Spring has sprung, the bogans are here?

I do like living in Melbourne, it has to be said. But there’s one rather annoying thing that always catches me by surprise in late September every year, and that something would be the AFL Grand Final, and more importantly, all the general wank that occurs in its’ hallowed name.

This year has been particularly impressive; both in my level of surprise, and indeed the ferocity of the celebrations, presumably because it’s the first time in almost ten years that it’s an all Melbourne final. Not that a technicality like that has stopped us as a city in the past – even with the two competing teams belonging to states that we don’t even share a border with, we’ve still held the damned thing in Melbourne. It’s a bit odd if you ask me. But still, here we are, 2008, and an all Melbourne final is bearing down upon us.

The good news is that this means less wankface interstate footy bogans touristing about on our streets. The bad news, is all of a sudden, all those perfectly normal people around you on the train, in your office, in your café, hell – just fucking everywhere, turn in to fully certifiable footy crazed lunatics. They can’t possibly all barrack for one or the other of these teams! No one has even barracked for the Hawks since the Platten years - that was twenty years ago! What the hell are all these people doing?! Where did they, their bogan shirts and their banners and their flags come from?!

But worst still are the footballers themselves. Here are guys the size a minibus who are renowned for getting on the piss and beating the shit out of their mates, their girlfriends, and indeed any inanimate objects that get in between them and their desired destination at any given point. Their adult fans, of equal size but considerably less muscle and considerably more beer gut also get on the piss and emulate this behaviour, probably managing to fight a touch less but yell "Show us your tits!" a whole lot more from the comfort of their large, obnoxious mobs.

Why on earth do we consider these blokes to be the prime stock of Australia? Why, in this particular week of September every year, do they walk the streets of Melbourne kissing babies and ruffling young boys’ hair with a higher frequency than any election fuelled politician could ever muster? Who would let someone like that near their children?! I understand people could certainly admire their physical attributes and prowess on the footy field, but you know what? I admire Choppers’ general ability to make a go of it these days – I still wouldn’t let Uncle Chop-Chop near my imaginary children, let alone my very real cats. And don’t give me that unrealistic comparison crap – the courts have shown footballers to have more filthy fingers in more filthy pies than you can ever imagine; organised crime being just one of those many pies.

Now I have to say that in high school - and indeed now - I had a good friend who shall remain nameless. This friend was extremely fond of the idea of digging holes, particularly if it were to support some kind of retribution or trapping. Towards the final days of our last school year, the time when the best pranks often emerge, this friend was quietly plotting the demise of the school oval, one shovel load at a time. Bearing that enormous and adventurous scheme in mind, I don't think that even he could dig a hole large enough or trap filled enough to deal with the scourge of the AFL finals season, let alone the decent sized handful of pisshead players and fans who'll be up to their usual top notch behaviour.

Still, I do maintain that it's significantly better behaviour than when the interstate fans are in town. If there's anything worse than a footy bogan, it's a bloody sydney footy bogan. But what can you expect from a city where the highest form of entertainment seems to be going down to the local sports club, scoffing your parma, and propping yourself up at either the betting tables or the poker machines for the rest of the night, drinking bloody schooners of all things. Fucking abysmal. No wonder they punch people and yell a lot in Melbourne - they're simply in shock at the notion of people being friendly and nice here.

The simple greeting "Have a nice day!" would obviously be interpreted as "That's what she said!". "Can I help you?" is no doubt something along the lines of "Ya Mum!" and I think we all know what being served a pot instead of a schooner means - that's right, that the recipient clearly must be smaller in the trouser department that the server. That said, if we try and feed them pints instead of pots they just get all giddy and vomit everywhere from the intoxication excitement of it all. Messy bloody bastards. I think we're much better off without them this year. In fact, forget the finals - I'm sending my friend to Sydney to dig up the entire city. Much better.

And on that note I'm heading off now - to weave through the banners and the streamers and the fat met in inappropriately small football strips all the way to either a nice quiet pub or alternatively, my house. If you're in the same boat as I in this terrible football predicament, I suggest you don't bother turning on your telly until at least Monday, and stock up on a lovely range of non prescription...er...medicines, dvd's, takeaway, or perhaps even all three. Certainly sounds tempting to me!


Have a lovely weekend,
The Rantolotl

(I'm actually going to go and put $20 on the Hawks...)

PEW! KAPOW! ZAP!

Tim glared angrily at The Boy. It was no surprise really, Tim being the bastard he was. The Boy, even at his tender age of three feet high passionately disliked his father. It might have been something to do with his lazy cunt of a father actually naming him The Boy. It was just the latest in a long line of his guardians’ misuse of the Births Deaths and Marriages office, all seemingly designed to torture The Boy. The Boy and His Sister glowered back at the angry eyes of Tim The Bastard. Their plan would soon be complete, but even now, they realised they should have acted sooner. His Sister’s eyes drifted down to the fabric of Tims’ jeans. Collected around the still unbuttoned fly, feathers. Little soft downy feathers. Another innocent life lost to The Bastard, one more family parakeet buggered to death. 

Today, thought The Boy, will be Tim The Bastards’ last day alive on this planet.

To be continued...

