Archive | March, 2011

DAY 202: Drawing naked commuters

21 Mar

THEY say if you’re feeling nervous you should imagine people naked, but I say it’s something you can do any time.

Bored on a train and can’t be bothered playing Bejewelled on your phone? Try and guess what kind of nipples the fellow opposite you has.

Might there be freckly biceps under that RM Williams shirt? A whisper of a crab ladder? And cut, or not?

And you, madam. Have you a tufty birthmark somewhere curious?
Have now!

Keeper? Was amusing, but feel a bit bad actually. And could one get arrested for this? I will stick to just picturing people naked in my head. THAT MEANS YOU.

DAY 201: Conquering the quad bike in reverse

20 Mar

Watch it.

ACCORDING to WorkSafe, quad bikes are “exceptionally dangerous vehicles”, and yet I am driving one without so much as a driver’s licence. Backwards. Cop that, VicRoads.

The faithful reader may recall that it all got a bit much on DAY 176 when I crashed a quad bike into a bush and couldn’t reverse out again. Today, the bush pirate suggests I return to the challenge – and spank it. He shows me once more the reverse function.

To reverse:

* Heave down button above left handlebar using the might of both thumbs.
* Simultaneously crank lever.
* Hit another button twice.
* Gun throttle with other hand. Oh, wait – you don’t have another hand.

The bush pirate tilted the camera so it would look like I was on a steep hill, but I think the angle of the grass gives it away.

Mission accomplished, I reverse down a track for a little bit and then go hooning through a paddock. After some bunny hopping (this thing lurches like a bloodhound when you change gears) and a detour into a prickly moses, I get it running smoothly. Thank fuck for that – you see three-year-olds operating these things on farms on the telly.

Keeper? Yes. Will try these stunts next.

DAY 200: Crewing in a yacht race

19 Mar

Peter, Ken and your humble narrator.

KEN doesn’t know me from a bar of soap, but agrees to let me help crew his yacht in a race around Apollo Bay. There are five boats competing, from two-man dinghies to our three-bedroomed, $300k (with $30k of “add-ons”), 39-footer. “Your boat’s all cocaine and champagne,” another skipper sniffs, although actually neither are forthcoming.

Cruising out of the harbour with the motor on, we pass flotillas of stingrays and a lone penguin, then kill the motor and hoist the mainsail (pronounced “mainsull”). Rob is the mainsail trimmer. He keeps his sunnies attached to his head by cords and his cap attached to the back of his shirt with a little bungee rope – he’s not taking any chances. Right now he’s got the sail going full-flap, but if the wind’s blowing like buggery, he might take it up one reef (about 30 per cent) or two (50 per cent) so that he can control the boat easier and avoid us keeling over.

Peter unfurls the foresail (also known as the jib, genoa, or “headsull”). My job’s mainly to make sure ropes (“sheets”) don’t completely escape their winches.

When we get to the course, marked out by buoys, Ken lets loose an oath. They’re short lengths, much better suited to smaller boats. The umpire begins the five-minute start sequence – basically a series of flags hoisted upon his rescue boat. At one minute to, he pulls down the Blue Peter and Ken gives the order to do a 360 degree turn to stop us from drifting over the start line ahead of time. We turn too slowly, though, so when the klaxon sounds we’re facing the wrong way. Curses!

“If you lose the first 30 seconds, ya buggered,” Ken observes grimly, gripping the wheel.

Once back on course, we tack through the glassy water before pirouetting widely at the first buoy and completely blocking the passage of the yacht behind us. Boo! Foul! Consult your etiquette handbook! Etc. Ken’s getting flustered.

The second leg’s interminably slow, before we gybe back towards the final buoy – but we’ve come in third despite having superior wood finishes.

Race two is postponed twice for boats drifting over the start line or conditions not being right, and each time we have to go through the five-minute starter sequence. Eventually, we’re off. I think.

“Have we started?” I ask.

“It is a bit like that,” Rob says. “I dunno about the term ‘yacht racing’ – it’s just yachts going around in circles.”

The wind vane up top’s another thing going around in circles, first one way, then the other. We’re stumped.

