The Critical Thinker's Speakeasy

The Year of Living Dormantly

2012-02-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

Somehow, a year has gone by since I last wrote anything. A couple of days ago I asked myself how this could have happened. No answers came to mind - just a niggling feeling that I'd better do something before total atrophy set in. So, here you go, folks - I'm back, with a raft, or box, or kitty-litter tray, of new stories, observations, and stupidities, for your pleasure and edification.

Not that 'dormantly' is the most precise word, either - in the past twelve months I've been to Indonesia and Europe, had a few excursions into the Australian hinterland, worked a fair bit on my musical projects, assiduously driven the Titanium Princess to utter distraction, corrected not a few psycho-jeezoids on the interwebs, read Tia twenty thousand books, cleaned the pool, and vacuumed the carpet. So, before I receive nasty complaints involving the use of words such as 'sluggard', let me tell you that I've been busier than a one-armed taxi driver with crabs.

Now, where was I?

We (the T.P. and I) hit the tarmac of Dublin airport courtesy of Ryan Air, a company that believes it is sound policy to pay a penny to piss in its aircraft. Ha, I thought - what are vomit-bags really there for, anyway?

A few bus-stops later, we were ensconced in a shabby little hostel just down the road from St Stephen's Green. Central Dublin was just turning on its lights for the night, so we strolled up to Sheehan's Hotel, through the doors, up the stairs, and into the arms of twenty-odd people with whom I'd become great friends, but whom I had never seen in the flesh until this day.

It's a strange feeling. I'd 'known' all of these people for a couple of years - we were veterans of daily conversations about all sorts of matters: science, religion, atheism, culture, music, chickens - and I'd become accustomed to their 'voices' - the ones that formed in my head each time I read an erudite post from Sharon, or Steve, or Alexandra, or Dr Z, or Tyler, or Decius, or Philip, or Ashley, or Titania, or Jonathan, or Clod, or any of them. They'd become, for me, a digital family. But here they all were - sitting around at tables, big draughts of Guinness tumbling into the mouths of those who weren't currently declaiming strenuously (and into some who were doing both).

At our entrance, they all fell silent and turned to us. "G'day, you godless bastards", I cried, and twenty pairs of arms were hugging me. It was, I must say, one of the most astounding moments of my life. And we were all together in Dublin - let us not forget that. We were here for a conference; we were here to discuss important matters of the intellect; we were here to sort out, to rationalise, the New Atheist Agenda. We had conveniently forgotten that we were in the presence of a far greater intelligence: the mind of Guinness.

I awoke (to use the term loosely) the next morning with the blurry realisation that I was due to deliver a presentation on 'Language and Religious Metaphor' at the conference centre in about ten minutes. This was not good - I was in the upstairs portion of a double bunk, into which I had apparently climbed a couple of hours before, and from which I could see no immediate method of climbing down. I considered just jumping for it, but was unsure of the protocols of the Irish public health service. Then I noticed the T.P's gentle snoring coming from directly below.

'Chris...' I mumbled, trying to wake her so that she could take over the bunk-extraction procedure. It was to no avail - she'd consumed about thirty pints herself, and was somewhere between sweet dreams and a full-blown coma, by the look on her face.

Eventually, we made it to the conference centre, terribly late. Dr Z kindly offered to speak first, so that I could assemble what was left of my wits, and his erudite lecture on the 'landscape' of Evolution spurred me to pull my finger out, get it together, and say something vaguely intelligent. Somehow I waded through my presentation, and received rather enthusiastic applause and comments at its conclusion. These people, I thought, are either remarkably kind and generous, or they're hanging out to get to the pub for lunch. It was lunch.

After some tasty victuals and a couple more pints of ambrosia, we returned the the conference centre, where our resident cosmologist, Oystein, gave a fascinating account of the evolution of fourteen billion years of Universe in just under an hour. Jeebus, it made us all thirsty, though. We repaired to Sheehan's, again.

And that, dear reader, is the extent of our conferencing, unless you call wandering the streets of Dublin at all hours of the night, singing songs, laughing our heads off, telling each other our life stories, and becoming the real friends we always knew we'd become, a 'conference'. I think it became a far better conference than we'd ever planned. We took a trip to Newgrange, marvelling at the ancient mounds, intricate rock carvings, and the extraordinary solar observatory; we wined and dined at restaurants selected for us by our Dublin host Tyler (and they were all Italian, and all fantastic); we walked the grounds of Trinity College, where so many of the great Irish poets and dramatists and novelists had laboured; and we became friends for life.

It's not a bad way to spend a week, don't you agree?

We departed for Wales. We had an appointment with another man I'd never met. His name was Bendi. Sweet non-Jesus, how will I ever do literary justice to that encounter? But I'll try. Next time.

"Shenanigans" is Irish for "What the fuck hit me?"

2010-09-04T02:13:00.000-07:00

Dublin had always been to me a place of myth. I'd spent so many hours, no, years, poring over the great Irish novelists, poets and dramatists that the very idea of being there filled me with some foreboding - as if the reality would never match the imagining. Happily, I was wrong, but not for the reasons you may guess.

The Titanium Princess had been all agog in Brussels, which we'd not visited since we were kids in 1974, and I'd had hazy memories of the place (ok, I'd forgotten about it altogether). But Brussels was pretty cool; we stayed in a penzione just down an alley called the Rue Chair et Pain, a stone's throw from the famous square that housed the superbly elegant Grand Palace, the Museum van de Stad Bruxelle, and the Stadhuis van Bruxelle - all superb works of architectural and artistic genius.

But no - what took the T.P.'s fancy was the Musee du Cacao et du Chocolat, and I'm sure I don't have to translate that one even for American readers. Her Metal Majesty was high on hog heaven - she waltzed through the doors as if she were the number one shareholder in Belgian sweet-goods, and proceeded to expand by the minute as she tasted every single available offering. I must admit - Belgian chocolate is a pretty fine substance, and one which, I think, had it been dispensed freely to the Nazis and the Poms, might have prevented quite a few unfortunate fracas a few years back.

After taking photographs of Japanese tourists taking photographs of each other taking photographs of the Mannekin Pis and giggling and laughing, we jumped on a bus and headed out to the airport, where Ryan Air unceremoniously dumped us into the sky, went horizontally at a great rate of knots, and just as unceremoniously dumped us on the tarmac of Dublin Airport. (And that's just what Ryan Air does - talk about "no frills"; you even have to pay to vomit into their sick-bags!)

Well, I thought, as we trundled across the tarmac into Customs, after several weeks of hastily learning a number of languages including Turkish, Greek, Italian, German, Belgian and Alcoholic (ok, I was already fluent in the latter), here we are back in a land where everyone speaks English.

But what an English it is. I fancy that the Irish are the world's best users of our great and noble tongue - they have a way of making the most common conversational constructions appear as Shakespearian dramaturgy; if you ask for directions they will be offered with so many conditional subjunctives that you will forget where you were going in the first place. I was intrigued and bowled over by the friendly lunacy of Irish English. (As an example, when I breasted the bar in the Bleeding Horse Hotel one afternoon, the publican asked of my origins. I told him "Kurrajong, near Sydney". He whistled into his beard for a moment, scratching his nose, and replied "Well, now - that'd be a place, then, wouldn't it?")

There was a higher purpose to our arrival in Dublin. We were to meet up with about twenty friends of mine, none of whom I'd ever actually met face-to-face, but who had become good friends nevertheless via the magic interweb. We were all regular contributors to a well-known forum of atheists, rationalists, scientists, philosophers and other goodismists, and had been badgering away at each other for the past two or three years. A couple of the bright sparks, Titania and Decius (I'll use screen-names for these characters, considering the revelations that are about to unfold, haha), ended up planning a meet-up in Dublin about a year previously, and it turned out to coincide with the Laurie/T.P. Grand Tour. The stage was set.

The T.P. had organised our digs in another one of those youth hostels, which turned out to be not so bad, because it was within easy walking, stumbling or crawling distance from about thirty different pubs. (Have you ever crawled on cobblestones? It's a life-changing experience, let me assure you.) We tossed our bags on our bunks. (I got the top one, and dimly surveyed the kind of drunken calisthenics I'd be using to get up on it in about twelve hours' time. The prospect wasn't pretty.) A quick shower and change later, and we were walking towards Sheehan's Hotel, and a date with doom, or Oromasdes, as he's better-known...

...to be continued

Don't mention the war.

2010-07-06T03:51:00.000-07:00

We pulled into Prague on the day Michael Jackson went to live with Elvis. I haven't got much to say about this fascinating city, except that a) its drivers are horrendous, incompetent fools who obey road rules to the letter; b) don't go there in June or July, because you'll be drowned in tourists and high prices; c) the museum is great, and even has a mammoth, and d) it has the best thunderstorms.

So, after a couple of days, we boarded another train for Berlin. The Titanium one had gone troppo in Prague, and was kitted out with a most magnificent range of fabrics and those fiddly things women like to acquire to adorn their ears, necks, wrists and the like - all silver and crystalline chunks of ultra-compressed carbon. I bought another hat.

The train journey, which wound its way along the Vlatava River (which, when it reaches Germany, mysteriously becomes the Elbe), was a delight. It took all day, but it was one of those trips that never becomes a burden. The scenery changed around almost every bend in the river, taking us past farms, through forests, and, at one point, between Teplice and Decin, along a grand gorge with towering, incandescent sandstone cliffs that were eerily similar to the Hawkesbury sandstone of the Colo valley where I live. It was magnificent, and reminded me that the best part of travelling is the travel itself. Just as when I was a twelve year-old train enthusiast, hopping on and off trains all over New South Wales, this trip was enchanting; every turn of the track revealed something new and wonderful, and often enigmatic.

Like this: we were coming into Germany, and, in a field by the railway line, was a post and wire fence that was about two feet tall. It went for kilometres. I was intrigued - what the fuck was its purpose? Was it keeping hordes of feuding dwarves at bay? To this day, I have no idea. It seemed completely useless, but for some German farmer, it was an integral part of the infrastructure, as it was obviously well-maintained (like everything else in Germany, of course). I don't know - I suppose one of the German readers of this blog will enlighten me eventually (although there are probably several dozen fewer of them now than there were a few weeks ago. Don't worry guys - wait 'til I start telling you about England - you'll realise I'm an equal-opportunity curmudgeon, for sure!)

We stopped briefly in Dresden, scene of the British and American Air Forces' own Holocaust in WWII. Of course, Dresden has been rebuilt, but there were several monuments to the carnage left as they were, as a reminder to all and sundry that war is just about the stupidest project on earth. Interestingly, Churchill's rationale for the fire-bombing of the city was that they were trying to wipe out the railway marshalling yard. And they certainly succeeded in that. There was just the small matter of the 100,000 to 200,000 civilians whose barbecued remains ended up as collateral damage. Nice one, Winston.

With this grim reminder of humanity's utter collective insanity under our belts, we moved on, through spindly forests of ash, or elm, or some other types of trees at which, as an Antipodean, I was at a loss to identify, until we arrived at the most exquisitely-designed railway station I've ever seen - the Hauptbahnhof of central Berlin.

Opened in 2006, the Hauptbahnhof is a magisterial comportment of steel and glass. Its architectural beauty lies in its transparency - from almost anywhere inside the structure, one can look at all of the platforms, and all of the tracks, on multi-levels connected by vast escalators; it is almost as if the station floats in its own sea of glass. It said, more plainly than anything else, welcome to Berlin, welcome to modernity.

A bus whisked us efficiently and promptly to the Berlin Youth Hostel, only a mile or so from the city centre. Distinct from the YHA residences of Turkey and Greece, the Berlin outfit was all simplicity and (here comes that word again) efficiency. We were in our room in three minutes flat, had a shower (no enormous cockroaches evident), and were back out onto the street to hunt for victuals in no time at all. A blazing curry later, we sauntered back to the hostel and sat on the lawn, me demolishing a six-pack, and the T.P. fending off invitations from Adonisian young men to cast a critical eye over the robust collection of etchings they were hoarding in their rooms. (Just kidding - only one such Adonis made that sort of approach, and when I cast a quizzical eye at him he pretty quickly realised, from the gaunt visage of your correspondent's face, that an assignation with the T.P. might be biting off a fair bit more than he could chew, so to speak. Mind you, as an aficionado of all things comical, I would have paid good money to witness such an encounter.)

The next morning we took a walking tour of the city. There is still a neat divide between East and West Berlin, and it reflects the post-war priorities (and ideologies, if you want to get all politically historical) of the British-American and Soviet blocs. On the East, the Soviets preserved and maintained as many of the pre-existing structures as they could. And so, you walk along the great boulevard and see row upon row, block upon block, of 18th and 19th century apartments, shops, and, down further, palaces, museums and state buildings. It is simply wonderful. On the western side, however, vast spaces devoid of anything, with interspersed 'modern' buildings, testify to the Allies' penchant for knocking down anything that was vaguely damaged in the bombing. Vast edifices, legacies of the 1960s, ugly as only that period of architecture can be, confronted and appalled us at every turn. We headed back east, to the museum district.

The Pergamon Museum, built to house the collection of ancient relics pilfered from the famous Greek city in Turkey (to which we'd paid a visit just a couple of weeks before) stood, like a Parthenon, amidst the crumbling walls and buildings of East Berlin. The street on which the Pergamon stands was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting as the Soviets forced their way into Berlin at the end of WWII, and the legacy of that fire-fight is stark, brutal and disturbing. Shell and bullet-holes cover the walls of buildings; even the Pergamon itself didn't go unscathed, with great, gouging holes blown in the fluted marble columns. I earnestly hoped, as I wandered along the street, that these would never be lost, never be cosmeticised, because they too, like Dachau, like Dresden, were a reminder of the ferocity of war. If stone, brick and concrete could be so scarred, and so massively, what was happening to the bodies of boys and young men?

Back at the hostel, young men and women gambolled on the spacious lawns. A bunch of boys, fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in bomber jackets and jauntily-angled baseball caps, effected a swaggering sort of pimp-roll past us, speaking in German. These kids were attempting to fast-track cultural evolution. I half expected them to turn black and begin saying "Yo" before my eyes. Of course, I've seen the same thing in Sydney - it was just a trifle more amusing to see Coca-Colonisation proceeding in German. Ce'st la vie, as they say in !Xhosa.

The next day, on the Potsdamer Platz, I approached a German military officer who had a little table set up next to a big, heavily-graffitied chunk of the Berlin Wall. He was offering, for one Euro, to stamp passports with a variety of Cold War-era permission stamps. I happily found Checkpoint Charlie and a couple of other such paraphernalia embossed inside my passport. He told me that there was a movement going on to reclaim as much of the Wall as could be done, and his little effort was helping to raise money for the project. "So, where is most of the Wall now?" I asked.

"In people's lounge-rooms," he replied straight-faced.

We continued perambulating down Unter den Linden, to the Berlin Cathedral - another fine example of the temporal largesse that can come from convincing people of the efficacy of howling at an empty sky - and, on that sunny June day, lay on the grass beside the fountain on Museum Island, admiring, once again, the class of Europeans generally when it comes to the realisation of space in their cities.

But now it was time to go to Hamburg, where we had a date with destiny in the form of two outrageous Americans and a week of debauchery. Liver, don't fail me now...

Mecca

2010-04-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

Sadly, we took our leave of Narelle, and Munich, boarding a train bound for Prague. The plan was to take a detour into the Czech Republic, then emerge back into the old East Germany and head for Berlin. During the week in Munich we'd travelled to Salzburg, Wurzburg, and many a burg in between, relishing the efficiency of a couple of countries built on standards that would have been frankly impossible in a shambolic and oh-so laid-back country like Australia.

Every country has its good and bad points, of course - and often, these are evidenced on both sides of the same coin. Germany and Austria are paragons of public organisation and efficiency, for example - Mussolini didn't have much luck in Italy, by all accounts, but here, the trains really did run on time. These countries parade this neat-as-a-pin efficiency as a matter of course, most noticeably in their public transport systems, for sure, but in many more, and subtler, ways as well. I was forever taken with the no-nonsense attitude of the locals, especially when dealing with shopkeepers, policepersons, or any other official. Almost always, one's question was answered with a prefacing raise of the eyebrows and a slight moue, as if the answer simply didn't require the articulated "Of course, you oaf - vot do you think we are, here, barbarians?" There was a genuine pride in Germanic entrepreneurial efficiency, as if 'efficiency' was paradigmatic to any concept of both the ethical and aesthetic heights of culture. It was entrancing. Getting around the place was never a problem; the people were always happy to point one in the right direction, or offer good advice on food (...er, on second thoughts...), places to see, ways to do things.

Of course, there is another side. On a sunny Sunday morning, with no-one about (the Bavarians don't go out on Sunday unless it's to a relative's place for lunch), I went for a bit of a stroll. The roads were eerily vacant, and, j-walking across an intersection, I came across an old woman walking one of those sorts of dogs - tiny, yappy, fluffy and pompadoured - that really deserve to be picked up by the hind legs and dashed against the nearest brick wall. She stopped as I came to her side of the kerb, lifted a finger, and shook it vigorously at me. "Nicht in ordnung, nicht in ordnung!" she vituperated, busily clutching her tiny demon-hound to her ample bosom with the other hand. Nonplussed, I asked her what was the matter. She gesticulated wildly, tracing my path across the intersection with a finger, whilst jabbering away at me in German (naturally). I suddenly realised that I'd committed a grave offence, the worst one a bloke can commit in all of Deutschland - be different.

It dawned on me that the reason that Germany was a place resplendent in its efficiency was that everyone does the same things the same way. All those manicured wood-piles swept back into view, all of those pretty villages, docile farm-wives, cooking their pastries, all those people lining up so civilly to board the U-Bahn - to be well-ordered in Germany is the pinnacle of ideology. Forget the old Ubermensch bullshit - the only reason Hitler got to where he did was that the Germans are enthralled by the social purity of the concept of following orders. Heterodoxy is a sin; to be laid-back is as bad a crime as not washing for a month. I began to wonder what all of those post-war German immigrants to Australia must have thought when they got off the ship and saw thousands of Aussies deliberately not giving a fuck.

We trundled through several impeccably tidy towns - Dingolfing, Plattling, Deggendorf - and suddenly we were in the Czech Republic. Not that any sign announced it as such, but the first place we pulled into, Zelesna Ruda, was definitely un - German! The train heaved to a stop, and became, instantaneously, a Czech train. Instantly, the floor was littered with empty soda cans and beer bottles, scraps of paper and cigarette butts. And that was only my contribution! Outside, the rusting hulks of old boilers and other machinery littered the countryside; weeds grew with gay abandon, and everything looked tired and run-down. Ah, I thought - back to reality!

The train jalopied through a mixture of tumbledown villages, open country and pretty forests, then suddenly and noisily, came to a creaking halt in a city called Pilzn. Could it be, I thought? I jumped out of the carriage, onto the platform, and, Pope-like, got on my hands and knees, extended my posterior heavenwards, and kissed the earth. I felt like one of those diaspora Jews returning to Jerusalem for the first time, except that in my case the object of the pilgrimage was decidedly more gustatorial: beer! Fate, as she had done to me a few times recently, had delivered me to the shrine, the Mecca, of drinkers - the origin of the greatest of all styles of amber refreshment. Oh happy day! This was really beginning to be a journey of which one could be proud.

I resumed my seat on the train next to the Titanium Princess, who simply shrugged and gave me one of those acute, withering looks that said (and may I remind you that I can read the leader of the opposition like the doyen of Pitman's Shorthand): You simpering, gormless, feeble-minded halfwit. A divorce court is too good a place for you.

I was, however, in such a state of euphoria that I simply cracked open a can of Pilsener Urquelle and said "There you go, my darling - I knew this trip would take a turn for the better!"

We rolled on, towards Prague.

Civilisation

2010-03-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

The train came thundering through the Brenner pass as a weak sun rose under low cloud, and there was Austria all around us. Italy and its discontents were already a fading memory as we descended the mountain, through little towns, two of which were named, strangely, 'Mutters' and 'Natters'. Already the concept of civilisation had taken a curious turn, with each village obviously vying for 'Tidy Town of the World' status. It became rapidly obvious that in these rural villages, anal retention was not so much a psychiatric obsession as it was a religion.

Each little neat-as-a-pin farmhouse had a woodpile. And oh, what a majestic piece of architecture it was. Each stick of wood had been lopped to within a tolerance of half a millimetre for length, and split at a perfect one hundred and twenty degrees, then stacked with a precision that defied imagination, and common-sense, for that matter. For fuck's sake, they were just going to burn the stuff, after all. Everything was clean, there was literally not a skerrick of rubbish - not a bottle-top, not a plastic bag, not even a cigarette butt to be seen. Coming from Italy, this was some contrast, and it induced in me a worrying mixture of deep aesthetic gratitude and a rising panic that I'd suddenly been transported to some Midwich-like otherworld. I fully expected to see Nicole Kidman look-alikes with Mary Tyler Moore hairstyles and cotton pinafores carrying trays of pastries to each others' houses. It was all magnificently surreal.

Even the natural landscape looked like it had been manicuring itself for centuries. Perfect stands of conifers gave way to fields of mown meadow; snow around the conical summits of mountains glimmered with a praeternatural light; bubbling and hissing streams of pure water cut lyrical swathes through a countryside that was familiar with every shade of meaning of the word 'green'. Verily, this was an elysian dream.

Gradually, I regained the use of plain English as we descended into Innsbruck, then headed on through pretty valleys until we passed, unnoticeably, into Germany, where we finally arrived at the busy terminus in Munich.

We were having a week off, just hanging out at Narelle's apartment and taking in the sights and sounds of Munich and its environs. I was dead keen to do some serious, Australian investigation into the entire range of Bavarian liquid refreshments, and I must say that I did a pretty good job of exhausting the possibilities - so much so that by the end of the week I had become, I think, the premier ameliorator of the global financial crisis, Munich chapter. The Titanium Princess, of course, continued to be unamused by our rapidly deteriorating bag of shekels, and informed me so as I lurched blearily back into the apartment each night after another days' sociological endeavours.

'I hope your liver explodes, you idiot,' she would lovingly coo, as I ripped the top off a nightcap of a particularly dark and handsome variety of the local wheat beer. One doesn't have to actually eat anything whilst sojourning in Bavaria, I found out, as the entire gamut of food groups seems to be contained within each bottle or stein of Weizen, Bock, Doppelbock (and boy, can a bloke get misty-eyed on that little product!) or even Helles.

And it's a good thing, too, because what the Bavarians actually eat can inspire nightmares just by looking at it, so what kind of nocturnal torment a bloke would endure if he accidently swallowed some of it, Christ only knows. Dear reader, have you ever even looked at a plate of udder tripe? I rest my case.

On the fourth day in Munich, I decided to ease up on the old body, which had started to disintegrate under the onslaught, and spend the day being cultured. The girls had bravely decided to visit Dachau and its horrors, whereas I was intent on walking my way through the Alte Pinakothek, Munich's illustrious museum of art.

The Alte is one of three museums of art (the other two being the Neue, and the Moderne), and contains one of the best collections of Mediaeval and Renaissance art in the world. I walked towards it via the Konigsplatz, the seat of Nazi power during the '30s, wondering how the girls were faring, and thinking about the dissonance between the grand opulence of the Reich's houses of power and the charnel houses they were walking through only a few miles to the north.

The Alte is a magnificent building, constructed in 1836, and an exemplar for modern galleries all over the world. It was rebuilt in the 1950s, along with eighty percent of the rest of Munich, all bombed to rubble. For the princely sum of one Euro I gained entry through vast timber doors, and began a day of saying "Ooh" and "Ahh", and "Fuck me dead!" about every ten seconds.

The museum is home to the old masters - German, Flemish, Italian, French and Spanish masterpieces assail the viewer at every turn. I was captivated, more than anything, by the iconography of the early Germans and Flemish. The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Hans Holbein caught my eye. Here is poor old Sebastian, strung up to a tree, with various archers taking cross-bow pot shots at him from point-blank range. He's beginning to resemble a porcupine, and is decidedly green around the gills, as you would expect. One of the archers is on one knee, casually slipping another bolt in his bow. The whole affair is being conducted in a no-nonsense style as if whacking arrows into a martyr's body is just another day's work for the executioners. It's a tantalising painting - and gruesome in its mundanity.

Lucas Cranarch, with whom I was unfamiliar before this visit, was a wonderful painter of the sixteenth century. His Adam und Eva is a colossal piss-take on the whole Garden of Eden thing, if you ask me - complete with a serpent with a smile like a used-car salesman. Lions and deer gambol peacefully around the tree, and Adam and his missus, rather than eat a fairly delicious-looking apple, look like they're about to drop acid for the first time.

I was still chuckling when I walked through a doorway into the hall of Reubens, and had to gently lower myself to the ground before I passed out in delirium. Here was a cornucopia of delight, bliss, fear, and horror; a compendium of every extremity of human emotion. Lined against each other on the walls were paintings of sheer intensity, colour, vibrancy, and masterly technique. I was winded, I was fucked.

To give just one example, let me quote verbatim from the notes I wrote on that day as I stood before Der Bethlehemitische Kindermord, a painting describing the Herodic infanticide:

The Roman soldiers murdering babies. On the right, a woman is biting the arm of a soldier whose bloody dagger is poised over her back. Their faces ooze brutality. Another woman scratches at the face of a soldier, who is holding a baby being stabbed through the heart. The angels watch from above and throw flowers!! A woman, right, clutches a dagger above her infant, as if she is resigned to ending its life as humanely as possible. Blood is dripping from her hand. Throughout, human flesh is being sliced to the bone. I wonder what Reubens was thinking? Is it a moral lesson, or is it journalism?

As I walked back to the apartment, I wondered whether the T.P.'s excursion had not, perhaps, been so dissimilar to mine. All that horror, centuries piled upon centuries of it.

I opened the door. Chris and Narelle were sitting on the lounge, and both of them were crying.

"Remember Montaperti!" (Part 2)

2010-02-17T23:37:00.000-08:00

A couple of days later the three of us got on a bus and trundled through the Tuscan countryside to San Gimignano, a smaller version of Siena - another mediaevel fortress city perched on a hill. San Gim is famous for half a dozen or so square towers that poke out of various of its buildings without any rational explanation. It's like the builders just said 'Hey, Tony, we've got nothing on today, let's build a fuckin' tower on top of, er, that joint over there.' Whatever the case, they're pretty impressive, as is the entire city.

We walked through its ancient gates, and a wide, straight boulevarde climbed up and up the hill, lined with shops and markets, all adorned with flags and inexplicable figurines and knick-knacks. It was glorious and vibrant, and hundreds of people were walking along, everyone (including me) with the most delicious gelato in the world stuffed in their mouths.

I jumped into an internet cafe and hooked up with a few friends around the world, just in the interests of gloating, of course, while the girls haunted frock shops and the like. We re-assembled in the main square an hour or so later, where it seemed the annual festival of the pig was going on. Whole hoggies were roasting on several spits, and for the princely sum of two Euros I was handed an enormous, crusty bread-roll filled with the most succulent meat I've ever tasted. It was heaven on a stick, and without any guilt at all I went back for seconds.

San Gim is a really pretty spot, and as we walked along the twisting, steep slopes of the Via Santo Stefano, I had the uncanny feeling of walking in the footsteps of romance personified. It was romantic; it was a place in which to love, and fall in love. It spoke of the history, and the ghosts, of lovers, this place, and I was calmly content. I like it when a new place brings old, close, and comfortable feelings to the surface. It's happened a few times before, but this felt special, and I was content. Ok, you can stop laughing now, but I was in love with the whole thing.

Fortunately, the T.P. brought me back to earth, complaining that I had once again got us horribly lost, and we had to get back on the bus by 3.45, so could I please get my head out of the clouds and concentrate on finding civilization again? We made it back to the bus depot in time, and I dozed away the return to Siena thinking happy thoughts.

Finally, it was time to leave Siena. We had a day in Florence booked, and I was keen to get there, because all of my life I have wanted to see Michelangelo's David in the flesh, and Florence is where he lives.

Florence is a city without parallel - it is unfathomably eclectic, with a prepossessing mixture of all of the elements that make a city alluring. Picture this: Florence's vast, opulent and somewhat spooky Duomo sits comfortably amid a bustling, modern raft of tack. Shitty tourist restaurants and gift shops crowd it on all sides, forcing the traveller to think of this, the second-greatest Catholic cathedral in the world, as nothing but an attractor of filthy lucre. Which, when you think about the ultimate raison d'etre of Catholicism, strikes not one note of discord.

The Duomo itself simply reeks of exploitation and repression. I don't know why, but all of the great cathedrals of Europe I visited had exactly the same effect on me. Of course, I am awed by their majesty, their opulence, their mystery and their intricacy. There is no doubt that they display craftsmanship that is the pinnacle of architectural art. But, within their walls, is an ugliness which is inescapable. In Siena, for instance, exquisite sculptures by the world's greatest, Bernini, are overlooked by a parade of busts of one hundred and thirty popes, sternly overseeing the gullibility of worshipping peasants. The entire atmosphere in these houses of blood is the atmosphere of a psychological repression that left me in no doubt as to the origins of Fascism. We got out quickly - David was waiting.

We sauntered down from the Duomo to the Galleria dell'Academia, where David had been enthralling people for centuries. And, for fuck's sake- it was closed! 'Pissed off' is not the term to describe my mood at that moment. I'd travelled half-way around the world, only to find that the Florentine Pogens had decided, for some inexplicable (but probably Catholic) reason, to close the gallery on Mondays. As I howled in rage and disbelief, banging my fists on the doors, the T.P. tried to comfort me, saying 'Stop whingeing, you idiot. You're attracting odd looks from the passers-by.' She's so understanding, my wife.

We made our way, me shrieking at the stupidity of all things Italian, to the Piazza della Signoria, where David's replica stood, amongst other gems of Renaissance sculpture. Somewhat calmed, my spirits began to rise. Here were sculptures by Ammannati, Donatello, Bandinelli, and the exquisite Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. The whole place, overlooked by the fabulous Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's famous city hall, was wondrous. This was Italy, this was culture, for real.

It was time to go to Germany.

"Remember Montaperti!" (Part 1)

2010-02-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

We got out of Venice after a few days, and by then my pessimism about the place had evaporated somewhat, after being treated to a night at the opera and some wonderful, simply magnificent museums of art. (I'm still not keen on its cops, though.)

The T.P. was excited to be on our way to Siena to meet her sister Narelle, whom she hadn't seen for a couple of years. Narelle is a dramatic soprano who lives in Germany and can sing a bit (not really - there is still some dispute in the family over whether it was she who shattered every bit of glassware in her parents' house at the age of thirteen.... or whether it was her mother hahaha - sorry, mother-in-law in-joke).

From Florence, we boarded a rattle-trap old train that reminded me of the state of the art of the Australian rail system (in Germany a couple of weeks later I had cause to wonder at the stupidity, carelessness and sheer blundering incompetence of our political masters down under, as I rode in a sumptuous express at 250 kilometres per hour, whisper quiet and vibration-free), and pulled into Siena a couple of hours later. We walked through the gates of the old city, high on the hill, and my jaw hit the ground.

Anything one can say about Siena is an understatement. It is grand, on a scale of grandness that

invites comparisons to other cities in the same way you might compare the intellects of Richard Dawkins and Kent Hovind. It is architecture on acid - three- and four-story stone buildings of exquisite design crowd narrow, zig-zagging cobbled streets. Gigantic, elaborate timber doors open onto dim courtyards, where water can be heard trickling into sculpted ponds. These are the residences built from about the eleventh century onwards - the houses of the nobles, and it seems that almost every citizen of Siena in those times must have been a noble, because there is virtually not one house that is not ravishing in its grandiosity and architectural brilliance.

Our room at the penzione was on the fourth floor. As usual, I dragged two heavily-laden packs - realising, at last, that the T.P.'s shopping exploits in Venice had been designed with one sole purpose: to induce a giant myocardial infarction in me - up a ridiculously narrow staircase, alighting on the top landing to see Narelle and my assassin in a cheery embrace. I hugged Narelle - it had been about fifteen years since I'd seen her - and collapsed on a lounge demanding beer, pronto. There was none.

Like every other place in Siena, our quarters were - literally - a work of art. Frescoes of saints and angels adorned the bedroom ceilings, and the shutters opened onto a panorama of utter gorgeousness. I dived into a shower recess built by a sadistic midget, and with many contortions managed to wash off the accumulated sweat from our ten-mile hike up the mountain weighed down with the contents of the Venetian Treasury.

Narelle, who was familiar with Siena, and who also speaks a fairly good brand of Italian, was the perfect guide. We wandered down the street, around a few corners, and my jaw, which was still flapping noisily against my chest, shot arrow-like to the street. We had reached the Piazza del Campo.

If there is a better-realised city square in the world I want to see it now. The Campo is as splendid an urban space as you could wish for, and to think it was pretty-much complete by the thirteenth century. Paved in red brick, its seashell shape is dominated by the Torre del Mangia, a tower that reaches majestically to the sky. Great mansions circumnavigate this vast, open and airy space. Hundreds of people were just sitting around it, at tables outside the myriad of restaurants at street level, or just plonked on the brick paving itself, eating gelati or pizza and drinking wine and beer. It was coming on evening, and the deepening sky contrasted with the reds and creams of the buildings in a sight I won't forget in a hurry. It was spectacular (and that's just another understatement.)

We ate pizza and drank beer, and I suddenly realised that the square, although populated by plenty of tourists, was also the haunt of the locals themselves. And why wouldn't you come here of an evening if you lived in town? It was cool and inviting - everything you needed was within thirty seconds' walk, and the sights and sounds of musicians playing, dancers twirling, and people just generally having a pleasant time made you want to stay well into the night. I'm not a city person, but I could live here, I thought.

...to be continued

I'll sue!

2009-11-09T04:07:00.000-08:00

Some jumped-up Welshman's been having a go at me on his rotten little blog. I leave it for fair-minded Australians to come to my defence:

http://richardemmanueljones.blogspot.com/2009/11/bonzer-day-in-llanfihangel-y-creuddun.html?showComment=1257768412979#c6828378600377961611

A man, a plan, a canal - Panama. No, sorry, Venice!

2009-11-03T18:05:00.000-08:00

I know everyone is supposed to fall in love with Venice on sight, but guess what? Venice is just a massive European K-Mart with cobbles.

Not that the Titanium Princess would agree. The T.P. literally waltzed across the Rialto bridge as we made our way to Al Gazzettino, the hotel in which she'd stayed a couple of years earlier. She was all smiles, and seemed to have lost about thirty years, as we walked down the little alleyways that featured so prominently in Don't Look Now. It was a delight to watch her (as I struggled with two recalcitrant suitcases and a massive hangover), tripping lightly along, staring into shop windows and mentally arithmeticking the vast amounts of money she would shortly be spending on Venetian knick-knacks.

The hotel was on a little canal called the Dell Aquae San Marco, about halfway between the Rialto Bridge and the famous square of San Marco. An ideal spot, and one in which the T.P. had fallen in love with Italy, and all things Italian, a couple of years before. A very charming and urbane gentleman in a suit greeted us at the reception desk, and showed us to our room. He kept referring to the T.P. in the third person, as in "Madam will find that...", and "If Madam would like to..." He quite deliberately left me out of the picture, no doubt assuming I was some stupid Venetian lackey who was merely carrying the bags, and would trundle off once my job was done. (He did get quite a surprise the next morning when, in search of coffee, I bundled noisily down the stairs and gave him a forthright "G'day mate" as I galloped out of the hotel.)