Recently, the Human Resources department moved into my building, and I have to say so far I'm not impressed.  It's pretty much confirmed every thought I've ever entertained about them being totally incompetent, head up arse, perpetual wankers.  Christ, they've been here a good couple of months, and they still haven't managed to plug in their fax machine.  In this age of electronic everything, we actually have to fill stuff out on paper, then hand deliver it to them if we're to have any hope of receiving our overtime payments.  Though, this has grown a lot more convenient with them actually residing in the same building.

What has not grown more convenient however, is using the lifts since their arrival.  Every fucking day these tools crowd up the foyer, endlessly chatting away and sporting their knock off designer sunglasses, handbags and perfume, waving these items around like they're going out of style (which I suppose in all likelihood, probably are).  But as annoying their mere presence may be, it's nowhere near as bad as their inability to actually walk down a single set of stairs to the foyer instead of catching the fucking lift down from their floor.  

The previous tenants of that floor didn't do that.  No.  Once in awhile they'd do something a little retarded and manage to set off the fire alarms, but that was okay, because we'd all get to go for a little stroll and have some coffee and maybe even a cupcake.  These silly bastards could never manage to accomplish something quite so considerate.  In fact, I suspect they may be the antithesis of considerate.  I wouldn't be surprised if the next time we have some sort of celebration the bastards managed to infiltrate our floor, then sit on, steal, or otherwise sully our cakes.  But that wouldn't be enough for them.  No.  We'd all dejectedly wander back to our desks to find our papers all ruffled and shit in our shoes.  Fucking monsters!

They manage to form this quite special type of annoying that not even your stock standard office-admin-fridge-nazi types muster.  You know the type - the ones that decide that their children are their future (teach them well and let them lead the way, woooooo) and lose any sort of ambition in their jobs.  Don't get me wrong - I too lack ambition in my particular form of wage slavery, but at least I don't expend all that extra energy on policing sink and dishwasher usage, or perhaps creating spreadsheets that precisely outline who has put what in the fridge and how long it may or may not have been there. 

But that's a little beside the point, after all, we're meant to be focussing on the gutterslime HR staff here.  Okay, sure.  I suppose they're not all gutterslime, but you have to admit that if you think about your own HR deparment, that there are certainly some telling and universal signs across the industry.

I don't really know what to do about these unsavoury characters.  I want to set traps, but they do control the pay run, which seems to be a tricky operation at the best of times in their remarkably incompetent hands.  Perhaps some kind of trapapault (surely the term for the external delivery of a trap?)  would do the trick?  If so, I'd quite like to nominate Couch Boy for the task.  

Couch Boy has a long history of being a madman, and placed in correct circumstance, can cause quite the stir.  Would he eat all their cake?  Why yes.  Yes he would.  Would he burrow into their fancypants  handbags to nap, only to be discovered at a later, most inconvenient time, perhaps in the Ladies room?  Perhaps with gnashing teeth?  Most assuredly so!  Would he lope around the office indiscriminately yelling ANOMMANOMNOMNOMNOMMANOM OORRRRRUMPH! ?  Fuck, I can only hope so.

It's settled.  Couch Boy is the secret weapon.  He will bring punishment to HR departments when nothing else can.  And what will the rest of us do?  We will sit back and laugh the laugh of the righteous, for that is what we will surely be.  

I like to think of them all in their horror, swatting at the duo-flacid-horned beast with their expensive coats, stopping only to spray whole litres of perfume in his face, only to realise the futility of it all as he rolls around in abject joy of his newly acquired smells and fabrics.  They could never tame him; they could only hope to feed him donuts at regular enough intervals to make him sleepy.

Who ever knew that left handed, colour crippled, early onset coffee drinkers could be so useful?  I suppose you learn something new every day!

Sincerely,

The Rantolotl.

The adventures of Scruffy Girl and Boy Orange.

The names are true enough, I suppose. I was indeed a scruffy child - and many would hazard a scruffy adult – and Fandango Jones was indeed orange. Though quite possibly more orange these days with the addition of facial hair. Either way, it’s safe to say we were a pair of little bastards when let out on the prowl in the elderly-filled town of Mount Waverley.

The perpetually slow moving streets of the sleepy suburb were the ideal playground for a couple of antisocial children with a lot of time on their hands. No matter where we went, boredom would set in, and sooner or later we’d be lobbing objects over fences for some trivial reason or another.

SG: “Man, that’s the house with that bastard in it!”

BO: “Oh!”

SG: “Well then. I wonder what we should do with all these apples…”

BO: “Mmm, I wonder”

And then would come the inevitable hail of rotting fruit over the fence and onto some poor housewifes nice clean washing. But it wasn’t just fruit that we used to turf at our enemies, real or imaginary. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that we often didn’t really bother with the construction of enemies at all, and just restorted to games of ‘golf’ in our grandparents tiny backyard, equipped with a treeful of lemons and our grandfathers set of golf clubs. Our idea of damage limitation was not to try and chip the fruit around the backyard, but more along the lines of trying to hit the fruit around in the way that it could be construed as an errant chip that may’ve accidently flown over a fence… or two. That, and lemons. Totally less damaging than golf balls, they are - Certainly in terms of our grandfathers’ reaction to them being lost, at any rate.

Then came the trips outside of the house. I think it was one of the few places you would have children actively offering to go out and grab a litre of milk.

“Hi Nan, do you need anything from the shops?”

“Er, no, don’t think so”

“Are you sure? I think you’re low on cheese”

“Why don’t you take a look in the fridge, and see dear?”

