Armenia Decides

(published in the Kalgoorlie Miner on election day)

I have just recieved a frantic pigeon-mail from Michael Gorey, advising that an ‘Australia Decides 2007’ feature piece is needed from my out-station. “Get out and about,” he directs from his red-brick tower, “I want the opinion of the man on the street”. The editor’s oft-criticised decision to post a foreign correspondent in Kapan, southern Armenia, will now bear fruit, most likely a lemon.

I decide immediately that to connect with the man on the street, I need to become the man on the street. I dye my hair black – if you’re blonde, you’re a hooker – and pencil in a monobrow, then don trousers, a jacket, and pointy shoes, all in black leather. The thought occurs to me that it might have been easier to meet men on the street if I’d left my hair blonde. Too late now. The finishing touches on my disguise are a packet of long, peach-scented cigarettes and a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Right to go.

My trusty donkey, Alby Mangels, bucks as I drag him from his pile of cabbage stubs and cast an Iranian tapestry across his midriff. It takes three quick shots of vodka to settle him down - one more than usual. I jump on side-saddle, in observance of Armenian traffic regulation 1.1(a), and begin the ride to town, lighting up a cigarette and pop-pop-popping a few birds with the Kalashnikov, just to show I’m one of the boys.

The ride takes me down a pot-holed concrete footpath, past a crumbling concrete apartment building, through a damp concrete tunnel, and beside a long concrete wall, pocked-marked with bullet holes from Azerbaijan. “We showed them though,” a local once told me, aiming his imaginary AK-47 at the mountain side, “Three years ago, the nearest Azeri was up there. Now, he is 200 kilometres away.” I laughed for five minutes – any less would be considered un-Armenian.

The central markets are abuzz when I arrive. The local currency, the ‘Cucumber’ (CBR), has strengthened against the greenback in recent times, and inflation – long the enemy of former Soviet states – has steadied, with a standard basket of pickled green tomatoes only CBR 2.15 more than this time last year. So men and women and transvestites are spending Cucumbers like there’s no tomorrow, which may well be the case if Iran, just 30 kilometres away, goes nuclear.

Amongst the throng I spot my language coach Cher, named after the singer Cher, the greatest living Armenian. She is a pretty young thing (this Cher, not that Cher): facial desiccation – the curse of Armenian women – has not yet taken hold, and her moustache is fashionably styled. I slither through the crowd and reveal myself to her, and by that I mean reveal my identity. With a little encouragement, in the form of a cabbage leaf dipped in vodka, she agrees to follow and interpret for me.

I canvas several market-goers, and most seem to favour the Coalition. In a country where brides must be virgins, and flatulence brings shame to you and your family (as I discovered during dinner at the mayoral palace), it is natural that Armenians favour the Howard Government’s social conservatism. I discover that WorkChoices is also revered: earning AUD $5.00 (approximately CBR 12.00) an hour is a dream here, where most take home less than twelve Cucumbers per week.

Moving across to the stalls, I meet Armen (after Great Armenia), a greying, 50-something vendor who specialises in cabbages and vodka. I show him pictures of John Howard, Kevin Rudd, and Bob Brown. I’d show him a picture of the Democrats leader but I don’t know who it is. Slapping each photo in turn, Armen speaks with great animation.

“In Armenia, we call these men The Shun, The Esh, and The Katu,” Cher translates, “That is The Dog, The Donkey, and The Cat. Howard is The Shun because, like an Armenian dog, he is rabid and wiley, but will whimper and lay down when cracked with a cane. Rudd is The Esh because, like an Armenian donkey, he is painful to listen to, and will bite off your fingers if provoked. Brown is The Katu because, like an Armenian cat, he pisses on all of your favourite things.”

I nod in agreement with Armen, and continue pushing through the crowd. At the far side of the market square I spot a group of old men – good for political comment in any culture - enjoying a traditional lunch of boiled cabbage and vodka. I greet the men, and reveal photos of some prominent candidates.

At the sight of Barry Haase, the men, all called Armen (after Great Armenia), giggle and mock his baritone voice. I show Alexander Downer and they laugh for a solid half-hour, stopping only when I fire a few warning rounds from the Kalashnikov. When everyone has their breath back I show Julia Gillard, and things suddenly get crazy.

The Armens descend upon me, tearing Gillard’s image from my hand and nailing it to a length of two-by-four. They parade it through the square, bouncing to the beat of spontaneous gunfire, and the crowd ascends into frenzy. As I flee the dizzying scene, leaving Alby Mangels behind, I remember that in Armenia, ginger hair is considered a virtue, a sign of The Chosen One. I sense a strong swing to Labor.

On the way home, I stop on the bridge and peer into the Kapan river. The water is a vivid azure blue, not because it’s sourced from melting alpine glaciers, but because it runs through the local mine, and contains enough copper sulphate to kill a man. A rotten cabbage races an empty vodka bottle through the eddies, and I am reminded of the local proverb: “In Kapan, look up - don’t look down”.

That wisdom, I decide as I wander off, applies equally to this election: we shouldn’t look down into the poison torrent of fear, we should look up at the brilliant mountain and aspire to reach its summit. We’ve been slipping down the slope for the past ten years. Now is the time to stick the ice-pick in, and claw back some national pride. I’m just sorry I won’t be on the ground to see it. I was gonna have a sick election party.

Dear Sam [former housemate]

Your letter really got me thinking about what I am doing out here: Am I here because it's something I want to do, or am I here because society expects it of me? I genuinely believe I am here because I enjoy it; because, exactly as you and Tim discussed, you never know what a time you've had until you tell somebody about it. While sometimes it may be difficult, there is always a story to tell and laugh at years from now. While some prefer events to run smoothly, I prefer everything to be crazy and difficult and for shit to go wrong. The best travel adventure stories are always about shit going wrong: The time you got the shits, the time a rabid monkey scratched your face, the time you ate magic mushrooms and thought a googly-eyed German was the Devil himself. No-one cares for stories about beautiful sunsets, nice hotels, or friendly locals...

... But back to the question of why I am here - and, perhaps, why you are there. A lot of people, when I say I am finding the fly in-fly out a little bit difficult, will say something like "You'll get used to it", but I have concluded there is a great difference - a huge terrifying chasm - between "getting used" to something and letting it kill your spirit and soul. Do you know what I mean? If I keep doing this work and, after a while, it doesn't bother me, is it because I am "used to it", or because I have let it grab my soul, tear the skin away, and leave it hanging to dry from a meat hook, like a great piece of beef jerky, or "soul jerky", as it were?

Yes, this "soul jerky" is what we have to stop ourselves becoming my dear boy. There's people I work with out here who are definitely in the latter stages of becoming hard, dry soul jerky, and the sight of them causes me to dry-retch. They are career FIFO workers, whose lives have so subtely eroded away that they don't even notice it happening, until one day they find they have nothing left - no friends, no lovers, no passions. They have no reason and no desire to go home because they have no home. This lack of a centre to their lives is like the blazing sun to the meat of their souls. Without a spiritual hub, one is dangerously close to becoming soul jerky.

But enough of this depressing talk of soul jerky, though I do like the term I invented just now by the campfire, after a few beers. Aah beer, the lubricant to the cogs of my brain...

Dear Gerard [former workmate]

... The shame is that after 9000 metres of RC drilling since my last letter I am not quite so excited about geology. I think I mentioned then that I had stopped reading high-brow literature between drillholes, taking to the hills instead, yes? Well guess who is currently sitting on the passenger side of my Landcruiser? Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's official: I am burnt out.

Speaking of books, I have read but two about Africa [Gerard had just got back from a trip there]: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and a biography of Cecil Rhodes. Neither, you will understand, endears me to the continent, but both were thoroughly excellent. The Rhodes biography was read at the tail end of a long period in my mid-late teens when I read only non-fiction, declaring to all that there was no need for escape to fiction - then I became an adult and discovered Aldous Huxley, who could tease the joy out of a dinner party, and Henry Miller, who could make it out to be a fiery pit of terror. So I altered my stance: The only books worth reading are those that find the joy, the terror, and the magic in the everyday world. Hmm, a tangent.

But yes, Rhodes - what a cunt, but what a brilliant cunt. And I mean brilliant, not as good or clever, but as 'shiny'. Yes Cecil Rhodes was a shiny, polished, flawless cunt, and if you don't know his story well then learn it. Cunts like that need to be spotted at an early age and shot. There's heaps of them out there, and all that you and I can do is buy a shotgun and read about the life and times of Cecil Rhodes. Knowledge is power...

Dear Peter [old Uni mate]

What's new pussycat? Nothing is new where I am. It's all old, weary, rotten; and there's not a thing to be done about it, but learn to love it. No, things aren't so bad - in fact it's quite good fun, apart from the whole being away from Carlie and my friends and my dog; from the beach, the shops, the football; from the realm of the sane man. The Kimberley is a hub of insanity, a Mecca to pilgrims strange and dangerous, and an accepting, womb-like hidey-hole for those on the run.

But who - this is a question that has been brewing in my head - is insane, and who is sane? And who does the judging? And how do we know they are sane? Mental state can not - must not - be thought of as a linear continuum, with sanity and insanity as the opposing end-members. Why? Because sanity and insanity so closely approach that to distinguish one from the other is an impossibility. Take the example of a man who has given up all his worldly possessions and resolved to walk the earth as a primitive man - I met such a man a few weeks ago at the Kununurra Hotel (he hadn't given up beer, obviously). Is he insane because he can't see the value and usefulness of modern technology? Or fantastically sane and clear-minded because he has recognised the evil inherent in a world run by machines? You decide.