Al Gazzettino is, in fact, a terrific little hotel. It was once the headquarters of an eponymous local newspaper, and its restaurant's walls are lined with old clippings and photographs of Venice from the late 19th century onwards. After the excruciating horrors of the Ikarus Palace, it was a godsend, if one likes to imagine that a non-existent deity would ever have the forethought to put a nice hotel in the middle of a waterlogged city. I liked it just fine, as there was a little stall down the alley-way where good coffee at less than a billion Euros a shot could be had, served by a genial young woman with a face like a Botticelli painting.

After my run-in with the law at the bottom of the gang-plank the previous morning, I was going to take every precaution I could against further interest from the Carabiniari, having been appraised of their prediliction to offer warnings against poor behaviour in the form of horses' heads at the foot of one's bed. I decided a 7.30 a.m. stroll around the precinct would be just the ticket. I hadn't gone far when I came across a gentleman in a black and white striped shirt and a funny little straw bota on his head, fiddling around in the front of a gondola on the canal. We had a short conversation in that curious argot where English morphs into Italian and back again, and you do this for several minutes, smile, laugh, and shake hands with many "See yous" and "Arrividercis", and continue on your way for a little while, whistling happily, until you realise that neither he nor you understood a single word of the conversation. Communication is one of those things I love about travel.

Before long, and after several little ponts over the canals, winding my way through narrow, mouldery alleyways, I came smack bang into the square of San Marco. Even I, a recent veteran of the architectural slendours of Ephesus and Athens, was gob-smacked. San Marco is such a beautifully-conceived space as to beggar description. But I'll try.

The painting at the top of the page is by the Italian artist Canaletto, and this view of the Piazza San Marco was finished in 1746. I've always admired this beautiful work, largely because it captures the superbly realised space of the square, which takes the unwitting traveller by surprise as he steps out below the portico of St Mark's Clocktower, a stupendous bit of archtiectural humour that immediately had me chuckling, to the consternation of a tightly-knit group of early-morning Japanese tourists, who evidently thought it was just about the most impressive bit of brickwork in Christendom. It's actually very nice, though, compared with the sheer lunacy of the Basilica itself. I stood, stunned, in the almost empty piazza, with only the sound of twittering from pigeons and Japanese to disturb me, as my eyes began following the cornucopia of excess in front of me. I'd never realised God had the taste of a drag-queen before, but this place was chintz from arsehole to breakfast.

This bizarre Byzantine confirmation that religion can really fuck with your mind (in this case, the minds of its conceivers) is supposed to house the remains of Saint Mark himself, whose body was allegedly stolen, by the Venetians, from Alexandria. I don't know what it is about this obsession Catholics have about the 'relics of the Saints' stuff, and frankly, I couldn't care less. If it's your thing to go digging up the powdery remains of some two-thousand year old dead bloke just because he wrote a pack of lies about another bloke who probably didn't exist anyway, go right ahead. But don't expect me to respect the fact that they used all this nonsense just to invent a religion which would give them access to little boys' bottoms, okay?

After reflecting on the gilded cage before me, and its place in the enslavement of millions of minds over the centuries, I decided to go and wake up the Titanium Princess, still languishing languidly in our four-poster back at the pub. She came to with a couple of grunts and a hearty "Fuck off," which I always regard as a particularly loving greeting, coming from her.

We breakfasted in the little dining-room on the ground floor, where the most marvellous selection of farinaceous delights went down with a good helping of strong coffee, all served by our urbane concierge, who turned out to be pretty much the entire staff of Al Gazzettino. Indeed, it transpired that his grandfather had been the editor of the newspaper when it eventually re-invented itself as a funky little hotel. I liked that.

A water taxi came around to the back of the hotel and picked us up for a little journey across to the island of Murano, famous for its glassware, of course, but less well-known for the fact that the bones of a dragon, slain by Saint Donatus (again with the fucking saints, but hey - we're in Italy, folks!), reside in the church bearing the dragon-slayer's name. I really wanted to see these relics! Alas, the church was closed when we got there, but the bloke who'd guided us told me that he'd seen the bones of the dragon. "I've also seen the bones of a cow," he confided, "and guess what?" he smiled broadly.

I tell you, Mythbusters has a lot to answer for. Everyone's a sceptic these days.

The glass industry at Murano is fascinating. The Venetian authorities sensibly moved the glass business out of the city and onto Murano in 1291, fearing that the entire town might be burnt down one day. The glassmakers' factories are principally furnaces, and the one we went to was occupied by four masters all working to produce a single chandelier. They were currently working on some gilded leaves, and as each piece of glass came out of the furnace, it was deftly beaten into shape by one of the artisans, then further moulded and modelled. Several operations, all involving reheating, dousing and beating took place, until the leaf was cut from its rod and hung to cool. Each of these pieces ended up being precisely identical, without the glassmakers' use of measuring devices of any kind. They had the eyes that would be ears on a Mozart. It was all most impressive and beyond my comprehension. And I was getting thirsty in the heat. We got back on the water taxi, and headed off down the Grand Canal, looking for lunch and a jar or two.

The afternoon was spent walking, and I was, as usual, doing all I could to avoid the shopping precincts, which is particularly hard in Venice, a city that resembles a mediaeval Walmart. Some may say I'm being impossibly churlish, but to me a frock shop is a frock shop.

We lighted upon a little bookshop that proclaimed itself as "The World's Greatest Bookshop", on a sign outside. And guess what? It was! As we walked inside, a gondola from the fifteenth century greeted us, piled high in books and other parephenalia. In fact, the entire shop was a junk-yard of paper, cardboard and glass. I roamed around in heaven, sifting through 17th century manuscripts on the quality of the water-supply to Venice in 1658. We bought several large prints of Venice from the eighteenth century, which now adorn the already overburdened walls of our home. This funky little bookstore, whose doors opened up onto a canal, was a place in which one could happpily reside for a few weeks. Alas, we had to go. It was opera time.

The Ikarus Palace

2009-10-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

These big, ocean-going ferries are usually about thirteen storeys tall, and after manhandling our luggage up to the top deck, on a series of escalators (all non-functioning), we arrived at our destination. In a flash of inspiration, I had booked our passage several weeks beforehand, and our travel agent in Australia had assured us that our accommodation for the two-night, one day cruise to Venice would be in "airline-style" seating. Fair enough, we thought - we can handle that for a couple of nights. As it was my only contribution to our travel plans (the T.P. had insisted on doing the rest, me being 'pathetically incompetent'), I was enormously chuffed at my vision of a romantic cruise for two up the Adriatic to Venice, the city of love - and, I must say, as a testament to my pre-eminent organisational skills.

I handed our boarding passes to the bloke at the door to our deck and asked him to show us to our seats. He scrutinised the tickets, for a bit, then looked around the outside deck where we were standing. It was a steel deck, painted green, and had some circular tables bolted to the floor. Other than that, it was completely bare, and open to the seasons. Stacks of white plastic garden chairs were roped to the bulkhead (that's 'wall', for you land-lubbers).

"Anywhere here," he replied, indicating the acre or so of green steel.

Somewhat taken aback, I remonstrated mildly, "You've got to be fucking kidding, mate!" I pointed to the cabin I could see through the doorway, where rows of very comfortable-looking easy chairs adorned a tastefully-decorated indoor cabin. "That's where we are booked," I corrected him.

He looked at the tickets again. "No sir, it says right here, 'Deck D', and this, I assure you, is Deck D. Your ticket booking does not assign you a seat. You must do that separately, through the shipping company itself. See? It says so right here." He pointed at a paragraph of fine-print on the ticket, then gave me one of those European shrugs, and moved off to deal with some other passengers, who I noticed had begun the 'Look at this, another moron from the Antipodes'-type of eye-rolling.

I looked again, across the vast, green space of deck, where a rather strong and quite cool breeze had begun to blow, then turned to see the Titanium Princess eyeing me off rather sharply.

"You. Great. Fucking. Idiot."

Now, dear reader, I know those full stops. I've had thirty-five years of those full stops. When the T.P. starts to punctuate, it's time to either start inventing stories or run. Alas, I had nowhere to run, and the cat had, indubitably, been let out of the bag by that jumped-up little ordinary seaman I was going to find, later on, and issue with a stern rebuke in the form of a knee to the gonads.

"Well, I don't know about you, Laurie," she declared, "but I am going inside to find some sensible man I can offer myself to in exchange for a decent bed." She turned on her heel and whisked herself through the doorway, quite regally, and disappeared. I pondered these unsettling events for a moment or two, wondering what the best course of action might be. Of course, the answer had to be found in a bottle of Heineken or two, so I clambered up a flight of stairs and found a congenial bar located on the upper deck. Just to be on the safe side, I ordered two Heinekens. The barman quizzically, but uncomplainingly, opened both for me and placed them on the bar.

"Seven Euros, please," he asked. It was only then that I realised I had left my little tote-bag with passport, tickets, and money in it in the hands of the T.P. "Oh, sorry, mate - my wife seems to have taken all the cash. Just put it on a tab and I'll fix you up when she comes back."

The barman gave me one of those heard-this-one-before looks, and said "May I see your ticket or boarding-pass, then?" I had to admit to him that these, too, were in the hands of my beloved, who, I refrained from adding, was currently undertaking a search for Aristotle Onassis. He looked at me dubiously, and turned to pick up a telephone, into which he mumbled several words of Greek.

Presently, two very officious-looking sailor-types with guns on their belts appeared at the top of the stairs and sauntered over in my direction. "Sir, are you a passenger on this ship?" asked one. I explained the situation as best I could. "And where is your wife now?" he persisted. "Er, I'm not quite sure, but she's certainly somewhere on the ship."

He spoke into a two-way radio, and presently a loud, booming voice announced over the ship's PA system "Would Mrs Christine _______ please come to the aft lounge immediately!" We all settled down to wait, me eyeing off the two unconsumed beers with a strong feeling that they, and four or five whiskies, would be better consumed right now, and they looking over me with undisguised contempt.

About ten minutes later, the Titanium Princess arrived. She sized up the situation pretty-well straight away, then casually walked to the bar and put a ten-Euro note on it. "My apologies, gentlemen," she purred. "My husband is a little, er, unwell." She faced the senior marine guard, put her index finger to her temple, and slowly rotated it, her eyebrows raised in a 'you-get-the-picture?' kind of way. "I'll look after him now - thank you for your concern." The gendarmerie, duly mollified, traipsed away, and the T.P. sank into a chair with a beer in her hand and said, quite casually, "Why did I ever marry you?"

As it turned out, her solo efforts had not been in vain. Not that I'm suggesting she met Aristotle, of course, but she had charmed a purser she'd found, who had assured her that it would be quite OK to park ourselves in the lounge for a couple of nights, as the ship was nowhere near capacity-loaded. And so, as the Ikarus pulled out of Patras, we found ourselves ensconced in a warm cabin, drinking wine and listening to Greek pop-music being piped over the air.

So passed the first night, with the Princess happily snoring beside me, while I snatched a few minutes here and there. As a consequence, when dawn came, and the ship's passengers began to rouse, I was still sitting up, hard-wired on coffee and cheap wine. I must have looked rather bleary, as the T.P. woke up, looked at me and said "Fuck." I decided a shower was in order. Gathering up my kit, I stumbled along the corridor to the men's bathroom. The sight that greeted me almost had me losing what was left of the wine and coffee. The floor was awash in a grey, viscous and evil-smelling solution that I guessed was sewage. I backed out and returned, unkempt, to my seat.

"That was quick," mumbled the T.P., as she opened one eye, and then the other. "Jesus, Laurie, you smell worse than you did before you went to the bathroom. What happened?"

I explained the problems I'd encountered, and suggested we both go to the ladies', where she could play cockatoo for me while I got cleaned up. Unfortunately, the women's facilities seemed to be in almost constant use, so the only wash I got that day was courtesy of some bottled water I threw over myself. Things were not looking good.

We made our way forward, to a set of sumptuous dining-rooms, looking for breakfast. As it turned out, the ship laid on a magnificent repast, and I was duly lining up with a tray in hand when I saw a notice on the wall: "All breakfasts 15 Euros." Now, the thought of spending that sum on a plate of scrambled eggs took me aback somewhat, but not so far as it did the Titanium Princess. "I think we can forget about breakfast," she opined severely, "and did you bother to check before you booked me on this colossus whether meals were included in the fucking life savings you handed over to this company just for our fare?" When my beloved starts to speak in italics I start to quiver, and if she'd started to punctuate those, I swear I would have just made a run for the side and hurled myself into the briny.

I placated her with two Mars bars I procured from a machine down the corridor, at about five bucks a pop, and decided to go up to the top deck and get a little sun. The Leader of the Opposition, meanwhile, enjoyed a relaxing, and no doubt cleansing, shower in the ladies' bathroom, from which, you'll remember, I was excluded.

There was a swimming-pool on the top deck, so I thought I would have a quick plunge and rub a bit of the miasma that had accumulated in the past twenty-four hours off the old body. There were about twenty passengers in the pool, all German by the sounds of them, frolicking and chatting and generally having a whale of a time. And boy, were they brown. I learnt later that many of them simply cruise up and down the Adriatic for about four weeks, never getting off the ship, just so they can work on their tans, then go back to Hamburg or somewhere and show off for a while before they go down to the melanoma clinic for some radical surgery.

As an Australian, of course, I have permanently brown head and arms, but the rest of me is lily-white. In Australia, the sun is your enemy - we grow up with that fact ingrained. (By the way, a few years ago I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my chest. Not a big deal, but enough to seek attention. When I got to the clinic, a dermatologist came into the surgery, ordered me to strip, then looked over every single square inch of my body with his little spy-glass. He then told me to wait, and called in a female colleague, who did exactly the same thing. When she got to the nether regions, she casually lifted all of the wedding-tackle and began to scrutinise something I didn't even know the name of, but found out later was called the 'perinium'. "Bloody hell, Doc," I protested, "the Sun has never even shone down there!" She looked up at me. "Oh, you'd be surprised where these little bastards appear," she confided.)

Anyway, I stripped down to my Speedos and was just about to plunge in when yet another uniformed person laid his hand on my arm and said "Excuse me, sir, but passengers must shower before they enter the pool." He indicated a sign which said exactly that in about four zillion languages, so I guessed it was important to them. I dressed, and made my way to the bar, where several Heinekens never saw the light of day again. It was nine o'clock in the morning.

At some stage of the morning, the Titanium Princess finally found me. She looked radiant, having showered and changed, and availing herself of breakfast somewhere else on the ship. I, on the other hand, must admit that 'radiance' was not a word that one would willingly throw in my direction. Apprising the situation, she simply snorted in disgust and took off in the other direction, no doubt attracting the attention of several Greek shipping magnates along the way. Of course, this was all fine with me. Everything was fine, at that stage - why, I had even fallen in love with the bar-stool next to me. I decided to rest my head on it.

I awoke, sometime later, in a cool room with white walls and a green floor. I was lying on a bed, and could see a small, barred window over my head. There was a door to the room, and it appeared to be rather solid and locked. I got up, and tested it. Sure enough, it was going nowhere. Suddenly I heard voices outside and began to yell, "Hey! Hey! Who's there?"

A key rattled, and the door opened. There was the Titanium Princess, looking rather stern, surrounded on two sides by a couple of very heavy-duty looking dudes. "Laurie," she said, "these gentlemen are happy to let you come with me as long as you behave yourself, and don't drink anything more."

Well, it was news to me that it was nine o'clock at night, and I'd been asleep for nearly twelve hours. But I felt in tip-top condition, and happily bounded out of my bunk and into the T.P.'s arms, whereupon she effected one of those nauseated expressions and pushed me away quite firmly. "Just behave, for a change," she admonished, leading me through a labyrinthine set of corridors to our suite. I collapsed into a chair, and the rest of the night passed without incident (I think.)

I woke up as we came into Venice, cruising along the Grand Canal to the port. There it all was - this majesty of a city: San marco on one side, the island of Murano on the other. I was impressed, as I leant across the starboard railing. Finally, we were in Italy. I'd not had a wash, shower or shave for three days, and was desperate to find Il Gazzatino, our hotel, and luxuriate.

We traipsed our bags down the still-silent escalators, and came out into the sun of Venice. The T.P. was ahead of me a little way, and as I struggled to catch up to her, a man dressed in a suit approached me from the dockside.

"Your passport, please," he demanded, holding out his hand. Now, by this stage of the cruise, I was in no mood to fuck around with anyone. I was tired, worn out, in fact, and looked like shit.

"Fuck off," I remonstrated, "who are you? You're getting shit from me." He continued to badger me to give him my passport. "Listen, you arsehole, I have no idea who you are. Get out of my way. I'll give my passport to that cop over there," I pointed to a uniformed officer standing nearby, "but you can get fucked."

The uniformed officer made his way over to us. "He's the Inspector," he informed me, gesturing in the direction of Mister Suit.

They kept me there for three-quarters of an hour, with Mr Suit on his two-way almost constantly. "Where is your travel itinerary?" he asked me at one stage. "Fucked if I know," I replied. They had obviously formed the opinion that I was a terrorist engaged in the bombing of the Rialto Bridge, or something. Meanwhile, I could see the Titanium Princess, perched on her bag about fifty metres away, giggling like there was no tomorrow. Thanks, T.P., I kept thinking.

Eventually, after many questions and calls to headquarters, it was established that I was not a threat to the modern world, but just a down-and-out drunk from Australia.

Mr Suit made a big deal of handing my passport back to me. "Welcome to Italy," he said.

The tale of the erotic cockroach

2009-09-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

So many people have seen and written about the Athenian Acropolis that it hardly seems worth saying anything at all about it. So I won't. But I can tell you that getting to it on a hot day involves so many refreshment stops that it can become quite difficult, after a while, to remember where one is, let alone the purpose of one's exertions.

I was in a state of enhanced euphoria by the time the T.P. and I had returned from wherever it was we'd been (I don't know - a big hill with columns on top is all I seem to recall), and I collapsed into our hotel room, which had seemed to have mysteriously shrunken in dimensions since we'd left it that morning. My next recollection is of being awoken by the sound of screaming. I shot bolt-upright in bed. It was the Titanium one herself, screaming blue murder for me to come and rescue her, and on the double. The noise was emanating from our little bathroom, and by the time I'd reached the room, expecting to see Alfred Hitchcock leaving, and a stream of bloody water gurgling down the drain-pipe, I realised (with relief mixed with a guilty tinge of expectation) that the malefactor was nothing more than a gigantic cockroach which had decided that the T.P.'s skull was as good a place as any to start chewing for the day.

"Get this fucking thing off me!" she wailed, as I tried to manhandle her soapy, naked body into a position where I could take a good whack at the offending creature.

"Ow! Why are you hitting me, you idiot?" remonstrated an increasingly edgy spouse, who, with her eyes closed tight, was by this time unsure as to which was the lesser of two evils - the bug, or her obviously insane husband. We frolicked around in the shower recess for some time, both of us getting soapier and soapier, until I managed to flick the offending species of God's beneficient creation out the window. By this stage we were both sitting on the tiled floor, and I must say it was a most romantic position to be in. My thoughts were turning to other, fonder feelings than belting members of the order Blattaria. I thought I'd attempt a tone of conspiratorial friskiness.

"Do you know, my love, that cockroaches breathe through their posteriors?" I asked tenderly.

"You really are a fucking lunatic, Laurie," the Titanium P. exhaled, as she got up and jumped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around herself. Fuck me, I thought - at least the cockroach got to chew on her for a bit. I was still sitting on the floor of the shower cubicle a couple of minutes later, humming the tune to a song called "What About Me?", when the T.P. returned and enquired sunnily "Now, what's on our agenda today?" It was back to business as usual, which is to say, traipsing the boulevardes of Athens in search of further mountains of knick-knacks and scarves. Boy, does that woman like scarves.

A couple of hours later, we clattered into the Athens Museum of Archeology. And what a place it is. Here, in a building the size of a city block, is the most stunning collection of what humans can really do well when they have a mind to it. An eight-thousand year history of life in the Mediterranean parades past the astounded visitor to this cornucopia of sculpture, craft, building, decoration and all of the other plastic arts. We spent the day in an orgy of high culture that surpassed even the post-cockroach imaginary orgy of the early morning. I do believe that marble and gold are my favourite substances, apart from Heineken, of course.

Well, once you've seen four or five things in Athens, it's time to get out, because Athens, like most other big cities in the world, is overwhelmingly crowded, dull, and commercial. I needed country. We boarded a little rattle-trap train and headed away towards Corinth and Patra, where we were due to embark on a highly anticipated cruise up the Adriatic to Venice.

But our first stop was a little town on the coast of the Corinthian Sea called Psathopyrgos. Now, here's a serious traveller's tip. When you're really hoofing hard through a big joint like Europe, every couple of weeks book yourself into a fairly swank hotel, preferably near the water, and chill out for a couple of days. The Oasis Hotel at this quaint little fishing village was just the ticket. We alighted from the train (in this case, not so much alighted, with all the connotations of grace and ease that word implies, but hastily chucked all of our bags onto the nearby track then jumped down before the driver hit full throttle and thundered away into the distance) and began trudging into town. Psathopyrgos is, I am bound to say, utterly charming. It nests on a little bay at the narrows between the Patra Sea and the Corinthian Sea, and affords a spectacular view of the steep-sided mountains on the northern side. It really is pretty, with gaily-coloured fishing boats resting at their moorings, children playing happily in the shallows, and at least two pairs of dogs enjoying sexual congress at any given moment.

The owner of the Oasis, an Englishwoman from Cornwall, greeted us effusively in an accent so broad I was tempted to ask the Greek receptionist to translate into English, but I refrained. She was a charming woman, really, and escorted us to our room, all clean and nice and with a real, spacious bathroom (pure heaven), and left us with an admonition not to "Doi arnythang Oi wardn't doi." I had no idea what she was talking about.

The Oasis was just that - a large and well-appointed swimming-pool (it had a bar in the middle) fronted the sea, and a garden restaurant just behind served delicious local fish and more salads than even I could force down. The Leader of the Opposition and I decided to plunge into the sea from a little jetty, and have a bit of a race. My wife is a particularly good swimmer, and we were neck and neck for about four hundred yards out into the briny. I finally admitted defeat, and we floated around for a while admiring the view to shore. At this point I noticed that a small crowd had congregated on the jetty, and there seemed to be much scratching of heads and pointing in our direction going on. "Wonder what that's all about?" I said, looking around for any signs of a big Noah coming our way. We decided to head back in.

As we clambered up the ladder to the jetty several voices in a number of languages seemed to be scolding us over something. We ignored them, and dived into the pool. I breezed over to the bar and ordered a couple of drinks. The barman started shaking his head and giggling. "They're all a little concerned that you swam out so far," he said. "Most Europeans don't really swim very much, and they thought you might be in trouble." I assured him that there was no problem, and that a half-mile swim in flat conditions on very salty, buoyant water was not all that taxing. It's a sad fact that surf drownings in Australia are disproportionately high amongst European and British tourists. Or a happy fact, depending on your point of view.

So we spent a relaxing and rejuvenating two days in Psathopyrgos, a beautiful part of the world I would recommend even to my mother-in-law, were she still around to enjoy it.

The second evening saw us sadly saying goodbye to mine hostess (all right - the T.P. dragged me kicking and screaming all the way to the bus stop), and we headed off for the port city of Patra. At 10.30 p.m. we walked to the rear gang-plank of the Ikarus Palace, an enormous ship that I was told was capable of housing eight hundred vehicles and a thousand passengers. There was a sign with some sort of motto emblazoned on it on an archway leading into the vessel. It was in Greek, of course, and it was only later that I discovered that it was a quote from a little book called Dante's Inferno, saying "Abandon hope, all ye who enter..."

We were about to embark on the cruise liner from Hell.

The Athenium

2009-09-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

We landed in Athens at five in the afternoon. The weather was turning typically Greek - that is to say, bloody hot. In a city like Athens, such heat, which is tolerable in Australia, becomes so oppressive that the Athenians begin to stalk the streets purposively, with glints in their eyes that suggest madness is just around the corner.

As usual, the Titanium Princess, in her never-ending quest to do Europe on five dollars a day (she still had all those dog-eared paperbacks from the seventies stashed away in our bags) had booked us into a hostel in the Omonoia district, which turned out to be the sleaziest part of town by a long chalk. Rubbish was piled ten feet high along the footpaths; drunks and ice-addicts hurled abuse at each other across rat-infested alleyways, and everywhere was the overpowering aroma of a sewerage system that had not been updated since the Romans left town.

"Jesus, TP," I complained, "if I'd known I was going back-packing with Tom Waites in a skirt I would have stayed home!"

"Ah, suck it up, Nancy Boy," was her considered response - a reply which, on reflection, was about as close as I was going to get to marital compassion.

We found our room, six gruelling stories above the reception area of the "Athens Lucky Hostel" (I suppose one must give the proprietors of such establishments a few brownie points for eponymic optimism), and collapsed in puddles of sweat on the bed. At least we had our own shower at this place, unlike some of the communal cess-pits I'd been forced to bathe in previously, and I spent ten vigorous minutes under a cold shower until life had returned. It was way past beer o'clock, so I sauntered out into the city while the TP took a short beauty sleep, on a mission for Heineken.

Omonoia, as it turned out, happened to be just my kind of place. In the Dark Ages, I used to work six nights a week in Kings Cross, Sydney - and this part of Athens took me back to those heady days of dodging puddles of urine and beating off the kinds of women who assure you they want you more than any man in history until you explain that you're rather short of cash, in which event they drop you faster than Phil Tufnell under a screamer (and if you don't know cricket, that one's going straight through to the keeper).

I pulled up at a little roadside kiosk - the sort of joint that sells everything the modern bloke could wish for, from condoms to hair-gel, with beer in between. The shopkeeper, a young guy with a crooked nose and some serious tattoos, produced two half-litre bottles of Heineken from a little fridge, and asked me where I was from. When I told him, he became all enthusiastic, and told me he'd just seen AC/DC when they'd performed in Athens a week or so ago. Apparently AC/DC was the greatest Australian export of all time, at least according to their number one fan in Greece, who gushed on for a while before turning around and showing me the back of his head, which had "AC/DC" artfully tattoed across a shaven skull. I thought about baring my chest and showing him my "Joan Sutherland" tatt for a moment, but he side-tracked me with an offer of a "genuine shrunken head", which he pointed out to me, hanging from the top of his kiosk. It was a most unusual piece, and from the couple of flies buzzing around it, could well have been for real (and relatively fresh). It was time to move on.

I took off from the kiosk at a rather fast clip, and, rounding a corner, belted straight into a bloke coming the other way. We both bounced back and hit the ground on our backsides, rocking backwards and forwards like a couple of those blow-up clowns with sand in the bottom you used to get from the local variety store. He bounded straight back up, and let forth what I assumed was a torrent of abuse (I don't know, it was all Greek to me). I, meanwhile, was assuring myself that the Heineken was still intact (it was, fortunately), and when I finally looked at him I realised with a start that I'd bumped into the wrong bloke. He was emaciated, with a filthy shirt that was probably white, once, and a pair of grubby jeans from which protruded two bare and dirty feet. His sleeves were rolled up, and as he continued his invective he scratched one arm, and then the other, both of which were covered in evil-looking, bloody scabs. And when I looked at his face I understood that it was probably only the scabs that were preventing his entire body from dissolving and leaking down the gutters into the already overloaded Athenian sewerage network. He was an ice addict. I offered him a beer.

He looked at me strangely, then smiled, and grabbed the Heineken and poured half of it down his throat in one go. He smiled again, then his eyes glazed over, and he continued staggering away from me, up the road, occasionally stopping for another swig. I watched him until he was out of sight, and wondered how long it would be until he was cured or dead.

After wandering the streets (carefully) for another hour, sipping away at my remaining beer, I returned to the hostel to find the TP rested, refreshed and ravenous. We decided on the cafeteria at the hostel, and made our way downstairs, where a big, happy, noisy group of youngsters from all over the world, different accents plying for dominance, was devouring pizza and drinking ouzo and retsina and beer. A young woman came over to us and deposited two complementary glasses of ouzo on our table, and asked if we were ready to order. Her accent was unmistakenly Australian, and so was her body. She was aboriginal, from Byron Bay, in fact, and she sat down and we chatted away for twenty minutes until she decided to do a bit of work. A reasonably edible pizza arrived a few minutes later, washed down with a couple of bottles of Pilsner Urquell (or four - I can't remember now). I was starting to feel rather fond of the world, in inverse proportion to how the TP was feeling about me, no doubt. After all, at three Euros a go, I was blowing the next two weeks' travel budget. She's a tough cookie, my wife.

The following day dawned hot and dry, and we wasted no time in getting out and into it. It was a short hike to one of the places I'd been busting to see for over thirty years - the Academy. It was not Plato's original of course (that had gone long ago, and there is still some dispute as to whether the modern structure even sits on the site of the ancient one), but a neo-classical building designed by the Dane, Theophil Hansen, in the 1850s, as part of a beautiful trilogy of structures next door to each other (the others are the National Library and the University). As I stood in front of it, a tear or two sprang to my eyes. Here, after all, was a monument to the founding of modern thought, and its power. The moment was poignant, imbued with warmth and beauty. Even the Titanium Princess was captured by it. "Can we go now?" she asked solicitously. "And use a hanky, you sentimental fool." I like it when she's kind to me.

...to be continued.

Aesthetics 101

2009-08-13T18:29:00.000-07:00

We'd been relaxing on the island of Samos for some days, after our whirlwind tour of the Turkish Aegean coast. Samos is inexpressibly beautiful - mountainous and, for a Greek island, botanically luxuriant. We'd hired a little Fiat, and I learned to drive on the wrong side of the road (although the TP malevolently reminded me that I've done that on more than one occasion in Australia.) Driving a left-hand drive vehicle is a doddle, really - the only thing of importance to remember is that the gear-stick is operated by one's right hand. Several times I'd fumbled for it with my left, succeeding only in opening the driver's door and almost casting myself out of the car. One benefit of this is that I managed to elicit screams of horror from the usually unflappable Titanium Princess, and one should always be thankful for small mercies.

Our hosts at the Emily Hotel in Vathy, the island's major town, were Emily herself and her ex-husband Kari (don't ask.) They were most gracious in their welcome, although Kari resembled a more genial Basil Fawlty, and seemed unconcerned that there weren't too many guests in his establishment. He would prepare wonderful breakfasts, then sit us down in a garden patio, where bougainvillia competed with orange trees and other flowering shrubs planted by our hosts many years before, and regale us with stories of ancient Samos and its obvious importance to the evolution of civilisation as we know it. It was, after all, the birthplace of Pythagoras and Aristarchus the astronomer - for Kari, the two most important figures in history. He and Emily were two old troopers - funny, charming and knowledgeable, and would bring us glasses of wine or beer without suggestion after we'd arrived back from a hard day's slogging around the island.

We'd used the tiny Fiat to thoroughly explore the island, and what a treat Samos was. The little port town, eponymously named Pythagoreia, combined tradition and ancient history; the ruins of the Ionian acropolis at Herion, and the temple of Hera, with its fifty-five marble columns, all in ruins now, out-doing the Athens Parthenon in size, scope and astonishing gravitas; the tiny mountain villages, with cultures and traditions all their own - yes, Samos was a place the traveller would immediately choose as a return destination.

We were booked on a fast ferry to Paros, but as it was the day when the European Parliamentary elections were on, the entire island, including the shipping companies, decided to close down for the day with the Greek equivalent of "Fuck it - let's party." Any excuse, and I could readily understand why so many citizens of the oldest democracy in the world had decided to relocate to one of the newest, and good for them. Talk about cross-cultural equivalencies - I can just imagine Theo jumping off the ship in Sydney in the middle of January, looking around at people deliberately doing nothing but enjoying themselves, and shouting "Effie! This is the place for us!"

And so, the following day, we trooped into the shipping-company's office at the port, where a very friendly and very out-there gay guy organised a re-booking for us. He was a lovely man, who, looking at my reasonably drab green t-shirt said "I love your blouse. You must come back later and sell it to me." Hey - it was the first pick-up line I'd had directed at me in about thirty years - don't knock it.

The ferry-master must have decided that a "fast" ferry meant exactly that, and we were no more than five centimetres out of the harbour when he put his foot to the floor. Our first stop was another port on Samos, Ag. Dimitrios, and we came barrelling into the harbour at top speed. Fuck, I thought, standing up on the top deck, this is a several-thousand tonne vehicle. I hope he knows what he's doing. It seemed that the ferry was on a course designed to stop us, eventually, about two hundred yards up the main street of the town, but at the last moment our captain executed a perfect handbrake turn and reversed up to the dock with just the gentlest thud of metal against concrete. I knew I was in good hands, and returned to the bar to consume about thirty retsinas in a row, just to be on the safe side.

About four hours later we arrived in Paros. Somehow I managed to man-handle our bags off the ship, and stagger about four hundred metres along the quay-side, the Titanium Princess keeping up a constant monologue on the dangers of drinking at sea, or drinking, period, until we arrived at the Hotel Paros.

We got to the desk, and I stood there, swaying slightly (well, I was still to re-acquire my land-legs; after all, I'd been at sea for four and a half hours), while the manager of the hotel eyed us up and down, then rushed around from behind the desk, grabbed the Titanium Princess in a bear hug, and shouted enthusiastically in a distinctly American accent "Christine, Christine! Where have you been, darling? I was expecting you yesterday! What's happened, my poor love!"

Well, it was news to me that the TP had visited Paros on her last solo European excursion, and further news that she'd been conducting an affair with a hotel manager, and an American one, to boot. I was just about to offer some advice like "Hey Chuck, or Brad, whoever you are, I don't mind you groping my wife, but could you carry these bags up to my room and get me a beer, first?", but then realised that Dimitrisgouros (or something like that - he was of Greek parentage, and his name was utterly unpronounceable) was simply one of those hoteliers who had been to a hospitality school where the idea of "service" included acting as though he and any guest of the opposite sex had been sharing intimacies for twenty years.

Meanwhile, a slightly discombobulated, and thoroughly flattered, Titanium Princess was breathlessly explaining the reasons for our delay. With Dimitri's help we got to our room, and I explored a well-stocked refrigerator while the TP, for some inexplicable reason, adorned herself for the first time since I'd met her with face-paint and bright red lipstick. (Just kidding - she flopped on the bed and resumed reading Pride and Prejudice.)

The Parians are the world's greatest, and most enthusiastic, stone wall builders. It is only a small island, but Paros simply teems with the things. Big ones, little ones, walls of houses, churches, taberna; walls to delineate paddocks, to retain banks of earth, to terrace olive groves, and walls for no discernible purpose at all, that wind for hundreds of metres over hills, along ridge-lines, and parade right down to the sea. Dry-stone walls, mortared ones, capped walls, walls decorated with icons, inlaid with equilateral triangles; walls made of quartz, shale, sandstone, volcanic rocks of every variety - the Greeks of Paros simply adore the very word "wall".

I'm convinced the natives of Paros build walls for fun. In fact, I'll bet they knock down perfectly good ones just so they can get a kick out of replacing them with something even more beautiful to look at. Every field, paddock, house-lot and road is perimetered by one, and each one is not just a utilitiarian division, but a work of art in itself. And, where you find an open area which, unbelievably, has seemingly been forgotten by these muralistic obsessives, you will almost certainly find several huge piles of stone, just waiting to be skilfully manipulated into place. "Hey, Nick - there's a fuckin' paddock here without a wall!" "Shit, Con, ring the cops. Then get a few truckloads of rock in - this is a disgrace!"

