2

Round 3- Adelaide v Richmond: Now, I know why Tigers eat their young

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rodney

In Caddyshack one of Rodney Dangerfield’s much-loved lines is, “Now, I know why tigers eat their young.” He’s speaking of Judge Smails’ disagreeable grandson Spalding (I want a hamburger. No, cheeseburger. I want a hot dog. I want a milkshake. I want potato chips.) but could be referring to the Richmond Football Club, for this club has a tradition of enthusiastically self-devouring.

Regardless, there’s still universal affection for them. Who can hate the Tigers? Hands up if you’ve had or heard the following conversation:

“So who’s your second team?”

“Richmond.”

“Me too!”

“They’re just a likable team, and never cause anyone harm.”

“Yeah, exactly. And how great was Richo?”

“Yep. And they’ve got the best song.”

“Oh, mate. Easily the best song.”

*

Adelaide’s Tom Lynch is a late withdrawal because he didn’t complete a late withdrawal, and he’s flown home to attend the birth of his child. Richmond’s Griggs gets the first goal, but it’s reviewed to generate some theatrical tension for the assembled unwashed, but quickly confirmed.

It’s frantic, but like the front bar of a sailors’ pub in the last hour of shore leave, it’s untidy. Adelaide’s early skill is awful. Finally, we string some disposals together. Sloane receives it wide, settles and goals. Milera impresses with his efficiency. He moves well, has excellent awareness, and dare I say it, shows the poise of a young Andrew McLeod.

With their long kicking indoor footy should suit the Crows, and we witness this when Sloane and Walker transport it the length of the ground with two huge dobs. Adelaide’s now applying pressure and Betts claims Houli in the pocket. He goes back and sets up. Has there been a better shot at goal from a pocket? He slots it. Eddie’s kicking is now so widely celebrated that a footwear retailer should be named in his honour. Twice.

Jarrod Lyons get one for us late, and resolves the age-old dilemma. Despite the inter-continental impossibility, a Lyon indeed, defeats a tiger. New Crow McGovern shows composure to also goal. I’m starting to relax.

Adelaide are direct like a Mt Isa publican, and gaining confidence. Douglas gets his second. Following a corridor turnover, Sam Lloyd records a goal, but almost immediately after a Tiger disaster allows Lyons to get Adelaide’s seventh from turnovers. Richmond deals with the pressure like a drummer auditioning for Spinal Tap.

Seedsman’s proving to be the best thing Collingwood has given the Crows. Ever. Or at least, since the Magpies guaranteed the Crows a 2015 finals campaign by beating Geelong in the penultimate round.

Vickery gets one to give the home side consecutive majors. Then, suddenly the Tigers control everything, and like the William Blake poem, are burning bright within the Dockland’s forests. Against the Tiger-ish mood, the Crows force a midfield error and gift Jenkins a late goal. After a mammoth thirty-four minute, twelve goal quarter, it’s half time.

*

Today the Barossa and Light Bowls Association First Division grand final is between Eudunda and my Dad’s team, the Nuriootpa Tigers. Like Hawthorn Nuriootpa’s after four flags in a row. Unlike Hawthorn, most of the planet is not hoping for Nuriootpa to fail fabulously.

To open the second half Seedsman takes an excellent defensive mark, and Adelaide quickly moves it the length. In time when he gets the ball I hope the crowd yells, “Seeeeed” to belatedly continue the Wayne Weidemann of Fish Creek tradition.

Richmond persist, but unmethodically. Talia and Reiwoldt are having a tussle. The ill-fated Vickery takes another solid grab, but like an angry lumberjack, bangs it into the woodwork. Rory “Bruce” Laird is cultivating productively, and streaming forward, Ed and Tex (coming soon to your local RSL) again combine.

Sam Lloyd takes a screamer and converts to keep the Tigers within five goals, which history tells us, is not nearly enough for the tricolours. Briskly developing Crow Milera weaves exquisitely around some seemingly extinct Tigers and finds Walker.

Tex looks about uninterestedly, ignores all, saunters back, and bombs it straight into the stand from sixty-five out. Despite the doom merchants this, and other cracking moments, speak to me of the robust and enduring health of our great game.

Now, the Tigers game plan appears less certain than Tony Abbott becoming honorary President of the Onion Farmers’ Association (OFA). But like Tony, Richmond don’t disappear as they should, and with another burst, get three rapid goals.

However, Adelaide asserts itself during the final term to keep the Tigers caged. Shane Edwards gets one after the final hooter, but it’s ninth prize in a chook raffle.

*

Tigers, if you think about it, are everywhere. On their terrific album Daisies of the Galaxy American band Eels have a wonderfully upbeat song about imminent doom, which I delicately suggest, is most appropriate for Richmond. The Esso petrol-inspired “Tiger in my Tank” could be sung by any of the Punt Road faithful

 

I bought some rock star ashes

From the back of Rolling Stone

I guess he wouldn’t mind it

They couldn’t sell his soul

The tiger in my tank

Is going to go extinct

And I’m not feelin’ so good myself

I think I’m on the brink of disaster

Well done to my Dad who played in his umpteenth decider, but fell just short of winning his twelfth bowls pennant. So, enjoy your evening. Whatever you do to celebrate or commiserate, can I advise you, on the back of three years in Singapore, to not have any Tiger beer? You’ll be pleased you did. And it’s goodnight from my lounge room.

tiger

6

Cooler than a robot, older than the wolf

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beach

The endless swimming was a highlight of our three years in Singapore. On some Saturdays, we’d be in and out of the condominium pool four times. At dawn, when the boys and I’d occasionally happen upon whispering Japanese couples rounding out their evening with a bottle of breakfast Shiraz. Then we’d also dive in around midday, and driven by heat and claustrophobia, twice during the sultry afternoon. It was a theme park and often for us, an escape.

Early during our other-hemispherical stint, we were in the water, and I was talking with you about your birthday. I said, “How’s things now that you’re three? How’re you different?” Of course, your answer was instant, and assured. You replied, saying you were now, “Cooler than a robot, older than the wolf.” Not any wolf, mind you, but the wolf. I’d long suspected that you’ve a capacity for language, an opulent and striking relationship with words. Splashing about that muggy day, confirmed it.

Only a few months ago, and back in Australia, there was this domestic exchange. “Max, will you stop being so ridiculous?” It’s a word that’s vigorously employed from time to time in our house. But only as required. Ridiculous. You announced, “Mum, you’re ridiculous!” to which she said, “You can’t even spell ‘ridiculous!’” With sparkling comic timing, your retort came. “Yes. I can. M-U-M.” This talent, while sometimes maddening, might carry you far. It’s a gift.

A counterpoint to this linguistic skill is your love for engaging with the physical world. Moving like an inexhaustible machine, you explore, you probe, you pull stuff to bits. Inspired by curiosity, and bursting with a hearty sense of industry, you help me with jobs about the house. These are the moments.

One of my favourite things is when our world shrinks and shrinks, and it’s just you and I on a Saturday morning. A little backyard militia, we mow, and with a cutting wheel, we edge the lawns. All the while you question, encourage, engage. We sometimes visit the recycling depot, and lastly as a tiny reward, we pop by the Anzac Highway TAB, where in joyous imitation, you illustrate your fan of betting slips, resulting in financial return at least equal to mine.

It’s a routine that drapes exquisite meaning over these weekends. In a life often too complex, this fetching simplicity refreshes me like an oasis. We don’t often sit still on the lounge and chat, instead conversing while in motion. The car. With heaving backpacks, walking to and from school. Out the back, as Sunday shadows lengthen, playing cricket.