I have decided that sanity and lunacy, if not one and the same, are at least kissing cousins. My driller is walking the blurry line that I speak of, after seven weeks out here with a total of three half days off to get supplies and spare parts from town. At the beginning of the program he fooled me a few times by saying things like "We have to stop the hole here (short of target depth) - there's too much water/the bit is broken/the ground is too hard" or "Oh no! If we stop the hole here (after a particularly short hole, which they find frustrating) then the rods will get bogged and we'll have to stand down." After about 10 seconds, or after I realised he was bullshitting me, he would laugh and tell me he was joking. He says the same things now, but with dull, pleading eyes, where before there was a sparkle; and the chuckling has gone, replaced by an uneasy silence, a scuffle of the feet, and a half-baked excuse to drift away. Yes, my driller is walking the line and beginning to list badly - towards the anoxic cesspool of insanity.

The good thing about this "isolation-style" insanity is its temporary nature. It allows a normally sane man to look through the foggy glasses of insanity; to crawl towards the edge of reason and sing "cooee" into the abyss. But, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, the only people who really know the limits are those who have gone over the edge...

Dear Chris [old workmate]

... Today as I staggered over yet another spinifex-matted gabbro outcrop, I asked myself this question (no, not aloud - I am not yet COMPLETELY mad): Is what I am doing living, or am I missing out on living? Is life the experience of walking through kilometres of thick, head-high cane grass in search of a high-magnetite gabbro, or is it the steady process of progression of work and play and meeting with friends for "a cup of joe" (I like that silly word that you taught me in the Norseman kitchen)? Or is it a bit of each? Who has lived more, by the common understanding: a man who spends every week of every year in the city, or a man who spends one thrilling week out of every four in the city and the rest of his time alone in the wilderness? Who is really missing out? Oh I do propose such leading questions don't I, and I think my feelings on the matter should be quite clear to you, if you have half the understanding of me that I believe you do.

The main goal I set for myself in my life is that I continue to add to my collection of stories, and that I also improve my ability to tell them, for I believe that all we can hope for in life is to laugh with and connect with those closest to us, and maybe add some new friends along the way. Maybe many people think this way, and that's why old grandpas and grandmas are always telling useless stories. Perhaps we should pay more attention and respect to old people. Nah, we shouldn't.

So how does one go about gathering stories? Do I simply walk the trail of life, picking up stories as I happen across them, or do I veer from the trail into the dampened thicket and return at some later stage - if at all - with a bloody great sackful? I'd personally like to think that even if I were to not leave this Coleman four-person tent (with vestibule*) for the rest of my days, I could still come up with a good story or two per day - true or false or somewhere in between.

I used to be a great believer that stories should be told modestly and accurately and with minimal foul language, but not any more. Any story can gain from a little embellishment, the addition of a hero or villain, or the skillful use - but not overuse - of the word "fuck" or one of it's many variants: fucker, fuckstick, fat fucken motherfucker, and so on. See how this letter has suddenly been brought alive by that sentence? Would the effect have been the same had I opened with "How the fuck are ya?" and carried on with the obscenity from that point forth? Hardly...

* My bedside dictionary defines a vestibule as "a room or hall just inside the outer door of a building". My fieldy and I have been puzzling over it's meaning since we found it on the tent boxes.

Postcard from Speewah

[This was sent to my workmates, who send "postcards" from wherever they are working. As you may be able to tell, this one was "polished" - drafted, re-written, unlike the letters]

It's a knife fight. Sanity in the blue corner; Lunacy resplendent in red. The bell rings; the opponents meet in a flash of silver. It's desperate. In the second round I notice something odd: Lunacy's trunks have taken on a blueish hue; Sanity's have reddened. By the third round both fighters are purple, indistinguishable. At the beginning of the fourth the combatants shake hands and call for tea and scones; in the fifth they dance a waltz.

I laugh maniacally. I laugh, and then I cry....

Cat Stevens - my lone companion and confidante - tells me thrice daily that "out on the edge of darkness, there rides the peace train". I tell Cat that had he commandeered a stallion, jumped the tracks, and flogged the whinnying beast until it's legs gave way - well beyond the edge of darkness - he'd have reached a place neither light nor dark; a place filled with God and, paradoxically, forsaken by Him. A place called Speewah.

Yes the Lord did some of His finest work when He created the Speewah Dome, pushing a large chemically-unstable mafic intrusion into flat-bedded sandstone, ensuring that the resultant ovoid valley would be fenced in by steep golden cliffs. It must be Eden in the wet season as water gushes in through the Dunham and Pentecost gorges and any number of waterfalls, but in the dry season the sunken ellipse becomes a coliseum; a super-heated crucible where Heathens - counseled only by Cat Stevens and fuelled only by sweetened condensed milk - are pitted against Brown Snakes amongst a thick mat of spinifex and spear grass*. And just when a Heathen, seemingly victorious, staggers punctured and bloodied from the thicket, his face torn with horror, Hell's Monsoon - "the other monsoon" - breaks and the creeks and rivers and waterfalls flow not with water but with despair - at first in a trickle but, before long, in a rampaging torrent that fills the cauldron to overflowing. Then, as quickly and unexpectedly as it began, the great surge ceases and all becomes quiet, still.

It is from the bottom of this Great Lake of Despair, from the lowest point on the valley floor, that I write to you now; my body, though literally tanned and upright, is metaphorically pale, limp, and laying prone in anoxic sludge, faintly idling at -273 C - absolute zero. I am embalmed in loathing; pickled in dread. But don't send help - I am comfortably numb. Forget me, please.

.... Round six and purple tuxedos are being worn for what looks like a banquet. Entree breezes by amid dazzling good manners and gaiety, but after a brief uncomfortable silence, anarchy erupts. The original colours are restored. Lunacy springs forth, plunging his desert fork into Sanity's eyeball and - oh the humanity! - splits his temple with a candelabra. It's a bloodbath!

I stop my Toyota to scream at a cow. She bucks with bewilderment and staggers backwards, her bovine sensibilities severely jangled. "Holy Jesus", her limpid eyes imply, "A madman!" I frown momentarily as a small voice - soft, fading - suggests that the cow may be right: I have gone crazy. But my own sane, sane, sane laughter drowns out the whisper and I speed onwards in a cloud of dust. But again I step on the brakes as I see a black dog in the bushes - the same black dog I have seen each of the last two days. He watches me without expression from his beady black eyes, as I begin to wonder: Is it just a black dog, or is it The Black Dog; Churchill's Black Dog; Led Zeppelin's Black Dog? My laughter is gone, replaced by solemnity, and as I chug away down the track, the dog patiently, knowingly trots behind.

* A tall savannah cover that dispenses it's all-penetrating seed pods at scrotum height.

Dear Adrian [old workmate]

[I butchered some of the lyrics, but you'll get the point]

I have two tapes in my shambolic Landcruiser wagon, but I will only listen to one of them: The Best of Cat Stevens. The other tape - The Best of UB40 - rests in the magazine slot of the driver's side door, destined never to be played again and, quite frankly, that tape is lucky it hasn't been smashed and burnt, such is my disdain for the band. I WAS happy to listen to it - after all, I bought it - until I read the tape cover during a quiet day and discovered they were white men - well one token black man and five or six white men. And they are English, not Jamaican. Who knew? Not me, and boy did I fly off the handle when I found out. Here I was all this time - years Adrian - with a picture in my head of three or four stoned Rastafari tapping on steel drums, up-strumming their guitars on the off-beat, laughing, crying, and eating two-minute noodles, and then I find out they are pasty white, skinny English geezers who wear dark sunglasses. Can you imagine my fury? I don't think you can, but you might get close if I tell you I paid $15 for that tape (and for Cat Stevens) from Kununurra Music, and that both had "45 rupees" stickers on them, meaning I should have paid around $1.50...

So given that UB40 is getting no airplay - I have resolved to burn that tape tomorrow when I brew my morning tea - and my radio doesn't work, it must be clear to you that I am hearing a lot of Cat Stevens at the moment. This is not an all-together bad thing, yours truly having been a fan for some time, but it would be fair to say that The Cat and I have been experiencing some turbulent times. I have begun to see The Cat as something more than a friend or a fling or a passing interest, and this kind of relationship change is not without its problems. Allow me to quote from The Cat's own work:

"Remember the days by the old school yard,
We used to laugh a lot.
Oh, don't you remember the days by the old school yard?

When we had simplicity,
And we had warm toast for tea,
And we laughed and needed love,
Yes I do, oh, and I remember you."

Don't you see Adrian? Can you fathom the relevance of those words to my situation; their astounding foresight? For years The Cat and I have had what one might call an open relationship: a bit of Cat here, a bit of Cat there; a bit of Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin or The Beatles or Jeff Buckley; a few weeks of silence; a bit more Cat beside the fire after a cask of port; and so on. It used to be so simple and carefree. I would generally just get drunk with the boys, have a bit of Cat, and then go to bed - no strings attached. I think Cat was just happy to be let out of the bag, so to speak. But now we're full-time, basically living together, and he wants more. Where before I just sang along, now he wants me to listen and understand. I'm not sure I want that, but The Cat's all I've got and silence is not an option - again, The Cat says it all:

"Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody.
I've got some money 'cause I just got paid.