I jest, but the Parian walls provided an intimation of something else that was going on in this part of the world. It crystallised for me as we sat at the taberna at the front of our hotel one night (traveller's tip: the Hotel Paros is fronted by one of the best restaurants in all of Greece - to say the food is merely delicious is tantamount to defamation), and, as we were waiting for our meal, and looking across the bay at an idyllic Paroikia sunset, I noticed the manager's son, a bloke in his late twenties, fussing about to my left. I looked over to find him hanging a glass bowl of rose water by some delicate chains to one of the lintels; when that was done, he gently placed half a dozen floating candles within and lit them. The whole time his friend, who seemed to spend most of the day drinking coffee at the restaurant, but who had no apparent employment status there apart from resident philosopher, was encouraging him with words of advice about the orientation of the bowl, etc. Eventually, they both walked out onto the road, turned around, and had a lengthy conversation about their masterpiece. Satisfied that it was just right, they came back in, sat down, and gazed appreciatively at this newest addition to the restaurant's already extensive range of decorative ornamentation.

I realised, suddenly, that the Parians are just aesthetes - for them, life is not about competition, accumulation, or consumption; it is about beauty. They love living within a beautiful environment, and they abide no distinction between craftwork and high art. It is all the same to them - their wonderful natural surroundings are simply enhanced and highlighted by their stone walls, their blue and whitewashed buildings, and their humble frescoes and decorations. These are enough for life to be complete.

Armed with this epiphany, I turned to the man to congratulate him. Waxing lyrical, I explained how refreshing it was to come to a place where capitalism was yet to pervert the souls of men; where art was the province of the people, and finished by pointing to the rose-bowl and saying "And I see now why you get so much enjoyment out of the construction of such a simple, yet beautiful, little thing."

He listened impassively to this somewhat tipsy monologue, and when I'd finished, leant over and said conspiratorially, "And it sucks in stupid fucking tourists like buggery."

Three jewels of the Bosphorus

2009-08-09T18:05:00.000-07:00

The Topkapi Palace was, for centuries, the seat of the Ottoman Empire. When Constantinople was taken by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, the Ottoman Turks used the site of the old Byzantine Acropolis, on the peninsula leading from the old city to the Bosphorus, as the place where a palace of dreams would be built.

Topkapi is huge - the complex is twice the size of the Vatican, and, to give you an idea of how vast it is, at the height of its grandiosity it boasted a kitchen complex that employed two thousand cooks. That's a serious gastronomic facility, folks.

There are four enormous courtyards on the palace site, each one hosting palaces and pavilions, dormitories, stables, liveries, armaments rooms, and, of course, housing for the ladies of the harem. One particular Sultan of the sixteenth century had some 1500 such women in his harem. During the course of his Sultanate the Ottoman Empire went into a temporary, but nevertheless serious decline. Apparently, the old boy was so hard at work servicing these fair maidens that the affairs of state were left a distant second on his list of priorities - a state of affairs which boggles the mind, as well as the gonads, one might think. When the TP read of his horizontal exploits, she gave me one of those looks that says Men are such fuckwits. You know that look, gentlemen?

To say that the Topkapi beggars belief is an understatement. Here is a place where you will find ceilings adorned in beaten gold leaf; where there are palaces literally studded with gemstones, where even the ceremonial knife used in the "Circumcision Room" is made of gold and diamonds. I'll bet that attention to detail comforted the fourteen year-old princes as they were about to get the chop. "Ooh, what a lovely looking knife. What did you say you were going to do with it, Father?"

Reeling from the heady delights of the Topkapi, we headed off to the Karpali Carsi, the Grand Bazaar at the top end of Sultanamet. This promising little shopping-centre was established in 1461, and has grown considerably in the ensuing five and a half centuries. I gave up counting the number of individual retail outlets when I got to about four thousand, the TP seemingly having made a purchase in every one of them. Pashmena scarves, silver and gold jewellery - she even bought a belly-dancer's outfit, and I'll be writing about that in a later instalment. I bought a cap. It cost two dollars.

The Karpali Carsi is as psychedelic place as you would ever see. An interior decorater's nightmare, each shop tries to outdo the next in gaudiness and cosmetic hubris. And at every little palace of bargains, a tout will accost the shopper with a well-practised sales-pitch. My two favourite lines were "Sir, madam - how can I relieve you of your money today?" and "These goods are almost free."

Thus substantially burdened with exotica, and considerably lighter in the pocket, we returned to the "Cordial House Hotel", our lodgings, where I had to consume about six bottles of cordial to assuage the morbid prospect of re-financing Casa Laurie, yet again.

I must say I really like the Turks. They have a nice, laid-back attitude about them, and a great sense of humour. Friendly and helpful, they made us feel welcome everywhere - and that's not something you can say all the time about cities and countries chock-a-block full of tourists, and German and American ones, to boot. (Sorry, I know, I know, I'll stop now.)

To give you an example of Turkish generosity (jumping a few days ahead), the TP and I were walking along a road in Kusadasi, late at night, searching for a hotel where we were intending to meet some of our touring friends for drinks. We were totally, utterly, hopelessly lost. I had spurned the Princess's advice to get firm directions and take a street map, relying on my inherently good sense of direction instead. As I said, we were completely lost. It was pitch black, dogs were barking at us from doorways, and I was just a little unsure about even finding our way back to our hotel. We'd been walking for an hour, and had found ourselves on the outskirts of the town, instead of the intended destination, its centre.

Presently, a bloke scootered past us and disappeared over the hill. The TP was exhausted, sat on a low stone wall by the side of the road, and declared "You and your fucking sense of direction. I'm not moving until you get a taxi."

Just then, a car came towards us from the top of the hill. It was the same guy who, a few minutes before, had driven past us on his little motorbike. He leant out of the window and said, in passable English, "Are you good people a little lost? Where are you going?"

I mentioned the name of the hotel, and he shook his head. "I don't know that name, but I will find out. Please, get in."

Now normally, when travelling, it might be inadvisable to accept lifts from perfect strangers in the middle of the night. I think there are warnings about such things on travel advice websites, under the general heading "How to avoid being mugged, raped and shot in foreign countries", but the Titanium Princess was ensconced in the back seat of his car before you could say "grievous bodily harm." With just a slight feeling of misgiving in the bowel region, I clambered in behind her.

But the bloke turned out to be a delight. He stopped at another hotel nearby, left us in the car with the motor running, and disappeared inside, only to emerge in a couple of minutes with a big grin on his face, and promptly drove us another couple of kilometres and stopped at the door of our destination. "There you are, good people, the hotel you were looking for."

We were flabbergasted. "Can we buy you a drink, sir?" I offered.

"No, thank you very much, I must get home to my children. It was very nice meeting you, and I hope you have a pleasant stay in my country."

With effusive handshaking all round, we thanked him for his generosity, and he sailed happily off into the night. He had done this simply because he was a good bloke who had seen a couple of travellers out of their depth. And that's the sort of treatment we got from the Turks wherever we went. What a great country.

The ugly professor

2009-08-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

I knew there would be trouble. It often comes in small packages, and this particular packet of it announced itself in no uncertain terms as ugly, loud and American.

It was early morning, and we had boarded a bus that was to take us on a guided tour of the Aegean coast of Turkey, a most remarkable part of the world that simply leaches ancient history, and was to provide us with a moving example of the utter stupidity of the modern variety, at a place called Gallipoli.

Our tour guide was a lovely young woman named Jen; she had fallen in love with Turkey several years ago, and was now working for a travel company with the singular name of "Fez", but never mind. The bus was a twenty-seat Mercedes driven by a young Turk (this is about my one and only chance in life to use that expression literally) called Ali. Ali's English was just slightly better than my Turkish, which is to say hopeless. (Although, by the end of the trip, I'd got him to nail "No worries, mate", accent and all.) From the moment we shook hands, I knew I was going to like him. You can tell with people, sometimes. Ali was friendly, funny, and a terrific driver. The Turks, generally, are very good drivers - they have to be, in a city as big (20 million or so) as Istanbul. They quite properly regard the road rules as advisory only, to the extent where even the police will happily ignore infractions that would have me locked in a police cell for several days in Australia. Anything to assist the flow of traffic is encouraged. And they are good enough to drive really fast, only inches from each other, all with good humour and a repertoire of horn blasts which are, by and large, courtesy calls.

Ali was one of these. As safe a driver in whose hands I've ever put my life, Ali wheeled the bus through the crowded, narrow, twisting streets of the old city, and onto the main highway out of town with nary a hint of imminent catastrophe. I was impressed, as he performed this entire operation with one hand, the other holding a mobile phone into which he poured a non-stop stream of Turkish. (I learnt later it was his mum on the other end.)

Now, there were three Americans on the bus, whose complement consisted of mainly Australians and our dowdy feathered friends the Kiwis. (Sorry, but it's sacreligious for an Aussie not to have a go at a New Zealander whenever the opportunity arises.) One of these Yanks was a 40-ish woman named Barbara - tall, slim, polite and quietly-spoken. She was on her way to Kusadasi, a southern port and resort town which was, coincidentally, our drop-off point too. Barbara and her partner were sailing their yacht around the world, and she'd just been to Prague for some shopping, and was on her way to rejoin the boat in Athens, via Turkey. She was a remarkably intelligent and warm woman with whom we, especially the Titanium Princess, became fast friends.

If Barbara epitomised all of the qualities I'd like to think are the talents of the best Americans, then, dear reader, just think what her opposite might look like. Because that's what clambered aboard the bus next.

A woman (and I use the word advisorily) of about sixty winters of discontent - large and ugly in a way only a lifetime of self-centredness and an inflamed ego can etch ugliness into a face that resembled a smashed crab - climbed up the stairs, huffing and puffing as if the exertion of not being carried onto the bus on a feathered golden bier supported by four eunuchs was too much ignominy for her station, and immediately demanded in a high, piercing voice that she be awarded the front seat, as she was "prone to travel-sickness." She had in tow a bizarre-looking man of about seventy, for whom the descriptor "gaunt" was probably flattering; it turned out he was her husband, and from the tiny squeaks he occasionally emitted I figured out that he must have done some fast-track evolving from the mouse species, as he was clearly terrified of the behemoth that had evidently been ruining his life for forty-odd years.

Barbara, who was sitting across the aisle from us, immediately offered her seat to Her Ugliness, who, without a word of thanks, bustled her hubby into the window seat, all the while whining that she must also have the aisle seat, being prone to panic attacks. Eventually, after going through a couple of volumes of Webster's Dictionary, she got herself settled, did a couple of Linda Blair-like pirouettes of the head to check out the assembled throng, and finally rested her gaze on me.

Now, if you're anything like me, you're probably adept at meeting people and breaking the ice. You smile, say hello, and offer a few inconsequentialities like "Where are you heading?", "Had a goood trip so far?", and "How could you have possibly voted for that idiotic, war-mongering Bush TWICE, you dumb American cunt?" (To be honest, I haven't exactly used that one myself...yet.)

The Thing gave me the once-over, and said "I'm a college professor, you know. Accountancy." I was about to say something innocuous like "Good for you", when I noticed her eyes. I could tell, right away, that she was stark, staring mad. One of her eyes betrayed her as delusional; the other had the steely glint of the psychopath. It was easy to see why the Mouse lived in terror. (Don't ask how I can be so certain of this diagnosis - suffice it to say, I've worked in gaols for twenty years, and one gets to know the look.) This one had a double dose. Oh boy, I thought, this trip is going to be fun - this lunatic probably thinks "ice-breaking" is best accomplished with the aid of an ice-pick; maybe the Titanium Princess should sit in the aisle seat - at least she's armoured.

Without taking a breath, she began to complain vociferously about the poor state of education in the world. Apparently (and I hadn't realised that this was still a thesis going around, what with trepanning being almost a lost art), the decline of general educational standards throughout the world has a lot to do with the appearance of black people at universities. She leant across the aisle and confidentially lowered her voice to about 140 decibels: "They're all dumb and lazy, the lot of 'em, you know."

"What," I replied, "as distinct from fat and ugly, you mean?" Fortunately, that one went straight through to the 'keeper, as she remained unfazed, replying "Well, that too, often enough, but I suppose the poor bastards can't help their genes. Their trouble is they've got no entrepreneurial flair. Just like the Turks. I had to have a word with my hotel manager yesterday. Told him to clean his hotel up. There was dirt in the corners of my room. They just don't realise that if they want to get more trade from the U.S. they'd better damn well clean up their act." I was comforted by the image of the Thing's hotel manager ordering a truckload of street sweepings to sprinkle around his rooms after her departure. Like garlic and vampires, perhaps.

"My husband's a professor, too, you know. Yale. Math." I looked at hubby, and he looked at me, and I saw a resigned helplessness, as if had he had the courage to take to the drink his liver would now be a prized specimen at the Museum of Medical Oddities in Denver, Colorado. He was a man shattered, and if he had once been a prized professor of mathematics, it was plain that he was now only three ticks above village idiot.

"My first husband died, you know," she continued. "I was twenty-eight, so what do you think was the first thing I did?" I remarked that I couldn't possibly imagine, although my mind was going through a list that included Watergate burglar, assassin, cannibal, etc., when she replied for me. "I got another one - this one!"

"Well," I said, "it looks like this one's lasted pretty well - you haven't managed to kill him yet." She gave me the look for a few seconds, then broke into an hysterical cackle.

"No, you silly boy," she slapped me on the knee, "I didn't kill the last one. He fell off a very tall building." No wonder, I mused - if I was married to you, madam, they couldn't build skyscrapers fast enough for me to climb up and throw myself off.

As we ran along the motorway, through vast suburbs of teeming and towering housing developments, and noticed hundreds and hundreds of people lining the road, perhaps to be picked up for work, perhaps hoping for work, the Thing kept up her manic autobiography. She wasn't the slightest bit interested in Turkey, she said (without realising the sheer, vapid stupidity of such a remark), and was only there because of a conference in Istanbul.

"What a coincidence," I remarked, "I, too, am attending a conference soon. In Dublin."

She needled me with the psychopathic eye. "What's it on? Accountancy?"

"No," I replied. "The psychopathology of economists."

"So you're a professor, too?" she said with an enlarged bonhomme that was starting to scare me just a bit. "I like associating with professors. Well, the white ones, at least. By the way, you speak remarkably good English."

"Why thank you, madam," I responded, "it's so nice to be complimented on one's proficiency in one's native language." I was beginning to realise that it didn't matter what I said to this drongo - she enjoyed nothing more than the sound of her own voice.

We arrived at Gallipoli, where lunch at a local restaurant was served. I was feeling slightly under the weather at this stage. No matter how careful you are, you'll always cop the wrong end of a microbe or two whilst travelling. It was nothing serious, I was just a bit queasy, and I forced a rather lovely meal of fish down before we set out for the battlefields.

We drove to Anzac Cove, and alighted from the bus. And here it was - this tiny strip of sand whereupon one of history's greatest military follies began. It was blindingly obvious, looking up at the towering cliffs and impenetrable canyons, and just the sheer exposure of the place, that storming the Gallipoli Peninsula was always going to be a mug's game. Our guide, a Turkish bloke called Bill, took us through the campaign step by step and month by hideous month. We saw the places where the major battles had been fought, where so many young men died, the front-line trenches only ten metres apart, where the soldiers of both sides would throw food to each other during lulls in the fighting. This epic series of battles lasted eight months and achieved precisely nothing. That's right, nothing at all - the Dardanelles remained in the hands of the Turks. The British and French had wanted to wrest control of the straits, and Istanbul itself, and the Black Sea ports - partly to take these mechanisms away from the Hun, and partly, of course, because they were insane, murdering, greedy bastards themselves whose objectives in Europe had less to do with peace, civilisation and development, and more with the insanity of weirdos like Winston Churchill and his coterie of alcoholic cut-throats.

The piece-de-resistance was a shrine at the Turkish memorial, upon which were inscribed these words, in Turkish and English:

In the name of Allah the compassionate, the merciful. The martyrs requested of Allah the following: For the sake of you, oh Allah, send us back to the world so that we may be martyred once more.

On reading this my gore began to rise. I was composing what I thought might be a more fitting epitaph to the dead children buried here, something along the lines of "Dear Allah, you ignorant, malicious, psychopathic prick - if you really exist, please raise us from the dead so that we can live in peace with our Anzac brothers, who killed us, and whom we killed, for no good reason at all, just the insanity of our deluded fathers who thought it was dulce et decorum, but who should have known better."

Her Ugliness was, at this stage, reading the inscription too. She looked at me and said "That's so lovely, so righteous, so noble, don't you think?"

I opened my mouth, and a stream of Gallipoli lunch cascaded onto her stupid purple trousers, gently dribbling into her shoes.

"I'm so sorry, ma'am," I managed to blurt out. "I had no idea travel-sickness was contagious."

I'm back!

2009-08-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

Just a note to inform regulars that I'm home, and preparing a vast collection of highly risible anecdotes from our recent grand tour of Europe. I hope you enjoy them as they appear!

Just one short one for now:

The Titanium Princess and I were walking along a road in Dublin. We came to an intersection where, painted on the roadway itself, was a sign that said "Look Right", with an arrow pointing in that direction.

"That's considerate," I remarked, "It's a good idea considering the number of European and American tourists who come here."

The TP eyed me, with a mischievous glint in her eye.

"They're for the locals," she grinned.

"You're not the woman I married," I replied.

I vant to suck your blood

2009-06-25T01:58:00.000-07:00

Now, some regular readers have, from time to time, unfairly accused me of fabricating certain stories just to get a cheap laugh or two. Well, OK, not unfairly - I'll admit to exaggerating the odd fact or two here and there. But, dear readers, the following is, I swear, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The Titanium Princess was a witness, and she's a kindergarten teacher, so is incapable of mendacity.

Yesterday afternoon, here in Munich, we decided to catch a tram just to see where it would take us. We had no other motive than to simply see the sights, and get off at an interesting-looking Platz or two to take in a delightful Bavarian refreshment.

We caught the number 12 from Rotkreuzplatz, where we are staying, and headed off down wide boulevardes lined with substantial and sturdy (and expensive, no doubt) houses. It was sehr freundlich. Along the way, a woman got on and sat across from us. Noticing that we were chatting in Australian, she made her acquaintance, and we got to talking. She was a very nice woman who had spent some time in Australia a couple of years ago, working on a sheep station. "Where are you going today?" she asked.

"Nowhere in particular," I replied, "just seeing the sights."

"Oh, well, you must go and have a look at the Schloss Nymphenburg - it is Munich's most famous, and biggest, castle. I am getting off near there - I'll show you the way if you like."

We duly alighted, and were walking along the Notburgstrasse, chatting away, when a young man approached us. He was a singularly odd-looking fellow, with a very white, pasty complexion and jet-black hair which hung over the sides of his face. He had one of those man-bags hanging from his shoulder, and was holding a map in his hand. He asked me something in German, and I replied Entschuldigung, Ich spreche kaum Deutsch. He hesitated for a moment, then said in English

"I am from Transylvania, and I am looking for a castle."

Quitting

2009-06-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

I have stumbled across a terrific method for those of you who would like to give up the dreaded weed. It's a little bit expensive, but I guarantee it will, at the very least, give you pause for thought. Perhaps the best way to describe this procedure is to outline my own experience, which is as follows:

We took off from Singapore at 9.30 p.m. on a Boeing 777 - a very nice plane that, apparently, to its maker's credit, does not have the habit of falling out of the sky for no reason at all. Its only downside is that it tends to vibrate and emit high-pitched whistling noises inside the passenger compartment, playing havoc with anyone, such as myself, who suffers from industrial tinnitus.

As we took off, an older, Muslim woman sitting beside the Titanium Princess decided that the only way this creaking, whistling hulk would get into the air was if she began praying and keening as volubly and rapidly as possible. She began to execute that strange, up-and-down bowing of the head at which the faithfull are so adept, all the while giving the little set of prayer beads in her hand a fucking good shake. It was a most impressive performance, and, to my surprise, Allah must have been listening, because the 777 climbed into the air, albeit with the grace of a teenager climbing all over his girlfriend.

Next, we flew for seven hours in this thing, which was packed to the rafters, or gunwhales, or whatever the avionic equivalent is. As we approached Dubai, the pilot must have decided, right at the most critical moment (i.e., about four hundred feet above the landing-strip), that he had had it up to here with flying fucking aeroplanes, and obviously just threw up his hands and said "Fuck it, I'm sick of this shit, somebody get me a real job.", because the plane promptly dropped out of the sky like a brick onto the tarmac with an awful, terrifying 'BANG', did a couple of doughnuts, and slid to a stop with a gigantic groaning sound.

The intercom came on, and the pilot announced "Ladies and Gentlemen - you can stay in the plane or get out; I don't give a fuck - I'm outta here", (or something like it - I'm not good at taking in messages when I'm vomiting over Muslims). To no-one's surprise, there was a general exodus at a very sharp pace, and it wasn't long before we were safely ensconced in the terminal. I needed a smoke - badly.

Now, here's where it all gets interesting. Dubai airport is approximately two-thirds the size of the Republic of Ireland, and has a population of several million, all of whom smoke like chimneys. To accommodate these people's addiction, the airport has generously donated a room of precisely eight by four metres for anyone in the terminal who would like to enjoy a gaffer. And get this: it is the only room in the entire, palacious kingdom that is neither air-conditioned or sports an extraction fan. I walked into this room to light up, and immediately had the impression that I was being force-fed tar through every orifice in my body. Stupidly, I ignited a cigarette.

By the time I had staggered out of Dante's little shoe-box hell, my brain was reeling with the Turkish tobacco industry's yearly quota of nicotine. I resolved, then and there, to give the filthy habit away.

We got back on the plane, which had been hastily repaired (there was still a bit of wet epoxy around the tail-fin area), and to my horror, I realised I was walking behind the new pilot, who was obviously only twelve years old. I leant over to the TP and whispered "Let's help that old Muslim lady out, and pray like fuck as well."

Surprisingly, our new pilot turned out to be a gem, and we landed in Istanbul some five hours later with a touchdown like the kiss of a brand-new mother. All I can say is "Allah akh-something."

Gotta go - it's time for a fag.

The Titanium Princess

2009-06-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

The Titanium Princess was in no mood for argument. I had christened her the Titanium Princess (or TP for short) many years ago, after a car accident had left most of her skeleton unuseable, and which had consequently been almost completely replaced by titanium rods and plates. It now works fine, and looks pretty good, too; I've even got used to the grease nipples protruding from her knees and elbows. Remember that scene in Terminator where Big Arnie cuts open his forearm and rips the skin away? I have nightmares about that.

Anyway, the only downfall of being married to a cyborg is that she causes mayhem at airports. Every time she walks through a metal detector the thing starts wailing like a banshee, as if Rommel had just driven the 2nd Panzer division through the thing.

We had not even begun our trip to Europe - it was Saturday afternoon at the Sydney Aerodrome, and we were about to embark on a flight that would take us to Turkey. We had nine weeks of adventure in front of us - Turkey, Greece, Italy, Austria, Germany, Czeck Republic, Holland Belgium, Ireland, and the U.K. - (I was deliberately avoiding France this time, after the famous case of the Cyanide Croissant - but that's another story).

We checked in, laid our bags on the X-ray machine, and I walked through the metal detector. I waited on the other side as TP came through. As predicted, pandemonium ensued. It looked, and sounded, like Saturday night at an Oxford St. rave club. About a dozen airport staff came running over and surrounded TP, obviously of the view that - at last - Johnny Howard's malignant obsession thet the country was about to be invaded by terrorists had come true. They can be so sly, these malefactors - even mutating into middle-aged female schoolteachers when required. I stood by, a healthy twenty feet or so away, and bemusedly wondered how TP would handle what would be the first of many identical situations - or, more precisely, how the airport security staff were going to handle a woman whose vocabulary is, er, extensive when she wants it to be.

"Madam," enquired one of the security men, "do you have any metal objects on you?"

"No, but I've got plenty in me," she replied. The security guy asked her to step into a little room off to the side. "I don't think a strip-search is warranted," she objected reasonably. "I have a letter here from my doctor that will give you the run-down on exactly where all the metal is." She eyed him with a look that plainly said "Don't fuck with me, Sonny Jim."

He hesitated, then waved over a female officer, who passed something resembling a black, plastic cricket-bat all over TP's body. The thing made noises like R2D2 having a heart-attack, while the male officer read the doctor's letter.

"All good, he eventually conceded, "have a pleasant flight."

We got our seats on the plane, and TP leant across and whispered "That was close. No way I'm taking my clothes off for any of these bastards. Good thing the Glock sits comfortably over my left hip."

Oooowwaaaafuckmedead!

2009-05-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

A treat for all star-gazers. A 360 degree view of the Milky Way, provided by my friend Kiriakos, who works at the Very Large Telescope in northern Chile. (And to think God did it with the snap of his fingers!) Thanks, Kiri!

Where's my machine gun?

2009-05-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

If you're a mildly observant chap or chapess, you'll have noticed the look of my blog has changed. A friend asked me if he could experiment with some new software he'd been testing, and, being a total ignoramus when it comes to all things computer, of course I said "Yes".

I think you'll agree he's done a wonderful job. I love the atmospheric theme he's imagined, designed and rendered. His name is Claudio Esposito, and he can be found at seism_graphics@gmx.com. If you're in need of any sort of web design, I couldn't recommend him more highly.

(OK, Claudio, you can take that tommy-gun out of my back now!)

Trench warfare

2009-04-17T03:59:00.000-07:00

Well, call me an idiot, but standing around in mud up to one's elbows whilst listening to a drongo like the excerable Ben Harper doesn't sound a lot like my idea of fun. But that's what thousands of tripped-out punters did on Monday night at the Bluesfest, attesting to the theory that lousy ecstasy and lousy performers go hand-in-hand.

Meanwhile, your happy curmudgeon of a reporter was bunkered down in the ladies' change room at Kids' Korner (spelling not being a high point of Australian culture just yet) waiting for a break in the torrent that had turned Byron Bay into a mud-fest. I'd just seen the phenomenal Ruthie Foster deliver a set that could make a grown man (me) weep. I was standing there with a friend, and we just had to hug each other as the beauty and power of Ruthie's voice washed over us.

So why did the majority of the festival's punters trudge their way through the mud to see this Harper feller? One can only guess, but I'd say that Ben Harper is a mere symptom of the impending downfall of western society. He, and the atrocious John Butler, and a gentleman by the name of Xavier Rudd, etc etc, represent the colossally stupid end of the "new" music spectrum.

These are characters who are, undoubtedly, sincere. They write and perform songs that lament the extinction of gay aboriginal whales, and celebrate the idea that the world will be saved if only you will form a circle with your friends and chant in a made-up language.

All of these blokes, and more, have only one tiny downfall: their music is shit. Dumb, boring and repetitive, their tedious strummings have at best a soporific effect on the sophisticated listener. In my case, Ben Harper makes for a useful purgative. While various entrepreneurs made a killing at the fest selling gumboots to slide around in the mud with, I think next year I'll see if I can make some money flogging vomit bags and buckets to the discerning.

Anyway, none of this was to be the point of today's post. Apart from the mud and a few brain-damaged performers and their adoring minions, the Bluesfest was, for me, an Easter of perfect happiness. Why? Because I was surrounded by family and friends for a week in one of the most picturesque parts of the country, drinking wine, relaxing, and listening to some great music from time to time. One friend, whom I hadn't seen for a number of years, nearly hugged me to death when we met. These catching ups with old friends, the peaceful hours spent lazing about at our campsite at Lake Ainsworth, the sounds of hooting, chuckling and screeching emanating from Leigh's tent at 3.30 a.m. as he remembered yet another hysterical anecdote from the night's proceedings, and in turn had the rest of the campsite in fits of laughter - these are the phenomena that make the Fest my most enjoyable time of the year.

And, of course, there's some great music to be had. As usual, Angelique Kidjou was glorious. But so were Zappa Plays Zappa, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and the irrepressible Ruthie Foster. What a voice. Each one of these performers was worth the price of admission alone.

A highlight was the Voodoo Daddies - 30s and 40s swing, with a five-piece brass section that was amazingly tight and luscious. Tia sitting on my shoulders rocking and rolling as they launched into a version of Minnie the Moocher that would have had Cab Calloway sitting up in his grave yelling "Ho de ho de ho de ho!". When the cameras found Tia, she was plastered all over the giant screens, and waved to herself with frantic joy, singing the chorus at the top of her voice with about eight thousand others.

There were some quibbles, of course. The sound quality was poor, compared to previous fests. I have no idea why the sound at such a venue should be less than perfect, as there are no reverberation problems to overcome. Some acts, including Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, achieved brilliant sound, so one can only wonder at the state of ears/brains of other engineers behind the desk. As well, the whole mud thing was poorly handled. At one stage on Monday night I was wandering around shin-deep in the stuff. Rivers of slush were pouring through the site. There was not enough shelter provided to get people out of the rain.

Nevertheless, I came home after a relaxing eight-hundred kilometre drive feeling energised. Can't wait for next year. Now, which gumboots? Cherries or leopards?

Little Red Riding Hood

2009-04-07T03:22:00.000-07:00

Just check this out:

http://dashes.com/anil/2009/03/this-is-how-we-should-talk-to-kids.html

Tell me you're not disturbed.

Get yourselves to "Darwin's Teapot"

2009-03-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

A bloke called Scott runs one of the best blogs on the net. It is full of fascinating news from the world of science, astute observations on religion, politics etc., and is criminally under-utilised. I urge everyone to take a look - you'll want to put it in your followers list for sure.

Darwin's Teapot - go there now!

...and get your kicks for free.

2009-03-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Mormons introduced themselves as "Jim" and "Peter" from "The Latter-Day Saints".

To their surprise, I immediately asked them in. "Coffee?" I offered. "Er, no thanks," replied Jim, "but a glass of water would be nice."

"Now, fellers, what have you blokes got to say for yourselves?" I enquired, as we sat around the table while Jim got a dirty big book out of his briefcase - a tome that resembled a bible, but which was in fact The Book of Mormon, one of the stupidest wastes of good Tasmanian old-growth forest you might ever see.

"Do you know anything about our church, Laurie?" asked Jim, who was obviously the senior partner of the Jim and Pete show.

"Nothing at all," I lied, wondering what tale of idiocy would shortly be coming my way. Jim, who'd been to Mormon training school by the look of him, asked me straight off (and believe me, I was unprepared for this) "Are you worried by the prospect of spending eternity in hell, Laurie?"

Well, ten points for announcing your utter stupidity up front, I thought to myself. "Tell me about this hell you speak of, Jim," I replied more courteously. Jim launched himself into a tirade of imaginary horrors that would have done James Joyce proud. After three or four minutes of this I was becoming both impressed by his reserve of adjectives, and worried about his sanity at the same time.

Now, it just so happened that, a couple of days previously, I'd had a bit of an altercation with the limb of a tree I'd been removing down in the bottom paddock. The thing had fallen and twisted, sending a smallish branch in my direction. I'd turned to run, just as the branch came down and grazed my back. Nothing serious, but I had some pretty hefty cuts and grazes down my back that made it look like it had come in contact with a cat-o-nine-tails half a dozen times. To tell the truth, I was more pissed off with the thought that it had ripped to pieces a favourite t-shirt that proclaimed "God is dead - now let the bastard rest in peace, motherfuckers." A sudden thought came to mind.

"Jim," I interrupted as speckles of froth were starting to appear around the sides of his mouth, "there's a bit of a problem I see in your argument, if you don't mind me saying so. You see, I have a medical condition - well, to tell you the truth, it's a mental health issue - called Masochism Anxiety Disorder. I know, of course, that it's irrational, but my psychiatrist tells me there's no likelihood of a cure for it."

"Oh," said Jim, utterly perplexed.

"Yeah, it's a bit of a bugger, actually," I continued, "because it's a condition that presents itself as a desire to have pain inflicted upon myself. I enjoy being hurt, to put it simply, and, quite frankly, this 'hell' you describe sounds like my idea of the ultimate fun-park. I mean, I've made up a few little devices I use down in the shed that involve whips and electric motors and such, but hell sounds like the mother of all torture chambers, and to tell you the truth, I can't wait to get there."

By this stage I could see Peter glancing around as if he was coyly assessing the best possible escape routes out of the place, and he had begun to go several tinges of a whiter shade of pale. Jim was studying his book of Mormon as if he was trying to find a verse or two dedicated to the management and care of the seriously deranged. Fat chance, I thought, as I ploughed on.

"I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. A couple of days ago I had a good session with my cat-o-nine-tails machine I've rigged up. It was most gratifying, I can tell you," I said with a decidely lewd leer in Pete's direction.

I stood up, turned around and pulled my t-shirt up over my shoulders. By this stage, my wounds had become scabrous and evilly red, with blue tinges of bruises on the sides. It was a most prepossessing sight, if I do say so.

At this, young Pete jumped to his feet with a gasp of horror. It was a bad move, because what little blood had been left in his head cascaded immediately into his feet, and the poor bastard dropped like a rock in a pratfall that would have done Buster Keaton proud. He was out cold on the floor of my kitchen with blood trickling out of a nose that was never going to attract nice young Mormon ladies again.

Jim jumped to the aid of his mate with little cries of "Oh, oh, oh!", knocking his glass of water all over the open pages of his book of moronism. At the same time, his face had gone a distinct tinge of green, but, curiously, his ears were the colour of a beetroot. Fuck, I thought, trying to contain my joy, these two could just about pass as the Italian national flag.

I pulled an old bottle of smelling-salts out of the cupboard, and held the open bottle under Pete's flattened nose. He came to with the sort of startled cry that Uma Thurman affected in Pulp Fiction. It was a shame I didn't have a dirty big needle full of adrenalin, I thought. Young Pete would have been seriously discombobulated to wake up with something like that sticking out of his chest.

Eventually, he was conscious enough, and comforted enough, to whisper to Jim that it might be a good idea if they went home. Jim helped him out the front door, down the path, and into the Landcruiser. "Are you sure you don't want to take a look at my little chamber of horrors before you go? I enquired solicitously.

At that, Jim gunned the motor and did an impression up my drive of a Norwegian rally driver. I dusted off my hands and went inside, only to spy Jim's book of Mormon still sitting on the kitchen table.

"Ah, kindling!" I exclaimed. "These Mormons come in handy occasionally."

And, I must say, the Book of Mormon burns beautifully.

The prince of sports

2009-03-16T02:19:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I retired from competitive cricket. My last year was as captain of the North Richmond 7th grade team, a position I was thrust into some years previously by the president of the club, a genial bloke called Ross Matheson, who must have been seriously deluded about my capabilities to have even considered the possibility that I would lead the team to glory, i.e. by actually winning a competition. (It never did, by the way.)

I'd played cricket as a youngster, of course, going up through the age grades and learning the trade. But cricket gave way to girls, surfing, taking drugs, playing in rock and roll bands, robbing banks, and generally being stupid.

When my eldest son finished his junior career, the possibility of blooding him in the seniors came along, and so I agreed to play with him in one of the lower grades. By this stage, Miles was a pretty damn good cricketer, and it wasn't going to be long before he climbed up to first grade potential. I, on the other hand, at the age of 45, was going nowhere, and was happy to admit it. The club got a team of fathers and sons together - six blokes of about my age with our sons, who were all pretty handy with the leather and willow by this stage.

