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.
.

DAY 192: Nudey night swimming in the sea

11 Mar

YES, I know you’ve done this loads of times, but I am an English and it is unthinkable.

“You’ve got to get a song in your head – it helps,” says the bush pirate as we get out of the car. “Ready?”

In the sea we’re surrounded by swarms of tiny brill, which I’m not told about till later, and we often can’t see the waves coming till they bowl us over. Double the excitement.

Sea mist or something.

Keeper? Squeals ahoy! But don’t fancy going on my own much.

DAY 191: Learning poetry for those after dinner gatherings

10 Mar

The fact that Philip Larkin looks like Eric Morecambe is a bonus in my book.

BACK in the olden days, everyone could recite poetry after the dessert course, but now it’s a lost art.

A quick poll of Facebook associates reveals one person can recite Wilf Owen’s ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ while the rest are caught embarrassingly short at soirees that call for poetic expression.

Personally, I know half a ‘Jabberwocky’ and that’s about it.

I like poems written in layman’s language with a grudging sentimental humour, like those of Philip Larkin and self-proclaimed hack John Betjeman; no metaphysical meanderings or frothy layers of meaning here.

I won’t lie, though – I’ve only heard of Betjeman because he wrote a slightly self-righteous ode to my hometown, which is the one I’m going to memorise, while Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ (“They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to but they do…”) people don’t so much recite as hold up as evidence.

Doesn’t matter. It’s made me go out and read more by them.

Oh no. Pixie Geldof has a Larkin tattoo.

Betjeman’s ‘Slough’ (pronounced “ow!”) was written back in 1937, when I would have thought the town was comparatively lovely. Having said I like layman’s language, I’m particularly fond of the Biblical-style line “Swarm over, Death!”. NB: Funnily enough, bombs did fall on Slough a couple of years later, during World War II. Not enough, though.

Slough

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

Keeper? You know it now, but you can still test me – I did learn it.

DAY 190: Rating my undies

9 Mar

THERE are no dirty pictures of me in existence to the best of my knowledge, unless you count that arty shoot when I was 18.

I decide to end all that today and send someone a mid-morning, up-skirt shot, sort of like a nice break for elevenses.

Unfortunately, the picture won’t send at first, so I go outside and press send about 18 times. Eventually I get the response “ha ha”, which isn’t the reaction I had envisaged at all. Perhaps the text never arrived and he’s chortling at something I said earlier.

After that, though, I’m worried that my undies have failed to cut the mustard, which is hardly fair, as if I’d known I was going to do this I would have put on some lowest common denominator ones and Bob’s your uncle.

Rattled, I decide to email the shot to ‘Rate My Pantys’ (sic) to settle this once and for all. There are lots of ‘Rate My’ sites on the internet: rate my implants / vomit / life / ex-girlfriend / ink / wedgie / pecs / parking / kitten / wee / moustache / doodle… Oh, you name it.

My finger is poised when I’m afraid I start to have doubts. I dunno. I can’t help wondering if all the pics on ‘Rate My Pantys’ are sent by real women with a burning need to know if they’re on the right track, or if it’s just a butt portal for preteens. I rate my undies sacred. Abort mission.

Keeper? I’m not convinced this experiment is bettering my personal development.

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