Now given Nan was more or less confined to the dining room chair for most of her career as an elderly person (and probably knew damn well what we were up to), and Pa was always just as keen for a stroll up the street, it wasn’t really much of a challenge to be sent up the road for a stick of butter with a ten dollar note in your pocket.

Off we’d stroll, Boy Orange and I, in search of the nearest shopping trolley. This generally wasn’t too difficult, as it was back in those heady days when people actually walked to the shops, so would leave trolleys, post-shop, in conveniently placed locations for the trolley boys’ nightly collection round, And of course for errant eight year olds.

With our shopping trolleys (one each) secured, we would usually head to the railway station carpark. If it was a Sunday, we would head over to the empty Wooly’s carpark, just for a bit of variety. Both of these carparks presented their individual challenges. Both had speedbumps, but more impressively, both had bloody excellent ramps of one form or another. The Railway featured a pedestrian underpass, which consisted of a rough ashphalt slope, with a right angled turn to the left at the bottom into a small tunnell, and then another right angle turn into the pathway on the other side. It also featured guttering which had to be avoided at all costs, and a couple of pylons, presumably to stop people doing silly things like racing shopping trolleys down there. Needless to say, the challenges in this particular race were to;

a) stay upright ,

b) make the turn if possible,

b) scare the pants off any pedestrians who were so foolish as to try and actually use the underpass.

In later years, we would try and emulate this feat on my skateboard. Though for some strange reason, we never used to stand on the bloody thing, instead we would lie on it and try and paddle it around like a surfboard. This seemed to result in more grazes.

Over in the safeways carpark, the only slope to be found was in the loading dock. The smooth concrete provided a much better surface for ones’ attempt at trolley racing, resulting in a far more satisfying speed. The real problem with this slope was that it ended quite suddenly with a concrete wall and a big jutting out piece of metal at the bottom. Clearly, the key was to obtain maximum speed, and to time ones’ jump off the trolley in a way that would not result in;

a) your head being removed by the metal bit,

b) your body being maimed by the concrete wall,

c) the trolley bouncing back from the concrete wall and mangling you.

But as much fun as it was to race ones trolleys, it simply didn’t compare to the fun a daring duo such as our fine selves could have in a supermarket. One of the supermarkets (the Woolworths) had installed a complimentary coffee machine in an ill fated attempt to win customers away from the competing supermarket 50 metres away (the other Woolworths). As we were still children and did not drink coffee yet (I’m looking at you, CouchBoy), it was rather fortunate that they had thought to include a hot chocolate option on said machine. It was crap, but more importantly, it was free. After helping ourselves to several cups, and then disposing of all the whitener in the bin, because really, who the fuck wants whitener, anyway?, we’d make our way into the supermarket.

I recall one particular time, not long after the launch of Kinder Surprise into the Australian market; I made an arbitrary decision that they were the kind of chocolate clearly designed for toddlers, and therefore unsuitable for our consumption. Based on this decision, the next time we went to this particular market, I set about breaking the kinder surprises, and nicking the toys from the toddler-chocolate shells. I’m not entirely sure where the rationale for this came from, and didn’t have much time to consider such a thought, because it soon became apparent that Boy Orange had come prepared for his supermarket trip… with a cap bomb. We delighted in tossing the little metal ‘bomb’ up in the air, complete with rolled paper cap (or two, or three) jammed in the top, watching it fall, make contact with the floor and bang loudly, scaring the bejezus out of whichever elderly woman we’d been stalking. I don’t recall seeing any heart attacks onset by this, but I’m guessing a few years were shaved of already shaky lifespans that day.

After a good bit of cap bomb fun, the store manager tracked us down. He was fucking furious, and as he stood there in his silly white shirt and his silly Woolworths tie, going pink from anger and not quite knowing what to say, I think all we could do was giggle a bit, completely diffusing his anger. Don’t get me wrong – we were indeed little bastards, but we weren’t the sort of little bastards that could usually deflect a telling-off like that, we were the sort that would crumble, cry and bit, and be suitably ashamed – which is why it was so fucking ridiculous that this grown adult seemed to be having so much trouble trying to get a pair of young kids out of his store. We weren’t disagreeing with him, we weren’t even being argumentative and refusing to leave, we were simply waiting for him to take the lead and escort us out. Eventually we wandered off, leaving the store in good will (with our stick of butter), stopping for a complimentary hot chocolate or six on the way out. When we got home, we were saddened to discover that the Kinder Surprise toys were just as shit as the chocolate they were encased in.

One day, nan filled me in on her latest news, absolutely elated. The nurse came in on Tuesday, and she says I can’t walk anymore!, she conveys with a huge grin on her face. But we soon discovered the source of her unusual eleation at the news of being permanently disabled – she was now eligible for a mobility scooter! This was a pretty big win for her, because I don’t think she really had any intention of walking anywhere again anyway. I think she hit about 65 and decided that she’d been walking for at least 60 years now, and it was about time she had a good break and put her legs up. So, the scooter was delivered, and she used it all of twice before going back to the dining room chair she was so fond of. I suppose I can understand why though, she was head of her own little world in that room, where people would come and visit her and chat, where the heater and tv were always on, and where food smells were always coming from the kitchen.

It really was quite amazing – she managed to maintain control of the kitchen and all the meals it produced from that chair. She’d cut up beans on the table, and then instruct someone to go and put them in pot x, or to give pot y a stir. On special days, she’d instruct someone to bring her the electric fry pan, and there she’d sit, in her chair, at the table, frying up some salmon patties. It was really quite extraordinary, now that I think about it.