I remember the first time I strode out to the crease, donned in new pads and gloves, and the most important bit of kit a bloke needs: the box. Cricket balls make a curious, crushing sound when they come in contact with a pair of unprotected gonads - a sound I'd heard once or twice while fielding at slips just before realising that that particular kid was going to spreading his genes in the future only by means of a syringe and a turkey-baster.

Anyway, I shaped up to this young bloke from the Glossodia team who came screaming in to the bowling crease at a great rate of knots. "This feels pretty good," I said to myself as I prepared for a comfortable front-foot drive into the covers, only to find that the bat was still at the top of its back-swing as the ball thudded into the keeper's gloves.

"What the fuck happened then?" I asked of no-one in particular, as the blokes in the slips cordon began tittering. The next five balls brought about similar results, until I was left bewildered at the end of the pitch checking that my bat did not have watermelon-sized holes in it. I realised, finally, that my reaction times were not as they had been twenty-five years before, and, more importantly, I was gonna have to do something about it, and quick. My son, who was opening the batting with me, just stood at the other end of the crease giving me a look that would have withered Don Bradman.

"Okay, you smug little bastard," I thought, as he shaped up to the bowling, "let's see what you can do. Crack! The ball whistled past my ears at Mach 3 on its way over the fence at long on. The next ball he turned deftly to backward square leg and immediately yelled "Come on! There's three in it." I was running as fast as I could, and had just turned for my second, when he overtook me, already on his third run. "For fuck's sake, get a move on, Dad!" he said with an evil grin as he loped, elegantly, to his crease. Meanwhile, I was considering the time it would take for an ambulance to make a round trip from Windsor Hospital with a victim of myocardial infarction on board. Somehow I made it up and back once more before the square-leg fieldsman, fortunately a bloke also in his dotage, could return the ball to the keeper. I decided a good lie down on the grass was in order, and asked the umpire if rest periods between balls had been written into the official MCC book of the laws of cricket.

By the time I'd regained some composure and my stance at the crease, I was thinking that this really was a mug's game. I threw caution to the wind, and, seeing a ball that was slightly overpitched just outside off stump, thundered down the track, kept my bat straight, and hoped for the best. The ball struck the middle of the bat and whistled straight through the covers for four! I looked up at Miles, who was gazing at me with a mixture of consternation, scepticism and awe. It was a moment of pure bliss.

I scored 25 that day, and, of course, was hooked. And so, I soldiered on for another eight seasons, until creaking knees and one rather unfortunate injury gave me pause to reconsider.

I was 53 and opening the batting again. This time I was playing with my younger son, Blake, who was, like Miles, stepping up into senior cricket. He is a very fine swing bowler, and I'd had two seasons of captaining him in the seventh grade, to my great satisfaction. It was a game to see who would go into the finals rounds in first position on the competition ladder. A young, lanky fast bowler, who was all of 6'6" tall, came in to deliver the first ball. It was short, and reared up at what I thought was an excellent hooking height. I went for the shot, was too late, and the ball careened straight into my face at about 120 kilometres an hour. It dropped me like a brick onto the pitch, blood pouring out of a gash just below my left eye, and the left side of my face immediately swelling to the size of the ball that had just done the damage. I was only semi-conscious, but had the presence of mind to call out to the bowler, who by this stage was standing over me, "Is that as fast as you can bowl, mate? Pathetic."

Ross, the club president was there, and immediately bundled me into his car and took me off to hospital, where x-rays determined that I had fortunately not fractured my skull. It took a couple of weeks for the swelling to go down, and I must say the blokes from the other team were very good about it, with their captain and the bowler himself both calling me to see how I was. Two weeks later we lost the semi-finals against the same team, and I realised it was time to hang up the box for good.

I know it may sound silly, but I'm very proud and fortunate to have been able to play a real, competitive sport with my sons. We learnt a lot from each other out there in our flannels, and I hope that their abiding memories of me will include all that great fun we had together playing the prince of sports.

I'm so very, very, very fucking sorry.

2009-03-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

Someone was having a whinge the other day, to the effect that my postings had slowed considerably over the last couple of months. All I can say to this is that time's been against me; the department of education has dumped an entirely new syllabus on me that means I have to re-write all of my programs, even though what I teach has effectively changed not one iota. Thanks, fellers, for giving me a shitloat of needless, redundant work to do just so that you can justify your pointless, inane, bureaucratic existences.

Secondly, I am in the process of writing a number of extended short stories which are not in keeping with the serial stupidity of the current blog. These are taking some considerable effort to craft, and will hopefully appear in print towards the end of this year. Wish me luck, folks.

As well, I have been organising a few travel experiences, including a grand European tour, for which I'm desperately trying to write a paper for a particular conference in Dublin, and the prospect of giving that paper in front of the assembled off-the-scale intellects I'll be faced with has caused several cases of terrified incontinence already. The other major trek is one Leigh and I are organising for early 2010, where we will attempt to drive in a straight line from Sydney to Broome. Thankfully, Leigh has come up with the original idea of towing a trailer with a pallet of beer behind us, so the straight line will become fairly wobbly from the word go. (At least we'll be able to maintain adequate levels of hydration when we're stuck in the desert.)

Last but not least, the Byron Bay Bluesfest comes up in exactly four weeks from now, and it has fallen to me to be the principal organiser of the forty or so crew that assembles at Lennox Head camping ground for what is the best ever time a feller can have standing on two feet. (Or lying horizontally in mud, as the case may be.) As usual, Leigh is no help in these matters at all, as he reckons that being the elder statesman of the Byron experience affords him certain priveleges, such as becoming stupid for a week. But I, for one, am looking forward to this year's experience like I never have in the entire preceeding twelve years.

All I can assure regular readers is that, as I can, I will continue to post ridiculous stories about my life, adventures and the people that mean most to me as time permits. I promise that, after my return from Europe in August, I will write dozens of idiotic pieces that will entertain you all, or bore you to death. I promise not to include any travelogue-type material, but merely my observations of the sheer hilarity of being human, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a phenomenon unconfined to Australians.

Win-win

2009-02-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, as I was sitting peacefully at my desk, strumming a few chords on my old Fender acoustic, I looked out the window and noticed a Landcruiser wending its way down my drive through the angophoras. Ascertaining that it was not the local constabulary come to pick me up on another trumped-up charge of "threat to public disorder" or some such, I sauntered down the front path and waited for it to arrive.

Now, I only mention the police because, a couple of years ago, I got a phone call at work from a bloke at the Greens' head office in Sydney, alerting me to the news that the then Prime-Minister, the execrable John Howard, would shortly be landing at the Richmond air-base for a Liberal Party luncheon at the nearby horse-racing club, and did I have any willing volunteers out there who could mount a picket at said establishment. Not being able to rustle anyone up on the spot, I decided a one-man protest was better than no protest at all, and jumped in the ute and headed down there.

Fortunately, I had a few Greens placards in the back seat, so I distributed a few of them around the fence - little messages like "Public education - not private largesse", and "Howard, you're a cunt", etc. (OK, the last one was not an official Greens slogan, I admit.)

Sure enough, before too long a cavalcade of limos came roaring up the drive to the race club. I could tell straight away that it had no intention of stopping so that the Prime Minister could get out and have a chat with one of his disgruntled constituents, so I hastily grabbed a placard and jumped in front of the first limo, forcing it to stop or run over me.

The driver jammed on his brakes, and the whole shebang came to a dead stop. The passenger window rolled down quickly, and a big, boofy bloke leaned out and said, in what he thought was the voice of authority, "YOU. GET THE FUCK OFF THIS ROAD NOW!" I very slowly moved to one side, and the driver gunned the car straight through the gates. The next car came by me rather more slowly, and there was the little rodent perched on the back seat. I began to tell him exactly what I thought of him, his cabinet, and the entire Liberal Party of Australia, in my loudest possible voice, and do you know what the slimy little prick did? He smiled and waved at me, as if I was just another admiring supporter. His car shot through the gates, and an attendant swung them shut and locked them, then called over to me "OK, you've had your fun, now fuck off."

Well, it had been a bit of fun, so I packed up and went home. I was sitting on the deck with a beer, feeding one of the kookas, when a for-real cop Landcruiser came tearing down the drive.

A sergeant got out, and said to me at the front gate "Are you Laurie F_____?" I confirmed that I was. "We've had a report that you were obstructing the Prime Minister a short time ago. Is that correct?"

"No, Sarge," I said. "I was exercising my democratic right to protest at that little cunt's malfeasance and complete incompetence in running the country. Besides, I wasn't aware that we'd become a police state overnight. You boys gonna put me in the back of that thing?" I asked, pointing to the lock-up on the back of their Cruiser.

"Fuck no, mate," the sergeant replied. "I just got a call to come out here and check out whether you were a nut-case." He leant over the gate, and offered his hand. "If you want my opinion, that piece of shit can get fucked, and the more people who tell him the better. See you later."

With that, they drove off, giving me a wave as they went. Bloody hell, I thought - even the coppers hate him.

Well, I suppose you're wondering by now who was in the car yesterday. Well, when I got to the front, two blokes in black suits with little name tags got out and smiled at me. Now, if I'd had a bit of fun with the coppers, this scenario had "pure entertainment" writ large all over it. It was the fucking Mormons!

God hates Australia

2009-02-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

The internet is a mixed bag of nuts. I was rather fortunate to stumble upon this exquisite selection the other day. I'd only heard of Fred Phelps in passing, but after viewing his eloquent speech, I'm sure you, like me, will be beating a path to the doors of the "Westboro Baptist Church" in Kansas to supplicate yourself in front of such a holy and benevolent bloke. On a pedantic note, I think Pastor Fred is just waiting for the opportunity to put the "ugh" back in "Westboro".

Apparently Danny Nalliah was dead wrong, and the Victorian bushfires were a result of Australia's infatuation with unbridled sodomy. It seems that we Aussies cannot walk along the street anymore without fostering urgent desires within ourselves to fornicate with anything and everything, as long as it is of the same gender. Forget the slaughter of millions of innocent babies in the womb, Danny - these bushfires are the direct result of millions of blokes around the country being prisoners of the cesspool of their own steaming desire! What a tragedy. So nice of God to cleanse the place by burning two hundred or more of these fornicators to death, although how the dozen or more babes in arms who were killed got tangled up in sodomite excrescence might be something that Pastor Danny may care to address.

Fred's had a bit of a bee in his bonnett about Australia, land of the sodomites, ever since he attended the Westboro multi-plex in his raincoat and sat through a screening of Brokeback Mountain, apparently starring an Australian actor who is now luxuriating in Hell, because he portrayed a gay cowboy. Now, I don't know whether Fred's objection is that it was an Australian doing this, or whether it is an affront to red-blooded, chest-thumping American manhood that anyone could be as evil as to suggest that a pair of cowboys could ever harbour impure thoughts towards each other (oh, where is John Wayne when you need him?), but I believe a couple of teensy little facts may have escaped Fred's notice.

The first is - and I know this is a difficult concept to get the old noggin around, Fred - it's called acting. Secondly, according to reports in the daily blatherers at the time of Heath Ledger's death, the actor was in a very happy relationship with a woman, and had, at least once, indulged in the god-sanctioned activity of vaginal sex, because the couple were the proud parents of a bonnie wee lassie!

Perhaps Fred needs to get on the royal telephone. "Ah, God, er, you know when I told you about that actor bloke, and you said 'Right! That's it. I'm burnin' Australia to the ground' - well, I might have made a bit of a mistake..." I'd be inclined to believe in Fred if 208 people and fifteen hundred homes were suddenly resurrected from the ashes, with a little note of apology from the Lord: "Er, Sorry, folks. My fault. Pastor Fred fucked up again. Carry on."

Now, all I can say about this business is that I think Pastor Fred has some secret he's not revealing, in that he obsessively desires the feel of something hard and long penetrating his own sphincter, but is too afraid to admit it. I'd help him out, of course, as one of his born-again flock, but I am afraid that total, fucktard, nut-job lunacy just might be a sexually-transmitted disease. I'd even go so far as to declare that the man's such a wacko that I wouldn't even fuck him with your cock, Brian!

The Italian connection

2009-02-22T23:19:00.000-08:00

Leigh was undoing his shoelaces, with the arthritic machinations of a bloke who has seriously extended himself. I, for one, was not going anywhere near mine, for the simple reason that a) I couldn't feel my feet anymore, and b) it would have been asking the impossible for me to bend any further than it took to pull a beer out of the esky beside me.

We'd just done a marathon hike into a place called "God Knows Where", by way of a canyon called "Fuck Me, You Must be Kidding" and along a mountain trail named "If You Get Through This Alive, You're Doing Well", a graveyard littered with the dessicated bones of unfortunate Germans and Japanese who had unwittingly read Fahrenheit for Celsius.

At least, this is my recollection. I can't be entirely certain, because I'd begun hallucinating by the time we'd tramped about fifteen miles through venomous scrub over rocks that resembled razor-sharp hand-grenades which exploded underfoot.

"Loz," gasped Leigh as he drank his sixth bottle of water for the day, "I'm having a great time!"

He giggled for a while, then collapsed on the ground, heaving.

Remembering that fortune favours the brave, we opted for cowardice, and bid a strategic retreat through the fields of blood to a camp-ground that at least afforded a decent burial in the case of a misadventure like slicing one's wrist whilst opening a coldy.

Of course, it was a tribute to our erstwhile enemies that they'd attempted the trek at all. Back in camp, we were comforted by a group of Italians who had pitched a tent next to us, and, rather than face the vagaries of wind and sun, had very sensibly decided to cavort in the resort's swimming pool all day, only to return to their campsite in order to quaff ice-cold chianti and graze on a variety of superlative Mediterranean foodstuffs.

I know all of this, because Leigh invited us over to their camp in order to, as he said, "determine that none of their victuals were poisonous."

They were from Florence - a mildly respectable centre of culture, that Leigh (who is a traveller of distinction), reckons is on a par with Cessnock or Heddon-Greta. "The trouble with Florence, Loz," he said with the air of the world-weary, "is that it doesn't have a smash-em-up car derby track like Heddon-Greta. Couple of good paintings and statues, though. Keeps the locals contented, although I reckon they could use a good Hoyts multiplex and a Henny Penny or two." Fortunately our Italian companions knew not a word of English, and if they did, were sufficiently familiar with irony to ignore the Barbarian Australian who was refined enough to know the value of fine wine. Besides, it's not difficult to tell when Leigh is joking. He begins to chuckle before telling you his story, breaks into giggles between sentences, then falls about laughing at himself at the end. His humour is completely infectious, and it wasn't long before the Florentines and we had become firm friends.

The following day we took them to Sacred Canyon, a tiny (by Flinders Ranges standards) cleft in granite cliffs, some twenty k from Wilpena. A dry, rocky creek bed led us, a kilometre or so, to walls of granite in pinks, reds and greys. And on those walls were hundreds of beautifuly engraved circles, animal prints, and campfire motifs. We were looking back in time - thirty to forty thousand years of it, in fact, at a civilisation that had used this little gorge, a place in the absolute middle of nowhere, as a meeting place, campfire and rest spot along a trade route that extended up into the Northern Territory and across to Cape York. These blokes must have been seriously good navigators, because this part of the country is so homogeneous that you can get lost just by looking over your shoulder.

The people of this area, the Adnyamathnha, or "hill people", inscribed these rock engravings with pieces of granite. We wandered around the gorge, inspecting everything, including a beautiful, big python that had serenely lain up in a crevice about four feet off the ground. Our friends were captivated by its sparkling green and yellow diamonds, and spent minutes studying and photographing it. To our chagrin, they were one pair of foreigners we were unable to scare silly with snake stories. When Leigh began to describe the rising panic one could expect in a victim were she suddenly pounced upon and wrapped in the python's vice-like coils, Eleanorae coolly looked down her nose at him and said "Their diet consists wholly of small marsupials and birds' eggs. We are not prey." Italians 1, Barbarians 0.

Sitting on a rock, staring up at the engravings, I began to ponder the sort of minds responsible for these at once ritualistic and practical symbols. What did they think of their world? They were, quite obviously, well beyond the simple "hunter-gatherer" stereotype our colonial ancestors ignorantly ascribed them. This was not some paleolithic graffiti. The engravings were works of great care; their draughtsmanship marvellous, and there were obvious signs that many of them marked out routes, waterholes, and food sources. This was the ancient equivalent of sat-nav and A Brief History of Time in one - a testament to intelligence, skill and tradition. Eleanorae and I sat together, enthralled. Eventually, she took my hand, briefly, and said very seriously "Laurie, you and your countrymen are very lucky." I could not but agree.

Humbled by our encounter with serious time, we returned to camp, where modernity returned with a rush in the form of several grey nomads who had parked their lurid behemoths all around our tent-site, and were busily erecting satellite dishes so that they would not miss the next episode of The Young and the Restless. Eleanorae, Rafael and we decided that culture was best promoted, instead, by that which draws the hearts of our two countries closest together - wine, and plenty of it!

From the ashes emerges a grub

2009-02-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

The "Pastor" of some tin-pot joint called "Catch the Fire Ministries", a certain Danny Nalliah, today blamed Victoria's new, more liberal abortion laws on the fires that have killed 173 people in the State (and counting.)

This cunt says he "woke with a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb."

The only thing I have to say about this, is that it would be a just and fitting irony for the clubhouse of "Catch the Fire Ministries" to catch fire itself, preferably with Pastor Danny trapped inside, on his knees, his pants around his ankles, with the flaming sword of Gideon lodged firmly up his criminal arse.

Bull's eye

2009-01-11T06:07:00.000-08:00

As I've said before, the Great Ocean Road is a driver's joy. Hundreds of kilometres of sinuous and beautifully realised roadway afford the motorist every pleasure, such as coming up behind a sluggard mobile home and overtaking it with the mighty power of the Volvo's 2.5 litre, turbo-charged engine, and narrowly avoiding the Audi doing exactly the same thing from the opposite direction. A rough calculation of vectors alerted me to the fact that a combined impact speed of about 300 kph would have probably set off the Volvo's air-bags.

"Jesus, Loz!" ejaculated Leigh - "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my Grandad - not screaming in horror like his passengers!"

We were in a rather more subdued frame of mind as we rolled into Apollo Bay, a combined fishing village and red-hot tourist mecca for cashed-up Melburnians, many of whom were to be seen promenading their pomeranians along the main drag as we dawdled through town. To be fair, Apollo Bay is paradise on a stick; a long, curving beach winds its way up to a boat harbour where the fishing fleet rests, and the ocean front is admirably bedecked with wide, rambling parkland. We pulled up outside (guess where) the Apollo Bay Hotel, and decided that drink was, for the moment, the better part of valour. After all, we were still shaking from a close encounter of the luxury German vehicle kind.

"Thought I was about to become an historical Australian figure, back there, Loz," mumbled Leigh as he poured schooner number three into himself.

"Get a grip, you big girl's blouse," I responded, "after all of your shenanigans in the Hawkesbury, you'd be lucky to have a statue erected of a size that just one pigeon would have the room to shit on."

It was time to find a camping ground, and, without any trouble at all, we drove into a neat little area that had several tent sites by a creek that fed into the ocean just a couple of hundred yards away. Having set our camp, and it being about 6 p.m., the call of food was unmistakeable, so we ambled back into the hotel to see what was on offer. (And, I must say, southern ocean lobsters are delectable, but please don't tell my wife.)

By about eight o'clock the place was getting jam-packed. Leigh and I decided that a game of pool was in order, and it wasn't long before two local fishos and we were having a rather merry time buying each other beer as we won and lost, and having a very fulfilling conversation about the vicissitudes of the fishing industry. Leigh had opted for the red wine option, and, when he didn't have a pool cue in his hands, was presented with the stimulating dilemma of a very large glass of red in his right, and an even bigger one of beer in his left. Naturally, he chose to be ambidextrous, and, after a couple of hours, became somewhat verbillaceous as well.

"Loz," he intoned rather conspiratorially, "I want to live here for the rest of my life."

"You keep pluggin' away at that lot," I pointed to the two glasses he held in his hands, "and that could be all of about four hours, pal."

At that point the doors of the pub burst open, and in marched three young women of the Vietnamese persuasion, followed by an older bloke who may as well have had the word "Pimp" tattoed on his forehead. The girls were wearing extremely short mini-skirts and equally extreme low-cut singlets; so extreme, in fact, that one had to wonder how those acres of exposed epidermis could actually be contained within the outside of a human body, if you get my meaning.

They turned out to be a trio of working girls down from Melbourne with their boss for a spot of R&R. They were, I have to say, for all their dainty charm, just about the toughest bunch of women I've ever encountered. They immediately commandered the pool table, and looked over the four of us, no doubt determining which would be the easiest to beat. Fortunately, I was overlooked by the selection committee, and retreated to the safety of the bar. The oldest, and toughest, of the three picked Leigh.

"Rack 'em up, sunshine," she commanded Leigh, who, by this stage of the evening, was starting to become unfamiliar with the English language, let alone that variety of it spoken by a tiny Vietnamese woman with a prepossessing snake tattoed across her sumptuous and extensive decolletage. Nevertheless, he valiantly attempted to assemble the balls in the little wooden triangle, overlooking the fact that the white ball didn't belong there. Having one ball, the black, left over from his assemblage, he bemusedly rolled it up to the cue line. The girls looked at each other with looks that said "How good is this?", and the snake lady strutted along the length of the table, pushed Leigh out of the way, and with a dismissive shrug, rearranged the balls correctly. She decided to break, and said to Leigh "You know about 'Pants down run around'?" - referring to an intriguing custom whereby the loser of a game is obliged, if he has sunk no balls in his defeat, to remove his lower garments and parade around the pool table.

Thus potentially relieved of what would be the last vestiges of his dignity, Leigh propped himself on a pool cue while the snake lady leant over the table, revealing a pair of red satin knickers under her mini-skirt with a black bull's-eye strategically embroidered, and belted the fuck out of the break. After a considerable time, the balls stopped careening off the cushions, and, to my amazement, and in seeming defiance of the laws of physics or probability, not one of them had found its way into a pocket.

When Leigh's eyes stopped rolling after he'd vainly attempted to follow the balls around the velvet, and finally appraising that it was his turn, he turned to the snake woman, smiled broadly and said "Tough break, darlin'."

Now, conventional medical science has it that alcohol inhibits various brain functions, including motor skills, calculation, and reasoning. The game of pool requires a tremendous degree of control over all of these faculties, and Leigh had had enough of the stuff to theoretically make it rather difficult for him to stick his pool cue in a bath-tub, let alone bring it close enough to a two-inch pool ball to actually make contact with it.

Leigh decided to throw caution to the wind, and lined up the most difficult long-shot on the table. The girls were tittering with scorn, when Leigh cracked the thirteen ball straight into the corner pocket, leaving the cue ball motionless, and perfectly positioned for an easy pot of the eleven into the side. "Lucky shot," exclaimed the snake lady.

Leigh ignored the easy pot, and lined up a ball that was resting on the cushion at the other end of the table. Gently, delicately, he rolled the cue ball onto the twelve, causing it to run faultlessly into the bottom pocket. The looks of scorn began to dissipate on the ladies' faces, to be replaced with an evident and rising anxiety. The snake lady looked cautiously at the hundred dollar bill that - with the confidence of the consumnate punter - she had previously lain on the end of the table.

Meanwhile, Leigh had smashed another ball cleanly into the side pocket, and was calmly assessing the angle of a particularly tough double into the bottom corner. The ball slid into the pocket without a murmur of complaint. Jack, one of the fishos standing beside me, spat half a schooner onto his mate, and started doing a little jig on the spot. "Fuck me - I don't believe this!" he exclaimed.

By this stage a sizeable crowd had assembled around the table, no doubt attracted by the combination of Leigh's effortless prowess and the ridiculous impersonation of an Irish kick-dancer he affected between shots. Dancing around the table, giggling for all he was worth, he smacked two more balls into their pockets with the sound of a whip-crack. Only the black ball was left. Leigh addressed it. It hit the back of the pocket and rolled down the tube with a sound like hollow laughter.

The crowd erupted. Leigh nonchalantly picked the hundred off the end of the table and walked over to the snake lady. "I can't take your money off you, darlin'," he said as he pressed the note into her hand, "but I believe it's your turn." I have to say this for the snake lady - she was a good sport, and dutifully and deftly removed the mini-skirt and bull's-eye knickers and jogged around the table two or three times. But in her profession, I suppose, such behaviour was fairly run-of-the-mill.

Of course, Leigh's sensational win was the occasion for another several rounds of drinks, and Leigh and I chatted for a while with the girls from Melbourne and a few locals. Or I should say I chatted - Leigh was somewhat more voluble, and mixed a loud discourse on the beneficial effects of red wine on the neurological apparatus with several triple forte choruses of "Proud Mary".

Eventually, the miracle of modern medical science and I staggered drunkenly back to our camp-site, where Leigh got half way inside his tent, and was still on his knees with his head and shoulders on the ground, before he went into a perfect, dreamless sleep. As a parting shot, I got a texta out of the glove box of the Volvo and drew three concentric circles on his backside, which was conveniently protruding from the tent.

"Bull's eye, indeed, old mate," I whispered.

Footy, funerals and fish.

2009-01-01T17:40:00.000-08:00

Leigh was keen to catch some fish. He'd even bought a little fishing rod in Sale, Victoria - where we'd stopped for a breather before we drove into a hurricane on Wilson's Promontory. As we cruised down the coast from the Prom, dodging trees and pieces of peoples' houses littering the roads, Leigh waxed lyrical about our good fortune.

"See, Loz - the fates were with us. Nothing bad happened to us at the Prom. Granted, the tree that crushed your tent while you were up having a leak put the wind up me a bit, 'cause, quite frankly, I didn't know how I was gonna explain to your lovely wife why, after your demise, I'd continued on to the Flinders Ranges in her Volvo. I would have given you a decent burial, though.

"No, the only bummer at the Prom was that it was too wild to have a fish. But we'll sort that out at Sorrento tonight, Loz - I'll go and get a few whiting, then I'll cook them up with some ginger, lime and chili: perfect."

He dozed off, no doubt dreaming about the culinary delights attendant upon fish hunting, while I drove through a town called Fish Creek that had the singularly weirdest street sign I have ever seen: "Caution - Funeral in Progress." I had to reverse up to it to assure myself that I was not hallucinating, but there it was, fixed to a metal pole concreted into the ground, and obviously rather old. I drove on, wondering whether Fish Creek was some doppelganger of the fictional Midsomer, with a murder a week de rigeur. Whatever, it was a peculiarity that bespoke much of the odd proclivities of Victorians.

One other of these is the enthusiasm - no, the psychopathology - Victorians exhibit for AFL football, possibly the most idiotic game ever to waste valuable parkland. We pitched our tents in a very odd little camp-ground at Sorrento, and Leigh ran off to the beach with his rod and a bag of prawns, and the gradually muted cries of "Come here you little fishy bastards", or something. I decided to reconnoitre the famous Sorrento Hotel instead.

Inside, I fetched the inevitable pot of beer and sat down to take in the ambience. Around the perimeter of the room, where walls met ceilings, was an array of television sets all screening different games of AFL. I nodded to a fellow drinker who was looking rapturously at one of the screens, and asked "Who's playing?"

"Oh, it's a repeat of the 1978 grand final," he replied quite seriously.

"What about the games on the other sets?" I asked, with a kind of urbane nonchalance that masked a rising panic.

"Arr, that one's 1982 quarter-final between Essendon and Hawthorn, that's the 1990 G.F. The other one's live, but I'll watch that on replay later."

Yeah, in about 2035, I thought, wondering whether the publican was some kind of time lord.

I very quickly finished my beer and hurried out before the Daleks came on for the change of shift, and finally met up with Leigh at the beach, who was still fishing, and chuckling at the same time.

"Any luck, mate?" I enquired.

"Not yet, Loz." I asked if he'd had any bites yet, and got the same response. I was just about to suggest that we pack it in and get a pizza when he hooted with laughter and said "I've run out of bait, anyway."

"Then why is your line still in the water?"

"Cause this is brilliant, Loz. I love fishing."

Eventually I coaxed him to reel it in, and we set off for the township of Sorrento, where, I must say, the pizzas were delicious. Leigh was keen to visit the hotel himself, so we ambled in again. The place was packed to the rafters, it being about 8p.m., with the assembled locals having a very jolly, noisy time, every one of them watching a replay of the 1972 grand final.

The following day we set off for the Great Ocean Road. But first, of course, we had to pay a visit to the beach where a former prime minister, one Harold Holt, had drowned while in office. To many people, the idea of the leader of a nation ambling down to the beach by himself on a Sunday morning, then throwing himself into a gigantic surf, only to never reappear, is strikingly odd. Where were his bodyguards, his minders? Well, the simple fact is that in 1968 no-one in Australia thought it odd at all. After all, he was just bloke who happened to have a fairly high-falutin' job. But, apart from that, his day off was his own business.

So Harold, who was in his late sixties at the time, decided to test the waters at Cheviot Beach. Leigh and I were making some breakfast by the beach, while waves of a similar stature to those that were the undoing of Harold came booming in at the shore.

"Loz, I reckon that there must be somethin' left of old Harold out there still. I might go out for a look." So saying, Leigh donned his blue boardshorts, paddled into the surf, and was, in fairly short order, obscured from view by fifteen-foot waves. I didn't see this as too much of a problem, at first. After all, he wasn't a prime minister, and, secondly, I hadn't finished my avocado on toast. Leigh was a reasonable swimmer, and although he hadn't taken his floaties with him as usual, I was sure he'd be alright. I settled down for a post-prandial snooze.

I was awoken by the sound of a helicopter's rotors beating a dull ostinato above the surf. I looked up to see a rescue worker, dangling from the helicopter, fighting to get what appeared to be a draft horse collar around a small, red-haired figure in the water. I could just hear the strident voice of my mate floating across the waves.

"Piss off, you idiot - I'm just waitin' for the next set to come along. Leave me alone. What right have you got to interfere with a bloke's freedom to have a bit of a surf?" He went on and on, all the while trying to belt the rescuer, whose natural concern was to pull what was obviously a raving lunatic out of mountainous, shark-infested seas.

Eventually, the rescuer subdued him, and Leigh was dutifully hauled into the cabin of the chopper. By the time it got back to the beach, he was barking mad and in no mood to party. I opened the Esky. "Here, mate, calm down and have a beer."

His mood changed immediately. "Aw, that's very good of you, Loz - did you see what these kill-joys were doin'? I just reckon they don't want me to discover the truth about Holt's disappearance. I got to the bottom, Loz, and I tell you, there's bits of submarine with Chinese writing on it down there."

As the rescue helicopter's crew were obviously looking as though strait-jackets would be the next phase in the rescue mission, I piled Leigh into the Volvo and we took off at high speed.

Somewhat further down the road, as Leigh was rubbing his neck, which was beginning to show some ominous bruising from the horse collar, he said "Jesus, Loz, there were some good fish out there. I should've taken my rod."

What's important?

2008-12-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

The biggest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere is about fifteen kilometres down the road from my place. It is an emporium on a vast, Mephistophelian scale. It has a sign at its entrance (which, symbolically, is directly across the road from the biggest crematorium in the southern hemisphere), that proclaims "You haven't lived until you've shopped here".

It is impossible to overestimate the level of pride I have in my countrymen's perspicacity when I see, as I'm driving past, thousands of cars turning into the place and making a beeline for the gargantuan underground car-parks, from which their occupants will emerge to stroll along the leafy boulevardes of the centre, which is hermetically-sealed, of course, and capable of withstanding any of nature's challenges ... er, like rain.

So dauntingly impressive is the sheer physical scale of this place that it has its own postcode - it is a suburb all to itself. I forget the figures I read about it in the local rag, an organ of biblically slavish regard for the god of mammon, but there are something like five billion acres under one roof, two or three billion separate shops, etc. etc. You get the picture. It seems we have inherited the Texan philosophy of "bigger equals better".

Now, I must disclaim that I have not, myself, personally, under my volition, actually entered this sumptuous pleasure-dome, but just the sight of it on the horizon, as I drive past on my way to a gig, fills me with a Coleridgean longing.

Through twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers girdled 'round...

Apart from the hugely satisfying architectural splendours of this behemoth, apparently one can, if one is so inclined, purchase every single appurtenance necessary to the maintenance of the modern lifestyle at this one place. That's so gratifying a concept that I am at a loss as to why I have not, myself, personally, set foot inside the joint. I will never know the pleasure of using the labour-saving "travellators" that effortlessly shunt the shopper through the emporium without the need to use any muscles in the body except those that are required to shove ice-creams made from pig-fat into the mouth as one gawks and marvels at the cornucopia of earthly delights on offer.

Leigh and I were pondering this place as we drove out of the crematorium after attending the funeral of Leigh's sister-in-law, and my friend, Rosalie, last Thursday. Rosie was a woman that everyone would have been proud to call a friend. Strong, but gracious; intelligent and funny, she had come across this world and become a child of it. She and her husband, John, had not so much built a place at Misty Mountain, out in the Colo wilderness, as grown it. Their little house was lovingly assembled, mainly from the natural features of the landscape. Rosie had made gardens, sandstone walls that would make a mason weep with joy, paths and tracks through the bush, places of solitude and contemplation.

Rosie existed on tea and happiness. She was the exact opposite of the shopping dullard - fit, energetic and completely satisfied with simplicity. "Things" meant nothing to her. Her greatest extravagance was to go to the Bluesfest every year with us, where she and John would spend five days revelling in wonderful music. Like the damsel with a dulcimer, she was the true Coleridgean. Nature, with its beauties and fascinations, was the world; a butterfly landing on her shoulder in the glow of early morning, up there at Misty Mountain, was a day's worth of pleasure.

As we drove from the crematorium and passed the shopping centre, I wondered what Rosie would have made of the sign over its entrance. I think I know.

A cautionary tale

2008-12-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

Years ago, as a young feller, I'd have the occasional puff of a joint. Marijuana, in those days, was stuff you'd go and pick from shrubs on the banks of the Hunter River near Newcastle, where I lived. It was there because, in the nineteenth century, hemp was an important part of any economy. It was a versatile fibre used for making rope, fabric and even paper. When the hemp industry fell into disrepute thanks to the propaganda of the emergent plastics industry in the 1930s, all that survived were wild stands of the stuff skirting the river systems. By the time I came along, of course, it was an illegal "drug", and was considered by the establishment to be the cause of a myriad of evils, including mental retardation and abandoned licentiousness. I don't know about the first, but it always produced an effect that made me think of sex as a decidedly bizarre affair.

Thus disabused of the idea that my parents' generation had the faintest notion of what they were talking about, my friends and I happily puffed away on our pickings for a number of years. Eventually, though, my interest in it waned to the point where a joint or two per year was about as big a drug habit as I had (discounting the copious amounts of Tooheys Old that I'd begun to consume. But alcohol is a good drug that had the establishment's seal of approval, of course.)

I hadn't even had a puff for several years. It was about 1990, and I was playing in a fairly large ensemble whose raison d'etre was to make as much money as possible for all concerned. It was a very well-organised band whose methodology was described to me by Phil, the band leader, as "play the thirty most famous and popular rock songs ever released." Which is what we did. It was a cornucopia, an alphabet of pop: we did everything from Abba to ZZ Top, cranking out note-perfect renditions of all of the greats. My job was to learn, and play, exact replicas of all the famous guitar solos, perfectly, night after night.