Oh how I wish I had someone to talk to.
I'm in an awful way (he's in an awful way)."

Oh Cat, how can I question my need for you when you are so wise? I will always love you and need you - I can't believe I ever doubted it!

Sorry Adrian. I am trying harder to listen and understand The Cat. For instance, I am trying to piece together the puzzle of how The Cat became a convert to Islam: listening for clues in the songs, thinking about the year they were written. In songs like Morning Has Broken, Here Comes My Baby, and I Love My Dog, there is little hint at any religious awakening. Then there is what I call "the tipping point" songs, where The Cat is sombre and full of warnings - Wild World is the type-example. In these songs he is disenchanted, struggling, helpless, but in the third series he is reflective, as if looking back at the world he has left behind eg. Where do the Children Play. My ultimate goal is to find the actual specific drum beat where The Cat becomes Yousuf Islam, and I think I'm just about there.

The Cat IS giving me more love than ever, but we do still need a couple of hours apart each day, just to renew our feelings for one another. It's been good getting to know him more intimately - certainly better than 1/4-knowing 10,000 songs off an ipod. And, as with most occasions, he has the right words to end this letter:

"Whoever I'm with boy*, I'm always talking to you.
Always talking to you, but I can't think of right words to say.

And whenever I'm near boy*, I will put my arms around you.
Put my arms around you, like the sea around the shore."

Cant fit the rest [the page was running out]. Ciao.

* "Girl" in the song, but that wouldn't have made sense.

Dear Brendan [old housemate]

I write to you from aboard QF1074 enroute from Perth to Broome...

... There is a swollen sickness in my guts at the moment, due, I think, to the eggs and gnocchi I had for breakfast, and the sweet, milky coffee that I felt obliged to drink at the airport. Do you feel this obligation to drink coffee? The drink physically sickens me and mentally disgusts me, but I drink it regardless because everyone else seems to be doing it. This behaviour disgusts me because it shows me that I, too, am a bloated consumer and slave to fashion. I don't need the caffeine - I'm sure it's not a physical addiction - but I need the camaraderie with my fellow hollow shells of people, who took up the habit, like me, after seeing Americanos - Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Eva Longoria, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, and other such modern icons - drinking the stuff by the litre in mindless journals of our time like the favourite of Carlie, you, and I, New Weekly. Everyone's doing it man, and we'd be fools to do any different.

My nine days off in Perth were cluttered with the sorts of disgusting excesses that had become fantastically foreign to me during the preceding three weeks: sweet, milky coffees, as discussed above; thick, rich pastas and Asian dishes; cakes of all descriptions; sublime and ridiculous bouts of alcoholism, where I felt compelled to continue drinking, far beyond any reasonable limits, whether they be internal or imposed upon me by others; and, of course, all of this was underlain by a base of sedentary living. Sleep-ins were the norm; even the smallest task was too much. So, as I return to the bush now, I do so carrying extra weight around my waist - though I am still, as many folks observed, skinnier than usual - and, more disturbingly for me, weight around my brain.

At the end of my last three weeks, my mind was sharper than that of a fox. I felt able, in an instant, to slice through difficult situations, removing slabs and swathes of useless information with one or two sweeping strokes of my mental sword - the "slash" finale of the bayonet technique you once taught me in the loungeroom - leaving only the meaty core of the issue at hand. But the city, Brendan, the city dulled my blade almost instantly, and I couldn't summon the will to tend to it, or even the will to care...

Dear Andrew [brother]

... In addition to the incomprehension and taking of offence over my decision to bathe in the river [rather than using the shower cubicle], there is also an unspoken conflict over the quality of drinking water being collected. While the two field assistants wade out into the deepest pools to collect the purest water, I take mine from a fast-flowing, oxygenated, and sediment-charged section of the river. In my area, what I am collecting is not so much water as it is what I like to call "Dunham Juice".

Dunham Juice is painstakingly collected to ensure a complete lack of consistency in the end product, with the theory being that the drinker will imbibe whatever the river decides to deliver into the jerry can: one mouthful will be pure water, the next will be 10% leaf matter, and the last may be slightly damp sand and algae. Regardless, I will drink it, wiping the muddy remains from my face and giving a loud "Aaah, fuck yeah" after each mouthful; as far as I am concerned, a high solid content is a good thing, and a sure sign that the drinker is capturing all of the river's vitality, minerals, and water-borne diseases. The water SHOULD taste like humus, fish shit, dead cow, and seven different strains of meningitis...

Dear Darryl [brother]

Do you remember the old Hale School chapel song about not building your house on the sandy lands? Here it is, in case you don't remember:

"Don't build your house on the sandy lands; Don't build it too near the shore.
Well it might look kind of nice, but you'll have to build it twice.
Oh you'll have to build your house once more.

"You'd better build your house upon a rock; Make a good foundation on a solid spot.
Oh, the storms may come and go, but the peace of God you will know."

Quite a catchy tune, I'm sure you agree, though not as catchy as the one that started "He may be short, fat, red-haired and freckle-faced...", which I used to say was about Nick John. That bizarre thing about THAT song, looking back, is that it was about tolerance, but it's very words imply that being red-haired, for example, is something that must be TOLERATED. It treats gingerness as an undesirable trait, but one that some poor souls are afflicted with, and asks that we try to find it within our hearts to treat them as equals, however difficult that may be. Quite rightly too, I might add. Bloody rangers.

But back to the point, which is that I built my four man tent on the sandy lands on the bank of the Dunham River; right on the bank, and in coarse, loose quartz sand. And yes, in keeping with the song, it does look kind of nice. Perhaps I will have to build it twice after a storm; perhaps God will choose to destroy my dwelling in a fit of tempest. I will cross that biblical bridge when I come to it, and in the mean time I will not be moving my tent to a rock. I'm certain that God wouldn't wish a bad night's sleep on a loyal subject after said subject had toiled hard all day and not engaged in any devil's activities, besides pooing down old drillholes, bathing naked without shame, taking nips of Stone's Green Ginger Wine, clubbing pesky bugs to death with an empty bootleg cane spirit bottle, and coveting thy neighbour's Sunrise fruitbox.

No, He is a happy god, because I am in His country, not just passing through it or admiring it from afar, but living in it, breathing in it, eating in it, pissing and shitting in it, fishing in it, bathing in it, exploring, feeling and loving it, and immortalising it in words for my brethren. He is a satisfied god, because He knows that wherever I look, from the river valleys to the sandstone peaks, from the scorpions to the crocodiles, and from the light to the dark, I see Him, or at least something like Him...

Dear Gerard [former workmate]

How are things in the Barrick-sphere; the solemn and holy depository of geological knowledge; the impenetrable citadel of all that is known to be good and true? I know that, due to company policy, you are unable to divulge anything - not even what day it is there - but that's why letters are so great, and why I am single-handedly restoring them to power: nobody can filter them, unless you are in prison or North Korea. Fuck, shit, nigger, cunt, filthy jew, PIMA, geochemistry [those last two are a geological "in-joke"]. See?

Working out where I am - [specific description of place] in the East Kimberley - there are no rules or regulations or people watching over your shoulder. It's amazing to see what happens to a man when he is released into a world of freedom and personal responsibility, from a tightly regulated world where he is mothered and dictated to. At first there is a period of excess, in the manner of the teetotaler who leaps from the wagon, where the subject feels compelled to work in the most hazardous manner imaginable: riding on the back of utes, wearing singlets on drill rigs, walking barefoot through what the aboriginals call (adopt aboriginal accent here) "the long grass" (end aboriginal accent) - home to snakes of all descriptions.

But following the excesses - and this is where it gets interesting, and the stage I find myself in as we speak - there is a period of sobriety, to continue with the drinking analogy, where the subject reflects on the past and present and settles on a sensible middle-ground. This concept of "personal responsibility", foreign to me for so long, is a revelation, and tremendously empowering. It spreads from safety behaviour to geological behaviour to fiscal behaviour to romantic behaviour, moving through one's life like a slurp of Stone's Green Ginger Wine through the bloodstream of a man freshly emerged from his evening bath in the Dunham River.

The increased geological responsibility and empowerment are a God-send to me and, in tandem with the nagging pressure of contract work, have transformed my waning lust for rocks into a violent and unstoppable cinder cone of productivity. Where in the past I would have sat in the ute reading high-brow literature between drillholes, I now switch on the GPS, don my mapping jacket, and scale the sandstone ridges, paying heed to all I see and, if possible, measuring it's orientation with my brand new (now slightly soiled) Frieburg compass. I am doing the best geological work I have ever done...

Dear Tim [old Uni mate]

What's news in your stretch of these damp, fungus-infested woods? News here is that I just had to kill an as-yet unseen insect that was traversing my tent underneath the canvas floor. The fucker was making a hell of a racket, tricking me into believing he was inside the tent, and forcing me to start flinging my belongings around on a merry invisible goose chase. Before long I saw the shifty bugger's outline moving across my floor, and I beat him a good twenty or thirty times with an empty bottle that once held Cane Royale - a fine blend of cane spirit, coffee, and chocolate that is brewed at a place called The Hoochery Distillery in Kununurra, and makes a perfect belly-warmer after my evening bath in the languid and chilly Dunham River.