Last Easter, we wandered down to Glenelg Oval for the Sheffield Shield final. Strolling southwards, chatting; the breeze, the bent rays of autumnal sunshine. I love listening to your brotherly conversations, as these dance and hang in the air like bubbles.

*

If I close my eyes I can see a silent movie of flickering highlights, and these tumble about me, like rain.

You’re riding madly round the Old Gum Tree Park, with your feet dangling high above the pedals, and look, they’re now up on the handlebars as you wizz by in a mischievous blonde rush.

Lying under the patio, just after a December dawn, with summer’s heat already heavy in the sky, you’re hugging our new dog, Buddy and you’re talking to him like an equal, as if he’s a little brother. And, he is.

We’re on a Thai beach, and in a cocoon of pure, insubstantial now, you’re jumping like a kangaroo and laughing in the gently frothing waves. I barely believe we’re here.

Finally, you’re in bed, and I creep into your room, but there’s a thin shaft of light. Inspired by the nocturnal habit of Alex, you’re in your bunk, on your belly, immersed by a book, reading with a torch. This makes me happy.

Now exhausted, you finish your story, surrendering to our will, and within moments, you slide down into an irresistible sleep. You’ve interrogated your world, so delightfully, so energetically, across the long hours of the arching day that instantly, almost impossibly, you’re still.

You are now six, and will always be cooler than a robot, and older than the wolf. Max, we love you. Play on.

lawn mowing

0

Jonesy

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car

We met in the Orwellian year of 1984 at the Salisbury SACAE and studied English together. It then turned into UniSA, and is now, perhaps poignantly given tonight’s splendid occasion, a retirement village where on Thursdays, I believe, they do a wicked two fruits and ice cream. But it was tremendous fun when we were there in the ridiculous and pastel 1980’s. Among many, many memories of my friend Jonesy, here’s just a few-

Joneso, do you remember how we’d plod off to fourth year English, heartlessly scheduled on Mondays from 4 – 8pm? Having survived, at 8.01pm I’d point my 1973 HQ Holden Kingswood southward, you’d beg me to crank up the cassette player with some mid-period Bob Dylan, and we’d navigate speedily if not unlawfully to the Botanic Hotel. Safely there, we’d review the lecture’s major themes, or not.

Back in those days pubs had to serve food to stay open late and the Botanic often offered spaghetti bolognaise, which was slopped out of a large steel pot, just like in a prison movie. And indeed the food was criminal. But, on more than one occasion, as uni students, we ate it.

One of my favourite Jonesy moments was on a Friday at uni when she performed a monologue by Barry Humphries’ best character; not Dame Edna or Sir Les Paterson, but the decent man of the suburbs, Sandy Stone. Jonesy’s performance was fantastic. I laughed like a drain. It was funny and poignant. That monologue is called Sandy Claus, and as I share an extract from it, imagine I’m a doddering, lisping old man, which’ll be impossible for I’m not the actor that she is. So, picture Jonesy in a dressing gown and slippers, with her hair gray

On top of the pudding Beryl had made a delicious fruit salad which she’d put in the big cut-crystal bowl she keeps for best. She’s had it for years now but it’s still got the Dunklings sticker on it. However, everyone was full up to dolly’s wax and I was absolutely stonkered, so unfortunately it was hardly touched and Beryl said it was a wicked shame after all the fag she’d gone to. With the exception of the banana which goes brown overnight, she’d preserved every bit of that fruit herself in her Fowlers Vacola and I can vouch for it personally; Beryl’s been bottling all her married life.

Is this the best reference to the Fowlers Vacola you’ve ever heard? Is this the only reference to the Fowlers Vacola you’ve ever heard?

Teaching at leafy and prestigious Marryatville High Kerry suffered or rather I suspect, enjoyed, a wardrobe malfunction. Yes, at school. Yes, in front of her students, like a shameless Kardashian. Many would’ve blushed and ran screaming from the room, but not our Jonesy, who confronted the issue with her students, saying,” Yes, I know it’s funny, have a good look, I’m sure this has happened to some of you too. Yes class, you’re correct, I am wearing odd shoes.”

Like a puppy I’ve followed her around professionally. Decades ago, early in our working lives, she went to Cleve and I went just up the road, to Wudinna (Woo-dina for those of you from Oxford). I then followed her to Marryatville, after she’d wisely left, and recently the exam and assessment authority called the SACE Board, after she’d wisely left, but at which we might work together in a few months.

If you return, we could sneak off early on Mondays, and yet again, regularly journey to the Botanic Hotel. I could hire a Kingswood. You could drive. I’ll bring the Bob Dylan tapes.

Happy birthday, loyal, funny, dear friend.

dylan

 

 

0

Skyhooks and me

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ego

Urgency. I reckon this is the best word. For they were always urgent. Midnight Oil was aggressive, and Sherbet was summery. But even when they were brooding, Skyhooks was urgent.

Learning of their 1991 reunification tour, some mates and I instantly booked our tickets. However, on the day of their Adelaide concert I awoke 565 kilometres away on the West Coast as I had to pack up my Ucontitchie Road farmhouse for the move to Kimba.

With my earthly goods flung through the front door of my new house, we leapt into my mate’s SS Commodore, pointed the 4.9 litre beast eastward, and rumbled the five hours, through a January thunderstorm, to North Adelaide’s Old Lion Hotel. We arrived with moments to spare. The pub already stinging in its smoky, hot fug. There were but three beers on tap. Red Symons was at his belligerent Red Faces best. It was a night of huge fun.

I love crowd singing on a live album. It amplifies the sense of being there, when in all likelihood, you weren’t. Great examples include “Army” from Ben Folds Live and,” Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis, but supreme for me is “All My Friends Are Getting Married” from Skyhooks’ Live in the Eighties. When Shirl invites the crowd to sing the chorus they do in such an adoring fashion. Back at the Old Lion this, too, was a highlight of that summer night.

*

Sophomore albums often rate highly. Think Nevermind, The Bends and Astral Weeks. Buoyed by the acclaim of their debut offering, there’s often a young band or artist, teamed up with a noted producer. Their confidence is unparalleled. An equivalent could be, again from 1991, when Mark Waugh made an elegant hundred on debut at Adelaide Oval. However, a friend observed, “It’s not such a surprise. After all, you only get picked for your country because you’re in fantastic form.”

Bearing this in mind, Ego Is Not a Dirty Word is their finest album. I know that Living in the Seventies is the much-loved debut, selling over 300,000 copies, and enjoying the infamy of six of its offerings being banned. But, on this second release, there’s an increased breadth in the songs, with “Love’s Not Good Enough” musing on suburban loneliness, “Smartarse Songwriters” featuring Greg Macainsh’s meta-cognitive explorations, and the title track, pushing the patience of many (I can’t imagine Sir Joh was a fan) with its brazen reference to the triumvirate of Richard Nixon, Leonard Cohen, and in an Australian music first, Jesus.

My favourite is side 2, track 2. I know it’s a hundred types of wrong, but I recently played it in the car for the boys. On the first note of “Mercedes Ladies” they both giggled at the larrikinism of bass line, the cheeky guitars and Freddie’s comical tom-tom drumming. It rollicks along with the musical highlight the double hi-hat chick at the end of each line. It’s a great way to spend three minutes, and encapsulates the band, their time, and their legacy. In this, as in much of their material, Skyhooks satirise the suburbs while also rejoicing in them.