Now, the interesting thing about this band is that it was all about the vocals. We had three very good female singers, a great male lead vocalist, and the other four blokes in the band able to hold a tune. And, without being immodest, we were pretty fucking good at it. As well, we had a synthesiser system triggered by a computer, so on top of the guitar, keyboards, bass and drums, we had all sorts of other sounds - more keyboards, horn sections, strings, percussion, and the like - belting through a gigantic, and very beautifully mixed, sound system. The computerisation of the band meant that we all had to wear little "in-ear" monitoring systems which would give us the click track from the computer so we could start the songs at the right moment and remain in time with the synthesised sounds. This is an almost universal phenomenon with professional bands these days, but in 1990 it was a technology still in its infancy.

We were doing one show at a very big club in Sydney. Just our regular set, which we'd played hundreds of times before, and which had got to be so robotic as to be like any other production line work. We really had to be conscious of making a performance out of it - once you've played the solo to "Stairway to Heaven" exactly the same way a hundred times, you're over it.

On this night, we had a new sound engineer. He was a very competent operator, and our sound-check had gone smoothly. We'd played our first set of two to an audience of about five hundred people. We had a twenty minute break, and the sound guy came over to me in the dressing room and said "Hey Laurie - you look like a bloke that might enjoy a smoke."

Without thinking - probably bored senseless - I replied "Sure, let's go." We went out to his car, where he proceeded to get out a bag of pot, and load it into an evil-looking bong. I'd never had much of an association with these devices, and had always considered them slightly anti-social, but what the heck - I was just getting stoned.

"This is really good stuff," he informed me. "Durban Poison - I grew it myself; it'll get you nicely stoned, mate."

He offered me the thing, and I sucked as hard as I could on it while he lit it up. It nearly killed me going down, I can tell you. "Thanks," I said at the end of it, spluttering and gasping for air. "Your turn, mate."

"Oh no," he said, "if I have one of these I'll be ratshit. I just thought you might enjoy playing after one." Oh fuck, I thought to myself, what have I done?

We walked back into the club. It was time to go on stage again, so I walked on, strapped my guitar on, checked my tuning, turned around to face the audience, and thought I was going to die. I had, suddenly and completely, entered a world of trouble with a capital T, short for tetra-hydro-cannabinol. I was fucked. I had walked into paranoia city, and had the instantaneous fear that I wasn't walking out of it in a hurry.

I looked down at the set-list gaffer-taped to the floor, and saw that we were about to launch into the Doobie Brothers' Long Train Runnin'. I'd played this song hundreds of times; I could play it in my sleep, but I had an almost overpowering urge to throw my guitar away and run like buggery.

I didn't, though, because I heard the count-in in my earpiece, and it was me who had to start the song: da-da-da, da-da-da-do, da-da-da, and so-on. I was playing it, and it seemed OK. The bass was next to come in, and, as he did, I realised that he was a semi-tone away from the key I was playing in. The drums rolled, the keyboards played a riff, and I very quickly changed to the key that the song was now in (F sharp minor, to be precise). I kept playing as the intro unfolded, but then I started thinking "Hang on, this is in G minor - it has to be; we've always played it in G. The computer doesn't change; the synthesiser should be in G, but it's not - it's in F sharp! But that's impossible. Oh, no - maybe it has always been in F sharp. No - couldn't be; I've always played it in G. Aaaaaaaaahhhh - I'm going mad; what the fuck is happening???"

I kept playing; I had no choice. We got to the solo section, where I had to play a harmonica solo. I whipped the harp out of its pouch on my guitar strap, and there on the top of the harp was the key for the instrument engraved on it : "B flat". I was right! It was in G minor! But - I couldn't play my solo, because the song was now in a different key. I had the very morbid feeling that the establishment had actually got it right - marijuana does, indeed, cause brain damage. I looked around at the other band members, who seemed to be happily and unconcernedly playing away. The harmonica was useless, so I played the solo on guitar in the new key - becoming increasingly aware that the guitar strings had taken on an appearance like furry spider legs, and the sound coming from my amp had ceased to resemble a Stratocaster and had taken on the characteristics of Chip n Dale having an orgy.

I played through the rest of the set, trying to overcome a bizarre feeling of sinking into the stage. I had to keep lifting my feet, one after the other, to keep on top of the quicksand the stage had become. And as for singing - forget it; I was afraid that any sound that issued from my mouth would just be a throttled scream.

The last song of the night was the abominable Hotel California, wherein it was my duty to play the solo that everyone knows by heart. I started with the right notes, but it quickly devolved into Chip n Dale having a Sorcerer's Apprentice battle. I felt like Harding in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - "I'm talking about form, I'm talking about content, God, the Devil, Heaven, Hell.." Folks, I was seriously off the planet.

Mercifully, the gig ended. I let my guitar slide off me and crash into its stand, and bolted for the dressing-room, where I sat in a cold sweat wondering if I might eventually come down, say before I was eighty.

Phil and the rest of the band all marched into the dressing-room, giggling and pointing at me. The paranoia meter went completely off the scale. Phil came over and said

"Man, you played some seriously weird shit out there." And then he winked at me and said "It was good, though, it was damn good. I'll keep you in mind as the guitarist in any experimental music bands I want to put together."

"Oh, and sorry about Long Train. I took it down a semi-tone - I forgot to tell ya."

Drugs are bad, 'kay?

Here comes Santa's claws

2008-12-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

Graham the Barbarian and his lovely wife Maria are our closest neighbours. They live in a rather large house which I helped to build. It wasn't so large when they first moved in; "shoe-box" comes to mind. They'd invited us for Christmas lunch; the turkey would be at their place, then we'd all (two couples and five kids) repair to our place, about a mile down the road and into the bush, for dessert and an afternoon by the pool. A peaceful and comfortable way to spend Christmas Day.

Maria and Graham had laid on a feast fit for a king: in Australia, more and more, Christmas dinner is a salad affair. Prawns, cold meats and lots of good things from our combined vegetable gardens went down superbly with a couple of beers each for Graham and I, and some bubbly for the girls. A warm westerly breeze was blowing.

We were all preparing to come back to my place, and as Graham and I were loading his kids' brand-new bikes in the back of his ute, he asked "Do you smell that, Loz?"

The breeze had become a fairly stiff wind, and on it I could detect the unmistakeable, and quite pleasant, aroma of eucalyptus burning. We wandered around to his gate, and, looking westward, saw a haze of blue-grey smoke drifting over the escarpment, the series of hills that identify the most easterly throes of the Great Divide, about ten kilometres away.

"Not good, Graham. I think we'd better go for a drive."

Heading out along the ridge, into a clearer vantage point, we could see that a fire was burning way off on the top of the escarpment. We decided to go to the fire shed, and, when we arrived, a flurry of activity was happening. I could see a neighbour, Eric, who was captain of the volunteer service, barking orders at groups of guys busy with their fire-trucks, reels of hose and a few water-tankers that had just driven in. I jumped out of the ute.

"What do you reckon, Eric?", I asked.

"Could be crook, Laurie - we've got a real bad weather report comin' in - forty degrees and 100k westerlies. We're going out along Cedar Ridge, cause it looks like if that fire comes over the hill, it'll blow straight through here. I'd get home and start gettin' ready, if I were you."

"OK mate - what about your place?" He just looked at me with the glum determination of a bloke who knows that, while he's out saving other people's homes, his own might just be burning down.

"If you get a chance, you know what to do, Loz."

"Sure thing." But we both knew that, if it did get bad, it could get very bad for all of us.

We got back to Graham's and decided to get his place as ready as possible, then head down to mine. Graham was in the reasonably fortunate position that there was plenty of cleared area around his house - especially towards the west from where the fire would inevitably come. The idea would be that we would get my place secure, wait for the fire and deal with it, then get back up to his to do the same. (As things turned out, our plans were totally demolished by the speed and severity of the fire when it did come.)

The lot of us drove to my place. Chris got on the phone to another mate, Greg, to get him to bring his pump and hoses over. (Out here, everyone has this sort of gear - you're mad if you don't.) Greg's place was in a relatively safe suburban area, and he was under no threat, really, so he got some things together and was on his way.

Now, my place is in a lovely little valley surrounded by ridges on three sides and about two hundred acres of virgin bushland. Tall eucalypts are abundant, and our house is in the middle of this green oasis of forest. Idyllic, except on a forty degree day with huge, hot winds. And they were really starting to blow.

From the house we could now see, beyond the western ridge, a massive and growing pall of smoke, extending about two thousand metres into the sky. It was action time.

The kids got every bucket and container they could find and filled them, placing them around the outside of the house. The bath was filled; I plugged the gutters and ran the sprinkler on top of the roof to fill them. Graham and Miles, my son, ran firehoses to various points, and made sure that they were all working from the five thousand gallon tank on top of the hill. Greg and his eighteen year old son Matt arrived, and immediately got his pump on the swimming pool, trailing hoses along the front side of the house. Izzy, my daughter, insisted that her horse be led up from the paddock to the shelter of the house.

The plan was to meet the fire at the interface of the clearing with the bush, about forty metres from the house, and divert it around the house and yard. In a previous fire, we'd done just that pretty successfully. But we had no idea that what we were about to face was going to make that blaze look like a sparkler at a kid's birthday party.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and by this stage the wind was beginning to blow ferociously. Graham took off back up the ridge to get some bearings, and arrived back, breathlessly, a few minutes later.

"It's comin', mate - and it's real fast. We ought to get things wetted down."

We began throwing great quantities of water all over everything we could. The house was drenched, as were the gardens and the shed that holds our generators and solar-electricity set-up. But the wind was so hot and strong that the water was evaporating nearly as quickly as it was delivered.

I heard a noise, and looked up. The fire was coming over the ridge-line, directly towards us, and it was in the crowns of the trees. I shuddered.

Crown-fire: the worst kind of bushfire. The last fire had, more or less, gently come down over the hill at scrub level, and, even though there was some fairly energetic activity for an hour or so, it had been reasonably easy to draw it away from the house, and pretty safe, as well.

This was different. I had to make a split-second decision. I ran into the house, and screamed at Chris and Maria to get the three little kids and take off out the back way and get back to the ridge and relative safety. They scrambled, and within a minute were gone, with hugs and some frightened tears all round. They knew we were putting ourselves in some real danger by staying, but Graham, Greg and I were buggered if we were going to lay down without a fight. I'm not saying this out of bravado; I and my mates were just too obstinate to see twenty years' work (Greg and Graham had had a big hand in building my place) go up in flames.

I told Izzy to get her horse "inside the house - now!". For months afterwards the story of her putting a horse in the downstairs lounge-room was told, with great hilarity, all over the neighbourhood.

We all lined up on the perimeter with our hoses going full-pelt. The huge gums along the hillside glowed white, and then, one by one, exploded into flame. Limbs of trees as thick as an arm came hurling through the air like incendiary bombs, often crashing onto the roof of the house. I hoped like hell the sprinkler up there was still working, but we had no time to go back as the fire came storming back up the rise towards the house with the most unforgettable sound I've ever heard: a roar like a hundred express-trains.

Miles and I were standing beside each other when the sound of an enormous explosion came from the top of the hill. The concrete water tank had simply exploded from the heat of the fire. Suddenly, the pressure in our hoses dropped to nothing. Graham and Greg were still pumping from the swimming pool, but we were left with no defence at all.

"Run," I screamed at Miles. We got around to the eastern, lee-side of the house and lay on the ground as the fireball exploded over and around us. Sheets of blue flame whistled past us where the vapor-laden air was igniting. We jumped inside through Miles' bed-room window, and raced up the stairs, where we were greeted with the sight of huge flames belting down both verandahs, melting the fly screens, frames and all, on the windows. The heat was intense and suffocating, but the adrenalin was coursing through us so voluminously that we were both shaking with energy. It was time to do some bucket work.

For the next half an hour we ran around with buckets, re-filling from the pool and throwing them on the parts of the house that had caught alight. Greg and Graham continued to blast away at the northern side of the house, standing in the middle of the yard with flames singeing their overalls. I've never seen anything as brave.

At one stage I was running down the stairs into the lounge room. There was Izzy, holding the bridle of her horse, which was unconcernedly chomping away at its nose-bag. Tears were streaming down her face.

"Are we going to be all right, Dad?" she cried, with a look of abject terror.

At that point I should have stopped, given her a cuddle, and reassured her.

Instead, I yelled (you had to; the noise of the fire was still deafening) "We might be if you let that fucking horse go and grab a bucket!"

She and Matt took the upstairs south verandah; by this time the firefront was past, and it was a little safer to venture out. I don't know who, if anyone, could have been given the most credit for saving the house. One thing I'm fairly sure of is that if we'd been only five, instead of six, we might have lost the house, and possibly our lives, as well.

After about an hour's more work, I was assured that the house was in no danger. (Well, technically, it was, because the air was still full of burning embers.) But Greg and the kids could look after that, so Graham and I jumped in his ute (it and Greg's car were the only vehicles that hadn't been burnt to the ground) and left for his place.

We couldn't get out the top road, as several trees had come down over it, so we doubled back and fought our way through the bottom track with the aid of a chain-saw onto the ridge road. Even so, it took a good half an hour to navigate our way to his place.

We drove in, under some power lines that were swinging precariously on burnt-out poles, looked at the house, and both cracked up. It was absolutely untouched. It must have been the adrenalin come-down, but we sat their for a few minutes just giggling. Then reality hit. Graham looked over at his tool-shed - a forty foot shipping container that held all the tools of his trade - tools that were not only valuable in money terms, but that had acquired a significance in the life of this professional tradesman; any tradesperson will understand what I'm saying. There was smoke coming from it. By the time we ran over to it, we could tell that the inside was not going to be pretty.

Graham got the door open; a huge cloud of black, toxic smoke billowed from the container. It was obvious that everything inside was gone. We hung our heads.

Then Graham said something that I'm not likely to forget in a hurry. He smiled at me and said "Loz - it's just stuff. Just things. Our homes are here; we're here. That's all I need."

The fire claimed twenty homes in our area, countless sheds, out-buildings, fences, tractors and other vehicles. Everyone in the community pitched in and fought it for a week. Eric's house was safe. I got a wonderful Christmas present: one of the best friends a bloke could ever have.

In the beginning, and in the ending

2008-11-17T03:43:00.000-08:00

18 million or so tears ago, a dirty great shield volcano aggressively splattered a large area of northern New South Wales, in the days when the eastern coast of Australia was going through a spasm and trying to swallow New Zealand. Some have argued that it's a pity it didn't, but that's not for me to say.

This is around the time (give or take a bit) Adam was discovering Eve, who you'll remember went around starkers in those days, and Adam was getting accustomed to the enormous burden of being permanently priapic, so we can understand why he wasn't interested in arcane matters such as geology. Any decent biblical education leaves one well aware of the acres of difference in the relative values of intelligence, power, majesty and moral rectitude between God and his creation. At least God was into geology; I mean, he invented the stuff.

As I was saying, since then the effect of erosion on this mixture of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rock includes fabulous and immense outcrops - and other features that simply stick up, on a grand scale, from the floors of valleys magnificent in their dense and voluptuous eucalypt forests. Blue gums, enormous in girth, build a cushion of cumulus-like foliage; the tops of the trees, viewed from above, look like nothing so much as a dense, bubbling cloud of green.

"Hey man," mumbled Leigh as we trudged along an uphill trail that threatened to, at any moment, collapse into the deep green gorges below us, "this acid is really good shit."

OK, OK, I just made that up. In fact, we were having a particularly pleasant time. Over the past twenty-five days, we had walked probably a hundred and fifty or more kilometres, and we had become pretty fit. We weren't going all the way to the Breadknife, but were climbing up to a good vantage-point to give the thing a good, close-up scrute. A mere fifteen-or-so kilometre round-trip. Tall ferns of various species gave way to ridge scrub as we climbed higher, until we were scrabbling over scree and fairly tumble-down rock platforms.

This sort of thing convinces me further that God, if he really is around, is a bit of a shoddy tradesman. Lord, if you really care for us, you'll put in, at the very least, gentle slopes with nicely delineated pathways incorporating escalators up the more challenging stretches. When Adam was having a yarn with a couple of cherubim at the gates, Eve was being chatted up by a creature that was to become the ancestor of used-car salesmen and Republicans, unaware that her nascent concupiscence would result in thorns, childbirth and great fucking boulders that like to take your head off when you're half way up a mountain.

As always, the effort was worth it. The Breadknife, and a couple of other ineffable gargantuans, peered across at us, rusty old fellers having their last say about the place, before wind, water and sun eventually took them down to be replaced by adolescents, emerging from their mother earth's aprons. The Breadknife could just as easily have been called "Old Silverback".

I thought of the serpent as we walked back towards camp, and, of course, we came upon a pretty little red-bellied black sunning itself by the path. Nicely coiled, with its head resting on its body like a little dog on your lounge pillow, it appeared for all the world to be blissing out.

We squatted near it and had a good look for a while, until we heard two walkers coming up the track. We said our goodays, and it was obvious they were English.

"Nice little feller we found here," said Leigh amicably, pointing to our friend by the track. The woman took one look at Blacky and hid her face in her hands, whimpering with a kind of rapid asthmatic pulmonary spasm. We looked at each other with some consternation.

"It's OK, he's just having a snooze. He's not interested in you at all." Leigh was being more than reasonable, I thought; little blackies, although poisonous, are very timid. Chris and I once had

a big feller who would park himself on the concrete doorstep on a Spring morning. We used to have to step over him to go to work.

She was disconsolate. When her husband tried to calm her by suggesting that it wouldn't hurt if she actually opened her eyes and had a look at it, she backed down the track, then turned as if to run.

"For Christ's sake, don't turn your back on it!" I yelled.

Have you ever seen one of those ninja movies where the guys run up vertical walls? Think it's impossible? Think again. The woman got about forty yards up the track-side cliff inside three seconds. Perched on a tiny ledge, she collapsed sobbing.

Leigh realised she needed his help. "There's more of 'em up there in those caves next to you," he kindly encouraged.

We realised we could have fun like this all day, but food - and a really big telescope - called, so we bid fond adieus and left our new friend contemplating the unabashed generosity and good-will of the average Aussie bloke, and the ubiquity of Pseudechus porphyriacus in the Wide Brown Land.

Apropos of nothing at all: According to perhaps apocryphal tales, a particular species of parasitic worm, Dracunculiasis (formerly referred to as Dracontiasis), was once a fearsome killer, and the only remedy was to extract it from its host by means of a stick, previously steeped in water. The stick would be inserted into the abscess on the patient's leg where the worm made its window on the world. (Fuck, I bet that little procedure brought tears to the eyes.) Shortly, the worm would detect the moisture in the stick, gradually emerging from the body and wrapping its way around it, right to the top. This ancient treatment became embodied in the universal symbol for medicine. (The parallels with our verbillaceous mate in the Garden of Eden are unmistakeable.)

Next stop was the Siding Springs Observatory, perched atop a mountain some few miles to our east. Now, the bloke in charge of this place is a feller by the name of Fred Watson, and a heartier, more rambunctious person you'd not likely meet. As well as knowing things your granny forgot about astronomy, he plays a mean guitar. We were hoping to meet him at the Anglo-Australian Telescope for a jam; although, as he keeps musician's hours, and it was only two in the afternoon, we thought the chances might be slim.

We alighted at the car-park, and with a fierce and cold breeze blowing straight at us, climbed up to the telescope on foot. A lift took us up three flights until we emerged at the viewing platform.

I suppose there are plenty of people who would look on that thing and simply dismiss it as a vast combobulation of steel, glass, and wire. But of course, it is actually a sports apparatus - a tool for the exercise of the imagination. It is the Age of Reason wed to Romanticism.

... I always wanted to say that.

Whatever it was, it was special. Even the kids on the viewing platform sensed the imaginative power of its part in the great project. One little bloke said to his mum "But what's it for?" His mother leaned over and said "It's for learning, mate, learning about the universe."

And with that, we drove back to our camp, to spend the last night of our trip across this often inscrutable, ever bewildering but stunning country, underneath a star-studded sky, thinking about all of those things that contribute to what is our world.

Opals

2008-11-15T04:47:00.000-08:00

Here is the link to a recording I made of the Sydney Guitar Quartet playing Philip Houghton's Opals suite: Black, Water, White. It was recorded at my studio last year, and I am thoroughly proud to say that my son, Miles, is one of the quartet's members. Enjoy.

Mind you, it's only an MP3. Sounds way better in glorious 24-bit 96Khz. For those with a technical bent, it was recorded using a pair of Rode NT2-A large diaphragm condensor microphones positioned directly in front of the quartet, and a pair of AKG C451 B condensors as overhead ambients, direct to Tascam 16 track tape (well, why not?) It was then mixed (no EQ), gently reverberated with an old Lexicon a mate lent me, and sent to Wavelab for a touch-up.

Just like baking a cake!

A brief musical interlude

2008-11-12T02:04:00.001-08:00

A shining example of the wisdom of Frank Zappa, for all those who thought religion might have something really going for it. Televangelists need not press play.

Taxidermy

2008-11-08T04:04:00.000-08:00

We limped into Gulargambone, in the early evening, looking for a place to rest our weary heads. It had been an eventful day; it's not every day that a bloke's navigator nearly has his head taken off by a kangaroo at high speed. Gulargambone was a sleepy little village lying on the plains just west of the Great Dividing Range, that long spine of mountains that separates the coast of eastern Australia from the unliveable part. We were in the unliveable part. The Volvo creaked its way into the parking lot of the town's only hotel/motel; we thankfully emerged, and without looking too carefully at the horrendous damage to our trusty steed, wandered into the bar.

We were in Gulargambone for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we intended to visit the Warrumbungle National Park, the site of some mighty fine pieces of geology. Secondly, a visit to the Siding Springs Observatory, home of the Anglo-Australian Telescope, had been a mission of mine for some years. But for now, we needed anaesthetic.

It turned out that the Gulargambone hotel/motel was the social centre for the town's inhabitants, and the hosts, Rob and Sue, a couple in their thirties, did an excellent job in food, beverage and company. I was talking to Sue, a vivacious blond, and one of the best multi-taskers I've ever seen - she was simultaneously cooking food for about twenty people, serving drinks, showing us around, and looking after two young kids and a baby - and mentioned that I was originally from Newcastle.

"Oh, me too," she replied. "Whereabouts?"

"Kotara. Grinsell Street, to be precise."

"Bugger me!" she exclaimed, "I lived in Grinsell Street until I was eighteen!"

Of course, that sealed the deal. We were immediately fast friends, and chatted away merrily with each other, while Leigh sat at another table, regaling the locals with outrageous stories (creatively embellished, of course) of our travels around the country. Every ten seconds or so, a great roar of laughter would erupt from the table. Leigh has this effect on everyone.

Apparently it was movie night at the pub. There being no cinema for a couple of hundred kilometres in any direction, mine hosts had taken it upon themselves to be the local culture vendors, and had set up a pretty nifty mini-theater in the back room. Rob and Sue were screening There Will be Blood on this occasion, so, after a great meal of swordfish cutlets, and with Sue sitting beside me, constantly replenishing my glass of red, we watched Daniel Day Lewis cover himself in oil and glory.

By about the eleventy-millionth glass, the screen was no longer in focus, so I bid all goodnight, and with a chorus of Good nights and Nice-meeting-yous ringing in my ears, I stumbled off to my room. What a great crew of people these dirt-poor, struggling farmers were. And the pub had become a lifeline (in some cases, I suspect, quite emphatically so) for a whole community ravaged by drought.

We left early the following morning, before anyone was up. We passed through a place that had nothing to distinguish itself whatsoever except for the sign that told you its name: Gummin Gummin'. Note the apostrophe? We stopped, and spent several useless minutes pondering the virtue of putting an apostrophe on the end of a double-barrelled place name, out in the middle of nowhere. It must have been a mistake, we thought, but when we checked our map, there was that cute little thing sticking out of Gummin Gummin''s name. More bizarre than crop circles, if you ask me.

We pulled into the National Parks Centre at the Warrumbungles, and went into the main office to register. A large group of tourists from Europe accompanied us. We got to the front door, and found that someone had creatively placed there a dirty big, perfectly taxidermified western grey kangaroo as some kind of ossified doorman. I took one look, and pounced on it.

I had the thing by the throat, and was giving it a good kicking to its nether regions, all the while yelling, in syncopation with the lethal blows to its protruding scrotum, "You - dir - ty - fuck - ing - cunt - of - a - thing!" This went on for some ten seconds or so, with the stuffed object rocking back and forth in time with my blows, before Leigh quite intelligently intervened.

"Ah, Loz," he said trepidatiously, putting a soothing hand on my arm, "it's already dead, mate."

I stopped, turned around, and found about twenty foreigners standing there, rather shell-shocked, and giving me the kind of look that I imagine those derelicts in the city who urinate in public litter receptacles get from passers-by.

I straightened up, threw my shoulders back and attempted to rescue my dignity. "Well, they are cunts of things. You might think they're all cute and adorable, but just wait until one of them decides to destroy your Volvo!"

I spun on my heels and marched up to the reception desk, and, I must say, was somewhat taken aback when I was unceremoniously thrown straight back out the door by a bloke who was probably three sizes too large for his shirt. What is it with people who wear epaulets?

Don't talk to me about kangaroos

2008-11-02T03:51:00.000-08:00

Leigh was driving. I'd done all the driving up until now, twenty-five days in a row. Not that I minded - driving, to me, is about as taxing as reading a book. Leigh was a superb navigator - the only time we'd been lost was in the Strezlecki desert, which is probably not a good place in which to get yourself lost, come to think of it.

We were on our way from Wilcannia to the Warrumbungle mountains in the mid-west of the state. We'd already covered two hundred kilometres, and had another five hundred or so to go, so I thought a little respite, on this day, would be in order.

The Barrier Highway was unremitting; we just drove forever into that endless horizon, with some stretches that were gun-barrel straight for thirty or forty klicks at a time. But we began to notice, by about half-way through this stretch, something we hadn't seen for two weeks: green grass. It was an epiphany; we even stopped to photograph a little patch of green on the side of the road, as if it had assumed some majestic importance to be back in a place where water had finally fallen from the sky.

We stopped at Cobar, a prosperous little town built on mining; a place that was so unlike Wilcannia, 260 k behind us, as to be unimaginable. But it was just a quick stop for food, and we were on our way.

I was driving again; the next town would be Nyngan, a further 130 k up the road. The Volvo was eating up the miles; Leigh was studying the map to determine the best route through to the lyrically-named Gulargambone. I was doing 110 k.p.h. on cruise control; we came over a railway bridge that curved gently up and back down again.

I caught a glimpse of something out of my left eye, close to the car. I had the sudden realisation that it was the head of a kangaroo. And then I hit it.

Now, hitting a 'roo at 110 can be a chancy business. Depending on a number of factors, including various vectors of velocity, direction, and mass, you can either live or die. Many people have been killed by collisions with kangaroos in Australia, either through losing control of the vehicle, or having the thing come straight through the windscreen and taking every one of the occupants' heads off. Roos are flighty buggers; they can, for no other reason than sheer caprice, take off at great speed and decide that leaping across a major highway at full gallop is a pretty cool thing to do. Which is exactly what our bastard decided.

There was an almighty bang, as the car took the body of the thing on the left front corner. Leigh, who'd been looking at his map, yelled "Fuck, Loz!"; he told me a little later he thought I'd come off the road and hit a post or a tree. The car pitched and swerved as the mudguard collapsed onto the front wheel; I wrestled the steering wheel, got back on course, and gently applied a little brake - not too hard, because I was unsure of the extent of the damage. But the screeching and scraping of tyre on metal told me plenty.

We came to a stop about two hundred metres down the road. I sat there, cursing our bad luck. For six thousand kilometres we'd been careful to avoid driving at dusk, or at night, when 'roos are around; to hit one in broad daylight two days before home seemed a vicious irony.

Leigh got out of the car. It was difficult - his door didn't want to open, as the 'roo had, in its dying throes, evidently decided to give the side of the car a good kicking as it scraped along it. Leigh came around to my window and said "That must have been a really big kangaroo, Loz - the car's fucked."

There was nothing to do but inspect the damage and see if we could get the thing driveable. The bonnet, headlights, front mudguard and both left hand doors were destroyed; the mudguard was just a tangled mass of steel with bits of 'roo flesh and fur adhered to it, all crumpled on top of the left front wheel.

But first, of course, we had to see whether the 'roo itself was still alive. We walked back to the site of the collision, and there was the poor thing, dead as a doornail, about twenty metres off the road. At least we were spared the prospect of clubbing it to death, as I'd had to do on two or three occasions in the past. Leigh estimated it at between fifty and sixty kilograms - a big one, indeed. It was horribly damaged. Irrepressibly, Leigh turned to me with a bit of a grin and said "Well, at least we should cut its legs off - waste not, want not, Loz."

At that point I wished it would just get up so I'd have the pleasure of killing it again. I had had to plead with my ever-lovin' to borrow her car for the trip, against her better judgement, which included admonishments like "But what if you have an accident, or hit a kangaroo?" I had assured her that none of these things would happen. It was going to be an uncomfortable phone call.

We found an old star-picket post by the side of the road, and did some serious panel-beating with it. We got the mudguard off the tyre, and gave the car a test-drive. Like all serious Swedish technology, the Volvo shook off this slight inconvenience, and trundled on as if nothing had happened. It was only a couple of weeks later that the damage assessment came in at twelve thousand dollars.

We were lucky; had I been a fraction of a second later, the thing might have come straight through the windscreen, and who knows what the cleaner's bill would have been for that.

The opposite of plenty

2008-10-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

We were trundling across the South Australian mid-East, from Quorn through to Broken Hill in New South Wales. Names like "Oodla Wirra", "Nackara", "Paratoo", and "Winnininnie" slid past; dusty, featureless "towns" with a couple of houses and a combined petrol station/general store if you were lucky. The landscape, although not as dry as it had been in the far north, was still groaning under the horrible drought that had been wrecking the entire Australian hinterland for ten long years. It was depression, everywhere you looked. The few sheep that still grazed on the stubble, poking sporadically through vast gibber plains that had once been fat paddocks of lucerne, looked tired, thin and despondent. Desolated farmhouses, from which people had simply closed the front door, got into their loaded-up utes, and left the land for good, looked out at us from the roadside. For four hundred kilometres, Leigh and I had nothing much to say to each other. Cocooned inside the Volvo, we were like aliens passing through a deserted reach of interplanetary space.

Gradually, however, the sheer unflinching aridity of it all started to get to us. Like the Ancient Mariner, Leigh intoned: With thirsts unslaked, with black lips baked, we didn't have no grub; I bit my arm, I sucked the blood and cried "A pub! A pub!"

Now, my immediate apologies to those aficionados of the British Romantic tradition for that travesty. One must realise, however, the deranged quality of thought as one shunts along a dead-flat landscape with nothing but a shimmering, eternal horizon through the windscreen. The "pub" was a run-down shack of a place hovering valiantly in the middle of absolutely nothing, the nothing being a place once called "Olary". It must have once been a township, but all that remained were a few sheds leaning away from the prevailing wind and the foundations of some scattered houses. We pulled up right outside. A sign on the door said "Closed Sunday."

We drove off, forlorn, wondering what kind of wild hootenanny we must have missed on Saturday night.

On the South Australia/ New South Wales border, at a place called Cockburn, we stopped to fuel up and get a bite to eat. Four or five road-trains - prime movers with three long trailers hitched together - were parked there; a sure sign of good food for the traveller. I kept wondering what they could have been carrying; it sure as eggs wasn't produce. (It turned out, of course, that they were all carrying minerals - just about the only commodity Australia has left.) And so we said good-bye to South Australia - a place of great wonder, amazement, and the most miserable policemen in the world.

We got into Broken Hill in the mid-afternoon; we were going to stay at my niece Erin's place. She's a physiotherapist with the Royal Flying Doctor Service - about which more later. Broken Hill, itself, is a place that constantly beggars belief. Here is a city, of some 30,000 people, which depends for its existence on a mine. In 1883 a boundary rider discovered silver on the surface of the ground. A frenzied mining boom began soon after, and the Broken Hill Propriety, now the world's biggest mining corporation, started tearing silver, zinc and lead out of the ground at an alarming rate. The BHP was so good at this that there is now virtually no ore left, and a huge hill of mine tailings dominates the city's skyline, eclipsing the original "Broken Hill", which was unceremoniously dug up and plundered early in the 20th century. Funny for a town to be named for a geographical feature that no longer exists, but there you have it.

One of the more interesting features of Broken Hill is that most of its houses are made of corrugated iron. We drove through street after street of these odd-looking dwellings. "Corro" roofs and walls were dominant in the landscape. This is surprising, really, considering that summer temperatures regularly hit 45 degrees (that's about 115 in the old scale), and winters, conversely, get down to freezing for three months at a time. Hardy souls, these Broken Hillians - or, as Leigh put it, "fucking lunatics."

We drove into the centre of the city; wide streets in the Australian country town-style greeted us, and absolutely enormous, ancient hotels, ringed with balconies, plate-glass, stained glass and wrought-iron, beckoned us with their foaming surprises. Not out of character, we decided to have a beer. (After all, it had been a very long drive.) The "Royal Exchange Hotel" seemed to offer much for the thirsty traveller; its bar boasted three different varieties of beer, and not much else. We ordered a Coopers each, and retired to a couple of well-upholstered lounge chairs parked in the corner of the saloon bar. The barmaid, a woman who had seen much, noted much, and analysed much in her fifty or sixty years, came over to talk. She sat on one of the arms of the green leather ottoman facing us, and sized us up.

"So, where are you blokes from?"

We told her a little about our trip: enough to keep it interesting, not enough to bore. We asked her, instead, what was the Broken Hill story. Her considered reply is worth reporting.

"This place is fucked," she began. "The mine's just about finished, only 400 miners have got jobs, and it's gonna be a case of whoever leaves last, please turn out the lights. This pub's for sale, if you're interested."

It seemed, frankly, inconceivable that the original site of Australia's mining boom could just shut its doors, and I suggested to the barmaid that, surely, tourism must be a big money-spinner these days.

"Oh, sure," she replied "but who wants to spend their entire lives bein' a servant for wealthy tourists and grey nomads?" She had a point.

We drove back to Erin's place. As I said, she's a physiotherapist with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and spends a large part of her working week in a Piper turboprop flying to remote communities in the region, sorting out people with various muscle and joint ailments, and, I am sorry to report, quite a few women and children, victims of domestic violence, from the aboriginal communities. She told a story of desperation, poverty and substance abuse that left both Leigh and I in a cold rage. Of course, every Australian has an idea of the misery that has befallen Aboriginal Australia, but to hear the stories first-hand clarifies and concentrates what is, largely, an abstract and diffuse consciousness for most of us.

We saw, first-hand, what she was talking about the next day. Two hundred kilometres east of Broken Hill is Wilcannia, a place Leigh was looking forward to seeing, having been there once many years before. He described to me a prosperous little town on the banks of the Darling, the second-largest river in the country.

We drove into Wilcannia, and at the main intersection, a blackfeller of indeterminate age staggered out onto the road in front of us, filthy, and holding a Coke bottle half full of what was, presumably, petrol. A woman on the other side of the street shambled along, a plastic shopping bag in each hand, both containing two five-litre casks of cheap wine. A group of young black kids stood, or sat, along the walls of a decrepit building, doing nothing. There were three retail establishments trading in Wilcannia: a pub, a service station and a take-away food store. All were heavily barred with steel mesh across the windows, and impenetrable security doors. We drove around the streets, looking at dilapidated houses; there was not a library, school, community centre, doctor's surgery or, indeed, any sign that anyone was making an effort to make life more user-friendly. I've been in some pretty shabby towns around the world; this was one of the worst places I'd ever seen.