The smaller boats have stopped altogether and I can hear a plaintive noise from across the way. “Sail whisperers,” says Peter. “He’s whistling the wind.”

By the time we get over the finish line, one yacht is still on the first leg, and hasn’t moved for so long that its skipper is having a swim. The umpire cranks up the motor of his start boat, shifts it over to the yacht and honks his finish line horn. Over the past two hours the wind has dropped from 10 knots to half a knot, so it’s time to pack it in.

“That was shithouse,” Ken proclaims, but I think he’s had fun.

The rescue boat/umpire. Reassuring.

Once the engine’s running and we’re heading for harbour, it’s my job to brace against the cabin and push the mainsail as far starboard as it will go, holding it there. In doing this, I can feel the rhythm of the wind as it threatens to dislocate my arm in perfectly evenly spaced bursts. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow… I’m surprised, as I’d assumed the elements to be more random than that.

“You really get to notice patterns like that when you spend time on a boat,” Peter says.

After bagging up the mainsail, which involves pulling it down and clinging on for dear life as the boom swings wildly around, the crew are insistent that I go up front to the bow and have a Kate Winslet moment.

“I’m the king of the waaaaah!” I utter, as Ken yanks the wheel sharply to the left. Ho ho. I slither back across the cabin on my belly.

Keeper? I’ve always wanted to drink in a yacht club bar, so yes.

DAY 199: Stalking seals

18 Mar

Stench.

THE stench! I rate seals only slightly below ducks and rabbits in my top animals poll, but I had no idea they reek of wet dog, rubbish and rotten fish. No danger of a new pet here.

We’re out in Apollo Bay in Kenty’s sparkly purple speedboat, which he’s smashing down on dips in the ocean with great aplomb. Earlier, the bush pirate betrayed the unspoken trust of menfolk by relaying the phone conversation he had with Kenty. “We’ll just take the boat out, give it some sharp turns and scare her a bit,” Kenty said.

So as not to disappoint, I shriek and squall sportingly whenever we take off over a wave and slam down again. I am a bit worried the electric engine contraption he’s screwed on to the front of the boat (for creeping up on fish) is going to fly off and break my nose, though.

“Is she going to be sick?” Kenty yells, as the wind whips off his hat.

“No, she’ll be right.”

We idle at the seal colony and watch a big group of them arf-ing and wrestling in the surf. Others sit atop pointy rocks, grinning. They’ve no interest in us, and ours wanes after a bit too, so we nick off to the site of  70-year-old shipwreck Casino. She went down in a storm, but not particularly dramatically. Today we can barely make out the dark outline. Time for some more yahooing, then.

“This does explain your hair-do of the last decade,” the bush pirate observes of Kenty’s swept-back look as we roar into the harbour.

Keeper? Wasn’t sick, just hoarse. Might have to grab the wheel next time.

DAY 198: Wrestling and manhandling

17 Mar

DING fucking ding! It’s The Perculator Vs. Legs McSqueal, throwing shit down, on the beach.

“The Perculator’s not so much about wrestling,” my mentor growls, hoiking up his shorts. “I like to think of him as a metaphor for people too dumb to think of good metaphors.”

With that, he spits on the ground, snarls, and grabs me around the neck. I bell clap his ears, rake his chest and knee him in the head. As he drops to his knees, I slide in for a flying dropkick to the guts. Such a crowd pleaser.

No crowing for too long, though – The Perculator’s just kicked sand in my face. Like, really. And he’s back up!

I remember my uncle’s love of the likes of boombas Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, but today we’re apeing the more classical moves of World Heavyweight Champ Mario Milano, who started life as ‘Black Diablo’, and American legend Red Bastien, or ‘Texas Red’. Mario’s finishing move was the atomic drop, which does sound quite final. He still lives in Australia today, after coming here to wrestle in the 1960s.

The Perculator and I work through a sequence of Greek wrestling holds, submission holds, scissor kicks, Chinese racks, backbreakers, suprexes, and that one Daryl Hannah does with her thighs in Blade Runner. That’s good, that one. We take turns to be the heel. Perko’s the inventor of the proctologist’s elbow, so I respond with my own signature move, the loving fistful.