Jesus Christ, there's bugs trying to get into my tent flat out tonight; flying straight into the paper-thin walls and scaring the buggery out of me. It's going to be another fiftful sleep, riddled with Franz Kafka-style nightmares about gigantic insects...

...After my bath, the warmth of my chosen neanderthal exercise has faded and I am decidedly chilly. At this time I dry off and return to my tent, remaining naked but casting a thin blanket over my goose-pimpled body and lounging back on my swag and stretcher. The ecstasy of this warmth is spine-tingling, but the two or three or four slugs of Cane Royale that follow are orgasmic, and the highlight of my day. I can feel the heat of the liquor travelling through my chest and into my stomach, and I re-learn every day the origin of the saying "it hits the spot".

Following the slugs of Cane Royale - men have "slugs"; women and homosexuals have "nips" - there is a ten minute period of reflectance and thought, covering vast spans of subject matter and travelling through time and space infinite. If I could write letters during this time, they would be the best ones, but the mere act of picking up a pen and paper would spoil the purity of thought, and recapturing it would be a dream...

Dear Stuart [old football mate]

[Content warning! If the first sentence disgusts you, please do not read on. If it intrigues you, please continue; but do so at your own risk, and with a sense of humour]

I had the best turd of my life today, and if you care to listen, I will tell you about it.

Let me preface this entire story by taking you back a few weeks in my life to a period where I was reading a book of essays by Sigmund Freud, the famous German psycho-analyst. "What does Sigmund Freud have to do with glorious turds?", I hear you ask. "Plenty", is my reply.

This particlar book, "Five Short Accounts of Psycho-Analysis & The Question of Lay Analysis", was interesting in parts, but not what one would call spellbinding. It was generally to do with the idea of the subconscious, the nature of memory repression, and the question of the suitability of using lay people, meaning non-doctors in this case, to perform psycho-analysis. The two sections that I found the most interesting, though, were those covering dream analysis, which I won't go into here, and infant sexuality, which I will go into.

Freud believed, and I understand it is now widely-accepted, that the sexual instinct is basically present from birth, not from puberty as one might expect. He claimed that common childhood behaviours such as sucking of the thumb, fiddling with the genitals, and the old "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" game - I know you've played that one Stuart - are expressions of this infantile sexual urge. I read this information with mild interest, at first questioning the theory, and then conceding that yes, maybe he was right. The only part that outright surprised me was when he said that defaecation or pooing or shitting or number twos or releasing the chocolate hostage or dropping the kids at the pool, or whatever you want to call it - he actually said that we get a sexual pleasure out of it. Until today, I didn't really undrstand what he meant.

Everybody knows that the most enjoyable turds are camping turds. The explanation for this is two-fold. Firstly, the nature of camping dictates that it is not practical to lay three turds a day; most will only lay one per day, or as few as one per three days, and this generally means that when a turd is lain, it is a full and satisfying one. Secondly, the layer of the turd appreciates the primitive and raw sensation of snapping a steaming grogan off into the dirt, just as the cavemen did; it's the same pleasure that one gets when gnawing meat off a large bone. So the two factors are basically size and environment; but today Stuart, today there was more than that. Yes, today was a religious experience, that much is certain.

It happened high on a sandstone ridge, overlooking the broad grassy valley that slopes away towards the Dunham River. It was around 10 am, I had done the bulk of my morning's work, and I felt an almost imperceptible movement in my lower bowel. Understanding that nature waits for no man, nor his drill rig, I solemnly took the paper roll from the back seat of the wagon and began my ascent of the hill, eyes wandering between the treacherous rocky ground, the stark dry scenery, and the flawless sky.

I found an old drill site - only in the good-old-days would they have had the guts to put a drill rig up this far, I thought to myself - and luckily the 150 mm PVC collar was left sticking from the ground. It was an angled hole so there would be some skid marks, but that wasn't my concern; the God's had smiled upon me, and I fully intended to take their gift graciously.

Lowering my pants, I took a deep breath and sighed, before flexing my knees and placing the estimated position of my anus over the hole, making a small allowance for the backward momentum of the stool. The first 3/4 of the faeces came in a rush, as if it had been eagerly awaiting it's release; like an innocent man from the prison gates.

While waiting for the aftershocks, I again took in my surroundings, eager to savour the moment. My earplugs had dampened the roar of the drilling into a low and pleasing hum that seemed to gently massage my bowels, and the sun was just high enough to shed the first golden light on the high west-facing cliffs towering over the Dunham. Yes this was God's own country, I decided, and He was with me now as the final dregs exited my satisfied arsehole.

It was only as I zipped up my Yakka shorts that I thought about what Freud had said. He was right you know; by the time I had reached the bottom of the hill I was convinced of it. The tension was released from my muscles; I had a small smirk on my face; my legs were a tad wobbly; I felt I needed a cigarette. The troubles of the day had washed away, just as the skid marks on the PVC collar had washed away with a few handfuls of dirt, some extra toilet paper, and a dozen good-sized rocks. Shitting is like sex; no shitting IS sex. Sex IS shitting, in every way. Both are releases; one of sexual tension, the other of decomposing foodstuffs and other bodily waste. Think it through; right through to the end. You know it's true...

Dear Michael and Ngaire [Kalgoorlie Miner editors]

Top of the mornin' to you! It may not be morning as you read this, but judging by the stars it's about 4 am here, and I am writing to you in real-time, so top of the morning to you. This business of waking up at 4 am has got to stop, but until the business of going to be at 8 pm stops, that just isn't going to happen. Normally I just lie here in my swag, thinking about how cold my face is and waiting for a bird to start chirping, but starting this morning I have resolved to start a series of morning letters, to juxtapose with my series of evening letters. It will be interesting to see how their styles differ. Looking back at the letters I wrote last night, I am immediately struck by their rambling and incoherent nature, and the scrappiness of the hand-writing...

...[if Kalgoorlie was attacked by terrorists] I would join the army without a moments hesitation.

I would make a poor soldier: ill-disciplined, messy, fond of drink (on no, a bird just chirped - time is running low), a preference for chaos over order, an abhorrence of killing people I don't know (and, for your peace of mind, people I do know), look bad in khaki, don't make my bed, long-haired, unshaven, meek, yellow, timid, soft, cowardly, and, to top it all off, a deserter.

In many ways, and on many days, I regret deserting Kalgoorlie. I have seen new and interesting places, but at the moment they have the cold and short-lived embrace of a random floozy from the Palace Hotel corner bar; I long for the warm and reassuring breast of my first true love. I read in Dolly magazine that to get over a relationship, one needs to allow half of the duration of that union, in which case I have around three years of desperate pining to go. Unless I come back.

Ciao for now, from the banks of the Dunham River, East Kimberley.

Dear Frog [old football mate]

I just heard a frog croaking outside my tent and it reminded me of you. Why are you called Frog? It's one of my life's biggest regrets that I never found out. I always assumed that it was because you are green and say "ribbit" a lot and you are covered in slime that makes one hallucinate when one licks it. I came close to licking you on many occasions, but you always hopped away at the last moment, damn you.

I would lick one of the frogs outside right now, but this would be a risky place to be hallucinating, especially of a night. It would almost certainly be a bad trip. There is water, fire, crocodiles, aboriginals, snakes, spiders, bush geese, bulls, falling trees, spinifex, scorpions, hypothermia, heat stroke, silicosis from RC dust, burst eardrums from the noise, red berries, brown snakes, stingrays, piranhas, fast-moving locomotives, trapdoors, wild boar, deranged field assistants and drillers, wedgetailed eagles, steep cliffs, quick sand, cannibals, ewoks, star troopers, klingons, muslims, jews, white pointers, white supremacists, white-tipped reef sharks, black-tipped reef sharks, pink-tipped reef sharks, and reef sharks with no tips at all but very sharp teeth indeed.

... But yes it would be a bad trip - there is too much worry. I certainly wouldn't be leaving my tent at night without a sharp mind, a sharper axe, and a fucking good reason...

Dear Drew [old uni/house mate]

... My stupid rechargeable lantern went flat after that sentence, and it is now the next night, Tuesday 10th July if I'm not mistaken, which I probably am. A freezing cold night it is too; cold enough for my penis to shrink to a mere 6 inches when I jumped into the mighty Dunham River after my evening jog. That's 6 inches across, in case you were wondering, which you probably were you seedy cunt. Honestly Drew, grow up and get your mind out of the gutter.

All this talk of penises has made me lose my train of thought, which was a narrow-guage, two-carriage, rickety steam train of thought anyway, so it's no great loss.

What would be a great loss, would be if you and I were not to meet when I am next in Perth - I believe between the 20th and 29th of this good month. Unfortunately Skywest do not fly people around according to when the passenger "believes" he is travelling, so I will need to somehow confirm those dates. No easy feat when your only form of communication is a good loud yell. I suppose I could just yell out my message and ask that anyone who hears it, can they please yell it on in turn, but it would no doubt lead to a horrible Chinese-whispers-style balls-up, where my message "When am I flying back to Perth?" would become something like "Dead-eye driving, smack the smurf" or "Jedi flying, slack the berth" or, worse still, "Cup of tea please. Milk and two sugars. Oh, and a milk arrowroot". Can you imagine the embarrasment? I only take one sugar!...

