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!