And smack bang in the middle of one of the most prosperous countries in the world. We felt ashamed - of ourselves and our countrymen. We stopped at the service-station to fill up, and I made my way past a burly security guard at the door, preposterously armed with a big, holstered handgun. He and the attendant were the only two visible whites in the entire town; when I asked him did he live in town, he answered "Shit no, mate - I drive back to Broken Hill every afternoon."

We drove across the bridge on our way out of town, and I looked down. In the second-biggest river of Australia, not a drop of water flowed. Poor feller, my country.

The Iguana's Economics Primer

2008-10-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

I've recently come across a blog by a writer who we'll call Ms Pants. As an Australian, of course, she has a naturally superior intellect, carved from the cruelty and dust of our harsh summers, and honed on the strop of a Menzian, Dickensian body politic (whose corpse you can still find floating off Portsea Beach). In her latest piece, which you can find here, she quite readily and appositely puts a six-inch nail through the forehead of Wall St. (And if you enjoy my writing, dear regular readers, check out Ms Pants - man, can she find her way around a typewriter!)

I recall Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, as he groaned towards an election defeat in 1983, bewailing the alleged incompetence of the forthcoming Labor government in matters fiscal. "You'd be better off putting all your money under the bed," he famously quipped. (And don't think for a moment, Malcolm, in your newly-minted, revisionist Statesman for the Oppressed personage, that I am ever going to forget the calumny of November 11, 1975.)

Well, those chickens really came home to roost, didn't they? Here we are, folks, at the end of one of the great cycles of human endeavour: the Age of Friedman. Who would have guessed that flat-out economic rationalism, liberating markets from the fusty chains of regulation, and ensconcing the notion that doubled, tripled and quadrupled debt farming was a damn fine idea in the scones of the rapacious, would eventually lead to a world-wide financial system that resembled nothing so much as the Pyramid of Cheops resting on its pointy end, waiting for a puff of wind?

Er...well, I, for one.

The puff of wind - that hitherto invisible fact of sub-prime lunacy - has blown a cold breeze through the world. And, as a gentle nor-easter will clear away a Sydney haze on a Saturday afternoon, the zephyr of realisation has finally clarified an idea whose time has come: Friedman was a cunt.

Now, I don't want to be too hard, myself, on the Masters of the Universe. After all, you can't really blame someone with the mind (and greed) of a reptile for not understanding the nuances of economics. I know they all crawled up the walls of the Twin Towers clutching their MBAs in their claws, but a degree is only worthwhile if you can read what it says.

And the MOTUs were nothing if not inventive, if only in the fashion of an iguana. Like other members of their species, they were adept at burying their nest-eggs under layers and layers of doublespeak. Their grand-dad, Milton Friedman, had devised an intricate philosophy which did nothing but inter a very simple message beneath mounds of economic mumbo-jumbo: Tell everyone they're doin' good while you relieve them of their wealth. In other words, Friedman's great insight was that the "Wealth of Nations", that fat of the land, was best utilised by being stealthily reducted into the claws of the corporate goannas. Privatisation, the taxation myth, user pays, the credit generation; these sleights of hand fattened the brokers, traders and merchant bankers, while schools, hospitals, transport systems, public housing and universities crumbled and died in a twenty year orgy that made the Thirty Years' War look like an ice-cream melting on the pavement.

And now, in a bout of revelatory epiphany that would make Uncle Karl himself take up prayer, these self-same slugs realise what the rest of us had an inkling of all along: socialism is a wonderful thing when you begin to die of starvation. Not that the fiscal slum-lords will ever go without the Beluga and Bolly; but it must hurt, terribly, to shelve the plans for the new yacht.

Meanwhile, "trickle-down" has proven to be nothing more than the tears of merchant bankers, falling, like rain, on the homeless.

Hospitality, Jerusalem-style

2008-10-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Man means nothin' - he means less to me

Than the lowest cactus flower on the 'umblest yucca tree

He chases round the desert, 'cause he thinks that's where I'll be

That's why I love mankind.

- Randy Newman, The God Song

The Bible is replete with stories that confirm what anyone with half a brain from the planet Zargon will tell you: we humans are a miserable lot of savages. Sorry to get off to such a morbid start, but just yesterday, while I was at our local Bible study group (heh heh), I came across the following beaut story in the book of Judges (a bloodthirsty little read if ever there was one), to which I'll apply the vernacular:

There was this bloke, a "Levite", who had a concubine, and this girl was fairly free with her affections, as they say. Eventually she pissed off back to her old man's place, and the Levite got wind of this, so went to drag her home. He took a manservant with him, and a couple of asses, so he was obviously middle-class, or what passed for it in the Paleolithic era.

When he got to the father-in-law's, the old man was all over him like a rash, and persuaded him to stay for a few days. Eventually, however, the Levite decided it was time to go, so he grabbed his girl, shoved her on top of a donkey, and off they went.

It was getting late, and the servant suggested they go into the city of the Jebusites, a place called Jerusalem. The only trouble was that they didn't have anywhere to stay, so they all sat down in the street not knowing what to do. By and by, a farmer came in from his fields and found the three of them sitting there. Being a kindly sort of bloke, he offered them lodgings for the night. So they all went to his place, where he washed their feet (as you do, I suppose), and set out food and drink. They were just getting into the swing of things, when there was a knock on the door.

The old farmer opened the door to find a bunch of blokes on his doorstep. Apparently, these fellers had been hanging around the town square, and had taken a shine to the Levite's young manservant, and had come over to offer the young bloke a game of hide the sausage. And they were pretty up front about it, too, 'cause they said to the farmer "Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him." (And we all understand what the biblical "know" means, don't we?)

Now, what would you do in this situation, boys and girls? Had it been me, I probably would have said something like "Fuck off, shirtlifters - go away and fuck each other; these people are my guests."

But no - this ratbag, in attempting to defend the young bloke's backside, says, instead "Behold, here is my daughter, a maiden, and the Levite's concubine; take them and do what you want with them."

Fuck me dead - what a hero!

Anyway, the blokes settle for the concubine, and take her away. (Now, get this: the Levite has just spent days tracking this girl down, and now he's content to give her up to a bunch of blokes who swing both ways for a little bit of fun which we shall call gang rape.)

So, the rest of them go to bed, leaving the concubine, screaming blue murder, no doubt, in the hands of the "sons of Belial", which might give one pause to wonder about old Mister Belial's parenting skills, no?

In the morning, the Levite goes out to find the concubine lying on the doorstep, blood everywhere. What does he say? Not "Shit, are you OK? Sorry about last night - what was I thinking?" No, here are his words as recorded in the Good Book: "Up, and let us be going."

What a prick. Anyway, the concubine has the last laugh, in a way, because she doesn't respond at all. Why? Because she's been fucked to death!

Here's my advice, dear reader: the next time a Jehovah's Witness, or a Mormon, or any other brand of God-botherer comes to your door, just haul off and lay a big one straight between his eyes. As he's lying befuddled on the ground, just say to him: "Judges chapter 19 - think about it, idiot!"

Singin' the Blues Fest

2008-10-19T06:11:00.000-07:00

Why on Earth wouldn’t you pack a trailer full of camping gear and drive 800 kilometres overnight to have a five-day holiday? Every Easter a troupe of us goes to Byron Bay to attend the East Coast Blues and Roots Music Festival, a huge Woodstock-like affair that brings performers from all over the world to Australia. The festival is in its eighteenth year, and will see some 150,000 people from across the country flood through the turnstiles over a five-day period. It is an event of monumental organisation, preparation and execution. And the music is always superb.

But the Bluesfest itself is only part of the reason my family and friends have been going there for so long now. Every year we camp at Lennox Head, a picturesque and peaceful little hamlet on the coast some fifteen kilometres south of Byron. The very first time I went to Byron for the festival was with my son, Miles, when he was fifteen. A bloke to whom I’d taught music in gaol rang me, out of the blue, suggesting I come up to the festival. He offered me a place to stay – “Do you own a tent?” – and so Miles and I piled into the car one night and I drove the whole way in one hit, arriving at his place at seven in the morning. The two of us camped in an old two-man tent that threatened to blow down with every gust of wind, and leaked like a sieve whenever a shower hit it, which, at Byron, is often. Our camping organisation was primitive, to say the least – we took only the tent and a couple of sleeping bags. But the experience of a world of brilliant music meant that we were permanently and thoroughly addicted. And the number of attendees from our neck of the woods has grown geometrically with each year, as everyone who goes comes back to the mundanity of ordinary life exhorting all and sundry to make the voyage.

So now, this year, there are thirty-two of us, all travelling north. Firstly, let me give you some idea of the demography of our little company. It divides, roughly, into two factions: the “oldies” – people like I, my wife Chris and ten or so of our friends (and a few “littlies”) – and a group of Miles’ friends, most of whom, like Miles, are current or former students at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. Of course, it is the oldies, particularly my mate Greg and me, who do the majority of the organisation. Tonight, I’ve arranged for Miles and another couple of carloads of his friends to meet us on Sydney’s northern outskirts. The oldies’ cars and trailers are already in formation, travelling out from the Hawkesbury. We meet at the beginning of the Pacific Highway at nine p.m., with about eleven hours of driving in front of us. We’ll keep in touch by CB radio or mobiles. It’s no small measure, driving along this stretch of road. The busiest highway in Australia, the Pacific winds its way along the NSW coast, with its myriad of small towns. These days, for a large part of its course, the highway is four-lane expressway. But there are many stretches of the old two-lane road that have all the hazards of an era when automobile travel was, generally, a more sedate affair. Rough roads, heart-stopping bends and crests, and the greatest hazard of all: oncoming traffic. You have to keep your wits about you, the lack of which is part of the reason that thirteen people have died on a particular ten-kilometre section near Coffs Harbour in the past three years.

We navigate the 120 kilometre F3 freeway without incident, and have our first meet-up at a servo in Raymond Terrace, just north of Newcastle. It’s ten-thirty. As always, there is a clamour of excitement amongst the assembly; some have not seen others for the past year, and introductions are made around the “newbies” from both groups. Among the company are people from all walks of life – carpenters, landscapers, a psychologist, quite a few teachers, an electrician, a stone-mason, and, of course, some of the country’s best young orchestral musicians. Most importantly, though, is the collection of characters in the group: my mate Leigh, who you've already met, is a natural comedian, capable of keeping the entire company in fits of laughter for hours; Craig, the world’s most eccentric psychologist; Steve, an artist and jack of all trades; Ezmi, cellist and sick joke expert – all have become firm friends over the years. Full tanks, a quick coffee, and we are off on the next leg, a big one of about 300 k through to Macksville, where we’ll have a more extended break.

I’m driving at the head of the convoy for a while. I’m hoping to pick up a likely-looking semi heading our way, and stick on his heels. Just short of Karuah I come slowly up behind a big Kenworth pulling a standard-looking pantech trailer. I hail him on the CB.

“G'day in the Kenworth?”
“Got ya, you behind me?”
“ Yes mate – I’ve got about a dozen in convoy with me going up to Byron. Don’t mind if we tag along behind you for a bit?”
“No problems, mate. Might be a bit slow at times – I’m pretty heavy tonight. And I’m gonna stop for a bite at Macksville, anyway.”
“Perfect, mate – we’re doing the same.”
“Roger, have a good one – keep about a hundred yards behind me.”
“OK. Thanks”

Chris texts the rest of the crew that we’re following the semi. I’m relaxed – it’s almost effortless driving, just keeping an eye on the temperature gauge when we climb the bigger hills. Bulahdelah, Taree and Port Macquarie disappear in our wake. Just out of Kempsey it starts to pour, vision comes down to about fifty yards, and great swooping gusts of wind throw the Hi-lux and trailer around the road. I get Steve, who’s at the back of the convoy, on CB – he thinks everyone’s coping OK. We press on – the semi’s unfazed by the atrocious weather, and I’m glad we got onto his tail. At two in the morning, in these conditions, the landscape is surreal: a big full moon scuds in and out of the clouds while belts of rain come bursting across the road in intermittent blasts; even some lightning adds to the mood, for an instant illuminating trees and distant hills. It’s travel: unpredictable, sometimes eerie and ever exciting.

About four hours after leaving Raymond Terrace, I see the semi pulling into the all-night diner in Macksville. It’s three-thirty, just the right time for breakfast! I walk over on fairly stiff legs to the semi; its driver is climbing down from the cab and we shake hands. His name is Kevin, and he’s taking foodstuffs to Brisbane, where he’ll pick up some beer for the return trip. He’s lucky – he has a good contract with a company that looks after him. I hear all of this over breakfast. Kevin (“Kev will do”) has been doing this run for ten years, and has been able to afford his own prime mover. He’s one of the lucky ones – many drivers are forced to work like navvies to pay for the enormous overheads involved in running a rig like this. He’s doing two trips a week, plus some local Sydney runs. He “only” works about seventy hours a week. Enough said.

Out of courtesy, I insist on paying for Kev’s breakfast. He grumbles a bit, but I suggest that the favour he’s doing us is worth at least a bite to eat. Mollified, he goes out to check his rig.

Under Kev’s guidance, the rest of the trip is pleasant and (almost) uneventful. Nambucca, Coffs Harbour and Woolgoolga glide by in the beautiful light of the pre-dawn. The sun is rising as we meander along the Clarence River between Grafton and Ballina. This is the danger time, for we have been driving all night, and it has all been a little too easy. Craig is driving my car, and I’m beside him, with my youngest son Blake, and Dylan, our friends’ thirteen year old in the back. Chris is with Tina and Greg, Dylan’s parents. Craig and I have been pointing out to the kids the proliferation of “big” objects along the coast road: the Big Banana, the Big Prawn we’ll see at Ballina, and so on. Craig suggests that what this highway needs is a “Big Arsehole” – a great big bare bum sticking out at you from the roadside. The kids are in hysterics, adding improvements to the concept, when an oncoming car veers into our lane. It’s tight – Craig can’t make a rapid correction because of the heavy trailer behind us, but is able to ease us onto the shoulder just in time. “Fucking idiot,” he growls. Still, it’s the only problem we’ve encountered, and we breeze into Ballina at seven.

Kevin hails me to say goodbye. I thank him for his guidance, and wish him a safe journey. We turn onto the coast road between Ballina and Lennox, only seven k to the north. This is my favourite part of the trip, swooping down into the town from the headland, with the stunning vista of Seven Mile Beach in the morning sunlight signalling the end of the first phase.

It’s too early to book into the camping ground, so we stop at the surf club and prepare for a swim. As usual, the water is beautiful, the surf is gentle, and the troupe is, in turn, exhausted and refreshed. The surf club café is opening for business, and thirty-odd people swoop on it for another huge breakfast. My god, travel makes a soul hungry.

We book in at Lake Ainsworth – the managers have known us for years, now, and are gracious in their welcome. Tents are pitched, in a fairly formal arrangement with the oldies having first pick of the sites. We call the youngster’s big site “Surry Hills”, partly because that is where many of them live, but also because their area tends to look like a dump by the end of the festival. Greg, Leigh, Steve and I erect the giant communal living area, which is nothing more than a ten by six metre tarpaulin with tables, chairs and assorted paraphernalia lying underneath. Steve is the kitchen whiz – the back of his Range Rover is fitted out like a chef’s paradise. He is the most organised guy I’ve met – after setting up camp, Chris is lounging in Steve’s blow-up sofa (I kid you not), and says “You know what I feel like? A chicken roll.” No sooner has she uttered the words when Steve appears with that exact item. He’s prepared several of them the day before, and kept them in his electric fridge. (Of course you take an electric fridge with you on a camping holiday!) He always brings a “homely” touch to our camping experience – last year it was one of those old-fashioned tall lamps, complete with 40’s style lampshade. Very art-deco.

Even though nearly everyone is knackered, we brush our tiredness away with a beer. It’s time to hit the festival!

We have to queue to get our tickets processed, and an armband fitted which will gain us entry over the next five days. The oldies can pack into Leigh’s van, and the youngsters will find their own way. This is one of the beauties of the trip – the two groups tend to look after themselves, and often meet up only at the end of a night back in camp to discuss the day’s events.
I’m excited as we enter the festival grounds for the first time this year. I’m looking forward to hearing some artists that have become favourites over the years, and there is always the certainty that you will see a performer, or band, that you have never heard before, who will blow your mind. This afternoon we’ll set our chairs up in the “Crossroads” tent, and listen to three or four acts.

I should explain the layout of the festival site. It’s held at the Byron Bay “Red Devils” rugby league ground, and is dominated by three enormous marquees, the biggest being about eighty by sixty metres, and holding about twelve thousand people. A gigantic stage is situated at one end of the marquee, with all of the paraphernalia associated with a big concert venue: huge sound system, lighting gantries, curtains, video screens etc.

We get our position, and some of us wander off to get a beer and have a look around. The first act - Marva Wainright and her band - won’t be on for a little while, so Leigh, Craig, Greg and I go for a stroll around the festival. Byron’s a funny place – a mixture of new-age hippy, and a cranking entrepreneurial flair. Everyone has something to sell, and the festival is almost as much a marketplace as it is a music venue. We ignore the fashion stalls, the jewellery outlets, and the arts-and-craft markets, and look for the beer tent.

We head back to the Crossroads. There are, by now, thousands of people inside. After coming to the festival for many years you get to know how to navigate your way into the best position, and we have done that successfully, setting up a row of chairs right in front of the mixing station in the centre of the tent, about twenty metres from the stage. It gets awfully crowded in these tents, especially after about six o’clock each night, and you need to stake your claim on a piece of real estate ASAP.

Marva’s band comes on and starts a big, bluesy intro for her. These guys play hundreds of shows each year in the States, and are a very cool, professional blues and soul band. As a muso myself, I’m always intrigued, not by the way the musicians play, so much, as by the interplay, the dynamics of the performance. For some reason, the Yanks seem to be awesome at this. But they’re not the only ones. Later on tonight we’ll head over to the Mojo, the biggest tent at the festival, to hear Angelique Kidjou, the great singer from Benin. I’ve heard her twice before at the festival, and have become a big fan. Can’t wait.

But before Angelique, we get an astonishing performance from Robben Ford, the American guitarist/singer. He and his band come out and play a set that has the entire 8,000 or so in the Crossroads screaming for more. What can you say? Exquisite, sublime blues guitar. This guy has got to be about the best there is in his genre.

Hyped up after Robben Ford, we head to the Mojo. It’s tough finding a good spot, as already there are about ten thousand people crammed into the marquee. The air is electric; at her last performance, two years ago, Kidjou brought the house down with her mix of Afro/Latin/Euro (God, how do you describe music like this?) rhythms and melodies. Her band comes on – big, powerful drums and bass kicking along a song that has everyone in the tent jumping, as the diva herself waltzes onto the stage. We are not disappointed – she is the best contemporary singer in the world today. We listen in rapture as she performs “Hallelujah”, which I’ve not heard before. And then, straight into “Africa”, a rejoicing, rollicking singalong – at one point, the band stops, and you can hear 10,000 people all singing their lungs out on the chorus. It’s got to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

She’s finished, and we turn to each other with looks of indescribable emotion. This is what we’ve come for – the experience of hearing music so uplifting, so imaginative, and so soulful. The campsite will be buzzing tonight.

But it’s not over yet. The last act for the night comes on – it’s the Nigerian singer Femi Kuti with his band, Positive Force. It’s their first appearance at the festival, and there has been plenty of buzz about him. He’s the son of Fela Kuti, the activist/musician who died a few years ago. Knowing a little of Nigerian politics, I’m interested to see how his songs reflect his peoples’ struggle against the Nigerian regime which has, more or less, sold its peoples’ birthright to Shell Oil.

Onto the stage comes a huge band: six-piece brass section, drums, two percussionists, bass, guitar and keyboards. They set up a blistering intro, and are joined by three female dancers who – now let’s put this in politically correct terminology – are supremely confident of their own sexuality. Dressed in traditional (i.e. next to nothing) style, they start to dance. Femi himself appears, and suddenly, he is singing about struggle. I begin to realise that this is the African way: the message is hard; it is confronting and challenging, but it is delivered within an idiom that rejoices in rhythm, movement, colour and harmony. Sublime, and at the same time kick-arse!

We’re back at camp, and full to the brim with the greatest music in the world. My son and his friends appear; he walks over to me and says, in his dry, laconic way: “Africa wins.”

It’s two a.m., and we’ve all been more or less awake for the past thirty-six hours, but it’s difficult to go to sleep while the experience of that time is still fresh in our minds. People begin to drift off to their tents, and I am left, finally, with Leigh, Greg and Craig sipping a nice red and winding down. I just know I’ll find myself waking to the lorikeets in this same chair in about four hours from now.

And I do.

For the Bible tells me so...

2008-10-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time.

And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. - Joshua Ch 5: 2-3

Now, you've gotta love that, haven't you? The Lord, not content that the Israelite blokes (who, to put the story in context, had been wandering around in the desert, stone motherless lost, for forty years) had already had the chop once, decided that another application of a very sharp knife to the genitals was in order, just to be sure that they'd be "pure" before they stepped into the promised land. Now, a tiny thought springs to mind - I know it's a fairly petty quibble, but here goes - what kind of fucking drugs was the Lord on, anyway? I mean, it's a pretty crook go when a bloke gets circumcised anyway, especially when, in the biblical times, they'd do it at the age when a young feller was starting to get a sense of his (excuse me, ladies) "manhood". But no - the stark raving mad elders of the tribe decided that what had been good for them must, ipso facto, be good for every young lad. But twice? I mean, what was going to be left?

And what, may I ask, is the motivation behind a "hill of foreskins"? How big was this hill? How many foreskins were there? Did the ladies sew a few of them together to make a purse? Not a bad idea - rub it a few times, and it instantly becomes an overnight bag.

All right, I'll settle down now. I think I've already derailed the original intention of this little homily, but I'll press on regardless.

I think my point, in this, is to critically analyse a few selected verses from the Bad Book, and marvel at how little it does take, if you're human, to become a full-blown, irredeemable, obsessive-compulsive, blood and guts Psycho-Jeezoid. So buckle up, ladies and gentlemen, and let's find out just what a terrific bloke the Lord was (when he wasn't tripping).

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.

Those Israelites didn't fuck around, did they? This, of course, was Joshua (again! - a bloke who makes Milosevic look like a latte-sipping, pigeon-chested Mardis-Gras float driver) quietly (or rather loudly, in this case, what with the trumpets and all) doing God's business. This ethnic cleanser par excellence went on a binge of killing, raping, destroying and smiting that saw city after city sacked and burnt: Sihon, Og, Jericho, Ai, Gibeon, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Hebron, Debir, Zidon, Hazor, and most of Lebanon; all because the Lord's treasuries were slightly depleted. The Lord, meanwhile, must have been fairly busy himself; he was tied up with processing the hundreds of thousands of newly-arrived Amorite, Jezubite, Hittite, etc. souls queuing up, headless, at the Pearly Gates. (I don't know why he bothered; he could have just handed them over, as a job-lot, to the bloke with the horns and pointy tail.)

No wonder the Palestinians are fucking edgy!

Now, dipping randomly into the Book again, we find this little nugget of Israelite purity:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife...

But if a man finds a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die: But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing... For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.

This little gem is from Deuteronomy chapter 22, and is one of my all-time favourite examples of Logic 101, goat-herder style: virgins only protest at being raped when it happens in a bucolic setting. Pheeeeeewwwww! You've got to hand it to them, haven't you? These barbarians had the brains of termites and the morals of a Wall St. futures trader (and, come to think of it, those two appellations are probably interchangeable, with my apologies to the termites).

Now, get this - stoning is the punishment du jour for a myriad of crimes, including talking back to your parents (I'm not kidding; check out Deuteronomy 21:18), and pretending to be a virgin on the wedding night (ladies only, of course). It really does underline the meaning of the word Paleolithic, doesn't it?

Let's now dip into the theme of luurve, and with it, some poetry, Solomon-style:

Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves' eyes; thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from Mt Gilead. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep, that are even shorn; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate; thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury; thy navel is like a rounded goblet; thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies; thy breasts are like two young roes that are twins, thine eyes like the fish-pools in Heshbon.

Now, fellers, try this little exercise. Close your eyes and build yourself an imaginary woman made out of sheep, pomegranates, goats, sacks of wheat, rabbits, doves, and fish. Got a stiffy, yet?

Just try and tell me that old Solomon wasn't munching an L.S.D. sandwich as he etched this one into a tablet. Whatever the hallucinogen, I want some!

I spent the early years of my life subjected to this kind of revelatory moral guidance, Sunday after Sunday. No wonder I think it's time for a more rational Biblical concordance to be written. As soon as I've stopped quivering with desire I'll have another go...

Into the Flinders (part 3)

2008-10-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

We sat at our little camping table - me with coffee, Leigh drinking water (I can't for the life of me get him to enjoy the splendour of a good coffee) - and pondered our maps. We were on the eastern side of the Pound, and would need to walk about five ks through the only pass between the mountain chain in order to get into the basin proper.

"We could do that, Loz, or we could just climb this bloody mountain here," he stabbed his finger on the map, "and then we'd get a real sense of the lay of the land."

I looked at where he was pointing - "Mt Ohlsen-Bragg", the map said. It was about two and a half thousand feet of climbing. I smiled at Leigh.

"Are you up for it, mate?"

"Too right, Loz, let's go."

We set out along the first part of the track. Leigh was carrying the day pack with water and some dried fruit and nuts; I had all the camera gear. We meandered through the Wilpena Gorge, where the runoff from the Pound flows through Wilpena Creek (the original settlers were notoriously unimaginative with place-names), and marvelled at the magnificent stands of river red gums along the way. The walls of the gorge began to close in and become steeper as we progressed, with vast scree-slopes tumbling their way into the pass. A sign ushered us to the left, along a narrow track that snaked its way up a fairly steep slope of scree and larger boulders. The sign said "Mt Ohlsen-Bragg: 10k. Warning: Walkers should be physically fit. Take water."

"Well, at least we've got water," said Leigh. "I wonder how 'physically fit' they expect us to be?"

"We'll find out when we come across the bodies, mate."

We plunged up the track. Now, here's an interesting and handy tip when you go walking, especially when it involves some reasonably serious uphill work: take little steps. In his younger days, Leigh trekked nearly all the way to Everest base camp. The Sherpa guides showed him a technique that allows you to walk all day in any terrain. You just put one foot in front of the other, often taking little more than dolly-steps; that way, you conserve energy expenditure and prevent your muscles breaking down and producing so many waste products that they turn into an amorphous, jelly-like substance that would look good on an ebola patient.

And so, for the next hour or more, we dolly-stepped our way up and along a track that was only a foot or so wide, often clambering over larger boulders that had recently come crashing down from above. It really was a "tumbledown hill"; everywhere were the signs of this ancient escarpment gradually disintegrating under the force of sun, wind and temperature. Amazing that, according to our loony mate from the day before, it was only 4000 years old!

As we climbed, the vegetation became sparser, not because of the altitude, but because the escarpment started to thrust its way up more or less vertically above us. The loose stands of black boys, stringy eucalypts and tufted grasses hung on gamely to whatever crevices they could find. Looking out to the east and north, we began to get a grand view of the upper Flinders; they were a magnificent sight - I clicked away furiously at several points, but no photograph can do justice to what we were seeing. We were only about a third of the way to the top, and everywhere above us were enormous blocks of sandstone, precariously perched one upon the other, just waiting for the signal to come hurtling down the mountainside. It was inspiring, and somewhat threatening at the same time.

We came around a buttress to find a woman sitting on a rock. She was dressed in khaki shorts and shirt - the only thing missing was a pith helmet. Sweat was pouring from her body, and her face was the colour of the rocks around us. She was pooped, and the high-thirties temperature was obviously not to her liking.

"Gooday, there," said Leigh, "fairly warm day, isn't it."

"Oh, it is absolutely like a furnace," she replied in an unmistakable German accent. "My husband has climbed up this very steep rock, but I am afraid to go any further." She indicated a large, sheer plate of sandstone stretching about forty feet above us. It had a few little cracks and rills running through it, but although steep, it didn't seem like that much of an effort would get one to its top.

Leigh sized up the situation. "Don't worry - we'll give you a hand up. I'll go first, and you follow me. Put your hands and feet where I tell you. Laurie will come up behind and make sure all your footholds are good."

Both Leigh and I have plenty of rock-climbing experience, and the slope didn't appear to be more than a casual stroll, in my book. The woman was not looking anywhere near as sanguine about it, though. I took her day pack and slung it over my shoulder. Leigh started up, and the poor woman, before she knew it, was ten feet up the slab uttering little whimpers of fear. I couldn't blame her; here she was with two galahs she'd met about ten seconds ago, and was now attempting to conquer the Matterhorn.

In the end we arrived safely, and I could see that she was quietly pleased with herself. Her husband, while the mountaineering team had been hard at work, was sitting on a great big boulder with his legs dangling into space, admiring the view. Unfortunately, this boulder, which was about the size of half a house, was resting, with nothing else to support it, on a rock as big as a basketball. Sometime soon, in the next thirty days or three hundred years, that little rock was going to give up the ghost, with a spectacular result for anyone standing below it.

Leigh and I glanced at each other, and Leigh said "You know, madam, I'd encourage your husband to get off that rock and sit over here with us."

"What do you mean?" she asked with a re-elevated sense of imminent doom.

Leigh began a brief physics lesson, and as soon as Madam got the point she yelled "Dieter, oh Dieter! Get back here now," and continued frantically in German. Her husband, looking unconcerned, got up and jumped across to where we were. We shook hands all round, and sat down for some water and nibbles. It seemed like a good spot for a break.

Frida, the woman, told us that she and Dieter were here from Hamburg on a two-month holiday. They'd been to a few of our country's best places, including the Great Barrier Reef (traveller's tip: come and see it before it dies), and were about to go to Uluru.

"We saw a snake yesterday, Laurie, when we were up on the mountain on the other side of the valley, there," said Frida, "we don't have them in Germany, you know. Here, I have a photograph of it on my camera." She fiddled with the camera for a few seconds, then handed it to me. On the screen was a beautiful close-up of a king brown, its head raised above its coils, ready to assume the strike position.

"Er, how far away from it were you when you took this, Frida?" I asked.

"Oh, about," she stretched her arms out, "a metre, a metre and one half, maybe."

I passed the camera to Leigh. He emitted a low whistle. "Look, Frida, that is a king brown snake, probably the deadliest snake in the world. If that thing had bitten you - and they can strike faster than you can blink - you'd be dead. No question - nobody could save you. Jesus. If you see a snake, any snake, out here, stay at least twenty metres from it. OK?"

I looked back at Frida. From sandstone red, she had gone a ghastly shade of white, tinged with green. "Oh Dieter, Dieter," she shrieked, "we must go back to Adelaide and get on a plane back to Germany. This country is...is...impossible!"

After we'd taken leave of our friends and continued up the track for a few minutes, Leigh stopped. He turned around to me, following behind, and said "And to think they nearly won the war."

After climbing for two and a half hours, we reached the summit of Mt Ohlsen-Bragg, and peered into the majestic panorama of Wilpena Pound for the first time. The floor of the Pound was covered in a forest of stately eucalypts, that here and there gave way to expanses of grassland. Circling the basin were the tilted plates of sediment, so uniformly rising away from the base that the whole edifice looked remarkably like the world's biggest football stadium. It was not hard to see how someone, ignorant of tectonics, could simply throw up his hands and say "God must have done it." It had the feel of a majestically designed landscape. But it wasn't, of course; it was simply the result of blind energies working on a timescale so vast as to be imponderable.

We stood, transfixed, for an hour. If I never see an object in the natural world as stately, grand and alien again, I'll remain happy. (Although, if anything, my hunger for such experiences has grown immeasurably after Wilpena.)

The descent was agony. Unfortunately, there's no getting away from the fact that, once you've hit the mid-fifties, your knees are not what they used to be. Every steep step down thrust the entire weight of our bodies onto these ancient, creaking joints. By the time we got to the bottom, both of us were deliberately avoiding saying anything at all, in case the only thing that might issue from our mouths would be shrieks of pain.

At dusk, we hobbled back into our campsite, groaning. We both, immediately, collapsed on our chairs, and it was a scramble to see who could rip the top off the esky quick enough. Anaesthetic was called for, and plenty of it. The first six beers went straight down without touching the sides, and it was only then that our gasps of pain began to give way to murmurs of pleasure.

"That," opined Leigh as soon as he had recovered sufficiently, "was fucking brilliant, Loz!"

"Absolutely one of the best days I've ever had, Leigh," I replied, ignoring the dull throbbing occurring in every part of my body. "What do you reckon about tomorrow?"

"Well, mate," he replied ruminantly, "there's a couple of other of these big bastards we should knock over yet."

Into the Flinders (part 2)

2008-10-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

After our adventure in Quorn (see "On the Road"), it was time to head for one of the most anticipated parts of our trip - Wilpena Pound. I had been wanting to see the Pound for years; as a keen enthusiast of all things geological, I couldn't wait to get to this ancient, and by all accounts spectacular, part of Australia. (Just type "Wilpena Pound" into Google Earth to get a good look at the remarkable landforms that make up this part of the Flinders - convoluted, twisted and folded sandstone plates that bend and snake their way into a tightly-packed mass of mountains, valleys and gorges. You can almost feel their age just by looking at a satellite photograph.)

It was about another 180 kilometres to the Pound, and along the way we fueled up at a little town called Hawker, where I went into the grocery store (the only food-vending establishment) to see if we could buy some steaks to barbecue for dinner. A middle-aged guy was behind the counter dealing with four or five little black kids who were taking an eternity to decide which lollies would get them their best value for a dollar. Satisfied, the kids ran out merrily into the afternoon sunshine. They were gorgeous.

"You wouldn't have any steaks or chops in the freezer, mate?" I enquired.

He looked at me balefully. "Nah."

"Is there a butcher's in town?" I pressed on.

"Nah." Progress was going to be slow; I could sense it. I looked around the shop; the shelves appeared to contain nothing but tinned food: Campbell's Chunky Steak and Kidney; Pea and Ham Soup, etc. etc. I went down the back, to the refrigerators, and found some acceptable cheese, some bacon rashers, and a couple of small bags of frozen vegetables. Back at the counter, the proprietor bagged them all up and charged me about the national debt of Tanzania.

"Well, so long," I said, "it's not too far to Wilpena from here, is it?"

"Nah."

"Did you get everything we needed?" asked Leigh, who'd been across the road fueling up.

"Nah."

The temperature outside was approaching forty as we drove northward. Pretty soon, we came to the foothills of one of the most intriguing, wonderful and spectacular mountain ranges on the planet. We were now well and truly into the heart of the Flinders Rangers, and on our left were the great escarpments of the Pound itself. It was breathtaking; in the afternoon sun the faces of gigantic sandstone buttresses arrogantly pushed their way out of the surrounding plain in a jigsaw of slanted and folded, red, yellow, orange, brown and black layers of ancient sediment. The walls of the Pound were littered with deep caves; stumpy eucalyptus struggled gallantly to find a toe-hold in the battered, weather-beaten rock. It was like nothing I have ever seen before, and we stopped, emerged from the car, and drank in this overwhelming sight for ten minutes before one of us could say a word.

"Fuck."