Of course, we’re all apprehended by our creative context. Even here in smug 2016, history will eventually scold us. 1975 imprisoned many with multiple charges: sexism, homophobia, stereotyping. But despite this, Skyhooks also pioneered themes concerning the suburban and the local. It was music of the largely untold other; it was not of NYC or London.

Such is the significance of Skyhooks for me that the mention of Carlton evokes the song first, and the footy team second. The band’s collected lyrics still generate an imagined google map of Melbourne, and a reference to Toorak or Balwyn returns me to my original conceptions of the city by the Yarra. If the Beatles are Liverpool, and the Rolling Stones are London, then Skyhooks is Melbourne. Their music has always presented the geography of a highly human environment, as there’s colourful pictures of grimy pubs, menacing streetscapes, and widescreen vistas too.

Open photo

It was in my school mate Lumpy Nixon’s lounge room (I’m sure there were ceramic ducks flying up the wall) that I first saw, and heard Straight in a Gay, Gay World. I was mesmerised by the guitars on the title track, and the sonic trickery of a swarm of insects hovering overhead on the outro, moving from the left speaker to the right. I was fourteen and this was beyond cool.

The album’s artwork gripped me equally with its triptych of a solitary black sheep, butcher shop and lamb dinner. It was the first humorous cover I’d seen. The art often functioned as a portal to an album’s narrative. I was especially intrigued by Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and tried to decipher the cover photo of the two businessmen, one calmly ablaze, shaking hands on a Californian backlot. However, I couldn’t unlock its mystical meanings. In our age of Spotify and digital downloads, these happy distractions have largely disappeared. But vinyl’s fighting back.

*

And finally, to Shirl. He’d a remarkably complex voice, blending a tradie’s building site swagger with the footballer’s front-bar cockiness. It was effortlessly confident, and also reassuring, saying, “Why would you live anywhere else?” as it slapped your back and shouted, “Forget about it, I’ll buy you a beer!” He sung to, and for, us. But his vowels were knowingly crisp and aware of the telling subtext. He delivered his stories with affection, while also investing the songs, as appropriate, with a sneer. “Million Dollar Riff” could be his best performance. Shirl was the perfect front man.

I love that I can go years without listening to a band, and then one afternoon find myself dragging out a dusty CD, and with the opening chords, being teleported to a distant, thrilling place. With Skyhooks that place is in the dimming distance and unreconstructed, but from time to time, I really enjoy going back there.

hooks

2

Now You Are Eight

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Koh lanta

Suddenly and incredibly, you are eight! Alex, how our world changed when you were born on that bright Saturday afternoon, eight years ago.

Among my favourite things is spying on you. Isn’t this funny? You and Max love spy games, but Dad loves spying on you. What do I see when you’re not looking, but I am?

I see so much that makes me, and Mum proud. You’re funny and alert. Like a puppy, you play with creative energy. You love your friends, and they love you too. You like sharing stories, but listen when people tell you stuff too. For you, games and fun must be fair. You don’t like it if others are unkind to you, or those you care about. Because it’s important, you take a stand. This makes you a leader, and we love this about you.

I’ve so many memories.

We’re on Koh Lanta. It’s a fresh, clean morning and the sky’s holiday blue. I’m on a sun lounge out the front of the resort, looking across the sparkling sea towards the Strait of Malacca. You and Max are on the flawless, golden sand. Buckets, spades, toys. Boys and brothers. Do you remember this? I watched you; long-limbed like a giraffe, and miraculous, as if born of the tropical sun itself.

And later, on the same trip- our last while living in Singapore, we do a boat tour to five islands! In the marine warmth, snorkelling above the coral, Mum and Max are bobbing about on the azure ocean, while off on our own, and peering down through our masks, we see it. Silently, and like a whip cracking in slow-motion, is a sea-snake! It’s there for mere seconds, and only we saw it, together, in our private universe. Instantly we sit up, beaming

Did you see it Dad?

Sure did. What’d you think?

So cool.

A momentary sight, but for us, stronger than two electrons in perpetual orbit. For someone as curious about nature and dangerous creatures as you, it’s a thrilling highlight of our three years in Asia.

Last Friday, in the afternoon sunshine, you’re in your blue Strikers shirt and cricket cap. We’re at Glenelg Oval, and there’s plastic yellow stumps and kids, learning and playing, learning and playing. You’re batting. I’m on a bench by the boundary, spying on you. Again!

The bowler pitches it on a good length, but outside the wicket. In a fluid, looping motion, you step into it, and swing the bat. It’s an on-drive, and possibly having seen an Australian cricketer like David Warner do this, you go down onto one knee. It’s cute, but also shows me how carefully you take in the details of your world, how keen you are to do your best and display some robust mastery. You stay low and hold your position, watching until, just in front of me, the ball jumps the rope. Your first boundary! Certainly a treasured event in many years of loving cricket.

Now finally, back we travel, to 2008 when you’re only three months old. It’s May, Mothers’ Day; fetching and warm like a hug. We’re at Wattle Reserve, by the beach, with a picnic of olives, breads and dips, dolmades; unhurried food for a late autumn lunch. You’re there on the rug, in the breezy, timelessness. Smiling, blue eyes alert, enchanted. It’s a movie, a love song, our lifetime distilled. It’s a dreamlike afternoon.

So, as you begin your ninth year, I wanted to find a few moments among the guitars and the bikes, the barbeques and the blur of the cruelly rushing weeks to reminisce on how astonishing our world became on that bright Saturday. The day you arrived; the gorgeous, clever, amazing gift of you, arrived.

glenelg oval

0

Monster Trucks: A Love Story

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trucks

We’re at the Adelaide Showgrounds. For me these are Sunday mornings and the hipster cool of the Farmers’ Market with organic kale and homemade sausage rolls and artisan bread. I can also hear the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of the Royal Show’s wood chopping. Look! It’s Tasmanian axeman David Foster. Walking in tonight we saw my new favourite sign

No tethering of cattle along sheep pavilion wall after 8.30 am

My previous number one resides in Cornwall, neatly capturing the British beach holiday experience

Please do not bury soiled nappies in the sand

Our boys Alex and Max love watching Monster Jam and its crazed wrecking yard of gigantic trucks. So we’re here to celebrate their birthdays. Monster trucks are undoubtedly symbolic of American hegemony and excess, and yes, the boys should probably instead be attending a Shakespearean Sonnets for Primary Kids workshop, but we’re pit-side.

Because it’ll be raucous, ridiculous fun.

Two decades after his final race Waikikamukau remains the best racehorse name, but Grave Digger is our favourite truck. Monster Jam features dozens of trucks, each with its own cult following. There’s Captain’s Curse, but mercifully no Captain’s Call. I’ve some affection for the truck called Cleatus and its driver Frank Krme whose last name seems to have been heartlessly robbed of a vowel.

None of these are here as they’re in Albuquerque or Biloxi or Chattanooga. However, the local monster trucks are Revenge, The Convict, Wicked, the oddly plural Raptors, Extreme, Monster Patrol, Scooby Doo, Freak, and of course, the Triple M Truck. Look, Triple M footy commentator Brian Taylor is at the wheel. No wait! The truck’s veering about violently. He’s outta control. And now the monster truck is combusting. Wowee!

The pit party’s complete and the trucks start up with the sonic impact of a guitar’s first notes at a heavy metal festival. The crowd bellows. I note the local ice coffee advertising hoardings to the arena’s south, looming like Adelaidean versions of the eyes of Dr TJ Eckleberg. To our east are the hyperbolically named Lofty Ranges. They appear low and brown.

