DAY 325: Riding a camel

23 Jul

An oldy but a goody.

I’VE been determined to bother a camel before these 365 days are up. Coming from Slough, I find them as alluringly foreign as palm trees and Chiko Rolls.

According to our guide Rebecca, there are over a million wild camels wandering around the Nullarbor (through which Layna, Simone and I have just scored a path, getting from South Australia to West). You can wake up after a night of camping and see their footprints all around you.

They must have all been refueling on powdered lattes at some quaint truckstop when we motored through though, so Simone and I head to Kalamunda, a suburb in the foothills of Perth, to have a go on some domesticated beasties.

Rebecca tells us camels aren’t nearly as moody as horses, which is a relief. At best, horses are shirty; at worst, they try and mess with your head. My camel, Henry, doesn’t deliberately try and walk me into low hanging branches or stop suddenly in his tracks to rip up grass.

While camels can reach speeds of around 70km/h, we take a leisurely stroll through the beautiful bushland of Beelu National Park, where Henry, Amelia and Zara get to rip up a smorgasboard of passing plants – and keep the paths well pruned while they’re at it.

There are few birds around, but kangaroos stop dead and watch us pad past. We leave the beaten track to avoid a mountain bike race, although it wasn’t really necessary: camels don’t have a flight instinct. They’d rather turn around and check something out.

Back at the ranch, an emu wanders around in the gentle breeze and one of the camel whisperers tells us about his working day. Breaking in a wild camel, he says, can result in being bucked five metres in the air. Male camels are on heat, rather than the females, and once a female is slung in the pen there’s a frenzy of camel humping and slobbering – the sound effects of which we are treated to over a piece of cake.

You too, can have a go on a camel.

Amelia chewing.

Keeper? Yes. Camels rule.

DAY 324: Becoming a human lie detector

22 Jul

I WENT to see The Panics play last night, and I noticed frontman Jae stared up and to the right as he sang, sometimes right over his shoulder.

This is because he was using his imagination to recreate the world he’d written about.* You look to the right when you’re creating, fabricating or lying. Looking left means you’re retrieving actual information.

It’s more complex than that, though – we access different parts of our brain depending on whether we’re using our imagination, or recalling smells, sounds or visuals.

This human lie detection website gives me some scenarios to pose to my two guinea-pigs.

1. Ask someone to think of the noise of thunder. When a person’s eyes look to their right, they are constructing an auditory thought.
Simone: Looked right.
Layna: Looked right.

2. Ask someone what they wore yesterday. People look up and to their left when they’re remembering a visual image.
Simone: Right, up.
Layna: Right.

3. Ask someone to picture a boat on the ocean. This is a visually constructed image, and they should look up and to their right.
Simone: Right.
Layna: Right.

4. Ask someone to think of their favourite song and play it in their mind. This is recalling an auditory memory and they should look to their left.
Simone: Right.
Layna: Right, then left.

5. Ask someone how it feels to walk in wet sand. They should look down and to their left as they recall a sensory impression like taste, smell, or feeling. We look down and left when we’re conversing with ourselves.
Simone: Down and right.
Layna: Left.

Keeper? Yes, will be watching everyone extremely carefully from now on. Including myself.

* in my opinion.

DAY 323: Seeing a UFO or some shit

21 Jul

HOLY fireballs! We’ve been driving in a dead straight line down the Nullarbor for what seems like eons, with Layna having taken the lion’s share of the 14-hour haul, when she says, “I don’t want to worry you, but I just saw the road surrounded by lights. It was like the lights were flooding into us.”

I think back to the last time I slapped a driver, and their reaction, and decide not to do that.

We all crane our heads up at the sky and see the constellations that are usually lost to us. It’s at this point a big green light coasts down across the sky to our right. We all saw that one.

“A meteor!”

“It’s a fucking shooting star!”

“A UFO!”

Whatever. I ALWAYS miss this sort of thing, so I’m well pleased.

Wheee.

Once we reach our trucker’s motel in Norseman, I have a good old Google. Tons of streaky green UFOs have been seen above Texas and New Mexico since the 1940s too, as is their wont. They’re as regular as buses above Los Alamos, where the US military are constantly forced to insist they are natural phenomena. But such phenomena also happen loads in this neck of the woods.