How's that for two fairly-well educated blokes: reduced to monosyllabic profanities by nature itself. To give you a sense of scale, the Pound is about 22 kilometres long by about 8 kilometres wide, and if you take a look at the photograph, you'll get an idea of the size of the mountains surrounding its basin. St Mary's Peak, the tallest, is a little over 1300 metres - not huge, compared with elsewhere in the world (after all, this is the flattest continent by a long chalk), but you try climbing the bugger, as we did a couple of days later. Wilpena Pound was formed between one billion and 800 million years ago (I think just after God created Adam and Eve). It was all under water, at the time; no doubt Noah sailed straight over the top of it on his way to dropping off the hairy-nosed wombat in Tasmania.

The Pound is a syncline, an area of sedimentary rock that has been folded by continental drift, which is why its inner slopes gently rear up from the basin floor at an angle of about thirty degrees. All around its outer perimeter, though, are the magnificent, cliffed remnants of the rock that underwent the upthrust, and these tumble down in great, sheer, blocks of sandstone and limestone. It is an absolutely outstanding bit of handiwork by 'im upstairs, as a rabidly zealous psycho-jeezoid assured me while I was poking around in the visitors' centre. That's the trouble with these places - apart from normal, inquisitive souls, they attract the grand loonies seeking the assurance of some divine majesty. The next day we encountered the same drongo, exhausted, half-way up Mt Ohlsen-Bragg, whereupon Leigh suggested to him that the Almighty might have put a few chairlifts in, as He must have foreseen the opportunities for evangelical tourism years ago.

After paying the paltry sum of forty dollars to camp, we drove into the campsite proper. It was vast, and could cater for over six-hundred camping groups. It was probably only one quarter full, so we dawdled through, until we found a pretty little spot under a grove of desert gums. The local kangaroos thought that our campsite was good value, as well; they immediately came over to welcome us, and beg for food. I couldn't help but feel sorry for these poor, bedraggled creatures; the drought was obviously starting to take its toll, and one young mother, with a starved-looking joey in her pouch, hung around indolently while Leigh and I set up. We gave them nothing. You cant - it simply prolongs the inevitable. Life is tough, as we had to point out to a group of Spanish tourists, camped across the way, who were intent on feeding them.

Leigh cooked up a terrific little meal for us , and, as we were enjoying a post-prandial beer, a guy from another campsite wandered over.

"I've got a very nice scotch over at my campfire," he said by way of introduction. He was desperate for some male company, we figured, because he was here, from Adelaide, with his wife and two young daughters. We accepted his invitation, met his wife and the girls, who were lovely, and Jim (that was his name) proceeded to regale us with stories for the next couple of hours while he very liberally kept topping up our glasses. He was from a part of North Adelaide called Elizabeth, where many "ten-pound Poms" had settled after WWII, and we could detect a vaguely Lancashirean lilt in his voice, even though he was born here.

Later, I somehow managed to wrestle the zip of my tent fly open and collapse inside, only to be woken up after a dreamless coma by bright sunshine and squabbling crows. I was about to enjoy one of the best days of my life...

Killing

2008-10-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago, on the Richard Dawkins website, I copped a fair bit of stick for being too accommodating of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, when I dared to assert that their "terrorism" was no different in kind from that of Israel or the U.S. Now, I'm not particularly perturbed that anyone would want to criticise me for not condemning outright the excrescent behaviour of such groups, but it got me thinking about reality and its perception again, and the idea of pacifism.

Graham the Barbarian and I were discussing this while we were cleaning out his grease trap on Saturday; it was a pleasant bit of plumbing work that needed to be done, and, as Graham had given me a fairly big hand in the Christmas 2001 bushfires (and I suppose saving my family's life might be called that, although Graham reckoned, at the time, that it was a bit of a doddle and he'd do the same for a blackfella), cleaning the grease trap was on the peanuts side of the scale.

"The way I see it, Loz, you're not communicatin' your basic philosophy clearly enough."

"How so, old mate?" I asked, eager for some sage counsel. (You may recall that this is the bloke who's quite handy with a pair of electrician's pliers and a roll of gaffer tape, especially in the field of particle physics.)

"Violence is for kids. How long is it since you were in a blue?"

"What, you mean a real, fair dinkum stink, with fists and feet and blood? Ooh, gotta be thirty years, at least."

"Well, there you go, Loz; you're out of the loop, as the Yanks say. You don't remember the personal catharsis that comes when you have a real dust-up."

"Personal catharsis? Jesus, Graham, the fumes from this grease trap have got to you. What's personal catharsis got to do with giving a bloke a free dental espresso? The last time I got in a blue, it was with that clown of a football player that king-hit me. I wasn't thinking about catharsis when the surgeon was sewing my eyelid back on, I can tell you."

"You misunderstand me, mate." Graham dragged a particularly foul-looking bit of muck out of the bottom of the well and hurled it onto the pile we'd collected. "When you're a youngster, you've got this great big body that's grown out of all proportion to your brain. You're ruled by hormones, and you think you're bulletproof, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," I replied, wondering where all this was leading. Graham has a way of taking his time to get to the point, and it's no good pushing him along. He is, after all, a former soldier.

"Anyway," he resumed, "most of us grow out of the idea that rammin' your knee into a bloke's forehead contributes to world peace, if you get my drift. We find our cathartic substitutes elsewhere." (As soon as Graham the Barbarian - a feller who is happiest when he's stabbing a rampaging feral boar through the back of the neck with his broadsword - hitches three polysyllabic words in a row together, you stand back and prepare to run.)

"Er, go on - " I offered, tentatively.

"The point, mate, is that violence is adolescent. When you're young, your brain is made of cream cheese - you live in a cloud of half-understandin'. You get stuck in incomprehension, you can't work things out properly, you get frustrated with your lack of clear thinking, and the next available step is the one where you pick up the big stick and start cloutin' other blokes with it. Naturally, after you've finished cloutin', you feel like you've achieved something, and it makes you feel good. You haven't won the argument; you've just beaten your opponent into submission for a while. The trouble is, he'll always get back up a bit later and have another go. Unless you kill him. Most people, like I said, grow out of it. But sometimes they don't."

As this was the most that had ever come out of Graham's mouth in one go, I realised that he'd been thinking on the subject rather deeply. I probed a little more. "Tell me about the Army, mate."

"Ah, Loz, I didn't realise, until I'd been out of the Army for about ten years, just what they do to you there. They're all people who've had the ability to think properly trained right out of them. Orders are orders, and all that? Well, the bastards at the top are just as stupid as any dickhead private. Ever wondered why they recruit blokes from about eighteen years old? The standard line is that this is when a bloke is physically fittest, and it's true you want fitness in a soldier. But the more important reason is that this is when the brain is most pliable, and you can be made to believe that violence is not only justified, but it's the way to do things. The training is as much psychological as it is physical - they want fellers to continue to accept violence as an important tool well into their twenty and thirties.

" The other thing, Loz, is that violence works for them - the authorities, that is. In 'Nam, we just took all of that trained, ingrained violence and let loose. The brass knew we were all violent, and they liked it that way. But on patrol, we were a team; a rootin' tootin' load of gangsters with powerful weapons, and it made you feel good to have all of that violence in your hands. I loved it, for a while. Most of our "engagements", as my Lieutenant used to call them, were little fights where we'd take pot-shots at each other from a hundred yards away. I saw one or two enemy go down, and it might have been me that shot 'em, might not have.

"But then, one night on patrol near Bao Loc, I cut this Vietcong guy's legs off with my M16 - he would have been about sixteen years old, and I just ran into him in the middle of the night. It was pissin' down with rain, and before I knew it, I'd shot him to bits. I was real lucky, Loz - we saw each other at the same time through some bushes, but I already had my weapon at the ready. He lay on the ground with his legs completely fucked up, blood spurtin' everywhere, and I didn't have any option but to put one straight into his head. Havin' to do that is what caused me to get the shakes - I was no good to anyone after that night, and it wasn't long before they shipped me back home.

"The trouble is, I was in for one last big shock. I was ridin' in an American armoured vehicle that was going back to Saigon; we were going through a fairly safe part of the country. I was about to be sent back home; I was lookin' forward to getting out of 'Nam for good. This Yank gunner on the rig was showing me his big 30mm gun mounted on top of the thing. We were passin' through a paddy; he said "Watch this", and trained his gun on this bloke, about 400 yards away, working his ox in the field. Before I could say anything, he'd pulled the trigger, and the next thing I saw was this poor little farmer's head come clean off his shoulders. I was freakin' out, and this bastard just patted his gun and said "How good is this, pal?" He didn't give a fuck - he looked like it was just nothin' to him; he looked like he'd done it more than once. That poor farmer had nothin' to do with the war, and this prick just wanted to show off. That's the reason I fell apart when I got home."

I didn't say anything for a while - Graham had just told me a story he'd bottled up for thirty-five years. I didn't know what to say - what can you say?

Graham the Barbarian looked up at me, and said "Loz, I grieve for that young bloke I killed, every day, and every night. I didn't have anything against him; he was just this poor kid who was as scared as I was. That's what the morons who still think war is justified don't get. They think it's just an extension of a schoolyard stoush. They think it's glorious, but it's not - it's just shit, and you can't get over it."

Into the Flinders

2008-09-28T03:01:00.000-07:00

Both Leigh and I were at the end of our tether. We'd just driven from Cape Jarvis, on the Fleurieu peninsula, up north towards the Flinders Ranges. Along the way, we had to negotiate Adelaide. I've got nothing against cities, except for the fact that I really, really hate them. They are always identical; you get a bundle of suburbs that range between urban and industrial development, and then you get into the "Central Business District", a place where, supposedly, all of the "action" takes place. Except for the museums and galleries, and the occasional bit of fine architecture, cities leave me cold, and Adelaide was no exception.

We hit Adelaide on a Sunday afternoon, and, as a Sydneysider, I was expecting the "city of churches" to be something beautiful and quaint that would take my breath away. Instead, we spent nearly an hour meandering our way along a long road full of car yards, junk yards and knock shops. Somehow, we'd found our way into the seamiest side of Adelaide, and our despair was only relieved by seeing a pub that boasted "cold beer" on an illuminated sign hanging from its dilapidated facade. "Stop right here," commanded Leigh, who was really feeling the strain. We'd been away from city life for over two weeks, exploring a vast, unimaginably old, and beautiful landscape; to return to the human termites' nest was frankly excruciating.

Leigh was perfectly correct, as usual; a little pub, situated within a rabbit's warren of lunacy, provided, somehow, a respite from the idiocy that surrounded us. Coopers Ale, freezingly cold and delicious, bubbled up into big schooner glasses. A bunch of friendly, relaxed people enquired as to our health, and took great interest in our stories of exotica, mysterious places and the somewhat random variations in pub pool rules around the continent.

Partly appeased, we continued our mission to get the fuck out of Adelaide as quickly as possible. Eventually, we got onto the A1, the highway that heads north along the St Vincents Gulf coast. It was flat and humourless; a road that is, at the same time, too near a big city to be comfortable, and happily leading the traveller away from said city.

It was getting late; about a hundred or so kilometres north of Adelaide we pulled into Port Wakefield, a little hamlet that boasted a ridiculously charming array of limestone buildings from the time when the town was a major railhead for the wheat belt (defunct). We pulled into its only camping ground. As it was my turn to pay, I got out of the Volvo, walked into the office, and was promptly told by the proprietor that the camp-ground was fully occupied.

"But we've just driven around it," I objected. "There're plenty of vacant tent sites."

"Look mate," replied the owner, "when I say it's full, it's full, OK? There's a motel up the road." He went back to appearing busy with some papers on the desk. Jesus, I thought, I've finally met Basil Fawlty - he's moved to South Australia. I walked back out to the car, and considered just driving over to one of the numerous vacant tent sites and setting up. But then, with some disquiet, I remembered the "Bodies in the Barrels" murders of a year previously, a particularly gruesome series of murders in South Australia where the perpetrator had suffocated his victims (six or seven of them, from memory) and shoved their bodies into vats of hydrochloric acid. The murderer had not yet been caught, and I was starting to think that Basil a) might have a pretty good supply of pillows, scarves, etc., and b) could easily, as a camping-ground proprietor, get his hands on some fairly serious corrosive substances. We decided on the motel.

It was an excellent choice, because the motelier (is that a word?), Bill, was a charming, generous, funny and completely insane individual. No sooner had we walked into the office of the little courtyard motel, complete with water feature, than he began a series of one-liners as if he was warming up for a gig at Comedy Central. To make matters weirder, he was a grotesquely obese albino who looked as though he had just prised himself out of a coffin as the sun went down.

"You'll probably need these," he said, chucking a couple of packets of ear-plugs at us across the desk. "Honeymoon couple in the next room. They've been here two days, and I've already replaced two mattresses."

Leigh and I cast a quick glance at each other, and Bill continued. "Nah, I jest - but we do get a lot of semis screamin' through here at all hours of the night. Besides, by the look of you blokes, I'd say that at least one of you is a pretty loud snorer. Hey - you're not gay, are you?"

Flabbergasted, we confirmed that we weren't. "Only askin', cause there's a double bed in the room if you are." He seemed genuinely concerned for our comfort, and we walked out of the office feeling flattered and abused at the same time.

We cleaned up and decided on which of the pubs (all two of them) we'd patronise for dinner. We chose a tiny little limestone building that boasted a bar made of a single slab of some kind of petrified wood. It was a ridiculous thing - so pitted and wonky that it was virtually impossible to settle a glass of any description on it without the possibility of it falling over. No, I decided, the bar was simply a device to separate the patrons from the staff. Apart from that, the pub was a fascinating place, with old photographs of the town's pioneering days plastered all over the walls. The building itself was a marvel of rustic engineering - it was essentially a conglomeration of limestone rubble slapped into the shape of a pub, and quaint and delicate, for all that.

And the food was from heaven. We both decided on the "Roast of the Day", which turned out to be at least two or three pigs each, cooked and carved, and loaded onto plates the size and shape of the Hubble telescope's main mirror. One thing I can absolutely recommend to travellers in my beautiful country: eat at the pubs, because, most often, you will get good, wholesome and tasty food, plenty of it, and it won't cost the earth. Of course, if you're a cashed-up dickhead, feel free to patronise one of those uppity joints that put a leg of quail, drizzled with gold powder-infused cranberry sauce (tastefully arranged in the middle of an enormous plate) on your table, and call it "dinner". That'll be me quietly laughing in the corner as you empty your life savings into the till on the way out.

By the time we'd finished the meal, the bottle of Margaret River red, and a couple of Coopers, the horrors of having to drive through the city of Adelaide were far behind us. Life was good, and the pub even had a decent pool room, where we played a few games with some locals, and, as ever, found out lots about the vicissitudes of life in this amiable little corner of the world.

The next morning dawned hot and red. I say "dawned" quite literally, because we were up at the crack of it, a most uncommon occurrence for a bloke who has spent a good deal of his adult life actually retiring, vampire-like, before dawn. The reason for this out of character behaviour was that we had a very big day in front of us. We were going to try to get to Wilpena Pound by mid-afternoon, and along the way visit the Mount Remarkable National Park - in particular, a place curiously called Alligator Gorge. In all, there were about four hundred kilometres of driving, plus a two-hour walk in the middle of the day in front of us.

The first leg was a relatively quick 130k run to Port Pirie, at the top of the Spencer Gulf. Port Pirie is, basically, a lead smelter. Thousands of tonnes of the stuff are produced every year, giving Port Pirie residents the dubious distinction of having just about the highest levels of lead in their bodies in the entire world. We expected, as we rolled quietly through the early-morning streets, to see people with extra fingers, heads, etc. To our chagrin, the place was surprisingly normal, if unendurably odorous.

I was hanging for a really good double-shot, and to our surprise the only cafe open at 7.30 a.m. served up a ripper, perfectly doled out by an Italian guy who knew his business. I had to back up for seconds, then thirds.

By the time we got back in the car, I was totally wired. I felt like a speed freak, and wondered how that fencer at the Atlanta Olympics could have functioned with forty-something cups of coffee inside him. No wonder he was excluded from the competition; had he been allowed to compete his epee would have resembled a shish kebab skewer.

"Loz, for fuck's sake, slow down, will ya?" demanded Leigh as I valve-bounced the Volvo through the Woolworths carpark. "We're only trying to find the supermarket, not win Monaco!" He jumped out as soon as I skidded into a parking spot, and ran off into the bowels of Woolworths, no doubt desperate to void his own.

Well-stocked up on groceries and beer (and with Leigh looking three or four pounds lighter), we continued on towards Mount Remarkable N.P. This is the beginning of that most intriguing chain of mountains, the Flinders Ranges, a vastly old mountain range that stretches almost due north for hundreds of kilometres, neatly bifurcating the state of South Australia. On its eastern slopes and plains wheat and sheep are farmed; to the west there is nothing but desert, salt-lakes and uranium. (I exaggerate, of course; there's also the detritus of several nuclear weapons explosions in the 1950s which have left thousands of square miles of the desert not only naturally dry and inhospitable to humans and any other unfortunate animals that happen to wander across the rocky plains, but fatally radioactive. Thanks, England!)

We arrived at the park's visitor centre, and, being the only people the staff had seen for about thirty-five years, were treated as if we were gods who had just stepped out of an aeroplane in New Guinea in 1930 loaded with mirrors and beads. I half expected the bloke behind the desk to accuse me of some cultural blasphemy, or spirit-stealing, when I snapped a photo of him and his female co-worker. He was pretty good about it, though, and we only had to spend the next three hours tied upside down to a tree while he painted us in goat's blood and danced around rattling a very big spear.

(For American readers, I just made that last bit up.)

The rangers plied us with every sort of useful information, including several and repeated admonishments to "take plenty of water with you", a refrain we were to hear iterated endlessly as we made our way north. And you know, I think the locals were onto something. In this part of the world, water is indeed a scarce commodity, so much so that when you do come across a stream that is actually flowing (and this happened only once in the following two weeks), you feel like singing a hymn to the glory of Quetzacoatl. (I knew I'd eventually get Jonathon into this story.)

We still had a fair drive, through Nectar Brook (no water), Mambray Creek (ditto), Chinaman Creek (you guessed it), before we came to Alligator Gorge. We alighted from the Volvo, strapped forty gallons of water each to our backs, and walked into a world before time. Alligator Gorge is a reminder that there was once water, and plenty of it, flowing through this part of the world. Great buttresses of blocked sandstone, hundreds of feet high, and often only thirty feet between their walls, testify to a violent geological childhood. We wandered, amazed, between these soaring walls of rock, acutely aware of their age, which was in the hundreds of millions of years - an unfathomable time-span. The National Parks service had conveniently placed descriptions and explanations of what we were seeing along the route. At one such, we were told of the evolution of the many floral species indigenous to the area. Some intellectual, obviously better endowed than the entire scientific community, had chiselled into the metal plaque "Evoluton is bulshit. God made the wordl." It was heartening information, and thus armed, we climbed back out of that place of magic, mystery and illiteracy.

After all of that exertion, we needed a waterhole, preferably with a dining room attached. It wasn't long before we pulled into the dusty, deserted town of Quorn, and met the goddess of the Austral Hotel.

(...to be continued.)

The twilight zone...

2008-09-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

(Prologue: My wife was reading this, just before, and said to me "Laurie, no-one reading this is going to believe a word of it!" I swear on my father's grave that the following is 100% true.)

I was in first year at uni, studying philosophy. One day, in a packed lecture theatre, some young blokes were mucking around up the back, not far from where I was sitting. Eventually, the lecturer stopped, looked up at them, and said "If you fellows aren't interested in this, then I advise you to clear out and let others who are concentrate."

Another young bloke, a good student who'd I'd met briefly in tutorial sessions, turned towards these guys and said "You heard him - fuck off, why don't you?"

About five of these guys got up from their seats, muttering threats and curses, and trundled off into the sunshine outside.

After the lecture, I was sitting outside with a group of students, when the ringleader of the dopey brigade came up and grabbed the young feller who'd echoed the lecturer's words. He started to go on about how he was going to take him apart, etc, etc, all the while dragging this poor guy, who was half his size, around the courtyard by the scruff of the neck.

I was thirty, then, and a lifetime of surfing, and a few years of hard manual labour, had turned me into a fairly solid bloke. I was 6'1", and about two pick-handles across the shoulders. Not that I was any sort of fighter; I'd always agreed with my dear old mother that "He who turns and runs away, lives to run another day." But I simply couldn't stand by and see this kid (who was as weedy as they come) get terrorised by an idiot.

I stood up, went over to the two of them, and grabbed the aggressor by the shoulder. He turned to see a bloke about five inches taller than himself holding a fist, cocked and ready to let go.

"You've got three seconds to decide whether you're gonna fuck off now, or stay and get smashed all over this courtyard. Two, one..."

He wrenched himself away from me and bolted. The young guy, who was shaking like a leaf, thanked me profusely. I said "No problem, mate; you said the right thing in the lecture theatre."

And that was that. I think the kid must have dropped out of uni, because I didn't see him again.

A couple of years later, I was doing a gig in Bathurst, a big town in the central west of NSW, about 250 kilometres from Sydney. We were playing at the Park Hotel, and it was a special night, because it was the last night this current line-up of the band would be playing together. We'd had a very good run, and attracted a large following in the west, but various members of the band were moving on to new things, so we'd decided to finish our time together at the place it had all begun, the Park.

The Park was a room that could handle about two hundred people; not a huge place, but sufficient for our hard-core fans. Consequently, we didn't need a huge P.A. rig, so we just brought the bare minimum plus our sound engineer. This meant, of course, that the band members had to lug the gear into the joint. It was mid-afternoon when we got there, and there was a big table full of bikies - I can't remember whether they were Bandidos or Comancheros - all sitting exactly in the spot where we had to locate the P.A. system. There must have been twenty of them, and it looked like they'd been there most of the day, because there was plenty of noise issuing from the table. I spotted the bloke who appeared to be head honcho; I could tell, because he had the biggest beard, the longest hair, the loudest voice, and was sitting smack dab in the middle of the group.

I walked up to him and said "G'day, mate - we've got to set up for the band tonight. Can I ask you fellers to move over to another table?"

He grunted at me, and waved his hand as if to say "OK". We went back to the truck and continued to load in, dumping all the gear on the dance floor in front of the stage. Eventually, I went back over to the bikies and said, "Well, we're ready to set all this up; would you guys mind moving now?"

"No worries, mate," replied the captain.

We fiddled around with things we could do for another ten minutes, but it didn't look as though our Harley-lovin' mates were going to move anytime soon, so eventually I went back over and said (very sternly), "Now, I've asked you blokes very nicely a couple of times to move away so we can do our work; now, how about you all pick up your drinks, get on your feet and FUCK OFF to that table over there?"

At this, the captain rose to his feet, pulled a double set of false-teeth out of his mouth, slammed them on the table, assumed the position, eyeballed me and said "RIGHT!"

I don't know what came over me at that point. Maybe mother's philosophy was echoing in the back of my mind. In any event, there was no way I was escaping from this situation. The false teeth were staring at me from the table. I unzipped my fly, pulled my penis out, and with a great big grin said to the captain "Oh, thanks very much!"

There are moments in one's life when time seems to dilate; when reactions slow down, and the world stops revolving, just for a little while.

The captain looked at me, and suddenly a smile, then a grin, began to spread across his toothless face. He started to wheeze, with a breathy, uncertain, phlegmy sound. "Hee...hee...ha, ha, hawwwwwwwh!" He cracked up, fully, completely, dissolutely. As did his brothers. Before long, the entire table full of bikies was a train-wreck of hilarity. I, on the other hand, was standing on the floor with my heart in my mouth and my dick in my hand.

The captain, still in hysterics, came around the table, scooping up his teeth and shoving them back in his mouth. He put a great big arm, encased in leathers, around my shoulders, and said to his assembled cadres in a voice of complete authority , "This guy is has got balls!"

The assembled crew were pissing themselves; the captain finally said, sotto voce, "You can put your dick away now, sunshine."

Of course, we were now all best mates. When they realised we were the west's biggest R&B/Boogie band, our status grew even more. Chalker, the captain, insisted on coming into the band room and rolling several joints of the most evil dope I've ever tasted; his mates made sure that the bar staff kept the drinks up to us.

It was a great gig. Far from the two hundred or so that we'd expected, about a thousand people had jammed themselves into the room. The place was rockin' hard. When that many are congregated together, and expecting so much, it is almost impossible, as a muso, to put a foot wrong. All night we rocked and rolled. It was one of the great gigs, and I'll remember it forever.

One tiny incident marred the night. While we were having a break, I was walking across the room to talk to some of the fans. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a disturbance. In one corner of the dance floor, two guys were getting into an altercation. The one was big, aggressive and drunk. The other was short, thin, and obviously in trouble.

"Oh, no," I thought to myself. I just couldn't let this continue. The big guy was really looking for an excuse to do some damage; that much was obvious. He had hold of the little bloke's throat, and was about to unleash a big one on him. I took three big strides, reached out, turned the big galah around and threw a knee straight into his groin. He dropped like a rock, and began to groan, waving his hands around the afflicted region as if one of these days he might be able to magic away the horrific pain in his pants. He was not getting up in a hurry, and I refrained from putting the boot in. I turned around to tell the little bloke that escape was the better part of valour in this situation, and, lo and behold, it was exactly the same guy I'd rescued at the Uni two years before!

We looked at each other for a second, then both of us did a double take, a triple take, and finally a quadruple with pike. He managed to mutter "Oooh, fuck!", then turned around and bolted out the door.

I have never seen him since, but you never know...

Disability is a state of mind

2008-09-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

In 1975 I was working in a band out of Newcastle. The keyboard player was a guy whose nickname was "Wheels", largely due to the fact that he hung around in a wheelchair, as a result of being run over by a car when he was fifteen. He'd been a promising athlete, playing football and other sports, and one day was simply crossing the road (on a pedestrian crossing) when a lunatic cleaned him up. He was a paraplegic with no feeling below the waist, except that his excretory and sexual functions still worked fine. (Sorry to belabour you with the plumbing details, but Wheels was not shy about talking about it, so neither should I be.)

He was fit and immensely strong, when I knew him. I once asked him, half jokingly, to bring my guitar amp over to me. He just reached down, picked the thing up with one hand, held it above his head, wheeled over to me using his other hand, and plonked it on the floor next to me. "You lazy prick," he said.

His only concession to his disability was when he needed to go up a flight of stairs. In that case, one of us would get behind, the other in front, and we'd carry him up or down. In just about everything else, he was completely able. (We did play a few tricks on him, from time to time; once, at Forster, while he was in the pool, we stole his wheelchair and went to the pub. He was furious; he'd had to drag himself around the pool perimeter and back to the hotel reception, where an aghast receptionist had to phone the bar to retrieve the wheelchair. Fuck, it was funny.)

Wheels was notoriously hard on his means of conveyance. He was always breaking the wheels and frame of his chair; he'd often complain that wheelchairs were "built for namby-pamby poofters. They should just wheel the bastards around in a pram." He would cross the road, take a flying run at the opposite gutter, and smash the chair up onto the footpath. Consequently, his chair was held together by bits of welding rod and wire. It was an ugly sight. He generally did all the repairs on it himself.

His stubborn independence made him immensely likeable, and he was always surrounded by a bevy of young women. Christ, he could pull the girls, and would offer them rides around the place - of course, they'd have to sit on his lap. When we were on tour, the girls looked after his (ahem) every need.

His one major downfall was that he was a notoriously horrible driver. He owned a big muscle car - a 351 Ford coupe, that he'd had modified. The steering-wheel had a big knob which he'd hold onto with his left hand, while his right would operate a lever which controlled the brakes and throttle. Nobody wanted to be his passenger, but sometimes it was unavoidable.

"Jesus, Wheels," I cried one day as we were tearing through the suburbs at high speed, "one cripple in this car's enough - don't make two of us, for Chrissake!"

"Oh, then just shut your eyes, ya coward," was his only reply.

The band got a job on the S.S. Oriana, a cruise ship that did two- and four- week cruises around the south sea islands. It was a good gig; we played every night for about three hours in the auditorium or one of the main bars on board, except when we were in port, in which case we were free to disembark and see the sights.

The Oriana was an ageing, stately old ship that only had a few more seasons in her when we were working on it. Apart from two elevators, it had no concessions to "wheelchair access", as it's said, so the only way up or down between decks were these narrow stairwells, otherwise Wheels had to trundle a fairly long way to the elevator, then a fairly long way back to where he wanted to be. He always opted for the short-cut, and got pretty good at holding onto the bannisters and thumping his way down the stairs. Consequently, we were only a few days into the cruise before his wheelchair gave up the ghost and fell completely to bits.

Now, by this time, Wheels had become a firm favourite with many of the passengers and crew. He was continually pissed as a newt, because everyone wanted to buy him a beer. So, when his wheelchair carked it, a few of the crew-members took it upon themselves to see if the ship's engineers could fix it. They took it away, and gave him a replacement, for the time being, of an old wheelchair that was to a modern one like a penny-farthing is to a sleek racing-bike. Wheels was fairly embarrassed by this old clunker, and was mighty relieved when his own machine was returned to him.

And not just relieved - amazed and overjoyed. The engineers had taken to their task with alacrity. In fact, with the exception of the wheels themselves, which had been reinforced around the rim (they'd even manufactured new spokes for the wheels), the entire contraption was brand new! They had made an industrial-strength wheelchair, with cambered axles, a new design for the front trailing wheels, a hugely complex and robust frame, and an ingenious suspension system. Wheels was in heaven. Years later, that same basic design became standard for wheelchair athletes; my friend's was the prototype.

Wheels spent hours testing the machine out; he'd career around the outside deck at high speed, pulling incredibly sharp turns, and occasionally coming a gutser. I was afraid that, in his perpetually inebriated state, he'd hit the guardrail and catapult himself into the sea below.

One afternoon, he and I were having a quiet drink in the main auditorium. There was tiered seating around the perimeter of a huge dance floor, and we'd decided to go right up to the top level to get the view. There were three or four dozen other passengers in the place, all with the same idea. We were somewhere between Fiji and Tonga. I'd helped Wheels up the series of low steps to the top, and we were chatting away with a couple of G&Ts in front of us.

Suddenly the ship took a bit of a lurch to the side, probably hit by a bigger than normal wave. The wheelchair rolled back just far enough for its back wheels to go over the first step, and Wheels and his conveyance tumbled all the way down to the dance floor, where the chair skidded away, out to the middle of the room, while Wheels was left in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

At this sight, of course, I just completely cracked up. I dissolved into gales of unbridled laughter. Tears were streaming down my face as Wheels gave me a sour look and began to drag himself across to the middle of the dance floor. It was a painful sight, but hilarious. He grabbed the wheelchair, turned it back onto its wheels, and crawled up into the seat. He wheeled back over to the bottom step, stopped, and called up to me "Well, are you gonna sit there laughing all day or are you gonna give me a hand up?"

I went down and helped him back up. We took up our drinks and continued as before. My only concession to the event was to say "You OK, mate?"

"Didn't feel a thing," he replied sarcastically.

Just then, I noticed an eerie silence in the room. I looked up and around, and noticed that everyone in the place was looking at me as though I was the worst, most evil animal to grace the earth since Goebbels. They just didn't get it. The mood was definitely dark; I was hoping that some goon wasn't going to come over and punish me for my bad manners. I decided to lighten things up.

"Hey, guys," I said to all and sundry, "it's rude to stare. Haven't any of you seen an idiot in a wheelchair before?"

Where angels fear to tread

2008-09-18T02:12:00.001-07:00

I've always been suspicious of creationism. Well, not exactly the belief itself, which is easy to understand: a being which we shall call "God" created the Earth and its inhabitants before he bothered about the rest of the universe, and then had the first woman chatted up by a talking snake, the result of which being that if you don't prostrate yourself before this God's son, who was a zombie who hung around in a distinctly abnormal relationship with twelve other blokes, many of whom were fishos (and that tells you a lot), this God who loves you to bits will cast you into a lake of fire for eternity where the gentleman with the horns and pointy tail does his business.

No, what worries me is the mental calibre of the people who subscribe to this particular belief system, and want to enforce it on the general population (good and wholesome as it undoubtedly is).

When I was a young feller, a few mates and I would irregularly attend the gospel services of the Assemblies of God church in Hamilton, Newcastle. We did this for one of the following reasons:

1. We were interested in discovering the answers to the "big" questions of life, as all inquisitive young men of that age are.

2. We were intrigued by the goings-on there, including the propensity of various and sundry parishioners to participate in the mesmeric, ullulate practice of "speaking in tongues".

3. We were impressed by the lucid explanations afforded us as to the origins of life on earth, and the simultaneous logical rejection of the evil called "evolution".

4. There were young chicks who went to this church who we considered to be eminently fuckable.

I'm fairly sure you can guess which one of these criteria took the biscuit.

Well, by this stage of my life, I was pretty confident that I knew absolutely everything there was to know; after all, I was sixteen, right? So, with the confidence that only extremely large doses of testosterone can give you, I became good at making my opinions known in an absolutely unmistakeable way. One of the things I knew for sure was that religion was bullshit. The Billy Graham crusade in 1967 had been an epiphany for me; apart from getting hold of a couple of mammalian protuberances for the first time (see below), it had taught me that snake-oil merchants had not gone extinct just after the garden of Eden episode. Billy was one of them - a guy who later went on to say that his best friends were Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr; so while Reagan was murdering Niceraguans, Billy was in the kitchen of the White House making iced tea and praying that his mate would get over the line in the 1984 elections.

Fueled up on testosterone and skepticism, my mates and I invaded the Assemblies of God. One Sunday night was a "special" night - the minister of the church had advertised that he was going to "refute the atheistic doctrine of evolution and reveal God's truth". I knew this because my spy in the church, a girl who I'd gone out with once or twice, and whose parents were raving pentecostal nut-jobs, showed me the newsletter this minister would put out once a week advertising churchy-type goings-on. This was 1969; the Moon landing had just occurred, and my mates and I were filled with a kind of righteous, evangelical pride in science and everything scientific. This latest buffoonery needed to be opposed, was going to be opposed, so help me Werner von Braun! We laid our plans.

The evening in question came about, and three mates and I, dressed in paisley shirts, coats, very thin black ties, black denim jeans and Beatle boots (fashion being intelligent in those days), disposed ourselves quietly about the church hall. The only problem that might discombobulate our plans was that one of the mates, Chris, had spent the afternoon at a friend's place invading the absent parents' liquor cabinet. He'd polished off half a bottle of creme de menthe, and, apart from smelling like a cross between a doctor's surgery and a lolly-shop, was having trouble co-ordinating the vestibular system and the perambulatory cortex. For the layman, this means he was fucking legless. We managed to get him into a seat, and whispered sternly to him to keep his trap shut. An old lady, one of the grande dames of the congregation, came in shortly after and sat down beside him. The rest of us were freaking - if Chris did anything stupid, then all our plans were laid waste.

Now, it was a practice of this church to indulge in the pastime of "speaking in tongues", or glossolalia, to use the medical term. This was an event I'd witnessed a couple of times, and one that had filled me with a morbid curiosity. In this church, being "filled with the spirit" meant that a parishioner would rise to his (or more usually her - go figure, atheist girls) feet, and begin to vocalise in a quasi - speech pattern way. they'd hold their hands up in the air and start to intone things like this: Ahmakalinda davra karmakarmakarmachameleon, and so-on, for a couple of minutes, with a look of ecstatic concentration on their faces, and their eyes shut tight. It was very amusing, but also intriguing, because another member of the congregation would always get up and profess to be able to interpret the message from the said afflicted glossolalialist. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, dear reader?