The upshot of this recently acquired yet completely unused mobility scooter, was that much to the rest of the familys’ dismay, nan would actively encourage myself and Boy Orange to take it out ‘for a run’ to stop the battery from dying or some other feeble excuse. That woman sure knew how to make us kids happy – ten dollars placed in our ownership, a mobility scooter with a fully charged battery, and instructions to go and get some chips from the charcoal chicken shop. We were in heaven.

A bit like this, but more of a bucket seat and a basket on the back (for dinking. Not for groceries)

We would jack the speed up to ‘Rabbit’ (as opposed to ‘Turtle’), and away we’d go. We quite effectively became pavement hoons, taking every corner as fast as Rabbit allowed, usually getting the scooter onto two wheels, and if you were really good, just one. With the help of the basket on the back, you could dink people, and you were showing pretty serious skills if you could get the scooter into a skid – though it’s safe to say that we usually managed to flip the thing sideways when that happened. Actually, flip is maybe too strong of a word. Perhaps something along the lines of an inevitable slow motion fall. As I recall, we used to manage to break things with the scooter on a pretty regular basis – often by presuming it had much better braking qualities than it actually did (it had none – just motor regulation). Terracotta pots, garden gnomes, garden edging and errant bits of hedges and fencing all fell prey to the scooter at one point or another, and with the help of the little horn it came equipped with, we only managed to clip a small number of pedestrians on our travels.

The funny thing is though, through all of this, the only time anyone actually got angry at us was the manager in the supermarket - and even then it was of to absolutely no effect. We would regularly terrorise these streets, lob lemons into peoples yards/windows/antennas, throw rotting fruit into peoples backyards, and regularly endanger pedestrians. I’ve no doubt we found lots more mischief to get up to in one way or another, but all these old people would just smile at us, ask us to pass on some greeting or another to our folks, and perhaps offer us a choccy biscuit. It was a very odd place.

Unfortunately, I think most of these kindly people are dead now (I’m going to presume the supermarket manager died young from some kind of heart condition). It is a shame, because I suspect it’s a rare place where a community are so tolerant of childish shenanigans. Christ if kids did that now, I’m guessing hapless bystander would get arrested for being a pedo, and the parents would be stripped of their parenting rights for being so careless as sending their kids up the street to grab some shopping. I can just imagine them being dressed down about all the dangers for kids in the world these days – don’t you understand? THERE COULD BE TERRORISTS IN THAT SUPERMARKET!

I think what the adult world it totally failing to understand is children are a much bigger threat to the adult community than the other way around. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just deluding themselves.

Sincerely,

The Rantolotl.

Rocks of the north, part three (fuck it. The crappy title stays).

STOP! She squealed.

I froze.

What?

Argh! I yelled, in response to my own question. Why? Because there was a big fuck-off snake darting around in the grass disturbingly close to my untrousered lower legs. I leaped back, and refused to move for quite some time, in fact, until some elderly people walked past me, laughing. Fools.

What you can't see in this photo are the six trillion species plotting to kill VG. There's probably
a small bushfire lurking behind one of those trees somewhere too.

Welcome to Kakadu.

A place where a simple walk around a small bird watching circuit is likely to get you eaten by some already impossibly overfed reptile. A place where swimming is likely to be rewarded with a loss of at least one limb. A place where the elderly become even more vindictive than usual, revelling in the full knowledge that they’ll soon be dead anyway, so they may as well go out with a bang. Or perhaps more appropriately, three venomous snakes attached to an eyebrow and a lizard for a foot.

Seriously, everything in this very pretty little chunk of land is more or less out to kill you. As you move around, you’re essentially running from one very pretty killing machine, to another very pretty poisoning machine, and then, as likely as not, to a whopping great bushfire. All the while being surrounded by german tourists, the elderly, and big tough barramundi hunters (failed and aging football players), all doing their best to shove you off tall and high killing precipices (lookouts, I suppose you could call them) in order to get a better, and indeed prettier photo than you.

That said, it was well worth it. This was the last stop on our way to Darwin, where we intended to do nothing other than civilised things like use the internet, use our phones, and visit markets and stores and all those other things you do in townships that actually have a population. This was our last and final chance to go and play in the mud and climb things and try to successfully identify things which were about to bite us. We did all of these things and more, including a great little jaunt into Arnhem Land.

The thing about Arnhem Land is that there are two road crossings to it, both through a river. That’s right, not over a river, but indeed through a river. Filled with crocodiles. For some strange reason the Federal government has never seen fit to perhaps create passable access points into this part of the country which spends a good deal of the year knee deep in mud and inaccessible by road… I’m guessing this has something to do with it being Aboriginal land and not, say, any part of the rest of the country. As a result, through the wet season food and other essential supplies have to be flown in, and work in Kakadu is inaccessible. Even in the dry, because the river crossings are tidal, access to work is made a bit tricky by having to wait for low tide instead of simply being able to cross a bridge whenever you please.