“Are you ready?” asks our host, a cross between Akmal Saleh and Dave Hughes. Located atop a flatbed truck a singer performs, “Star-Spangled Banner.” There may have been a wardrobe malfunction, but Row O of the Southern Stand is too distant to tell. I appreciate how many a NASCAR fan thinks that, “Gentleman, start your engines!” is the final, rousing line of their anthem.

And then the monster trucks are roaring about, impossibly huge as they motor by the jumps and props; largely assembled with old Commodores, and flat Camiras, which have finally made an earthly contribution. It’s a graveyard just as the Holden factory at Elizabeth will soon be.

Max asks, “When are they going to do some big air?” Then the monster truck called The Convict obliges. Suitably in the free colony of South Australia its driver is from the penal settlement of Sydney. “TNT” by AC/DC is our soundtrack. Whew! I couldn’t believe we’d been underway for an entire minute without accompaniment from the brothers Young and co.

I’m reminded of walking between Rome’s Aventine and Palatine hills on the site of the Circus Maximus. I reckon Caligula would have liked his monster trucks. There’s much about the night which is categorically Classical. But it’s also prehistorical, although these metallic dinosaurs aren’t herbivores.

Mountaineering cruelly over a row of car carcasses, Wicked stands up on his rear wheels like something reptilian in a Japanese horror flick. Exotic-looking Monster Patrol does a hot lap, barking past us, and our eldest Alex says, “Dad, I can feel the vibrations on me!” As this is theatre, and not motorsport the dramatic symbolism continues with an intermission, as if scripted by Andronicus.

Like Bear Grylls’ cameraman in Man vs. Wild the nameless star is the forklift driver who reorders the car wrecks and dirt mounds. There’s much lonely precision in staging chaos and commotion for the masses. The anthem singer returns and offers a version of Vance Joy’s “Riptide,” whose opening verse contrasts with the mechanical machismo we’ve seen so far

I was scared of dentists and the dark

I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations

Oh, all my friends are turning green

You’re the magician’s assistant in their dreams

At the resumption there’s monster trucks contesting in pairs around a tight circuit. It’s announced by the host as “Side by side racing!” Of course, if this were held in the Germanic Barossa Valley he’d have declared it, “Side by each racing. Already.”

Crowd favourite Scooby Doo provides some faux canine fun by jumping, teetering and rolling over! Well, he is a dog! With a busted nose he’s dragged away. His evening seems over. We’re disappointed. It’s like being at a Rolling Stones concert and hearing the announcement that for tonight only Mick’s been replaced by Peter Andre.

Now in the final act there’s trucks going guts-up every minute. That’s what we want! Danger replacing grace. Bolts of frisson. Metaphorical deaths. But more than this we know from the original American TV series that the lyrical climax is the sequence when a truck charges at a dirt cliff, ascends its face, somersaults back over itself, and bounces onto its sixty-six inch tyres. A backflip! In the world of monster trucks, it’s the Triple Lindy.

Here we go! After two deliberate false starts, the truck bursts at the mound, and climbs steadily, vertically. Now airborne high above the grass and dirt, his rear wheels are at their zenith, but gravity’s silent terror begins. The flat earth rushes up at the truck’s flimsy roof. Then soil and metal skin meet. We groan. We’re denied by an uncaring Nero. Like a bosomy matron the forklift patiently attends its duty and rights the truck. The event announcer cries, “He’s back on his heels!” Another roar.

There’s fireworks and these pound our ears and blink our eyes. The monster trucks are done. In the tranquil morning of tomorrow, the Adelaide Showgrounds will open for the Sunday Farmers’ Market. The stalls will again offer organic kale and homemade sausage rolls and artisan bread.

grave digger

3

The Beatles and me

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radiogram

Sunday at the Adelaide Grand Prix. Former Speaker of the House Arthur Whyte and his wife Mary were on pit straight. Respected folk from Kimba, local royalty. Every lunchtime Arthur went to the Kimba pub. Blistering heat or punishing cold, he’d have a stout. Just one. Mostly. Arthur lived to ninety-three.

Being outgoing and with a healthy curiosity in people Mary exchanged pleasantries with the man in the neighbouring seat. He was gentle, possibly even a little shy. Sounded English. He made gracious inquiries, asked about life in Australia, in Kimba, on farms. Nigel Mansell seemed to be leading the race, and with the octane thunder booming about them Mary reciprocated.

“So, what do you do?” Gosh, what was his name again?

“I’m a musician.”

“That’s nice. So which instrument do you play?”

The cars were making astonishing noise. It was hard to hear.

“I play guitar.”

“That’s lovely. Do you play on your own? Or with others?”

Mary took a sip of her tea. He was an agreeable chap.

“I just play by myself now.”

“That’s probably easier. So you were in a group?”

“I was.”

“Oh, yes. What was the name of the group? I probably won’t know them, but you never know.”

“They were called the Beatles.”

*

Mum and Dad had a radiogram. Wooden, heavy, solemn in appearance. The turntable sunken into its teak depths. I remember Creedence Clearwater Revival and Anne Murray and The Carpenters.

But what I recollect most vividly is a 45. In the digital age when artefacts like vinyl are discretionary, these seem primeval, unnecessarily real. It was “Love Me Do” with the B-side “PS I Love You.” Both songs crackled constantly when you dropped the needle, but were exhilarating. John Lennon’s harmonica was rowdy while Ringo’s drumming crashed out of that old radiogram.

I was only five, but I was in.

*

The first cassette I owned was It’s a Long Way There by the Little River Band. I’m pretty sure my first record was Ripper ’77; on which the highlights are, “This Is Tomorrow” by Bryan Ferry and, “A Mean Pair Of Jeans” by Marty Rhone. As catchy as it was my cousins Boogly and Froggy and I thought “Blue Jeans” by David Dundas the superior denim-themed pop confection. We’re still right.

Fresh from uni and working on the West Coast I bought my first CD player, second-hand from old school mate Fats with whom I shared a passion for Bush Biscuits, tepid Southwark, and Mondo Rock. Acutely aware of my personal responsibility I went into Allans music along Rundle Mall- just up from the Malls Balls. I bought two CDs- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album.

Living by myself in a big farmhouse I blasted these out into the dusty summer dark; brutally cold July mornings; before cricket; after school. These provided a soundtrack to my early twenties after I’d left home, and was making my way.

*

Having spent a week in Penang my girlfriend (now wife) and I then flew to London. It remains the world’s best theme park. Is there a better way to spend a day than walking the ancient streets before flopping exhausted, in a Soho boozer?

In exquisite St Johns Wood, Abbey Road’s frontage appears modest, giving no indication to the history, and the thrilling, unparalleled creativity that’s occurred within. But the fence across the front is remarkable for it’s a giant thank you card to the Beatles, electric with graffiti and black-texta tributes. It’s re-painted every week or so.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” unfailingly takes me back to this time and place.  I especially love George Martin’s cello arrangement; it’s blue skies in Hyde Park, a string of Routemaster double-deckers along Oxford Street, and planter boxes bursting with late spring colour on the façade of a Themes pub.

*

What are the most exciting moments in music? Guns ‘N Roses’ “Paradise City” and Axel Rose’s whistle urging his band into the song like a mad football umpire? The Who and Roger Daltery’s apocalyptic scream in “Won’t Get Fooled Again”?

No, it’s George Harrison’s Rickenbacker guitar opening to “A Hard Day’s Night.” The chord’s undeniable, an invitation, a golden promise. Fifty years on, it’s still rock music’s most iconic grab.

*

My favourite Beatles’ album has changed as I have. Curiously, I’ve moved retrospectively through their discography. Starting at the ambitiously expansive church of The White Album, I moved to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was then besotted with Revolver, and especially George’s spectacular guitar work on “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Is there a sunnier riff in rock?