“Two men were on the Eyre Highway near the border between South Australia and Western Australia in 1977 when they saw a purple-green fireball crash nearby. One of them entered the craft where he found two aliens, one dead and the other uttering a slight squealing noise. Both in appearance were pot-bellied, about one-and-a-half metres tall, and had long, thin arms. Their eyes were large and black and there were no ears or hair. When the man emerged from the wreck he found military personnel on the scene, who arrested them. The American disappeared (he was absent without leave from the armed services) and the Australian, who was also a soldier, was put in custody for two weeks and persuaded that what he had seen was a normal aircraft crash. He claims that he has subsequently heard of several other UFO crashes which have been cleared up in great secrecy by the military.”

In 2006 at least three phosphorescent green fireballs trailed over northeast Australia and rolled down the side of a mountain. They were explained away as meteors, the shockwaves of which lead to electrically charged oxygen similar to that seen in auroras.

Chuh, right.

Keeper? Need to see another one – I forgot to make a wish.

DAY 322: Making a Wolf Creek contingency plan

20 Jul

THE sun starts going down on the Nullarbor in West Australia, which means we’ve got four hours of dodging roos before we reach Norseman.

Each town we see on the GPS turns out to be a battered old servo with some dim sims in a bain-marie.

At one servo we’re nursing our self-frothed lattes from a machine when a bloke in a trucker cap starts filling the Holden GTS next to us. Apart from the nice ride, we notice him because he’s muttering to himself over some weird zumba music blaring from his stereo… and then he slings a rope in the boot.

He pulls out of the servo, does a loop and drives back in.

Here's a weirdo we saw earlier.

After a piss break, we set off ourselves, and soon find we’re driving past the same fella, who’s now pulled over by the side of the road. There’s a collective “eep” from our car as he swings out behind us, but I’ll also admit to a flash of excitement, given that we’ve spent the last 10 hours on the Nullar-bore discussing bowel movements and reading bits of Woman’s Day out loud.

The bloke pulls a U-ey and we see his tail-lights fade. We reckon he’s just joshing with us, but we decide we need a contingency plan.

First off, a vote: if we’re followed, keep driving or stop? It’s unanimous: stop. Then wait for him to get out. Then drive. Then stop. Then wait for him to get out. Etc.

Back-up plan is one of attack. The weapons available to us are:

Luke warm cappuccino (2)

Bottle of Jo Malone perfume

iPod lead

Rolled up copy of Woman’s Day (the one with a Joanne Lees interview in it)

Mini can of Dove antiperspirant + lighter

Knitting needles.

We’ll be right.

Keeper? He wasn’t bad looking, but we’ll leave him on the ’Bore.

DAY 321: Driving in SA and WA

19 Jul

I’VE sulked everywhere: atop mountains, by scenic lakes, on planes, trains and automobiles, throughout long walks with Mum and Dad (100m behind) and longer board games.

So when I find out Layna is reluctant to let me lay my grubby hands on her lovely new steering wheel just a few hundred kays into our four-day road trip, it seems as though history must repeat itself. Not only does the cosmos not want me to get my licence, neither does anybody else. BROOD.

By rights, I could sulk all the way through our latte stop at Snowtown, the Flinders Ranges, Kimba – the halfway point of Australia – the Big Galah, the Big Roo and the Nullarbor golf course, but there isn’t room for passive aggressiveness in a car loaded up with three people and confectionary; three people dancing on a knife-edge of sugar violence. Luckily, Layna feels the same, as about 12 hours into our trip, she reluctantly relinquishes her grip on the wheel. Onya!

Kangaroos: 0. Sudden swerves to the side when 26-wheelers trundle past: 100s.

Keeper? Yes, this was very satisfying. I suspect I was handed the wheel to prevent me from spilling any more peanut butter sandwich crumbs on the spanking new passenger seat, though.

DAY 320: Streaking in Streaky Bay

18 Jul

THE road trip through South Australia was pretty boring, till THIS happened.

Keeper? Yeaargh! Bring on other provoking place names!

DAY 319: Stalking my lost youth and other youths at Luna Park

17 Jul

TODAY I’m at Luna Park to tackle every thrill-ride it can throw at me. I’m emerging from a lethargic spell and I need a double-shot of adrenalin.

Going to a fairground drops me right back into being 12 years old again, mooching around on the brink of puberty, checking out greasy boys with moody acne and waiting for the buds of neurosis to develop into full-blown norks.