And let me tell you, there is nothing more entertaining that watching tourists in rental four wheel drives attempt to make that crossing, even at low tide. Because you can’t actually see the road - and I use the word ‘road’ loosely, because by the way vehicles travel over it, I’m more inclined to say it’s more of a collection of large rocks – they end up zigzagging all over the place, lurching this way and that, looking like they’re going to be swept away at any moment. Watching the looks on their faces, I’d say it was brown trousers time all round.

cue: Benny Hill theme music

Still, it’s well worth the hassle of the crossing to check out the fantastic landscape and rock art over the border. I’d thoroughly recommend a tour guide, because there’s simply no other way you’d find the art sites or any of the other cool little hidden gems, without one, let alone even begin to understand what you’re looking at.

Probably the biggest downside about Kakadu was the accommodation. Being a Wotif junkie, I’d pretty much left booking to the last minute, or indeed, the first available minute of Wotif booking, only to find that everything was more or less sold out, and that Northern Territorians absolutely fail at the internet. As in, more than you can ever believe. But after a lot of stuffing about, I managed to secure a booking at the delightful sounding Kakadu Aurora. Foolishly trusting the photos and descriptions, I was led to believe that this was a delightful little tourist resort tucked away in the billabongs about 20k’s out of Jabiru. It came complete with the delightfully eighties bedspreads (a mixture of salmon pink and cobalt blue triangles and wedges, of course) we’d come to expect from Territory accommodation, and two restaurants, a bar, a swimming pool, and a raft of other delightful sounding features, including such luxuries as the Internet!

What we got however, was a room in one of these:

We had the 'deluxe' room, meaning we only had to listen to three families with

young, screamy children, instead of five

It was spectacularly seventies. Everything was wood, or wood panelling. There was a restaurant, with a bar attached to the side that could competently open a bottle of VB, or Four X for you – the choice is yours! The bar seemed to serve counter meals which were just as expensive as the restaurant, and indeed, remarkably similar to the restaurants’ offerings. Now I’m all for a nice ‘lamb curry with rice and poppadum’, but I’m not sure I’m quite prepared to fork out $35 for the pleasure. The internet connection was even better. For $2 for five minutes, you could surf the web in the comfort of the middle of the reception building, at a whopping 14kbps connection. That’s a speed of dialup that wasn’t acceptable over a decade ago, for those of you who are only familiar with the term ‘broadband’.

So after a few days, off we went heading for the bustling metropolis of Darwin. After about two minutes of driving through the outer suburbs, we found ourselves at our inner city hotel. We laughed and laughed and laughed at the audacity of this place for calling itself a city. After another few days, we were indeed still laughing, and right now as I sit at my desk, a giggle can still be heard. It's a funny place, Darwin. It's a bit like the country town that time forgot - like Wangaratta from twenty years ago, or Hamilton, if you'd like a NZ comparison, say, about six months ago. Though a few less sheep.

The good people of Darwin are an odd lot. They don't really like to answer questions. Well, they do, but not with what the rest of the Australian populous would consider and answer. A simple question, like "where's your restaurant?" is likely to get you a response involving a childhood story, an offer of a beer, and some strange sort of explanation of why you want a receipt for your goods, even though you really don't. Primarily, because you've not yet purchased any goods. But you will never, ever, find out where that restaurant is. To find that out, you need to ask what the time is.

We spent a few days in Darwin, where we largely spent our time wandering around, drinking beer, and wandering around and drinking beer. After spending all my time in the long drives up to Darwin perusing the many guidebooks we'd seemed to accumulate, we worked out a pretty lazy itinerary of going to the Mindil beach market, and checking out the museum for the Cyclone Tracy exhibit. Mostly because that's about all the city really has to offer, bar a couple of decent restaurants. Upon getting to the beach markets though, we were pretty disappointed. After asking many questions about low and high tide times, I found out that while you could drink all you like at the markets, you certainly couldn't buy any booze there. Further enquiry on this point just got me strange looks, as if it was perfectly natural to not sell alcohol in an area where you are actively encouraged to drink it. This put a pretty massive dent in our original plans to spend a lazy several hours browsing stalls, eating, and watching the entertainment, and as I watched bogan family after bogan family unpack their eskies of four x, while having loud and meandering arguments about which child was to go and fetch the food, I realised that this plan was just not going to work unless we could magically acquire several bottles of wine immediately. Which we couldn't. So we browsed the stalls and went back to our hotel, where funnily enough, we could purchase wine and drink it. Amazing!

Sunset at Mindil Beach. Awwww.

The following day we ventured out to the museum, where after checking out every other bloody exhibit in the place, and not voluntarily, we finally found the Cyclone Tracy exhibit. In a nightmare layout which only just allowed for one person to pass another whilst perusing the displays (but only you're fond of intimate contact with strangers), I began to feel an enormous amount of sympathy for the poor bastard who was forced to put this otherwise rather good exhibit together in the collected space of a single stairwell. It would be great. You'd go through years of education in arts, art curation, and other generally arty things - hell, lets throw some architecture in there too - and be given a great opportunity... to create a record of Australias' greatest natural disaster, a cyclone that destroyed an entire city. On christmas day. A disaster with a living history, which is the subject of engineering, psychological, and emergency response education to this day. Except then you're given a budget of fifty dollars, a beer, and a broom closet in which to set it up.

That was another thing that seemed typically Darwin. There's such an intense focus on the Japanese bombings, and pretty much everything associated with that and indeed world war two in general - but next to nothing on an event which affected the city far, far more financially, socially, and physically than the bombings ever did. That's not to say the bombings were a picnic in the park - I'm sure they weren't - but fucking seriously... one day you go to sleep, and the next, you wake up and half your city, your cat and your mailbox are embedded in the windscreen of your car, and you don't bat an eyelid? Christ. I don't know about you, but I think if it'd happened to me, I'd want it to be recorded in history very firmly, as one very, very fucked up christmas.