Where am I now? Rubber Soul.

The record’s a confident transition by a band sensing that the boundaries might be further than even they’d imagined. It’s a languid listen, but there’s telling experimentation- most notably with Harrison’s use of sitar on “Norwegian Wood.”

But it’s “You Won’t See Me” which is the album’s standout.  At 3.22 it was the longest song the band had recorded. It’s perfectly placed, appearing at track three.

It connects to Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In it the author explores some dark themes that are critical of much in America- the greed, the selfishness, the appalling lack of responsibility, but he delivers these bleak ideas beautifully, in achingly gorgeous prose, and I’m always struck by the poignant contrast between method and message. It stays with me, haunts me. I like art which displays a thoughtful divide.

For me it’s the driving jauntiness of Paul’s piano, Ringo’s tambourine and inventive drumming, and the uplifting harmonies of Lennon and McCartney. “You Won’t See Me” has up tempo hooks in counterpoint to the gloomier nature of Paul’s seemingly autobiographical lyrics, documenting his challenges with then girlfriend Jane Asher, who might still be the most famous former girlfriend in rock music. This song marks a maturation for the Liverpudlians. It’s colossal fun.

In time I’m sure I’ll bow before other Beatles’ albums, other Beatles’ songs. Just like I always have. The labyrinthine beauty of their palace ensures this.

But tonight, as my family sleeps, I slide on my headphones and press play. Again.
Beatles

 

2

NYE in Adelaide Oval’s Bay 127

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th3AJK36NQ

Late December 31, 2014 we watched Thunderball in our St Mary at Hill hotel room by the Thames. Outside, in the brisk, cider-drenched London night several million folk pressed onto the riverbanks to enjoy the fireworks while we slept. Twelve months on, having taken our boys to Europe, seen some more of Asia, and farewelled Singapore, we’re back in flat, kindly, unhurried Glenelg.

Tonight contrasts with the previous NYE: it’s hot, we’re in a public place, and we’re more likely to see Troy Bond than 007. We’re at Adelaide Oval. It’s the first time our boys have been to a cricket game of any sort.

I’m not sure why our local Twenty20 franchise is called the Strikers. Is Adelaide a particular focus for industrial discontent? If so, then what would The Don think? Would the Piping Shrikers be better?

We’re up against the Sydney Sixers, and I can’t uncover any deep etymology concerning their name either. To paraphrase Butch Coolidge from Pulp Fiction: “We’re an Australian cricket franchise. Our names don’t mean s**t.” Others under consideration were the Sydney Edge and the Sydney Rocks. I’m trying to locate meaning or symbolism where there is none. I need to adjust my headset.

We’re with some dear old friends in Bay 127 at the bottom of the Riverside Stand, so-named because it’s adjacent to the Torrens Lake.

This contemporary form of our game has many critics who suggest it cheapens the skills, offers no narrative arc, and is shamelessly disposable. But I prefer to celebrate the unique situation of there being three distinct versions of our sport. I’m not sure they’re cannibalising each other.

Whilst it’s now only an oval in name my memories dart about the towering arena like friendly, swooping phantasms: the astonishing Day 5 victory in the 2006 Ashes, Mark Waugh’s century on debut, and Australia’s one-run defeat when Curtly Ambrose dismissed Craig McDermott in 1993.

I hope tonight becomes the first in a lifelong succession of cricketing reminiscences for our boys.

*

Juggling the obligatory clappers, pirate hats, battery-powered sunglasses, Kentucky-fried poultry buckets, four and six cardboard signs we take our seats. I doubt this event will be carbon neutral. Following various drills, the Strikers warm up with a few dobs of the Sherrin, and I’m surprised that the Glenn McGrath tripping on a footy at Edgbaston in the 2005 Ashes catastrophe still hasn’t resulted in a Cricket Australia ban. Dizzy should lock the footy in his cupboard.

Since arriving we’d been blitzed by hip-hop music, pyrotechnics, peppy dance crews and other hyperventilating stimuli, and when the Sixers’ innings finally commences, I like that it’s with the placid spin of Travis Head. This is an old-fashioned island in an ocean of now, and I exhale. Three hours later Head would conclude the contest in superbly volcanic style.

Michael Lumb and Ed Cowan use the field restrictions well, and accumulate runs steadily. An early wicket seems as remote as former PMs Rudd and Gillard eloping. Alex Ross takes a great catch at deep extra cover which is reminiscent of Glenn McGrath’s 2002 classic against England. Nic Maddison strides to the wicket, but completes a sharpish U-turn courtesy of a golden duck.

Every delivery is punctuated with a stab of music ranging from “YMCA” to The Black Keys’ “Lonely Boy.” Fortunately, we passed peak- “Eye of the Tiger” a few years back, and are spared. But the administrators might soon realise that our spectator experience is deficient in olfactory spurs, and install clandestine devices which at frequent market-researched points release perfumes called “Sweaty Protector,” “Freshly Mown Outfield” or, for the ladies, “Joe the Cameraman.”

Jon Holland comes on from the Cathedral end, and I’m terrified to check his player profile in case his nickname isn’t Dutchy. Adil Rashid bowls well in taking three wickets, and we stifle the Sixers’ scoring during the middle period of the innings before superannuant Brad Haddin hits out productively at the finish.

*

During the break I focus on the wonderful old scoreboard, and the Sixers’ team. I then amuse myself by constructing various adult-themed, 1960’s-styled sentences using the names Bird, Silk and Bollinger. I’d mentally written half a Carry On movie/ Warney biography when our eldest and I are sent to refill the water bottles.

We make our way to the Gary McIntosh Bar, where, hideously, the line for free water is longer than the queues for beer. As if this weren’t sufficiently cruel, we miss the Strikers’ opening two overs in which Craig Simmons and Tim Ludeman get us away smartly. A crowd highlight is former Redback skipper Johan Botha gifting us four overthrows off own bowling from a delinquent return to the keeper.

Strikers captain Brad Hodge and Travis Head now come together. They’re circumspect, like a Cup jockey not going too early. Doug Bollinger’s bowling is more Cold Duck but still economical, and like Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, the run-rate is climbing.

At the fifteenth over, they push the button. The chase is on. Sean Abbott takes a great catch at mid-wicket to dismiss Hodge, in the best public display of 2015 by any Abbott (onion-eating aside).

Alex Ross departs, and suddenly the run-rate is a call-the-fire-brigade seventeen. Rashid comes in with the Strikers requiring fifty-four. He faces a solitary delivery for two runs. Head then creates his narrative, a thrilling narrative which is action flick, boys’ own adventure and bed-time story.

As he clubbed the Sixers to and over the fence it became quickly clear that we were seeing something folkloric. Such was his energetic precision that each shot travelled exactly where he wished, as if guided by military software. There was a happy inevitability in the fluency with which he struck Abbott for three successive sixes, the last of which not only won the match, but also brought up his century, while closing the cricketing year.

He’d scored fifty runs in ten minutes. It was blistering punk-rock, but delivered with an elegance that Lords denizen Sir Mick Jagger would have appreciated.

Our boys smiled and waved their cardboard six signs and jumped up and down in their Bay 127 seats. They’d seen something remarkable, something rare.

I reckon they’d just had their first cricket memory.

Adelaide_Oval.jpg

 

3

Your local footy club’s best side in 2016

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footy 1

Australians love nicknames and footy. Here’s my archetypal team.

Who have I missed?