There follows leaping, reeling, grunting, red herrings, leaping over heads and outlandish cries of pain, to the alarm of perambulating old ladies and their yappy dogs.

Keeper? Yes. I will need some pretty good moves up my sleeve when The Perculator discovers Mr Thumpy has nibbled the corner of his 1967 World Championship Wrestling Holds souvenir.

DAY 197: Soliciting a letter from a stranger

16 Mar

BALTHAZAR lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and we’ve never met. I tell you what, though – from his business card he looks like a really nice chap with good teeth.

If you head to his website and write him a note about who you are, he’ll send you a story about yourself on good quality paper, and a polaroid that – 9 times out of 10, I’d say – will feature some nudity.

In my story, he suggests I bury myself up to the chest in my garden. It’s punchably cute though – it could have gone no other way, considering I told Balthazar I live in the country with Mr Thumpy the rabbit. I’m curious as to how a letter would turn out if someone said they were a homicidal maniac who collects ornamental weapons and books on serial killers.

For some other examples on how strangers have infiltrated my life, see:
Strangers pray for me
Strangers dress me

Keeper? Yes. If anyone wants me to send them a postcard, they can first please me by leaving lots of comments in the blog comment boxes. I can even use a commemorative stamp of my head.

DAY 196: Learning how to reduce a traffic fine

15 Mar


I TAKE notes as the bush bandit sweet-talks and shimmies his way down from a $290, three-point fine to a $110, token one-point tiddler.

This’ll come in handy when VicRoads pulls its finger out and gives me my licence.

How to do it.

  1. Slide out of car and amiably walk towards police officer, so that he is not looking down at you in your seat.
  2. Position yourself between police officer and flapping side mirror, and greet him with a cordial g’day. Throw in as quickly as is casually possible that you are a local, even if you have interstate plates and a Frenchman’s moustache.
  3. Throw hands up (whether literally or figuratively – both work) and admit to the crime/s. Do not offer an excuse if there is not one.
  4. Never admit unroadworthiness, even when both staring at a large crack in the windshield where the rego sticker should be.
  5. Scratch head.
  6. Spin incidental yarn about this being your hometown, and that you’re returning here to look for work – a little bit Steinbeck, a little bit Hemingway, a little bit Twain.
  7. Agree contritely to whatever is being said – it’s a fair cop, etc. Let him have his pound of flesh.

Bingo. From being done for speeding, running a stop sign and being unroadworthy, we’ve haggled the cop down to just having no rego sticker – and it’s all down to body language and that curious bush protocol.

Keeper? Not sure I can pull this off. Talking of which… anyone seen The Bad Lieutenant?

DAY 195: Baiting Miranda at Hanging Rock

14 Mar

HYPOTHETICALLY speaking, if one were to take a moonlit saunter into the Hanging Rock reserve – to retrace the steps of 1900s schoolgirl Miranda and her ethereal, doomed chums – one would have to first climb the fence, then tiptoe past slumbering rangers (or perhaps they’re playing cards, or learning Jack Johnson tunes), then hike up sheer slopes of thick bracken and thistles.

One would thus be a bit of a dolt to embark on this hypothetical mission with bare legs, slippery-slidey cowboy boots and a handbag. Ah, the wisdom of hindsight.

Picnic at Hanging Rock, set at these volcanic boulders some 70km northwest of Melbourne, is a novel and film “of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria”. Missing schoolgirls, corsets, undies and a suicide plummet – it’s got it all. In real life, though, this spot was an Aboriginal initiation ceremony site until the 1850s, for boys coming of age.

aaiiee!

I’m getting pretty spooked – not least by the low mutter of the bush pirate explaining the worst case scenario if we get caught. As we crash through the undergrowth, beating our way upwards into blackness for about 20 minutes (nope, can’t find the path), we hear kangaroos thudding loudly, weird birdcalls and furry things thrashing around in the trees.

“Wait!” The bush pirate hisses, freezing. My heart lurches. I prick my ears for eerie panpipes.