But despite all the shitting about and general failure at, well, everything, Darwin was a pretty nice place to hang out in for a few days. Chilled people, lots of beer, good food, and nice and warm. We got to feed fish, be scared of super-armed cops, laugh at some World Youth Day pilgrims, and even see several hundred screaming middle aged women from 'out bush' attending the premiere of Mamma Mia. We even got to see a stack of men sleeping on top of each other at the airport, which I for one don't see every day.
And with that, I bring this little travelogue to a close. Normal programming will recommence shortly, less stories about rocks and billabongs, and more about... whatever the fuck it is I write about. Cake mostly, isn't it? Hmm. Anyway - now it's your turn to tell me about your holidays. Go on. Comment. You know I love 'em.

The main streets of Darwin, embracing indigenous culture

Fin,
The Rantolotl

Rocks of the north, part two (still no better title)

The delightful town of Elliot, NT.

We headed out of Yulara to Wycliffe Well by way of Alice Springs. Alice Springs is a strange place, and I suppose the best way to think of it is perhaps as a rather large airport security area - you know, the bit where they scan your bags, look grumpy/bored, and threaten you with deportation. Everywhere we went, we were safely removed from the dangers of sharp objects which could be used as weapons... like scissors. In fact, the townsfolk of Alice seemed to be quite proud of this achievement. After purchasing a pair of sunglasses from the local K-Mart after discovering, oddly, that the Northern Territory is a touch brighter than mid-winter Melbourne, the checkout chick offered to cut the tag off the glasses for me.

Oh! Yes thanks! I replied to her foresight filled suggestion.

Well sorry, but I can't do that. We're not allowed to have scissors here - you know, being that they can be used as a weapon and all. You'll have to go over to the returns desk.

Well then. That was me told.

I could only assume that the returns desk kept such dangerous items locked in a hidden vault, only to be accessed by the most highly trained in martial arts and possibly armed staff on duty. But no, there they were, stuffed into a desk caddy, sitting right there on the bench being within reach of my personal 'danger' zone (being my wrists, and I suppose heart, if you're that handy with a pair of craft scissors).

We hastily left the security, the more or less geographical, and indeed the apartheid centre of Australia* by way of a petrol station where a similar situation occurred, but this time the dangerous object in question was a public toilet. Strange place, Alice. Very strange place.

And with that final stop, we were well on the way to Wycliffe Well, the self declared UFO capital of Australia. Wycliffe Well lives up to its name, even if only by the number of glow in the dark figurines it houses, including a particularly enjoyable bright green Elvis. When we finally arrived after many hours of driving, we were met by a gruff man, who was looking strangely dignified for a man neck deep in fluorescent aliens and other associated space and country music themed paraphernalia.

It was actually a pretty entertaining place, tackiness and captain Gruff aside. The on site restaurant appeared to be staffed by Gruff's brother and his wife, where we were presented with our choice of chinese and western menus! - the chinese menu presented fried rice, chinese noodles and your usual staples a la black bean sauce, and the western basically consisted of your standard steak and/or fish pub grub. The chinese selections were all a little bit occa for my tastes, but VG's roo steak was pretty good. All of this was in the delightful ambiance of the dining room, complete with plastic outdoor furniture, themed wall murals, and an old bloke sitting in the corner with a roland keyboard, playing his favorite songs until he stuffed them up, at which time he would promptly go back to the start and begin again. Interestingly, the chinese menu was handed to us, with the explanation 'there's a shitload of room out here in the outback, so why on earth shouldn't we let anyone in who wants to come? Why should people and their kiddies live in poverty when we have all this room for them and their food?' And with that, we realised that these guys were a little bit strange, but in a jovial and well meaning sort of way.

We have both kinds of food... Chinese AND Western!

Roo wrapped in bacon, covered with fried potato...and pineapple. Yum yum!

The lovely little man and his Roland.

This bloke clearly stocks his bar in a similar way to how you might do your non-essential weekly shopping... 'ooh! I like the look of that! Little red hen? Ooo!', so when I ordered the Estrella, he went into ridiculous detail about what international beers he's tried, and how many of each you can drink before you fall on your arse (the Little Red Hen came it at two, I'm told). Seeing we were the first people of the night who hadn't reacted poorly to his banter (ie, we didn't back away horrified nor punch him), he took this as licence to keep chatting. He told us a delightful story about how his young asian kitchen hand had been 'very admirable' (complete with dodgy and full blown occa caricature of a chinese accent) of his ability to lift weights, and wanted to be shown how he could do the same. One thing led to another, and the barman ended up being held down on the kitchen floor, with quite the quantity of frozen broccoli stuffed down his jocks. Now if this were you and I, I'd reckon we're be pretty fucked off by such an affair, but not this guy - when he got around to fishing out the vegetables, he noticed the vegetables had thawed out, and became rather impressed as his genitals' ability to thaw, and indeed cook food. He promptly offered to reheat a couple of dim sims for us while we perused the menu - and don't worry, we needn't bother with soy sauce... after all, he hadn't washed in a couple of days.

Mr Dim Sim himself!