 

Backs                         Pizzle   Gut    Dogga

Half Backs                 Blue Drainpipe Slug

Centre                        Nobby Squid   Stevo

Half Forwards           Chook Showbag Fitzy

Forwards                   Froggy Butch  Snow

Ruck                           Bones  Blacky Skeeta

Int                                Barney Doc Davo

footy 2             

4

G’day from Iron Knob

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racecourse

I’ve been reminiscing about horseracing and the tracks I’ve visited such as Randwick, Oakbank, and Port Augusta. But beyond Victoria Park, Clare, and Singapore, there’s one that holds a particular place.

*

The publican’s boyfriend stood in the dock. He was a bikie who showed dismal regard for the court. The prosecutor shuffled his papers and then continued. “Behind the front bar of the Iron Knob Hotel the police found firearms and drugs. You’ve admitted these belonged to you. Is this correct?” The bikie nodded.

Again the barrister spoke. “Additionally, knuckledusters were also seized. Were these yours?” Some of the jurors noted the bikie’s chest swelled a little before he replied. “They weren’t knuckledusters,” he smirked. “They were napkin holders.”

The court found that the bikie’s girlfriend wasn’t fit to hold a license, and she was given three months to sell the only pub in the outpost of red dirt and bemused kangaroos standing in the moonlit main street as you weave past in your sad little car.

Welcome to Iron Knob. Population: 180.

*

The Middleback Ranges on Eyre Peninsula has been mined for many years. West of Whyalla and about an hour from Kimba a fifth of the steel required for the construction of the Sydney Harbor Bridge was quarried at Iron Knob.

Other local ore bodies are at Iron Monarch, Iron Prince, Iron Baron, Iron Knight, Iron Princess, Iron Queen, Iron Chieftain, Iron Duchess and Iron Duke. Local stalwart Bryan Lock, from the Iron Knob Visitor Centre confirmed that, “150 million tonnes of high grade ore came out over one hundred years.” I wonder if any future mines might be named Iron Gloves, Iron Butterfly or Iron Chef.

*

Among my old mates it’s a notorious item of clothing, and we talk about it more than we should. Fresh from the drive across Eyre Peninsula, Paul banged on my door. “How’s the trip?” I asked. We shook hands. “Not bad. I stopped at The Knob.” Iron Knob is sometimes, simply, The Knob. “And I bought a souvenir.” Hmmm, I thought, like sending a postcard from your proctologist’s.

From his bag he pulled a frighteningly fluorescent green and pink singlet. Festooned across the chest was an unlikely salutation, a surely ironic hooray from a forlorn petrol stop

G’day from Iron Knob

Paul loved that singlet. Every spring he’d drag it out. Over the years I saw him in it at the MCG and on Coolangatta beach. He also packed it when we went to Vegas, the Grand Canyon and California. Wearing it today, I doubt he’d be allowed into Disneyland.

*

It was the first country race meeting I attended. I recall crushed Southwark cans mingling with the dust, and Akubras on every second squinting head. There was an energetic crowd of gnarled types, and blue-grey saltbush stretching across to the hills where The Sundowners was filmed over five decades ago with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr.

Legendary bush jockey Phil McEvoy came from Streaky Bay, and made his debut at Iron Knob in 1970. He saluted. Three decades later his son Kerrin piloted Brew to victory in the millennium’s first Melbourne Cup.

I was at The Iron Knob Cup with friends from Kimba. We stood about on the edge of a cruel desert, but happily trapped within the racetrack’s exhilarating world. Gareth and Netty trained horses, and competed in equestrian events, and Gareth was the showjumping course builder at the Royal Adelaide Show. Netty’s father Arthur was a famed horseman, parliamentarian and one of the “Rats of Tobruk,” and if you asked Netty whether she’d rather a month in Europe, or a month at outback race meets, she’d answer immediately. No passport required.

I couldn’t tell you who won any of the races, or even The Iron Knob Cup. I doubt I bothered the bookies at all. But there was something strikingly elemental and persuasive about that place for it evoked a time long forgotten, when the men all wore porkpie hats and “madam” featured courteously in conversations, and cars didn’t have air-conditioning, and so, as kids in the back seat, we wound down the Kingswood’s windows, welcoming in wind and flies and the baked, shimmering earth.

*

The town had a peak population of 3000, and there were 800 residents when the mine closed in 1999. Within weeks it shrivelled to one hundred and fifty. Many of the shops and houses remain boarded up. Wardy’s take away food business is closed, and a for sale sign points sanguinely to its peeling façade.

Iron Knob’s annual race meeting is now gone.

Today, the mine has re-opened and employs about thirty. In a few, fleeting years the ore will be finally exhausted, and then like Coward Springs, Radium Hill and Yudnamutana the town will quietly expire. But, for now, the Iron Knob Tourist Centre sells tea towels, and has a gem bar. There’s a dusty School Dux Board on its wall.

I doubt it, but hope they still sell G’day from Iron Knob singlets.

signpost

0

Finals Week 1 – Western Bulldogs v Adelaide Crows: Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes

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Tex

It was a moment of unfussy beauty.

At home and at the MCG we were looking at the goals, and dared to hope that he’d kick it straight. The distance wouldn’t bother him. But then Jenkins rushed forward, and we were fearful that the footy might go his way. He’d hardly touched it all night.

So why wouldn’t he have a ping? Minutes before, from a set shot, he’d brutalised a goal from sixty, in a statement of daring and confidence. Our game affixes much currency to the physical, to risk-taking, to muscular magnificence. And many would have rightly expected this from a swaggering centre-half forward. We could have expected a captain’s goal.

But we want our leaders to see what others can’t, and to show the way with the brain, and not only their brawn.

Until this point the camera had ignored Charlie Cameron, and then he appeared just beyond the goal square. It was an exquisite stratagem. With a low, spearing pass Tex found him, and he goaled. Done.

Taylor Walker has displayed enormous bravery in this season of unspeakable tragedy, his first as captain. He has moved from lovable country lad to a figure of purpose and clarity. On the field, in his debut final as leader, with only moments remaining, this is his finest effort. It wasn’t a pack mark, or inspirational goal, or brutish bump. It was an act of intelligent selflessness.

It was an act of such clarity that I wonder if Tex had recently read Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

*

About the only Latin I know is the phrase in medias res which means, “in the middle things” and it’s often used with reference to a story that begins in the midst of action. If the Roman satirist Horace was at the footy Saturday night he’d have recognised this in the explosion of dramatic events beginning with the opening bounce.

South Australia has again debated switching to the Eastern Standard time to align with the bulk of the nation’s population. The Crows were similarly uncertain about their clocks for they were their customary five or so minutes late in taking to the field. In that period the Bulldogs kicked four of the five opening goals.

Eddie Betts then occupied that rarefied space in which we all knew that no matter how many opponents were between he and the ball, no matter what cruel trajectory the Sherrin took before or after it bounced, that he would welcome it into his sure hands, and kick a goal. I was reminded of the Frank Zappa song from Just Another Band From LA fittingly titled, “Eddie Are You Kidding?”

*

Red dirt and whirly-whirlies and haunted, silent pubs. Broken Hill was our first stop on the road to Queensland. We wandered about the Living Desert sculptures just out of town. It is a place where sky and sand and heat and people connect. In the hot morning sun we started pulling up the tent pegs prior to the long drive across to Cobar.

Our caravan park neighbours were packing up too, and the woman made me think of the diverse country this is. She was handsome; on the cusp of middle age, but wearing a blue bikini, and although it was 2001, she was smoking a pipe. I hadn’t seen anyone smoking a pipe since my primary school principal, who’d patrol the corridors, leaving an olfactory, if not educational impact.