“What?”

“I think it’s a ring-tailed possum, look – up there.”

For fuck’s sake!

Once at the summit, we lie down for a bit and look up at the constellations of stars in the cloudless sky. The moon lights up the rock formations around us. It’s a wild and woolly romantic spot, when the tourists aren’t around. “Beats staying home and watching Entourage,” the bush pirate notes. “Is that your hand on my balls?”

While the bush pirate talks to Miranda, I take pictures – our spoils – and type stuff in my phone. It occurs to me that if we do get caught or go crashing to our deaths, I have all the evidence here to put us on Australia’s Dumbest Criminals.

After a spell, we follow wombat tracks back down the slope and then stage-tiptoe down a horribly crunchy gravel road to get back to the gate. The bush pirate starts doing Robert Crumb and James Dean-style tiptoes to calm my nerves.

Keeper? A real kick… but I’m not a gambling girl, and twice might be pushing my luck. A word of advice to anyone planning on scaling a wiry fence any time soon – don’t wear a loose-knit jumper. I hung, crucified, from the top, plucking bits off jumper off fence spikes for what seemed to be an age.

DAY 194: Diving in a kelp forest

13 Mar

IT strikes me, as I flounder through spectacular underwater kelp forests in a blind panic, that most of my activities with the bush pirate involve classic ways for the English to meet their demise.

You’ve read all those stories in the newspapers: an English falls off a sheer cliff-face (perhaps after being told to harvest hard-to-reach ferns); an English loses balance on rocks and is swept out to sea (after it is suggested a swim in a wave-lashed lagoon at high tide might be in order); an English drives a quad bike down a mountain and is lost… I’d not be surprised if a future idea involves hitch-hiking through Belanglo State Forest.

The English, I’m convinced, are not designed to put their heads underwater – yet here I am, tootling in fear up my snorkel. As ever with this year’s missions, though, the mathematics astound me: I go in 100 per cent sure this is a wearying, unpleasant idea – considerably further down the good ideas queue than ‘having a latte’ – and come out feeling 100 per cent more WAHOO!

Mystical hermit or grizzled surf dude? It’s up to you.

The lagoon at Castle Cove is cloudy today, but we spot rockfish, a stingray and abalone. The kelp usually rises up in columns so that you can swim among them as though you’re in a forest, but today they’re shimmying around the seabed, revealing bits here and there like saucy fan dancers. In the cliff walls, sea wrens are nesting, and apparently there are some sea hawks bandying about too, but I’m too busy trying not to get sucked out to sea.

Keeper? Will practise holding my breath – the three-second limit is hampering my experience.

Found this disturbing pic. It's like stingray porn. But for humans, not stingrays.

DAY 193: Piggybacking an adventurer

12 Mar

AT Lavers Hill Roadhouse in the Otway Ranges, I meet Andy Cadigan, for whom the local copper is buying drinks. Which immediately piques my interest.

Andy set off on Boxing Day to walk around Australia to raise money for the The Cancer Council after losing his mate Simo.

He sold his house and car to fund this trip, and all he’s got with him is a pram with solar panels that charge his laptop so he can keep people updated with his blog, Oz On Foot.

Obviously Andy’s looking for donations – the monetary kind – but hearing him talk about bone marrow donations  gets everyone in the pub thinking about that, too.

Andy will be walking till April next year, he reckons, so I help him on his way by piggybacking him off from the roadhouse.

Andy’s got a tent, a tiny cooker, water, clothes, mobile phone, laptop, sleeping-bag, wet wipes, Penguin classic… hey, that’s about it.

In Tasmania, Andy got so cold he chopped the sleeves off his jumper and turned them into mittens, held on by cable ties.

Keeper? We’re all knocked sideways by this bloke. Will definitely keep track of what he’s doing.

Addendum: In June 2012 Andrew Cadigan completed his epic journey of walking alone for 15,000km and raised $65,000 for charity. A month later, while recuperating  in Thailand, he suffered severe head injuries in a motorcycle accident. He died in October 2012, aged 31.
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