One summer I spotted a roustabout working the waltzer, a boy all of 14 in a Levis sweatshirt (well, probably a knock-off Levis sweatshirt, realistically) and blue jeans. For someone with my buttoned-up existence, this was as close to Rumble Fish as it got. He ignored me completely, and after the fair left town, I pined. I placed a personal ad in Sky, on the off-chance that travellers regularly bought mags with Wendy James on the cover.

I never saw that boy again, but I’m always casting a sideways glance at fair folk to see if anyone swarthy’s at the controls. No such luck in Luna Park, which is about as chiselled as Matthew Newton’s cheeks.

Instead, I climb on board the Pharaoh’s Curse with Clare and get tipped upside down a bunch of times in an unpleasant manner. Woah, that’ll do.

Keeper? No, but must write that Mills & Boon novel I’ve been putting off.

DAY 318: Leading by example in public toilets

16 Jul

This was in Bendigo station toilet.

I CAN never pick who writes the filth in girls’ toilets. You could be in the most mild-mannered of indie establishments and there’ll be references to orifices and base sexual activities all over the walls, complete with diagrams. Who writes it? There never seem to be any immediately obvious trolls sitting in the pub.

I’m feeling sentimental after being mean in yesterday’s blog, so I write an inspiring message in a toilet cubicle.

This differs from Day 141 – Baring My Soul on a Dunny Wall – in that Day 141’s missive went on for far too long and probably made everyone vomit, whereas this’ll serve as inspiration to make future visitors to this stall think long and hard about their lives.

Other inspirational messages, if you get the urge to do the same, might be:

Call home today and don’t just let Dad hand over the phone.

Go back out there and give your boyfriend some attention; you’ve been taking him for granted for ages.

Try and find something nice about everybody sat in the waiting-room.

Manners cost nothing.

Why don’t you wear your hair another way today?

If you answer that text you can’t be arsed answering, maybe you will get an answer to that other text you sent. Even if you don’t, you’ll have done the right thing.

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 317: Booking a flight at random and letting Mum take the rap

15 Jul

I’VE got some Qantas frequent flyer points stored up and I decide to pick a destination at random, to bugger off to in September.

It can’t TOTALLY be at random though, as I don’t have a driver’s licence and I don’t fancy my chances taking in the delights of Conclurry or Olympic Dam without wheels, let alone Paraburdoo, est. 1970 (“other facilities provided in town are a supermarket, newsagency, bottleshop, pharmacy and gift shop”).

So to randomise it up a bit, I ring Mum in England and get her to pick from three destinations she’s never heard of, which is a bit mean, since she’s not allowed to read the blog and has been told I will be able to tell if she does. She opts for Hervey Bay in Queensland, but here are her reasons…

Hervey Bay: “Yes, I gathered it was a bay. That’s why I chose it.”

Bundaberg: “Didn’t like the sound of it. It sounded a bit rough.”

Port Lincoln: “Sounded a bit serious.”

Now if Hervey Bay turns out to be shit on a stick, I can just add it to my list of grievances.

“Well we know that, you’ve been blaming me for a long time.”

Keeper? That was quite good, and it was nice of Mum to pick a bay. She’s not picking my outfits or boyfriends, but maybe other things.

DAY 316: Employing a personal shopper

14 Jul

MY sartorial style is something like ‘tomboy’ meets ‘half-hearted Audrey from Twin Peaks’ meets ‘still-got-my-rockabilly-wardrobe from my twenties’.

Given that I’ve now got less than two months to write about me, me and me, I decide to see what another woman makes of ME.

Adele is a professional stylist who moonlights as a personal shopper. I meet her in giganto-mall Chadstone; a complex stuffed with designer labels. She leads me to Sportsgirl.

No, that’s okay, really. I do shop at Sportsgirl. And clearly Adele thinks I deserve to.

I tell Adele I want her to pick out what shapes and colours she thinks will suit me, and that I’m totally willing to be open minded.

As if to test this theory, Adele immediately picks out revolting tan stretch pants made of some kind of shiny material, and an orange net top. The idea is that these autumnal colours will warm up my pallor.

I wind up trying on a variety of coloured blouses my mother would balk at, and pants – all of which have a low-hanging gusset.

I do learn a useful piece of advice from Adele and a saleswoman, though: cat’s whiskers across a pussy are okay (that’s the wrinkles across said gusset), but camel toe’s a no. Repeat after me, girls!

I’ll file that little nugget alongside “I must, I must, I must improve my bust.”

Keeper? No.

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