Until Tex arrived I’d thought little about Broken Hill and the Bikini-Clad, Pipe-Smoking Woman. But I like that Tex similarly brings a singularity of unique thinking to his game, influenced by the place that gave us Pro Hart and Wake in Fright and the Flying Doctor.

*

Neither side could outrun the other. At various moments Stringer, Dangerfield, Dahlhaus, Sloane and Dickson all seemed to charge into the straight with the baton a pumping, and the finishing tape mere yards away. But then the opponent would surge, and we’d gasp.

It was unrelenting entertainment. It was a Tarantino movie, a Ramones album, and it concluded in a Flemington photo-finish.

Finally, with a clever dispatching of a Bulldog on the wing, Tex seized the footy like a chalice, ran methodically, bouncing twice, before approaching the fifty metre arc.

With his sure disposal honed by long afternoons dominating kick-to-kick at Willyama High School, and then among men at the North Broken Hill footy club, he took a breath and sent the ball inward to Cameron.

Our captain had just won the match.

Broken Hill

0

Volleys, Blundstones and Thongs: Life in the Shoe-Wearing States

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blunnies

They’re beyond dreadful. Flat and offering less support than Chad Morgan opening for Metallica. The Dunlop Volley is a cultural icon, but podiatric nightmare, and I often wonder how Ken Rosewell wore them and still won all those tennis matches?

But spotting them about, they’re like the rarely seen old mate banging on your door with a six pack of Coopers. House painters love them. The herringbone tread must be superb if your day involves leaping up and down ladders, and cutting in around annoyingly ornate ceiling features.

I wore them at uni. A fine library shoe, they also performed exquisitely in the bar, especially on Friday nights when fifty cent schooners were on. The Volley was exceedingly valuable for sitting in the uni quadrangle as the morning sun streamed onto our youthful dials. About three times a semester and with eyes stricken with terror, my friend David would shriek, “Essay? What essay? Due at four today?”

They were also great as we plodded off to fourth year English, cruelly scheduled on Mondays from 4 – 8pm. At 8.01pm I’d point my HQ Holden southward, and with my old friend Jonesy co-piloting, navigate speedily if not unlawfully to the Botanic Hotel where we’d review the lecture’s major themes, or not.

But I couldn’t wear Volleys for sport. On the cricket oval I was a Puma Barbados man, and everything else apart from footy was handled by my Adidas Romes.

To my curious comfort I later met someone who actually wore them on the sporting field. For three seasons Peter and I played cricket together at Wudinna. A handy bat, and lively fieldsman, he was an accomplished first slip and stealthy patroller of the covers. One Saturday he arrived in a new pair, and I asked

“New Volleys? Where did ya get ‘em?”

“Town.” Adelaide was rarely called Adelaide.

“How much?”

“Fifteen bucks.”

I was surprised. “That’s a really good price.”

“They did me a deal. Because I bought six pairs.”

“Really? Why did ya get six pairs?”

“I reckon that should see me through to the end of my career.”

And I’m sure it did. Over the decades I’d imagine Peter in his shed, pulling down a box of new but peculiarly aged Volleys, brushing aside any resident Daddy Long Legs spiders, and with impish delight, sliding on the Dunlops for spring’s first cricket training.

But six pairs! What a visionary. Succession planning of the utmost order. Cricket Australia: phone this fella now.

I had mine on last Friday when the boys and I were at the park kicking their new Sherrin. They (the shoes, not the boys) are still terrible for this. However, as I later sizzled some sausages on the park’s free barbeque they became magnificent. My tong work was sublime, and I’ve rarely squirted sauce with such crisp authority. I thank my Volleys. They were always more Dean Martin than Dusty Martin.

*

They’d doubled in price. This was much better than anticipated, but I did purchase my first pair of Blundstones from a rural supplies store in Kimba during 1993 for fifty bucks. Since then we’ve moved nine times across three countries, and they’re still travelling superbly, and remain as utilitarian as Mark Ricciuto, but with a mellifluous special comments voice.

A new job meant I had to buy some new footwear so I jumped on the tram to revitalised Adelaide menswear retailer, Trims. Where previously I had no choice there are now multiple styles of Blundstones, catering from bushie to micro-brewing hipster. It was like buying a newspaper in London. You glance at the dozen or so front pages. The Times. The Daily Express. The Independent. And then, having scanned the alternatives, you buy the one you always get.

On the tram home I thought about my new boots and me. What might the next twenty-two years bring?

*

I know it’s feeble, but sometimes you just surrender. To make life easier. In Singapore, and surrounded by Americans, Canadians and Brits I started calling them flip-flops. It was just simpler. And now back home among the throng, and with spring making a few tentative squeaks, I’m reclaiming the word thong.

In various equatorial bars I’d try to explain for my global friends. But never with much success. “So it’s wrong to buy your mum a thong, but perfectly acceptable (if a little cheap) to buy her a pair of thongs.”

*

Late Saturday evening my wife’s Grandpop passed away. He was ninety. Not knowing either of my grandfathers contributed to him becoming a significant figure. For most of the twenty years I knew him he and grandma lived in Gympie on the highest hill in town.

We’d sit on their front veranda in the thick air, noisy with eccentric tropical bugs and their assorted clickings and whirrings. Geckos would scamper up and down the walls, while I’d gaze down across the houses on stilts and valleys so different from my dusty home town thousands of kilometres to the empty south.

With the exception of our wedding I only ever saw Grandpop’s gnarly hooves in slippers. Or barefoot.

A magazine columnist once described the non-Queensland parts of our nation as being, “the shoe-wearing states.” Grandpop reinforced this. His slippers were comfortable, but he also went shoeless partly because he didn’t care what those, “bloody wombats” thought. He’d always pronounce wombats with a deliberately long vowel and make it woombats. In the extended family it’s a term of fun and gentle mocking. Mostly.

And now he’s gone. He lived long, but it’s still sad.

*

The boys and I will continue to be bedazzled by Patrick Dangerfield’s seemingly irradiated footy boots. Before the season’s first lawn-mowing I’ll buy a pair of thongs, some double-pluggers. For extra comfort and backyard safety.

Like a feisty yearling my new Blundstones will finally be broken in, and the Volleys, as always, will push me on into that bright, windy spring.

thongs

3

Ringo Appointed Caddy to Tiger Woods: Adventures in Morroco and Portugal

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marrakesh

‘How do you like my new Fes?’ asks Jerry patting the hat on his melon. Only forty Dirham and he’s grinning like a shot fox. A dozen of us collect closely. We’re in the Medina or old city and New Jersey Jerry; ever-blaring, ever-egotistic and forty-something is taking pleasure from the tasselled headdress- and his own voice. ‘Yes, Jerry it’s great,’ we chorus. Absalom is our guide. Wearing his Muslim robes elegantly, and with snowy hair and trimmed beard he looks alarmingly like Kenny Rogers. He silences the Gatlin boy with, ‘Yes Jerry, it suits you perfectly.’ Through the dust and noise we lean nearer. ‘You are wearing the Fes of a young boy. Recently circumcised.’

With 350,000 people, 10,000 indistinguishable streets and 320 Mosques, the Medina is astonishing. Reaching its zenith in the 13th–14th centuries, the medieval monuments, madrasas (schools), fondouks (hotels), palaces, markets, residences and fountains are utterly engaging. About half the size of an Australian suburb, UNESCO declared it a World Monument in 1981. By morning’s end I am drained by the unbroken attack on my eyes and nose, ears and brain.