From here, we were off into the Top End, which I'm told is anything in the Territory further north of a joint called Renner Springs. This place, like about 80% of the 'towns', 'locations' and anything else with signage we passed until Darwin, was actually nothing but a roadhouse., a dog, and perhaps even a chicken. We only stopped at a couple of these on our trip, usually for fuel or water, but I have to say that they're absolute little gems of places! Before heading off, I was preparing myself for a journey of pretty sketchy food until darwin - dodgy pub fare... you know, cheap steaks, more cheap steaks, sausages, and probably something involving bacon. Figuring this, I prepared myself for the best of these offerings I could stomach... in fact, I was quite relishing the opportunity to compare and rank the ever crappy - but always interesting - pub prepared spag bols... but the closest I came to such a meal the entire trip was a place doing nachos with bolognaise sauce slopped over the top... accompanied by fishbowl margaritas.

Does drinking with snacks get any better than this? I think not.

The reality was surprisingly different - the food pretty much everywhere, from fine dining setups in the middle of lush wetlands to the sketchiest of motel restaurants in the middle of the desert were all serving the same thing - huge lumps of barra, huge fillets of roo, and something salady with a good dose of croc in it. There were usually decent looking scotch fillet steaks for you to fall back on if you weren't all that keen on indigenous animal for dinner. But the roadhouses, oh, the roadhouses! They pulled us straight out of this world of kitsch dining dressed up as progressive cuisine and straight back into the good ol' days of microwaved from frozen meat pies, and, on one occassion I was delighted to note, rissole and sauce sandwiches, refrigerated for your convenience! They of course all offer the full complement of flavoured milk varieties to go with your meal selection.

The stretch from Wycliffe Well to Katherine was a rather enjoyable one, complete with a trip to the Devils Marbles, the Daly Waters Pub, and the most amusing 'tea house' I think I will see in my entire life. The stop at Daly Waters was a given, as I tend to think if you're going to go driving up the middle of the country, you should make sure you visit at least one divey little pub complete with underwear stapled to every surface. The Daly Waters Pub definitely ticked off that checkbox. The real surprise though was Frans Teahouse, about twenty minutes or so up the highway from Daly Waters. This was an exciting moment for a number of reasons - for starters, seeing two things which aren't rocks or campervans in the space of twenty minutes is a bit of a rarity on this road, and secondly, actually bothering to stop at two such places on the tail end of a multi-day driving session seemed even more amazing - but it was definitely worth it.

The Daly Waters pub. I still can't decide if the building is sinking into the
ground, or if I just took a terrible photo...

VG attempting to 'wizard' the Devils Marbles, perhaps?

Frans Teahouse is not exactly what I was expecting. For an hour or so, we'd seen roadside signs advertising the place, dinky little things with "Frans!" in a faded cursive script tacked to the odd fencepost. The Lonely Planet guide for the NT described it as a delightful teahouse right on the highway, specialising in fantastic home made pies and scones. Again, what it turned out to be in reality was a little different. We eventually located Frans after some confusion, and parked out the front, next to one of many handwritten signs filled with many misspelled and wholly capitalised words, all underlined. None of them seemed to make much sense, now I think about it. So we ventured in to find a strange little setup of basically a caravan type annex, surrounded in plastic outdoor settings. And more handwritten signs. At this point, there was no real sign of life, so VG ventured forth and rang a bell with another sign attached to it indicating something along the lines of Fran might be asleep, but you should ring the bell, because Fran really won't mind. After a few bell rings, and a yoo-hoo or two, Fran had not appeared, but we could hear Fran hard at work washing dishes inside. VG stepped into the first of the annex rooms and yoo-hooed a little more enthusiastically, to have Fran come out and use some kind of crib to ensure VG stayed well outside of the little annex, where she was apparently not to be allowed.

Some confused garbling later, Fran was off to the kitchen to make some scones, damper and coffee for us, pretty much refusing to allow us to order anything else. Bemusedly, I sat down at a table (as ordered), and started flicking through a laminated notebook, figuring it was a guestbook of some description, as some sign or another had promised. What I actually had my hands on, it turned out, was a convenient and thorough guide on how to properly butcher your camel, should you have one. Each cut of camel meat (including tail - you should discard the last third or so of it by the way) was carefully detailed and depicted in both diagram and photography. Now I have to say I was delighted by this, but VG not so much. Our scones, damper and coffee arrived, and we tucked in - the food was every bit as good as promised, and there were no bits of camel to be found, which I suppose is a good thing to achieve in the food service of scones. Not long after, some more tourists arrived and were duly instructed by Fran to sit down and talk to us while she made them an unrequested coffee. We were sure to recommend the scones to them, as if they had any more choice in the matter than we did.

Visitors book? IT'S A TRAP! A CAMEL TRAP!

We later arrived in Katherine, where we would stay for a day and check out the spectacular gorge, and then, we would soon say goodbye to our friend the Stuart Highway and head off into the wonders of Kakadu before winding up in Darwin. Which I'm sure you'll hear all about in part three...

Katherine Gorge looking pretty. And big.

Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.