Dear Sam [old housemate]

You are the second person (besides Carlie, who is always No. 1) to recieve a letter from my book of Kimberley letters. I have often thought of you as my No. 2, and please don't take that in the toilety way because that brings to mind all sorts of horrible images, and would also add new meaning to my reference to Carlie being my No. 1 - meanings that I don't think she would appreciate.

But yes, you and I are a fine partnership: completely different at surface but precisely the same at depth. We are both men of values and morals that rest deep within us, and that nothing can change. We are strangers to each other, but we go together well. You are the dexi; I am the scoob. You are the pork chop; I am the apple sauce. You are the roaring fireplace; I am the $5 cask of Old Tawny Port...

Dear Carlie

It's me, your boy, writing to say hello, and to add that I love you and that all is well, despite these troubled and difficult times of terrorism, facism, starvationism, and me working for weeks at a time in the Kimberleys...ism.

All is not lost in the Kimberleys though, my gorgeous one. It is my bold and outrageous intention to fill this 100-page Spicers Olympic Carbon Book "with extra carbon" (it says that on the cover, which I, for some reason, found to be quite hilarious) with letters to all of my lovers (of which there is but one*), relatives and friends alike, so that they may benefit spiritually from my ye-olde-fashionede letters, and that I may benefit financially and egotistically by selling the book's contents for many millions of dollars, if and when I become famous. What say you of my plan? Dare you dismiss it as impossible?

Regardless of your stance, it should hearten you to know that you are No. 1 in my book, quite literally and probably even "with a bullet"...

*Maybe two, counting Stuart, who often refers to me, and me to him, as "lover".

Coming Soon: Something New!

Hello...hello...hello...is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?

Whether you want to read it or not, I will soon be posting some new stuff, probably in the form of letters, or excerpts of letters, that I have written to friends or relatives. Some names may be changed, some parts may be left out, but they will otherwise be word-for-word and punctuation-error-for-punctuation-error, as written in my Spicers Olympic Carbon Book "with extra carbon" from wherever I was at the time, and in whatever state of mind I was in.

Material may come on in spasmodic bursts, because I am often working outside the techno-sphere.

Kalgoorlie Miner (25): Farewell

One of the first principles I learnt at the WA School of Mines was the Law of Original Horizontality, which states that sedimentary rocks are originally deposited in horizontal layers – much like yeasty scum at the bottom of a sulphurous backyard homebrew (my simile, not WASM’s). They rarely stay that way.

Ask your friendly neighbourhood geologist and he will tell you that horizontal rocks no longer exist in the Goldfields because around 2.5 billion years ago they were stretched, squashed, twisted and fractured by unrelenting tectonic forces; divided by red-hot magma; and transformed beyond recognition by intense heat and pressure. I know how those rocks must have felt.

When I arrived in Kalgoorlie I was soft and horizontal like newly-deposited sediment. I was made of quality stuff – my family had ensured that – but I had yet to consolidate. I was still malleable and ductile; still open to influence. I was, if you like, a blank canvas.

I ask you, my learned reader: Could this young man have chosen a finer place to splash him with colour? I say no. And to press you further: If this city were an artist, whose work would it mirror? I say Vincent Van Gogh; characterised by coarse, bold brushstrokes that inexplicably combine to produce something of splendour.

Superficially there is nothing subtle about Kalgoorlie. A passing observer may appreciate the coarse, bold things – money, trucks, holes, miners, pubs, hookers – but like a good painting, the warm internal elation of true understanding is saved only for those who fully immerse themselves in it.

I hear you ask: What factor – unappreciated by the passing observer – over time transforms Kalgoorlie’s roughness into beauty before one’s eyes? I answer you confidently: It’s people.

When I moved to town, the general concern amongst family and friends was that I would become a red-necked simpleton – how distant from the reality! The city’s very strength is that people of all backgrounds are compelled not merely to tolerate each other, but to co-exist and have a grand time doing it.

My best mates are professionals, tradesmen and shit-kickers; footballers and scholars; Tasmanians and normal people. I’ve discussed philosophy with driller’s offsiders, met likeable South Africans and performed drunken emu-hunting dances with the natives on the Paddy’s Alehouse dancefloor. What better place for an education in life?

My experiences here have taught me that we are all brothers and sisters, helpless products of our own environments, dealing with the same fundamental questions and problems. Ben Lee: I’m made of atoms, you’re made of atoms and we’re all in this together.

Many arrive in Kalgoorlie masquerading as hard-nosed economic mercenaries, but this futile façade inevitably crumbles as they realise that it is far easier to love than to hate. If they do ever leave – as I will be shortly – they do so softened and with an unshakeable feeling that they’ll be drawn back by forces beyond their control.

Had I stayed in Perth I have little doubt that I would have remained horizontal; slowly hardening in a familiar setting until I became rigid and lifeless. As it happened I came here aged 18 and spent seven life-defining years being stretched, squashed, twisted, fractured, divided and transformed by this city and it’s people.

Thankyou Kalgoorlie and, to a lesser extent, Boulder (ooh, what cheek!). I doff thy top hat and bid thee farewell.

A funny footnote: Everyone that spoke to me about “Out There” – absolutely without exception – believed that no-one else understood it. How typical of Goldfielders not to give themselves and each other credit!

Kalgoorlie Miner (24): Shark

In the nanoseconds that elapsed between hitting the water and the commencement of my frenzied swim back to shore, I painstakingly reviewed how exactly I had come to be in this situation; immersed in the dark, heaving Southern Ocean with a large squid head and a decomposing herring attached to my leg.

The most immediate reason was my clumsy unintentional dismount from the sea kayak that had carried me out from the sloping migmatite (granite for non-geologists) coastline; an ironic occurrence you’ll agree, given that my sister is an Olympic oarswoman, but not nearly equalling the looming potential irony of being eaten by a shark while setting a shark bait. I had one quivering hand on a Darwin Award.

That I would soon be dismembered and/or devoured was, I felt, a fait accompli. It was twilight and slightly overcast, there were 40 rotting pilot whale carcasses on an adjacent beach, and some weeks earlier my brother had flippantly informed me (now a thudding internal reminder on loop) that Great White sharks were frequently tagged at nearby Doubtful Island.

Unhappy with the initial conclusion that my own poor seamanship was to blame for my predicament, I began racking my brain for alternative scapegoats. Thankfully several years in the mining industry had left the knuckles on my blame-assigning finger well-lubricated and it’s tip extremely pointy.

I was only on the dilapidated kayak, I now figured, because Sam – who was visible on the rocks alternately doubled over in laughter and yelling encouragement or criticism (I suspected the latter) – was unable or unwilling (again, the latter is favoured) to paddle out himself. His concern may have stemmed from the fact that he shares a name with a breed of charitable seal.

But was I really even in danger? As a teenager on Perth’s coastline I had traversed the ocean without fear, so why now did I feel like a lone springbok drinking from an eerily deserted waterhole? Were Channel Seven and the Sunday Times to blame?

Ultimately I put the paranoia down to the circumspection that comes with age, the ceaseless shark-related comments around the camp and the xenophobia caused by seven years in the Golden Outback. Oh and there was the bait dangling from my leg.

Alas with this answer came another question: When Sammy opted out, why had I cast my hat into the ring ahead of Rhett and Christian? For this the blame lay squarely with Ajax the dog, whose words from last week were still echoing: “It’s the ‘I wish I did’ regrets that haunt you,” he had explained with wisdom beyond both his years and his species, “not the ‘I wish I didn’t’ ones.”

“Sure,” I had therefore mused on the rocks, “I may lose a leg, but at least there’s a Kalgoorlie Miner column in that. If I don’t go I’ll have to write about Brian Burke or mobile phones or the wall outside Woolworths and no-one deserves that.”

And so I had entered the surging ocean with Ajax’s urging voice in my head and with your appeasement – yes you, my bloodthirsty reader – as my motivation; a wannabe Gonzo journalist risking limb and/or life to relay news from The Great Shark Hunt.

It was following this thought that I screamed “Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” several times and set off in a frenzied primal freestyle, pausing momentarily to shove the slapping kayak landward.

The 200 lb monofilament had come loose from my leg, but three days spent wallowing in berley, mulies and fish intestines meant that I alone would have made a delightful hors d’oeuvre for any passing monster. The herring and squid were mere parsley on the parmiagana.

As I finally slithered back up the migmatite slope, babbling incoherently and with my nerves horribly jangled, a stunning adrenalin-driven revelation dawned upon me: I was no longer in the acceptably reckless age group of 18 to 25, having turned 26 just two days prior. The dream was over, I decided there and then. It was time to grow up.

The stiff wind had almost dried my now goose-pimpled skin when I realised that without the fuel of youthful foolhardiness and adventure, the raging inferno that was “Out There” would soon wane, flicker and ultimately be extinguished. I had to call it a day.

Next week: my final column.

Footnote: We didn’t catch a shark. I told the boys the bait was in 3 to 4 metres of water. That was a lie.

Kalgoorlie Miner (23): Verandah - Part Two

There’s only so much a pooch can do in this backyard. Try to escape? Check. Lick the barbie plate? Check. Sit at the outdoor setting in mockery of my human captors and in flagrant contravention of their laws and customs? Check. I’m a settled twenty-something in dog years now, so shenanigans like knocking over the bin to drink the beer dregs are best confined to memory, or lack thereof. Ah, the foolishness of youth.

