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!
Saturday, 17 March 2007
Saturday, 10 March 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, 3 March 2007
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!
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!
Saturday, 24 February 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, 17 February 2007
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…
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…
Saturday, 10 February 2007
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.
(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.
Saturday, 3 February 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, 27 January 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, 20 January 2007
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!
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!
Saturday, 13 January 2007
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)