And now, a little side note on part one and part two that just didn't seem appropriate for the 'offical' parts;

There's a hell of a lot to be said about the racial tensions that exist pretty much as a way of life right through the territory. For some reason, I'd always placed towns like Alice Springs an Katherine, and even Tennant Creek somewhere along the lines of your standard regional town, just a but dustier. And this is kind of true - but what you don't see in places like Wangaratta, Geelong and Albury is such a clear cut racial segregation of a town, with each side of the colour barrier kind of getting by, pretending the other doesn't exist. In Alice, the shops were entirely staffed by europeans, and the sharp objects and toilets unavailable because they had to coexist with the local indigenous groups. The streets were filled with the black, the buildings were filled with the white. And that extends beyond just the shops and the schools - in Wangaratta, if you were on the dole and had to resort to state housing, you'd get just that - a house. In Alice, and indeed most of the Territory from what I can see, if you're black and in that situation, you end up in a 'camp'... a 'community' set up by the government, well away from town, with the most basic of accommodation and amenities. So basic, that when they built these fibro shacks in the 70's, they didn't even bother to put in basic plumbing - but that's what Today Tonight's next expose on those naughty aborigines won't tell you.

This blog isn't really the time or place to get into the nitty gritty details of how fucked this country is, particularly in relation to our treatment of the indigenous, but I really do need to mention some of this stuff as a bit of a sidenote if nothing else, because it was such a mentally domineering aspect of our trip, and it does certainly leave me wondering about how a country can allow - and I mean allow, because we were only two of the thousands of Australians that saw the red centre these school holidays, and saw this settled but unwilling segregation - an entire race, indeed the traditional owners of this land, to live in conditions that I would relate to a refugee camp in Palestine, in apartheid, right under our noses? We then have the gall to measure these massively displaced people against our own institutions of schooling, of welfare, of healthcare, by the standards we would apply to it, having grown up in nice suburban homes with an education and a future. And tell me, how exactly do indigenous get work in the Territory in any position other than 'indigenous tour guide', when every person in a uniform, in every shop, or information point was white as day? For fucks sake, it's one thing in Melbourne, when the indig population is virtually nil, but in the territory, where it's above 27%, how, just how can you turn a blind eye to all this?

/rant

Rocks of the north, part one (better title pending)

Welcome to part one of the several part series also know as 'my holiday'. VG and I headed off on a little adventure, flying from Melbourne to Alice Springs, where we'd pick up a rental car and head to Yulara, to check out the sights and then back to the highway where we'd travel to Darwin by way of Kakadu. We learnt several things on the way... including why not to pack your bags (ie, drunk the night before your early morning departure) - while the three tshirts I packed myself were quite comfortable, the slogans 'Justice for Jack Thomas - he's not a terrorist, he's just a naughty boy', 'APEC - Armed Police on Every Corner...NO POLICE STATE', and 'FREE PALESTINE! VICTORY TO THE INTIFADA!' didn't really seem all that territory appropriate, particularly given the sizable population of military and police who can be found withing spitting distance, even when in the middle of a seemingly empty desert. Anyhow - enjoy. More to come in a day or so!

This needs no caption, so you should probably ignore this text.

This is alright for a budget airline, I thought to myself as we boarded the dinky little plane tucked away out the back of Tullamarine. Three hours of having the seat in front of me repeatedly rammed into my knees, I thought a little wiser of my previous sentiment. Don't get me wrong - Tiger are decent for a budget airline... their staff seem to know what they're doing, their planes seem to leave and indeed even arrive on time, and they don't put on the sickening 'we're so friendly' song and dance that leaves you retching in your Sky Soup that Virgin & Jetstar have seemed to have so well developed. But they do have very snugly packed seats, that are far from ideal for anyone who isn't a midget (VG of course had no trouble here).

Air travel aside, we were now on the road and heading towards Yulara, fresh from our journey to Alice Springs. As we drove, we gazed and noted the crazy as all batshit architecture (from mars of course), the vegetation or lack thereof, and the fucking insane wildlife which seemed to insist on repeatedly battling our car. The rather large hire car insurance premium flashed before my eyes at one financially scary point, as a kangaroo bounded off the red dust, and straight in front of the car. Narrowly missing us, I relaxed a little and pointed out the local wildlife to VG who'd been hankering for some Australiana action. Much to my own alarm, the only response I could have when she asked "Oh! Where?!" was "OH FUCK - CHRIST! RIGHT FUCKING NEXT TO ME". Now I know I slowed a little when the little fucker jumped in front of the car the first time around, but I have to say I was more than a touch surprised to find the little shit not on the other side of the road hopping off into the spinifex as I'd expected, but instead keeping pace with the car and hopping next to fucking window, only very slowly losing ground. I slowed again, and the bastard tried to dart into the side of us, and this time, very narrowly missed running straight into the back of the car. We continued down the road keeping a very sharp lookout for further kamikaze roos, and successfully avoided any further nasty wildlife encounters, bar a dingo going a little zig-zaggy whilst chasing a rabbit.

We arrived in the town of Yulara, and by 'town', I mean resort complex owned in entirety by a cunt of a company called Voyages. Now the best way to introduce you to Voyages, I suspect, is by telling you all about an award winning dinner they run out of the Ayers Rock Resort, called The Sounds of Silence. Upon much brochure reading, website reviewing, and of course, Lonely Planet consulting, the general opinion of Sounds of Silence was that it was a pretty good night out. We booked it in a flash, treating ourselves out to a ridiculously expensive night out in the safe knowledge that it would be a once in a lifetime dining experience... Five star dining in the desert - in fact, in the very shadow of The Rock itself. A romantic dinner for two, if you like, in the vast and private expanse of the desert, in the capable hands of expert restaurateurs. What we got however, was this:

Spacious and comfortable viewing platform

Salubrious dining environment

It seems the des