Regrets: I’ve had a few, but in my heart of canine hearts I don’t really regret them. “I wish I didn’t” regrets decorate one with life’s badges of honour and make for amusing self-depreciative anecdotes. Any three-legged mongrel will tell you that a story of cataclysmic tragedy or failure is an order of magnitude more popular than one of success. It’s the “I wish I did” regrets that haunt a dog on his deathmat or deathbench or deathbush or whatever object it is upon which he dies.

The front gate just closed, meaning that the boss is back from wherever he goes for five days out of every seven. He stays home unexpectedly sometimes, usually following a night spent out here drinking the brown bottles and, later into the darkness, the tall bottles of red stuff. On those nights the boys become jovial and affectionate and many a chop bone gets cast my way.

The back door has been left ajar as usual. I’m not allowed through the house, but if I stay low then I become invisible. I think. Here goes. Creeping, creeping. Out the front now and he’s looking at me sternly. Invisibility error. I’ll just sit with my head down, eyes up and tail thrashing and hope that he forgives me.

Oh hello Ajax, he says in his condescending sing-song voice. In my teenage years I cringed every time I heard that name. Not after the cleaning product, he tells newcomers, but rather the mighty Greek warrior from The Iliad. He just wants people to know that he’s read the classics.

What’s the word for him? Pretentious. Yeah that’s it. As pretentious as a Hannans labradoodle – or so he would probably say, given his obsession with similes or metaphors or whatever they are. I’m only a dog so how would I know the difference?

What song should I play Ajax, he asks. Anything but Radiohead. Paranoid Android you reckon, he answers on my behalf. Sigh. Radiohead again. He really should listen to his mother and learn some happy songs.

OK I’m in tune boy, he says, let’s go. You go – I’ll just savour the grass and the sun. Both keys to canine happiness and both sadly lacking out the back.

“Please can you stop the noise I’m tryin’ to get some rest…”

Ah, such blinding irony in that opening line. Only a Thom Yorke impression is more annoying than Thom Yorke. How can he stay so glum for so long? Is it not a phase that you grow out of? If I had opposable thumbs I would track him down and wring his skinny English neck, putting an end to his apparent misery. And mine.

“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly…”

I used to have ambitions and urges but two changes – one instantaneous and one creeping – have put an end to that. Firstly, the operation that stripped me of my manhood. Now I can only be “good friends” with the bitches. That just sounds gay.

Secondly, the increasing dominance of my inner Staffy over my inner Border Collie. Oh for the days when the desire to sleep was hammered into submission by the twitching genetic compulsion to spring into the air and to corral other animals!

“Raaaiiin down, rain down, c’mon raaaiiin down on me…”

It’s been raining down on me lately. Pouring from a great height. Went for a run out bush and wore the pads off my feet. At least I wasn’t out on Hannans Lake this time – talk about adding salt to the wound. I got to roll in some rotting wildlife on the weekend though. That’s a positive.

Here comes the conclusion. Nearly time to leap up for a pat before he begins his next melancholy ballad. The smart money is on Jeff Buckley.

“God loves his children, yeah!”

And now for the power chord finale. Ho hum. Prepare for some Eau de Dead Kangaroo mister.

A, A, C, A, G#, G#, G#, C, D, A.

Jump. Woohoo!

Kalgoorlie Miner (22): Verandah - Part One

Blimey it’s hot out the front, but it’s either this or the damp, stagnant jungle out the back. Question: Flies or mosquitoes? Answer: Flies – they don’t inject piss into you. Question: Melanoma or Ross River virus? Answer: Melanoma – you can cut it out. Question: People-watching or introspection? Answer: People-watching in summer, introspection in winter. The front verandah it is.

Curse this daylight saving. I like to think I’m Progressive, but give me cooler earlier over lighter longer anyday. Sam the Stubborn Boilermaker (is there another kind?) was right about it all along. Note to self: Don’t tell him that. Can’t have my housemate saying I-told-you-so. Vote No, then feign excitement when the Yes vote wins.

Oh hello Ajax. The mighty Greek warrior. Where did you come from? Part Staffy (lazy), part Border Collie (hyperactive). Confused, like a three-toed sloth on amphetamines. Sleep in the dirt… ROUND UP FLIES… slowly lick testicles… JUMP THE FENCE AND RUN AWAY.

Bloody guitar is out of tune. Daylight saving almost certainly to blame. Excessive heating (expansion) and cooling (contraction) of strings. Top E always goes to E flat. Damn you Matt Birney.

What song should I play Ajax? Paranoid Android you reckon. Radiohead again? What did my mother say once? Mickey why can’t you play some happy songs? Like what? Like… I Love the Nightlife. Most I’ve ever laughed. OK, I’m in tune boy. Let’s go.

“Please can you stop the noise I’m tryin’ to get some rest…”

Vegetable garden is looking miserable. Corn and beans stunted, tomato yield down. Can’t even spare any to throw at the phonebox. Last season an old granny came to see the corn. Talk of the retirement village, or so she reckoned. Not so this year. Where are you random grandma? Improvements must be made. Note to self: Conduct bankable feasibility study into garden expansion, plus acquisition of a Chinaman’s hat and team of buffalo.

“Ambition makes you look pretty ugly…”

Little bottlebrushes are improving. Straight, dignified and independent. Had to untie them from their stakes because they weren’t progressing. Sink or swim, I said. Now or never. Like a mum sending her babies off to pre-school. In the first days they drooped like overworked gigolos. Had to resist the urge to interfere. So proud they’ve come good.

“Raaaiiin down, rain down, c’mon raaaiiin down on me…”

Ah, another recycler emptying their little yellow bin into the big yellow bin. Every day a reminder that people care. As Kevin Costner said in Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come. As I say to a right-leaning friend of mine: It’s global warming, it’s David Hicks, it’s recycling… it’s just the vibe.

“God loves his children, yeah!”

Get off me you stinky mongrel. Rolling in dead kangaroos again. You can take the dog out of Kambalda, but you can’t take Kambalda out of the dog.

Next week: Ajax's perspective.

Kalgoorlie Miner (21): Western Australia

I'm sick of Western Australia’s resources boom – in fact if I hear about it again, I tell you I shall spontaneously combust. Resources boom, resources boom, resources boom. Feeling uncomfortably hot. China, India, uranium. Ouch, it burns!

Sure, high commodity prices are putting the wine and goat’s cheese on my table, but I am beginning to resent all of these economic refugees coming into WA from other states to snaffle a piece of our pie. “My pie!” I cry, my face crinkled up and my lower lip protruding; and your pie too, my learned reader.

These eastern seaboard vultures covet our womenfolk, refuse to adopt Western Australian values and have the gall to prattle on about the superiority of their homelands. They mock us because we speak slowly and use two syllables to say beer like “beeya”, here like “heeya” and fear like “feeya”. Ooh, the nerve – I’ll show them feeya! Listen up now as I give them all a frightful literary spanking – take this, inferior scoundrels!

Queensland is only the second-biggest state. It’s full of lanky ginger-nuts who like to cover their ruddy, freckly faces with zinc and go surf-lifesaving with their bathers wedged between their buttock cheeks. They pronounce "pool" like "poo" but with an "l" on the end. They tackle, bludgeon and stab animals for fun, all the while rhythmically guffawing like a bunch of lobotomised Dr. Hibberts. Intolerable simpletons!

New South Wales bears no resemblance to the south of Wales. It’s people have spray-on tans, artificially-whitened teeth and those gym-formed Ken (of "Barbie and Ken" fame) muscles that have no practical value around the house or workplace – they’re just for show! They like shiny things and pastel colours and they cry easily. Pansies!

Victoria is cold and pointless. Why does it exist? There’s no industry. It’s bohemian residents just lounge about in trendy (read small) cafes, sipping mocha frappucinos and reading Franz Kafka essays or The Weekend Australian. They wear black-rimmed spectacles – even though their eyesight is fine – and produce art-house films that romanticise heroin addiction. Poseurs!

Tasmania is a rude shape and it’s inhabitants are strange. Jim Morrison once reasoned that "people are strange when you're a stranger" but he never visited Queenstown, where the people are strange even if you are Sigmund Bloody Freud. My brother and I spotted that banjo-playin' yokel from Deliverance there once. I tried to make a quick getaway, but was slowed by the tricky foot-operated handbrake in our rental Tarago. The boy almost got us. The horror!

South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory are... Sorry – I’ve got nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad. A blank. These places are black holes in the universe that is one’s mind!

The Northern Territory is OK with me, except for the crocodiles and poisonous jellyfish in the water – that’s just plain silly.

There is no doubt that Western Australia is the greatest state. We don’t build hideous monuments because our natural wonders are infinite; our arts scene is lagging only because it’s too pleasant outside to bother painting or sculpting or writing in some dampened studio; we are annoyingly casual because with a population density of one person per square kilometre, there’s really no need to stress; and Sunday trading won’t come in because we damn well don’t want it to.

It’s high time we seceded from the rest of Australia. It will be a glorious and, at times, bloody revolt led by me, your Supreme Commander. I‘ve already done the hard part and gained control over the media – I ordered the editors to call this column “WA: The Mighty State” and they did. Now grab your pitchforks and meet me at the border – I’ll go first, you follow!

I’ll just kick back and have another beer first though…

Kalgoorlie Miner (20): Bali

START OF PLAY.

