue-rinse, cardigan wrapped and pearl- choker wearing women would be shocked by the threat to the pearl industry , as should be the rest of the world .
Another deformed pearl , above, from the badly bleached Great Barrier Reef , looks like a turnip, which no fashion conscious woman would want wrapped about her neck, stuck in her ears or , worse still, pinned to her nostril and eyebrow . Only a dateless and extremely desperate Aussie farmer, probably a smelly swine herder , would take a second look at a painted woman wearing such outlandish jewellery.