This lunacy was too good to resist.

After the initial prayers, and a hymn from Sankey's Sacred Songbook, where we all got up to sing a ragged version of "Nearer My God to Thee", it was time for the pastor to let loose on the evils of evolution. He was a little guy about five-feet four, thirty-five or so years old, who had a mouth that was as dynamic as the words that came out of it were cretinous. He was a vapid moron with intense glassy eyes who frolicked around the stage yelling one inanity after another. I'd seen him in action a few times before, and already hated him with a passion.

"Friends," the drongo began, "today I want to tell you a story. It's one of the most beautiful stories in all of history, and one of the most terrible. It tells us of the Eden we all may have had if we had just followed the command of God. But one fine day, the mother of all mankind disobeyed our Lord, and since then we have been in the bond of SIN! AND EVIL! AND WICKEDNESS!"

The staccato volley of high-volume terrors was obviously designed to wake up any member of the congregation who might have thought that a late-afternoon doze could have been the order of the day. He continued in this vein for a while, reminding us of the power of sin over our lives, and the incredible burden of Christ's sacrifice. It was making me feel queazy, and I looked over at Chris, whose face was beginning to take on the hue of the liqueur he'd been unwisely quaffing all afternoon.

"And so, friends, we come to the greatest evil ever devised by a man. The evils of Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin and Kruschev have nothing on the evil this man perpetrated on the world. CHARLES DARWIN WAS THE SON OF SATAN HIMSELF!"

It was time to act. As planned, I rose from my seat, put my hands above my head, closed my eyes, raised my head towards the ceiling and began to call out in a very loud voice "Delam arkel oprodin balesque i todanti felkurn condrit a chenba lal entwokan!"

I started to rock backwards and forwards while I continued uttering completely ridiculous noises. I opened my eyes, and saw the entire congregation staring at me, transfixed. The pastor, too, had been stopped dead in his tracks, and was eyeballing me with a look of utter consternation.

The trouble for them was that they were in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, I had disrupted the pastor's sermon, but, on the other, I was having a moment of rapture which was regarded by this church as being a gift from god. They could hardly shut me up, now, could they?

At this moment mate number one, Colin, jumped out of his seat and began to jitterbug across the front of the church, bellowing unintelligibly in a succession of wild howls. To make things worse, mate number two, John, came over to me, put his hands on my head (I was still doing the cosmic rumba), and began to yell at the top of his voice "MY BROTHERS, MY FRIEND HAS A MESSAGE FROM THE LORD JESUS HIMSELF - PASTOR WHITTICOMB IS THE DEVIL'S AGENT ON EARTH. BE NOT BEHOLDEN TO THIS MAN - HE IS LEADING HIS FLOCK DOWN THE PATHWAY TO ETERNAL TORMENT. CHRIST SAYS IT IS SO: EVOLUTION IS TRUE, IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT!"

He didn't get a chance to say anything more, because, at this moment, mate number three, Chris, got staggeringly to his feet, but instead of carrying out his part of the choreography, turned to his right and, loudly and copiously, vomited all over the matron sitting next to him. She was covered in green slime (with carrots!), and let out a scream of outrage and anguish.

"Oooh, fuck!", I thought to myself. Sure enough, five or six fairly big blokes, who had sussed that things were not quite kosher, grabbed hold of the lot of us and gave us the biggest bum's rush, straight down the aisle and out the front doors, then proceeded to give us a good old-fashioned evangelical hiding on the street in front of the church.

We finally managed to tear ourselves away. Even Chris seemed to have been a bit sobered up by several blows to the head, because he was running faster than anybody. The thugs gave up the chase, and we ran, trailing blood from several open wounds, into a nearby park, where we all collapsed under a tree. We checked our wounds, which were really only superficial, except that I had a great big shiner that made my girlfriend avoid me for the next week or so. Sitting under that tree, one of us began to chuckle. Before long, the four of us were rolling on the ground hooting and braying with undisguised joy. Good had been done, and plenty of it!

The following Friday evening, the Assemblies of God church in Hamilton was burned to the ground. Police reports confirmed that the cause was arson.

I prefer to believe that it was an Act of God.

Vote for me, and I'll punch your lights out

2008-09-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

It's dark. I'm getting out of bed. I look at the clock. It's 5.30 A.M! What the fuck is going on? What am I doing putting my clothes on at this unconscionable hour? That's right, it's election day. I'm going to spend all day driving around to various polling booths, handing out how-to-vote cards, chatting with the crew from the Labor Party, and punching the lights out of the morons in the Liberals. (I wish.)

This election, I'm a candidate. A minor one, to be sure; some in the party wanted me to run at number two on the ticket, but I declined in favour of one of our bright young blokes who really wants to be elected. So I'm number four, which means there's no chance whatsoever of being elected, unless the voters of this region have a collective epiphany and decide that the Greens should rule the world. Fat fucking chance - this is one of the most conservative electorates in the State. It's so conservative that the local council is almost always made up of about three-quarters comatose god-botherers, real-estate agents and dodos from the Liberal Party, and one or two "progressives", including a good mate of mine, also a Green. And, anyway, I'm not really interested in being elected. I prefer to be one of those scheming, back-room party hacks (practises fiendish snigger and sideways glance).

I've got all my election paraphernalia - leaflets, badges, corflutes (which are just corrugated and plasticised posters), sunscreen, t- shirts, hat, condoms (well, you never know) - already packed in the Volvo, and I head out for the fray.

I get to the first booth at about six; I'm going to set up a few of these so the workers can just rock up at eight, when polling begins, and start handing out. Most of the polling-booths are at local schools, so you tie your corflutes to a handy spot near the front gate, get the card table out, put the box of gear on top and all's ready.

I pull up, and, as usual, the Liberals are already here. Now, I've got to tell you that six o'clock in the morning is really, really early for an old muso to get out of bed, let alone be that organised to actually do anything other than shuffle around the kitchen making triple-shots and smoking cigarettes. So I always feel despondent at election-time, after seriously disrupting my natural diurnal rhythms (and feeling mighty chuffed that I've actually managed the early rising thing again), to find these ratbags already there, with about a hundred corflutes monopolising all the real-estate, looking so fucking chipper, as if a six-o'clock rise is a bit of a sleep-in.

I carry the gear over and size up the situation. The two Liberals, old retirees in ridiculous yellow t-shirts, are involved in earnest conversation about superannuation and investment portfolios, using a vocabulary which to me resembles a sorcerer's incantation. I mean, what the fuck is a "levered fiscal brokerage", or whatever it is that the idiot's talking about? And besides, how can anyone be polysyllabic at this time of the morning?

They've already put a line of eight corflutes on each side of the fence adjacent to the gate.

"Er, fellers," I interrupt them, "are you gentlemen interested in the concept of equity?"

They look at me as though I've invited the Devil to a funeral. "What're you talkin' about, son?" says one.

"Well, there's about five political parties going to be handing out today; don't you think it would be equitable for each of us to have just a pair of corflutes surrounding the gate?"

"Well if you Greenies got out of bed a bit earlier, you'd probably get a space." He gives his mate a wink as though he's Billy Connolly, and they both crack up.

"Do you want me to take your posters down, or will I just staple mine over the top of yours?" I enquire.

"You won't touch anything, pal," the larger of the two says in his best "Fuck you" voice.

"Well, I will, mate, or we'll all go in and have a word with the returning officer." They're a bit unsettled at this, because they know that the returning officer at the booth can make whatever rules she likes about behaviour at the polling-place, and most returning officers like equanimity at their booths. They look at each other, and one of them goes to remove the signs furthest from the gate.

"No, I'll have the second spot," I say. They acquiesce; round one to me. I put the corflutes on the fence, set up the table and stick the box of leaflets on top. "Now, be good chaps and keep your eye on that gear for me. I've got to go and set up some more booths."

They're in a bind, and they know it. If they disturb any of my gear, it amounts to tampering with election material, a criminal offence, and they've been around long enough to know that any stupidity won't do them any favours. I'm pretty confident it'll remain safe, and I jump in the car, give them a cheery wave, and head off. You crafty bugger, I say to myself.

I set up the other booths without incident, and it's eight o'clock. Voting time. In Australia, it is compulsory to vote if you're over eighteen and a citizen. This is a very good thing, in my opinion, although not without its problems, for instance ensuring that a sizeable proportion of the voters come to the booth with no fucking idea what they're doing. Oh well, at least they get a kind of a picture about just what the word "democracy" means. And, maybe one day, they'll take enough interest to do enough research to make an intelligent choice. On second thoughts - nah.

I'ts the early rush, and I'm handing out and chatting to the woman from the Labor Party. An old geezer in a cardigan, shiny pants and sensible shoes walks past me and I offer him a leaflet and say something like "Greens for a healthy planet, mate." He stops, squints into my face with rheumy eyes, and says "Fuck off."

A middle-aged matron is complaining loudly to one and all that this "voting business" is an imposition on her Saturday. She does the rounds of the table with all of the party workers, then fixes me with a stare and says "And youse greenies are the worst."

I size her up and reply "Well, if I give you a hundred bucks, you can use it as a down-payment on a one-way ticket to North Korea, madam. Then you won't have to worry about voting ever again." Lame, I know - but these ignoramuses don't realise just what they've got. My Labor friend chips in: "Your vote's not a right; it's a privilege, sweetheart. But for all of our sakes, just write 'I'm an idiot' on your ballot paper and pop it in the box."

"Nice work, Sheila," I say to her after the idiot has gone. "Chalk up another vote for Labor?"

Towards the middle of the day I get relieved, and now my job for the next few hours is to run around the booths making sure that the workers have got enough leaflets, give them some cold water, relieve them for ten minutes, etc. I'm one of the organisers for the party, so I give myself this job most election days. It involves about 150 k of driving, but that's OK - I get to see all the workers, and resolve any conflicts. We're all on mobile phones, and occasionally our workers get some flak from other booth workers (almost invariably Liberals - which is part of the reason I hate their guts), so sometimes I have to sort out a problem.

I get to one of the booths, and one of our workers, who owns a crane truck, has parked his vehicle right outside the gates to the school with the crane up, completely festooned with Greens signs and streamers. It's a work of art, completely dominating the landscape. There he is, handing out, and I go up to him and say "You're a fucking genius, Shamus!"

"Gotta be worth a few votes, just for the lunacy of it, Laurie," he replies, with a great big grin.

The rest of the day proceeds without any major difficulties, and at six o'clock I start packing up a couple of booths. I've got a feeling that we might have done well. It's time for the after-party.

Most of the workers roll up, in dribs and drabs, to the Greens councillor's place, who just so happens to be Leigh, my mate from the road adventure. (I thought I'd leave that little bit of information until now, just for the sake of theatric surprise. Aren't I good to you, dear reader?)

Apart from being a great travelling companion, Leigh is a committed Councillor. An excellent public speaker, who can deliver superb, articulate and passionate speeches off the cuff, he is also a voracious political animal. Oh, and he lives in one of the most beautiful homes I've ever seen; mud-brick and huge, old hardwood beams, based on an octagon - all designed and built by himself.

And you thought he was just a drunk. Shame! (Oh, all right - it was my fault. But I do enjoy creating his character in the tales of our road trip, and I only have to embellish it a little.)

Leigh has easily got back into council, and we gather around the computer to see if our second candidate will get up. The night goes on and our fortunes wax and wane. By the end of the night's counting, we are on a knife-edge. We won't know for days if the second candidate gets in, so we sit around drinking beer and doing plenty of speech-making that becomes more and more disordered and ridiculous as the night wears on.

If nothing else, the Greens know the true meaning of political "party".

Back in gaol

2008-09-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

For some strange reason, I was teaching maths. I'm not a maths teacher, but when the bloke doing the job up and left one day, Allan, my boss, said to me "Laurie, you'd know a bit of maths, wouldn't you?"

I actually found teaching maths to be extraordinarily rewarding. As I had no idea how to do it, it was a case of "make it up as you go along."

The gaol's governor was looking for some projects for some of the inmates, who were not working, to occupy their time. I told him that it would be a good idea to build a sundial out in the middle of the yard, so my maths students and I got to work to try and figure out how to do it.

Wayne was a guy of about 24 who had been in and out of gaol most of his life, right back to juvenile justice times. He was a chancer; a young gun who just ran with the crowd and picked up whatever bits of (completely illegal) work he could get his hands on - running messages between fat big-timers and politicians, working the streets for brothel-owners, and a couple of stints as a tough-boy. He'd also picked up a pretty serious heroin addiction along the way, but was having a fairly good go of staying clean. He wasn't a bad feller, considering, but he'd had absolutely no education to speak of. He attached himself to me; he thought I was a pretty good bloke, for a square-head.

Well, Wayne, the rest of the boys and I came up with a solution to our sundial project, begged and borrowed bits of gear from the workshop, and got down to it. Wayne was good at things like digging holes in the ground; he went at that spade-work like a man on a mission, which gave me pause to wonder exactly what type of holes he'd had occasion to dig in his past.

So we built a fairly nifty little sundial, with a flower bed around it. It looked great, and, to top it off, you could set your watch by it. We were all standing around it, admiring our handiwork, when Wayne said "You know, Laurie, it's a pity I'm getting released in a couple of weeks - I'd like to be around when the equinox comes."

"Bloody hell, Wayne," I replied with some astonishment, "the next thing we're gonna hear about you is you've become head astronomer at the Sydney observatory."

About two years later I was walking through the yard on the way to the education unit, when a voice called out "Hey, Laurie!"

It was Wayne, back again. "Wayne, what are you doing back here? I thought you were on the straight and narrow."

"Well, it's a bit of a said story, Laurie," he said, somewhat sheepishly. We sat down in the sun, and I listened.

I was doin' alright (said Wayne) - livin' with me dad up at Lake Macquarie. But then an old mate came around one day and I had a hit. Well, from there it just went downhill - I was back on the gear like I'd never been off it.

Well, one night I was hangin' out. I had no gear, no money, and I couldn't stand the idea of goin' through a night with the turkey. So I put me balaclava on, got the old man's shotgun out of the wardrobe, and went up to the bottle-o just up the street.

I walked into the joint and stuck the shottie in the face of the owner, and said "This is a stick-up. Hand over all the money."

The bloke just looked at me, and said "Wayne, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

I ripped off the balaclava and said "How did you know it was me, Terry?"

He said "Wayne, I gave your father that shotgun."

Surfing

2008-09-06T02:37:00.000-07:00

I've only ever been passionate about one sport: surfing. I've played cricket, of course, and thoroughly enjoyed it (in fact, I only retired from comp cricket two seasons ago.) But, as a participator sport, nothing beats screaming down the face of an eight-foot wave, carving a big bottom turn and locking into the tube.

I started riding a board when my cousin John gave me his big, nine-foot balsa (true!) plank in 1963. He had upgraded to a "poly", a board made of foam and fibreglass. Surfing was a comparatively new sport; it had only really been popular for about ten years, and so, at the age of ten, I became one of the early enthusiasts of the sport in Australia.

The board John had given me, although made of balsa wood, was heavy. But this turned out to be somewhat of an advantage, because it floated on the water with the stability of an aircraft carrier. The first time I took it out was in a moderate surf with glassy, three-foot waves gently rolling in. I turned the board, laboriously, as a wave came towards me, paddled as hard as I could, and voila - the thing was skimming across the water as if under its own volition. I jumped to my feet, and because the thing was so stable, and I was so small, I could have probably done a couple of cartwheels on it. As it was, without much elegance, I rode all the way into the beach, triumphant to the last. I was hooked.

My dad rigged up a little trolley that we attached to the back of my bike, and I would pedal into the beach every Saturday and Sunday and spend hour after hour in surfing heaven. The other, older surfers, would always laugh at the skinny kid with the "antique", but I didn't care. I would paddle out to the bombora at Nobbys Beach with them, a distance of about five hundred metres, and take my chances with these huge, booming mountains of water that would, at least half of the time, remind me of how puny I was, as I copped one horrific wipeout after another. I was lucky, really; I only ever got hit by the board a couple of times - I learnt pretty quickly that if I was about to get wiped out, the best policy was to dive for the bottom and not come up until the coast was clear. Of course, I was then faced with a swim of a couple of hundred yards to retrieve the board - boy, did I get fit.

So, by about twelve, I was a pretty confident surfer, and bloody good swimmer to boot. I used to win all of the distance swimming events at school carnivals, even though I had a "surf" swimming style that lacked the grace and efficiency of the pool-trained swimmers.

When the surf was too big and rough to ride boards, we used to swim out with a pair of flippers (they're called "fins" these days), and body-surf the gnarliest, horribilest monsters around - ten-foot close-outs that would give you about two seconds of flying down the face before the whole shebang would close in on you and send you screaming through the washing-machine, arms and legs flailing, striving to keep some air in the lungs. It was fantastic. The older guys, whom I idolised, would keep a look-out for me in these adventures; they turned out to be really fine young blokes, and had long-forgotten their early disdain of the geeky kid on the plank.

In 1966 my parents bought me a new board. It was a six-foot three Hutchinson - sleek and beautifully shaped. It cost them $120 - a fortune back in those days. It changed my life.

I was now able to do lots of the things the plank had never allowed me: huge cut-backs and re-entries; it allowed me to really command how the wave would be ridden. If the conditions were right, I could power back and let the tube engulf me until I was right on the point of being picked up and wiped, but I could then easily shift my weight and come screaming out of the tube, thrust by the air-pressure in the barrel onto the lip, where a back-hand re-entry would finish the ride in sheer ecstasy.

Fast forward to 1969 - three mates and I are on our way to the central coast of NSW. The surf has been big for about five days, with a nor-east swell pouring through, whipped up by a tropical cyclone off Queensland. We've been told by one of the pro surfers in Newcastle that a few spots around The Entrance and Avoca are going to be pumping, so we pack some tents, sleeping bags, wetsuits, boards and plenty of wax and head south. It's Friday afternoon, so we won't get much of a surf in tonight, if at all. We eventually get to Avoca as the sun is about to set.

We get out of the car; a light off-shore breeze is blowing. We can hear, but not really see, a giant surf off the point of Avoca grinding its way towards the beach. The sky is full of spray being blasted back over the backs of these enormous waves that we begin to discern in the dimness. Will we get out in it? Too fucking right, we will.

The best way to get to the break, which is about two hundred yards directly off the point, is to walk along the rocks at the end of the beach, then jump into an incredibly strong rip that is carrying anything in its path out the back and off towards New Zealand. (Of course it won't be that bad; every surfer knows that rips peter out once they're out beyond the break.)

So in we go, and, incredibly, we're out the back in seconds. We paddle off the rip towards the break, where a few other hardy souls can be seen perched on their boards, waiting. The ocean is glass. We get to the take-off point. The sun casts a bronze sheen across the water.

"How is it?", I say to one of the local boys.

"You'll find out in a minute, mate," he grins back.

Sure enough, we see a disturbance on the horizon. A gigantic swell is rumbling towards us; the setting sun lights up its face with flecks of gold, red and bronze. It's big, really, really big. It's twenty foot if it's an inch. I see where the break will start, and eight board-riders turn and paddle in unison towards it. One of my mates gets right in position, turns, and paddles on. I keep paddling, up, up the face and over the top. Enormous scads of spray blow off the back of the wave; I turn and hear my mate screaming as he goes flying down the now-concealed face. Has he made it? No-one can tell, for the next wave is coming towards us in a hurry. It's even bigger than the first.

I'm in the spot; it's my wave. I turn, take three or four big strokes, and I'm on my feet. It's a cliff; far below is flat water, and I aim straight for the bottom. I can feel the surge and power accelerating me as I go down; I hit the bottom and pull a frantic, high-speed backhand turn, and begin the climb back up the face as twenty feet of tube starts to encase me. The tube is so big I can stand upright with my hands above my head; the last rays of the sun illuminate the breaking part of the wave like a bronze waterfall, and I am far, far inside the tube.

I stay there for ages, playing with the wave, swooping up and down its face, all the while locked in the tube. It is the best wave of my life. Finally, I am near the beach, and the wave starts to buck and kick as it feels shallower water. With a last great heave, it shoots me at light-speed out of its maw and over the back of the lip.

I just sit back down on the board, twenty yards from the shore, and drink it all in. Suddenly, I'm brought back to earth by the sound of cheering. I look up, and my mate is standing in front of me on the beach laughing and screaming with pure, delirious pleasure. I paddle in, walk up to him and we start to slap each other like hallucinogenic boxers.

"You know, Loz - I think we've got just enough time for one more, what d'yer think?"

We're back at the take-off point; all the rest have called it a day. We see a set start to roll towards us, and, if anything, it's bigger than the last. My mate gets the first; he's gone with great whoops of joy fading into the distance. I leave the next, then the third comes towards me. Massive - twenty-five feet at least. It comes to me - I'm in exactly the right spot to catch it. Around I go; one, two, three and I'm up. Down the face, pull a big turn, as before, and the whole thing comes down on my head. It plasters me across the face, then lifts me and spears me to the bottom. I have a vague recollection of my legs being bent up to kick me in the back of the head; this is the washing-machine from hell. I'm dragged and spun and booted along the sea-floor; down is up and so is sideways. I have no air, I've got to get to the surface. Finally, I come up, and gulp in great lungfuls of air and water. I get my bearings, turn around to face the ocean, and see three more monsters bearing down on me. None of this is good, I recall thinking, and for the next two or three minutes I am rag-dolled by the sea. I am drowning.

I find myself floating on my back in clear water. I've been pushed back into the rip and am fast running out to sea again. With my last strength, I swim towards the rocks, and finally grab hold of something solid. Two of my mates scramble down and help me get up onto the shore proper. They're laughing fit to burst. I lie on the grass heaving salt water, knowing now, finally, what it's like to be a drowning man. My board is in two pieces, about a quarter of a mile down the beach.

I don't know how I'll afford another board, but there's got to be a way.

The wife and the bank-robber

2008-09-01T04:37:00.000-07:00

I've had plenty of different jobs in my time. Kitchen-hand in a psychiatric hospital; building labourer; wool-storeman; record company export manager; interstate truck-driver; gardener; general assistant; musician; musical director; record producer/engineer; teacher of music, English, history, politics, media - the list goes on.

About eighteen years ago I got a phone call one evening from a chap called Allan, who had just been appointed the senior education officer to a brand-new maximum-security prison being built on the outskirts of Sydney. He'd gotten my name from my brother, whom he'd been working with in another gaol in the Hunter Valley. Allan asked me if I wanted a job as a music teacher there. I thought about this proposition for a couple of nanoseconds and said "Count me in!"

Allan then enquired whether I knew any other teachers in the area who might be interested. He wanted, he said, to put together a team that would be comfortable with some innovative methods in prison education. He had a fairly sizeable budget, and carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. As someone who has never been content with the mundane, I thought this could be a very interesting project, so I mentioned a few people I thought might rise to the challenge (including my ever-lovin' wife), and we agreed to get everyone together at the gaol in a few days to talk it over.

I'd never been inside a gaol before. A few police cells, here and there, but never a full-on, state of the art, maximum-security penal establishment. That first day was a mind-blower. The gaol was a massive complex built in bushland; we drove up to it and parked in the car-park outside. It was just a concrete wall about thirty feet high, with coils of razor-wire perched on top, stretching for hundreds of metres on each side of a big, fortified gate-house built into the walls.

About eight of us walked towards the gate-house. A big steel door opened, and out walked a roly-poly young guy with a huge smile on his face. He spotted me and bounded over with his hand outstretched.

"Gooday, Laurie, I'm Allan." We all traded handshakes as I introduced him to everybody, and then walked inside.

The gatehouse itself was a complex of rooms, cells and administrative facilities. We all signed in on the day-book, and then worked our way through reams of forms, answering questions about our criminal records, associations, and sexual peccadilloes. (Nah, just made that up.) It was then time to move into the gaol proper. Allan had a little blue plastic "key" that he could insert into a slot beside the multitude of huge steel gates we had to pass through in order to get to the Education unit, a long, low brick building with bars on every window. Once you were in, you weren't getting out, that's for sure. As we walked along inside the perimeter, Allan told us that the gaol had an internal perimeter fence separated by about forty feet of "no man's land" to the higher outer walls. This space was loaded with laser beams, microphones in the ground, and any other paraphernalia that was going to prevent the desperadoes from escaping. It was all very impressive - anybody who could escape from this place would automatically qualify as a genuine Houdini. (And the fact is, no-one to date has ever done so, although a few have tried.)

There were no inmates in the gaol at this stage; five hundred of them would be arriving in a couple of weeks time, so each section of the gaol had time to get its act together.

We settled into the Education unit and had our first staff meeting. When Allan learnt that I had a degree in philosophy, he immediately suggested that I run a philosophy class with the inmates. Likewise, as he talked to each of the teachers and discovered different attitudes and abilities amongst them, he suggested various "non-standard" activities that they might like to pursue with the students. I started to realise that here was a bloke (and he was only about thirty-one or two) that I was going to like immensely.

Over the next couple of weeks, the team gradually built the resources and programs we were going to use. Maureen, the librarian, Allan and I spent time buying loads of books for the library. A pottery workshop was set up; an artist's studio took shape, and the basic ed. teachers commandeered rooms and started to adorn them like adult versions of primary-school classrooms. When Allan learnt that I was also a recording engineer and producer, he got another wild notion to build a recording studio and set it up with what was then a nascent computer-based recording technology. That project was to occupy most of my time there for the next twelve years, with some amazing results.

The inmates were eventually moved into the gaol over a weekend, and on the Monday, when I arrived for work, the place had become a serious prison. We were given a talking-to by a senior prison officer about security issues; you must always be within sight and sound of another worker; on no account must you form personal relationships with any inmates; you must never bring or take anything into or out of the gaol on behalf of inmates; you must wear your distress alarm (a little electronic device with a big red button) at all times; and so-on and so-on. As a maximum security prison, we would be working with some of the toughest criminals in the State, so it was reasonable to have some protocols. But it became apparent that, for the prison officers, there was a real "them and us" mentality in the place; "they" were always to be regarded as unscrupulous chancers who would do anything to get a benefit. "We" were always to be circumspect in our dealings with "them", otherwise really bad things could happen.

The reality, as it turned out, was markedly different.

Our first job was to interview and assess the inmates' educational status and need. As this was a working gaol, with a large metal-fabrication industry, inmates generally worked for part of the day, then came to education, and vice-versa. My first interview was with a giant of a bloke called, naturally, "Tiny."

"Let's get a couple of things straight, mate," he said as soon as he'd sat down. "I can't read and write, and I'm not interested in learnin'."

"Fair enough," I replied, "so what about doing something that you might find you like, such as pottery?"

"Pottery's for poofs."

"OK, what about learning to play the guitar?"

He laughed, and held up two gigantic paws with a couple of fingers missing from each hand. I couldn't do anything but laugh along with him. "Hmm, maybe I'll just get you a set of bongoes, mate. At least you look like you're good at belting things."

Well, Tiny reacted as if this was the funniest joke he'd ever heard. He came over to me, put a huge arm around my shoulders and said "You know what, Laurie - you're OK. Listen, if anyone here gives you any shit, just let me know, OK?"

I'd made my first friend. I knew, and rather liked, Tiny for a couple of years until he was released. It saddened me later to hear that he'd been murdered in a gang war on the streets of Sydney.

Mike, the art teacher, had made up a poster announcing the philosophy class. We'd decided to hold it in the library, as we'd gotten a whole lot of books on the subject, and the idea was that the guys could do some reading for a while and then we'd have an open seminar (or debate, as the classes usually turned out.)

On the first day I was astonished to see twenty-five blokes sitting in the library waiting for the class to start. Gangsters, murderers, diamond-thieves, bank-robbers and con-men formed the bulk of them. I looked over to Maureen, who was sitting behind her librarian's desk. She had a grin from ear to ear, and said "This is gonna be interesting."

(Maureen was an attractive young woman of about thirty-five, with a bubbly personality to boot. All of the inmates thought she was great, but a few of them decided that she needed a bit of care. So you would always see one of the toughest blokes in the gaol - quite often it was Tiny, who you'll remember couldn't read to save himself - sitting a few feet away from Maureen in a comfy-chair reading the paper, or a book. After a couple of hours an equally tough bloke would come and tap him on the shoulder, and they'd exchange places. Anyone who said anything out of line to Maureen, or, heaven forbid, tried to touch her, was asking for a miserable time in the showers.)

The philosophy group became an outstanding success. Here were a bunch of characters whose lives had, generally, been nothing but crime since they were youngsters. Although they were, in the main, poorly educated in a formal sense, many of them were very intelligent and had plenty of robust ideas. They started to learn a great deal about the construction of society, and I used Hume, Mill, Marx and other philosophers to provoke them to think about the nature of crime, liberty, and social responsibility.

A new guy came into the gaol one Monday. Len was a career criminal, doing ten years for robbing banks, extortion, kidnap and other crimes. Highly intelligent, Len latched onto the philosophy class and became one of its most outspoken debaters. He was also something of an epicure in the world of the big-time criminal. He enjoyed the good things in life: money (obviously), good clothes, cars, properties. Not long after he arrived, we were discussing something or other when my wife walked into the library for some hot water out of the urn.

"Hey," said Len, in a hushed tone, "see that one?" He pointed to my wife (who, I have to say, is a slim woman with a classically beautiful face) and said "I reckon if you spent about three thousand bucks on her she'd come up trumps!"

All of the other blokes knew that Chris was my wife, and they all immediately started to inspect the floor, as if the carpet was the most interesting thing in the world.

"What's up with you guys?" asked Len. One of the other crims cleared his throat loudly, and said "Len, that's Laurie's missus you're talkin' about."

Len turned around to me, unfazed, stared straight into my eyes, and with the slightest hint of a grin said

"So, do you want to borrow a few grand, Laurie?"

The lowest point on Earth

2008-08-31T22:10:00.000-07:00

At the very top of the Flinders Ranges, before you run out into the Strzelecki Desert, is a place called Arkaroola.

For some hours we'd been driving, at a very slow pace, through the driest landscape I've ever seen, due to the fact that we'd already shredded one tyre, and the others were in danger of giving up the ghost any second. The track was composed largely of broken glass, razor blades and six-inch nails, with occasional pieces of exploded ordinance shrapnel sticking out of the middle. The only wildlife in attendance was a succession of kamikaze emus, who would suddenly appear on the track in front of the car and play chicken (although I suppose they'd call it "emu") by galloping as fast as they could in a zig-zag pattern until they were nudged out of the way by the bumper bar. They were, quite possibly, the stupidest animals I have ever seen.

"Jesus, Loz, Burke and Wills must've been pretty bad shots. One of these things would keep you alive for weeks!" Leigh was in adventure heaven, as usual; he has an amazing capacity to be perpetually, er, amazed. (For overseas readers, Burke and Wills were Australia's quintessential folkloric explorers. They set out from Adelaide to discover the north coast of the continent, wandered around in the desert for several months and died like the ridiculous, ignorant fools they were.)

The only concession to vegetation were the great lines of river red gum, demarcating creek beds which were as dry as the Moon. It was a wonder that these fabulous trees could hang on through a drought which had not seen a single drop of rain for over nine years. But they did; their roots must have been so far down that they were able, barely, to pull some moisture from the ground. Even so, many of them looked like they were about to succumb.

"How are we going, mate?" I asked Leigh, as he perused the map.

"Well, according to this, Loz, we're about half-way between 'At a Loss' and 'Completely Fucked' ", he replied, then dissolved into great hooting gales of laughter. Irrepressibly, he continued: "So, as the navigator, I recommend that we stop for a beer."

This seemed like a good plan; after all, we had 1) plenty of beer, and 2) no fucking idea where we were. After a while, under the shade of a big river red, and a couple of beers under our belts, life was seeming pretty comfortable, if possibly tenuous. We heard a vehicle approaching.

An old, beaten-up Landcruiser pulled up next to us, populated by a few blackfellers.

"Gooday", said the driver, as they all climbed out. "Wher're you boys headed?"

"Arkaroola," we replied in unison, "if we can ever find out how to get there," added Leigh.

"No probs," said the driver, "just keep going on this road, go through our place, then turn off when you get to the start of the Strzelecki Track. Too easy."

"Thanks, mate," I replied. "You blokes like a beer?"

"No thanks, mate; we're a dry community. But you fellers are welcome to have one." At that, they all relieved themselves at the side of the road, climbed back into their truck, and headed off with a wave and "Good luck."

"Nice fellers," remarked Leigh. I could not but agree, and we got on our way again.

We arrived at Arkaroola as the Moon was coming up over a moonscape; I know that sounds preposterous, but Arkaroola is a seriously weird-looking joint. It was once a grazing property, but plenty of different minerals were subsequently discovered there: lead, silver, zinc, etc., so the entire place, stuck out in the middle of nowhere, is an abandoned mine, with pits and holes and slag-heaps everywhere. And it was dry: an aridity that sucks the breath out of you, and allows no moisture to gather anywhere on your body. If you're sweating, you won't notice it, because your perspiration is immediately evaporated.

Stuck in the middle of this wasteland is a resort. Now, I should explain something of the history of the place. It is owned by a family, descendants of the original land-holders, and in the 1930s, after it was realised that no-one was ever going to make a buck out of either as a farm or a mine, it should be bequeathed to the community as a nature park. So, for about seventy years or so, Arkaroola has been a reserve. In the 1970s it was decided to exploit the emerging tourist trade, and construction of the resort was begun. And, as Damon Runyon might have said, it was no sort of resort as to have any pretensions about. It was basically corrugated iron and slabs of red gum. Inside, it was luxurious only compared with the fact that if you were outside of it you'd be dead within three days, either from thirst or emu attack.

We walked up to a massive counter made of great slabs of red gum, polished like a mirror. A very pretty young woman gave us a grin and said "You blokes look like you need a drink. Find a seat; I'll bring you a beer." She didn't have to tell us twice. We appeared to be the only "guests", so we sauntered around the place looking at glass-cased displays of various minerals, posters and maps on the walls laying out the history of the place, etc. It reminded me of a cross between a mineralogical museum and a shearing shed, which was pretty much what it was, come to think of it.

"Well, Loz, we can either eat here at $40 a head, or we can cook something ourselves." Leigh, as is his wont, had investigated the menu as the first point of call. We were directed to the salubrious camping ground, some five hundred metres from the resort building. We drove up to it, and found a place that resembled, quite remarkably, the photo at the top of this story. It was the worst camp-site I've ever put a tent on, and that, in itself, is a wonderful thing, because it is always good to have nodes of comparison in one's life, I've found. Next time I'm struggling to erect a tent in two hundred knot winds half-way up a mountain in a blizzard with the possibility of avalanche any second I'll be able to say to myself: "Ah, but remember Arkaroola."

The only thing to do was to get as drunk as possible, and I must say, in this, we were unsurpassed.

When I woke up the next morning and peered out of my tent, nothing had changed. Arkaroola had not, overnight, magically turned itself into some Elysian field of plenty. It was still dry, windswept and lifeless. Without saying a word to each other, we packed up the camping gear, loaded the Volvo, and left that place to the vagaries of sun, wind and emu.

On the way out, we came across the same mob of blackfellers. We both stopped, got out and sat down for a chat.

"So you got to Arkaroola all right, then? What'd you think of it?"

"Well, quite frankly," I said, "it was pretty uninspiring."

The driver turned around to his mates as if he were an interpreter. "See," he said, "even whitefellers think Arkaroola's a shithole."