(A hotel pool in Bali, June 2003. People variously reclined on banana lounges, skylarking in the water, or face down on massage tables. A no-doubt pirated copy of The Red Hot Chili Peppers "Californication" is on repeat. MICHAEL dives in, surfacing at the barstools.)

MICHAEL: (softly addressing the barman) One Strawberry Daiquiri please.

BRAIN: (mocking) Have a look at you – swanning about ordering cocktails like you’re flamin’ James Bond. And speak louder you idiot.

BARMAN: (clipped English) No worry Aussie mate, which room you in?

MICHAEL: (yells) Number nine.

BRAIN: (hypnotised) Number nine, number nine, number nine. Revolution 9 – The White Album. What is that song about?

MICHAEL: (staring vacantly into water, whispers) I really don't know.

(LES, a leathery, greying, well-fed Australian, takes up an aquatic perch adjacent to, but unseen by Michael)

BRAIN: (excited) Hey if you stare at the ripple-sunlight interaction on the pool floor for long enough it begins to resemble a troupe of frolicking Chinese dragons!

MICHAEL: (with growing enthusiasm) Hey yeah – and they're dancing in time with Scar Tissue!

LES: (friendly, inquisitive) Scar tissue? You talking to me mate?

MICHAEL: (startled) What? Who? Oh. (reddens, scratches head) Yeah sorry, that was nothing. Just mumbling to myself... ha ha ha... hmmm. (brightens) So what brings you to Bali old buddy?

LES: (leans back, broad crooked smile) The wife and I come here for three weeks every year. Look around (sweeps arm across pool) – it's paradise. Beautiful hotels and beaches, everything is so cheap, and the people are wonderful, just wonderful. So friendly!

MICHAEL: (with lacklustre enthusiasm) Wow yeah, it sounds like you really love the joint. I've only been here a few days myself – still finding my feet I suppose (half-heartedly hops from foot-to-foot, demonstrating the finding of one's feet).

BRAIN: Bad joke. (anxious) Don't you ruin this man's contentment Michael – I know what you're thinking. (pleading) Listen to me for once. Michael!

MICHAEL: (thoughtfully frowning) See, I reckon you've got to consider this place on a deeper level. (pauses, looks around) I mean I would have a hard time describing it as paradise, strictly-speaking.

LES: (taken aback) I'm not sure what you mean.

MICHAEL: (calm) Well there's rubbish everywhere, the natural attractions are rundown, and there's, like, monkeys eating westerner's vomit off the streets. And the people...

LES: (angry) What about the people?

MICHAEL: (remains calm) Well they are generally friendly, but see it from their point of view – they need your money to survive. It's not a balanced relationship and, as such, can't really be taken on face value. They’re friendly in the way that a cotton-pickin’ Negro slave is chummy with his boss-man.

LES: (dumbfounded) That's a bit bloody cynical isn't it?

MICHAEL: (on the front foot now) Outrageously cynical, but surely you must recognise the reality of the situation. (wildly gesticulating) We spend 100 dollars on a night out, urinate on their streets, then come past in the morning and barter hard over a two dollar t-shirt. They don’t love and respect us. They tolerate us out of necessity.

LES: (paddles away, mutters) Christ you're a prick mate.

MICHAEL: (suddenly guilty) Wait Les, come back!

LES: (turns, incredulous) My name isn't Les.

BRAIN: (laughing) You called him Les because he looks like Sir Les Patterson you turkey! (reflective pause) Hey let's not come back to Bali champ.

MICHAEL: (sighs) Amen to that brother. (rejuvenated) Hey the dragons are grooving to Otherside!

END OF PLAY.

Kalgoorlie Miner (19): Kebabs

I was struggling for a column topic today (that is Wednesday) so I stepped into my pool, expelled the air from my lungs and resolved to lie face down on the bottom until I came up with something acceptable. I hoped that the silence, the zero gravity sensation and the threat of imminent death would get my creative juices flowing - and said juices did flow, my dear reader.

As I lay prone in what was potentially my watery grave, I began thinking about kebabs - not about how delicious they are, not about their potential for carrying deadly bacteria, but about the role they have played as a binding thread through the ragged quilt that is my life thus far.

Weightlessly hovering in my liquid environs, I remembered my first taste (literally) of kebabs - a job at the now-defunct Kebab Company Scarborough, next door to the Stamford Arms. I thought of the 6.00 pm to 2.30 am weekend shifts that I worked for $8 an hour; of the summer twilights spent with a pair of open burners slow-roasting my back and the setting sun in my face; of the drops of sweat that would fall into kebabs from the tip of my nose, remarkably unnoticed.

My fists mutely pounded the fibreglass as I recalled the abusive English skinheads that I tolerated without a whimper; the musclemen who would angrily insist that the yolks be removed from their eggs; the arrogant South Africans who thrived on belittling me and who's behaviour was an order of magnitude more offensive than that of any slobbering drunkard.

I grimaced an aquatic grimace as I relived the paralysis that gripped me when confronted by groups of giggling beach babes. Halfway through an involuntary bumbling parody of my kebab making routine, one of my Scarborough Football Club mates would inevitably burst in, make a crude joke about hot meat, then strut back out with the chicks in tow - to pash behind the Surf Club I supposed.

Yes, I cooly reflected from the depths, the kebab shop taught me many of life's great lessons - it made me a Labour man, it taught me to stick up for myself, and it showed me that when girls talk of men in uniforms, they speak not of a 17 year-old in a hommus-stained polo shirt.

As I relaxed and entered the "acceptance" stage of drowning, other major kebab-related life events flashed before my eyes.

My first proper girlfriend and I broke up while watching "He Died with a Felafel in his Hand", a movie which I enjoyed immensely nonetheless. I too would like to die with a felafel (my favourite kebab) in my hand... as I ride my bicycle through an electrical storm (refer to column 17).

I was eating an authentic Greek kebab as I watched Sally Robbins famously collapse and deny my sister Sarah a medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics - yes my actual certified sister was rowing in the same crew, and no she neither slapped Sally, nor smote her with an oar. As delectable as that particular kebab was, I felt obliged to spit it out in disgust.

My decision to quit Croesus Mining Norseman exploration crystallised after the 2005 local race day, while staggering around the small town in search of a kebab shop that I knew didn't exist. I had to settle for stale potato gems and a microwaved chicken roll from Caltex - that was the last straw.

It was after this thought about Norseman’s kebablessness that I, your wrinkly narrator, emerged from the pool content with my musings on the matter and ready to put pen to paper, or fingers to little buttons, as it were - a few brain cells poorer yes, but far more deeply in touch with my inner kebab.

I leave you this day with a suggestion: be nice to the people at Acropolis - friendly people get bigger kebabs.

Kalgoorlie Miner (18): Inevitability

As Australia edged towards victory in the Adelaide test match late last year, I began to experience a strange and complex set of emotions that I hadn’t felt since observing a remarkably unremarkable boy on a Mumbai ferry some six months earlier. How were these events related, I wondered?

The emotional triplet began with pity, gave way almost instantaneously to guilt (at feeling pity, because pity implies superiority), and then slowly morphed into a deep and unreasonable sadness; and I mean unreasonable in the literal, dictionary-defined sense – that is “not governed by or acting according to reason”.

Every time Andrew Flintoff’s sagging, ashen face graced the screen on the fifth day in Adelaide, I recoiled as a fallen skateboarder recoils from the sickening sight of his own splintered forearm. His eyes were filled with the glassy, helpless terror of a poorly-anaesthetised man lying conscious through his own open-heart surgery. It was terribly difficult to watch, even for an Australian. I felt unable to revel in our victory because I felt so bad for the English*.

Precisely six months earlier, my comrade Tim and I were aboard a wooden ferry returning from an island in the Mumbai harbour. It was the final evening of our journey around India, and the setting was ideal for the resultant languid reflection - the boat advancing almost imperceptibly through the oily brown water; the sun sinking through the suffocating haze just as the light was metaphorically fading on our savage and testing oddyssey.

A glance around the ferry revealed a large component of relatively wealthy Indian tourists - the dignified parents, the spoilt, slightly flabby sons, and the heart-wrenchingly beautiful daughters - all chatting, laughing and texting. As an aside (grant me a moment of indulgence), no-one in the world delivers a more heavenly interpretation of the English language than a young, well-educated Indian woman - their frivolous, delighfully-inflected banter is the auditory equivalent of rolling around naked in silken bedsheets.

Anyway, juxtaposed against this well-to-do crowd was the remarkably unremarkable boy. He had a dark, serious face and wore a short-sleeved chequered shirt, a navy blue pair of straight-legged, long-zipped jeans, and a set of worn black leather shoes. He and his friend both had stern expressions that seemed completely at odds with both their age - which I estimated to be around 18 - and the jolly, relaxed tone of the tourist-filled vessel.

The critical event that triggered the pity-guilt-sadness complex was when the boy pulled out his positively monstrous camera - this thing must have been from the 1960s or 1970s. As he wound the film on he looked around and saw many of the younger, digital camera-owning people openly pointing and giggling, and when his mate took the photo - a photo that should have immortalised what was probably a rare and exciting experience - the boy wore an unforgettably sad expression, just like Andrew Flintoff's.

Q: What common factor links the remarkably unremarkable boy with England's defeat, and causes the pity-guilt-sadness emotional triplet?

A: Inevitability.

There is tragedy in the inevitability of heartless class discrimination, just as there was tragedy in the inevitability of the Adelaide test match.

Oh well, I've answered the question that was bugging me - whether or not you got anything out of it is another matter entirely. Sorry if I've wasted your time.

* Un-Australian I know.

Kalgoorlie Miner (17): Bicycle

A wise man who, like all wise men I know of, had a penchant for wearing tight leather pants, once said: “I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like.”

Like Freddie Mercury, I want to ride my bike. Like Freddie Mercury I also believe that fat-bottomed girls make the rocking world go round. Unlike Freddie Mercury, however, I rarely feel compelled to sing “I want to break free” while mopping the floor in women’s clothing.

But back to the bicycle, and to a point of clarification. When I say I want to ride my bike, I suppose I should say I do ride my bike, and I guess I do ride my bike because I have to ride my bike, and I must concede I have to ride my bike because I was caught drunk-driving, and it shames me to say I was drunk-driving because…

(cue blurry screen, descending harp arpeggio)

Judge (red-faced, spitting): Have you any excuse young man? Any excuse at all?

Villain (cooler than something very, very cold): Yes, Your Honour. The ridiculous amount of alcohol in my bloodstream made it quite impossible for me to determine right from wrong. I wouldn’t have even contemplated drink-driving, had I been sober.

(cue blurry screen, ascending harp arpeggio)

I’m sure that legal loophole has been closed, though it does seem to get people out of other offences: “I only bashed that granny because I had snorted three grams of cocaine”. That’s another column entirely though – the sort of fire-and-brimstone column best written by Graeme Campbell or Doug Daws. Has anyone ever seen those two in the same room?

I am digressing again. Sorry.

I’m super-glad that John Q. Law stripped me of my driver’s license, because it has enabled me to re-discover the joys of bicycle riding. Such a smashing way to get around, I tell you.

I revel in the feeling of traveling under my own steam, watching the cars go by with the straight-backed nobility of an aging horseman in an era of helicopter cattle mustering; the dumb pride of an amoeba in a world dominated by multi-cellular organisms.

I pity the fools in their air-conditioned vehicles, for whom every trip is an inconvenience – for me every ride is the trial-filled (prickles, unfavourable winds) equivalent of Ulysses journey home from Troy.

While drivers ruefully glance down at their pale, limp bellies, I gorge myself with high-energy food so that I may propel to and from work in world-record time, and as they furrow their brows over fuel prices, the screaming of my parched, oxygen-deprived lungs drowns out any such trivialities.

Like Robert Pirsig in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (see columns 1 and 4 on the website), I have become tuned to my bicycle. It is an extension of my body. I feel and hear it’s every flaw and tinker with it religiously, despite the fact that, historically speaking, I am far more an “in-the-grand-scheme-of-the-universe-who-cares-about-a-squeaky-chain” sort of person, than a tinkerer.

I leave you today with a tale.

I was powering through a deserted Centennial Park during an electrical storm late last year, and was overcome by a feeling that I was about to be struck by lightning. The funny thing was I really didn’t care – in fact I went no-hands, raised my arms in a Jeff Farmer post-wizardry salute to the sky and screamed “Take me Lord, take me now you bastard!”

He didn’t take me, but I think it would have been a fine way to go – fanging along in top gear, hair streaming out behind, adrenalin pumping. Oh well, there’ll be other storms.

On your bikes!

Kalgoorlie Miner (16): Shane

I’ve decided to write about Shane Warne’s greatness – a subject so clichéd that to call it a cliché is itself a cliché. In order to differentiate between myself and other admirers though, I specifically want to write about Shane’s face (first name basis lends the column an intimate air).

The seeds of this column were planted in my mind last Sunday afternoon aboard the Prospector (yes I’ve been to Perth and back on the Prospector again*), just 8 throbbing, hazy hours after I had been dragged out of Fremantle’s “The Clink” by a mean-spirited Indian doorman.

Admittedly I made several mistakes in the nightclub, not least of which was trying to reason with him in Hindi, a language in which I know just three phrases: namaste (hello/goodbye), apka shubh nam kya hai (what is your name?), and kanjus makhi chus (you are a miser and a fly-sucker). You can probably guess which one came to mind after 27 gin-and-tonics.

But I digress.

On the train I began idly thumbing through my cohort Rhett's Sunday Times and was stunned to see, on the front cover of the TV magazine, a raw, stark close-up photograph of Shane’s face. No airbrushing, no make-up.

I simply could not look away; partly due to the dull catatonia that defines the savage transition from drunk to hung-over, partly due to the numbing effect of a mouthful of pain-killers, and partly due to shock at seeing something of quality within the pages of a newspaper that is to the Kalgoorlie Miner what Danni Minogue is to Kylie. But mostly it was due to the intense character and meaning in the photograph.

His eyes were the first thing that struck me; army green irises with flecks and rough streaks of a sulphorous yellow (lookout Mills & Boon). Almost crocodilian. Gloriously bright – not in colour, but in stored and radiant energy. The intensity of the whites doubly strengthened by their frames of darkened skin.

A deeply-etched fan of grooves could be seen escaping from the outer point of each eye, like so many rays from a Japanese Imperial sun. The term “laughter lines” is misleading for these grooves, because the causal accordion motion of the skin can also be attributed to toil, stress, anger, or despair, and one strongly suspects that Shane has experienced all of these emotions many times over.

The skin on his face was that of an average man twice his age. Deeply weathered and pock-marked. The sun damage on his upper cheeks and nose has exposed a fine mesh of red capillary veins, the likes of which one would usually expect to see covering the face of a gout-ridden barfly in a darkened English alehouse. No doubt Shane has been there too.

The overall impression of the face is that it belongs to a man who has lived a life worth living; a life spent amongst the towering peaks and frightening troughs of the Southern Ocean, while others were happy to languish in sheltered bays.

His face contains happiness and laughter, not only at his successes and strengths, but also at his failures and weaknesses. He so closely approached perfection in his craft, but is sage enough to know that perfection is unattainable, and that it is necessary to make light of one’s mistakes. The key to his legend is that, unlike a Tiger Woods or an Ian Thorpe, he is gloriously, magnificently human.

Later in the train trip I was reading a book called “Eyeless in Gaza” by Aldous Huxley, and came across this pertinent passage:

"Progress may, perhaps, be perceived by historians; it can never be felt by those actually involved in the supposed advance. The young are born into the advancing circumstances, the old take them for granted within a few months or years."

People of my generation, though they may not fully recognise it now, have been thoroughly blessed to have grown up as the legend of Shane Keith Warne was being written.

Shane, I salute you and everything you stand for.

*Thanks for the free coffee Di – I won’t tell your boss.

Kalgoorlie Miner (15): Uncertainty

In 1927, young German physicist Werner Heisenberg discovered that the more accurately one measures a sub-atomic particle's velocity at any instant, the less accurately one is able to measure that particle's position in space. He wrote down his findings, rewarded himself with an super-sized bratwurst and sauerkraut value meal, then downed 13 steins of lager at the local beer hall.* He fell while clumsily attempting a complex German dance step, and was thrown out by over-zealous security guards.*

Next morning he decided that, in order for his theory to catch on, it would need a really mintox name. Unfortunately, due to a cruel mind-numbing hangover, the best he could come up with was "The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" (today he'd have to call it something like "The Werner3000 Xtreme Particulator System" in order to be noticed).

Despite it's inglorious name Werner's principle soon turned the world on it's head (at least it would have if the world actually possessed a head), because it revealed to physicists that they could never achieve perfect predictive knowledge of the sub-atomic environment – something that, up until that point, had been thought obtainable.

This all seems very boring, despite my attempts to "sex it up", doesn't it? Well look into my eyes much-loved reader (in the eyes, not around the eyes) and promise me that you won't turn the page just yet. Soon the subject will switch to cricket and skimpies - it really will.

One effect of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that no matter how closely we look at the physical world, there will always be blurriness. Just when we believe we are on the threshold of gaining perfect understanding, we discover that our goal is as far away as ever.

Cricket broadcasters use increasingly complex technology every summer as part of their quest to come up with the perfect judgement of a dismissal, apparently unaware that young Werner doomed them to failure back in 1927. Channel Nine could study a caught-behind decision with an electron microscope and still be uncertain if the leather atom struck the willow atom – just as uncertain as the umpire who watched the event with the naked eye.

Lesson One: Like a cartoon donkey chasing a dangling carrot strapped to his head, so is the person who strives for perfect knowledge.

Say you wanted to check out (insert name of semi-precious gemstone here) – the newest skimpy at the Federal Hotel. From across the bar she might look glamorous, maybe even better right up close, but what would happen if you studied her with a magnifying glass (assuming you don’t get kicked out), determined to see her beauty on a whole new level? You may start to uncover imperfections – a mole on her back, fine hair on her upper lip, tiny wrinkles around her eyes – and your worship of her as an impeccable goddess fades. By finding fault in her detail, you forget her general loveliness.

Lesson Two: While striving for detailed knowledge should be encouraged, it is important to remember the bigger picture. Be sure to see the trees AND the forest.

So think about Werner next time you’re at the pub. Study the effect of alcohol on blurriness and scribble your own thesis onto a beer coaster. Scream “Don’t you know the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?” at Ian Chappell when he starts his inevitable whinge about umpiring standards. Quantum physics is fun!

* Almost certainly not true.