Attempting to engage me, one impish boy chirped, ‘Hello mister.’ I ignored him. ‘Hola. Bonjour,’ he continued. ‘Ciao. GutenTag. Aloha. Konnichiwa.’ I laughed. Konnichiwa. In a particular light I guess I appear Japanese. He reminded me of the carpet-seller in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar who, sensing I’d rejected every rug- buying opportunity, edged up to me and smirked, ‘Is it now time to talk about carpet?’

In Marrakech we’re steered into an apothecaries’ souk or pharmaceutical market. Spices, roots and aromatic plants for cooking, magic and pills cram the shelving in kaleidoscopic chains of little jars. The apothecary talks about the local herbs and their various uses. We enjoy listening but of course should have known what was coming. The lecture concludes, a corps of zipping assistants gives everyone a plastic bag and the Big Sell begins.

The apothecary repeats his catalogue whilst the helpers briskly dispense the concoctions. Our entourage includes Americans, Dutch and New Zealanders of every age and attitude and twenty minutes later not a medical secret remains amongst us. ‘These jars contain a potion to combat abdominal dryness,’ he announces and up fly some hands, their owners eager to spend and lubricate. Enchanted containers are urgently thrust at the grateful. He hollers, ‘Next is the haemorrhoid relief cream!’ More hands. ‘Who’d like the Moroccan herbal Viagra?’ I sit tighter on my palms. Never have I become so unintentionally informed about the private rashes, oozings and inflammations of strangers. It was like a nutrimetics party but without the collapsing paper plates of sausage rolls.

Beasts current and cooked, domesticated and dangerous were a mesmerizing aspect of our trip. The Jemaa el Fna or Place of the Dead is the gigantic square in Marrakech which functions as an al fresco circus. Street performers compete for our coins with yelling shoe-shiners and insistent henna tattooists whilst loops of snake charmers rhythmically sway with their hooded cobras. Given that she’s a biology teacher I selflessly sent Kerry among the reptiles as I captured photos and videos from an artistic distance.

And suddenly a snake was writhing around my neck and a lithe wrangler rubbed its anaconda-like girth against my forehead. ‘It is good for fertility,’ he declared. I squeaked, ‘Mine or the snake’s?’

Monkeys (few self-pleasuring!) sprung about the teeming square too whilst stalls groaned with meats and dishes of arresting aromas. Curiously wry rows of boiled camel-heads were Plat du jour but disappointingly we’ve been off them lately. Rooster idolatry is popular on Portuguese china, shirts, towels, hats; indeed everything! Heading along the Atlantic coast road from Tangiers I glanced down to the sundrenched shore and what did I spy? A jaunty row of trotting chickens! Have you ever seen wild hens pushing into the breeze, bouncing along the sand? It was so unexpected yet so childishly familiar and funny that it became an African highlight. Beach chooks! Even now I can see my documentary advertised in the TV guide-

BBC 2- Sunday 8pm

Moroccan Odyssey

Tonight Mikey Randall goes in search

of Tangier’s mystical beach chickens.

(50 minutes)

Despite the coach being guarded whilst we slept in our Tangier hotel (up the esplanade from Celine Dion Café; your heartburn will go on) it occurs at midnight. We are oblivious. From our giant ferry we witness customs police beating and kicking would-be illegal immigrants. They hide down by the waterline- frantic to flee Africa’s poverty for the nirvana that is Europe.

A rolling Atlantic swell surrenders to Gibraltar’s gentler waters. Then in Spain we drive a hundred Andalucian miles and alight at a restaurant whilst Juao, our Portuguese driver, re-fuels. He hears a noise from under the bus. Two continents and an ocean later, a small stowaway escapes; having clung perilously to the undercarriage for fourteen dark hours. He slides into the countryside like a phantom.

The jagged rush of surprises makes travelling addictive. Toledo, indeed, is quite holy and El Greco’s 1586 masterpiece, The Burial of the Count Orgaz adorns a wall within the modest Church of San Tomé. The painting is marvellous but it is also startling that we could saunter in and admire a magnum opus without a wardrobe-sized guard pointing his Uzi at us. If it were displayed in a London or Paris gallery I’d probably shave three times getting to the ticket window.

It was curious to feel homesick in Morocco with its mosques and confronting hardship and intoxicating town markets. Introduced from Australia last century, Eucalyptus trees appeared like old friends and combined with the sparse terrain to suggest the River Murray landscape back in South Australia. I love being amazed when travelling.

I had few expectations for the Portuguese capital but found it wonderful. Prior to visiting Europe my favourite world city was San Francisco and Lisbon often reminded me of its hilly charms and marine vistas. Two colossal structures cross the glimmering Tagus River; the Ponte 25 de Abril commemorates the 1974 Revolution and is strikingly like the Golden Gate; the planet’s most fetching suspension bridge. At over seventeen kilometres; we entered Lisbon on Ponte Vasco da Gama, Europe’s largest and probably the biggest bastard of a bridge that I’ll experience.

In an age when Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur and Florence are serviced by airports hours from their CBD it is remarkable that Lisbon’s is downtown; reflecting that last century the metropolis grew exponentially. The equivalent of Heathrow being in Hyde Park; it was compelling and somewhat menacing- post 9/11 to watch planes climbing and landing near skyscrapers. We loved wandering about historic Alfama and seeing the mighty Monument to the Discoveries before learning that although the world is a village chip-shop one should never order Italian dishes in a Portuguese Indian restaurant.

Seville burst into my Top Ten with a bullet and is illustrious for much; orange-trees lining the charming boulevards, the resting place of Columbus and of course, bullfighting. During summer the Sevillians stroll past the cigar factory immortalised in Carmen to the Plaza del Toros de la Real Maestranza and given that it nudged 54 degrees in August 2003 some sip Cruzcampo beer!

Many stories are relayed of brave bulls. An ancient matador told me the obscure tale of an old bull and a young bull. One lazy afternoon they were gazing down at a field of attractive heifers. The young bull shouts, ‘Let’s run down and shag a few cows!’ The old bull quietly replies, ‘No. Let’s walk down and do the lot.’

True.

Michael and Kerry

January 2005

 CD

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1-800 RINGO’S RV RENTALS: Washington DC and New York City

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building

‘Welcome aboard this Continental Airlines flight from London Gatwick to Newark, New Jersey. We expect a little turbulence south of Greenland and our flying time today is six hours and sixty-five minutes.’

Spilling over their seats, a couple from Kalamazoo enjoys peanuts and orange juice when, I imagine, George declares to Martha, ‘That’s a pretty quick flight.’ Martha nods, ‘Yeah, I couldn’t stand being on this plane for seven hours.’

Distressingly, our Washington DC hotel room stares at the US Department of Education, festooned with banners proclaiming Dubaya’s policy- ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Marginal communication skills have not impeded the 43rd President, who, with twit-faced sincerity, once announced that, ‘Increasingly our imports will come from overseas.’

Walking the two mile National Mall, we enjoy its bookends of the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument; at 555 feet the world’s tallest structure- until the Eiffel Tower. The Jefferson and Roosevelt monuments are majestic, but we’re smitten with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool- through which splashed a uniformed Forrest Gump and hippie child Jen-nee, before embracing in front of a protest crowd.

Stumbling across the US Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Avenue is wonderful, but I’m unsure if I’m chilled or amused by the Explosive Ordnance team- whose divers dispose of mines and other underwater weapons. Their motto summarises perfectly their work- ‘Initial success or total failure.’

Our first glimpse in the Smithsonian National Space and Air Museum is unforgettable. Hanging like artwork from a Land of the Giants-style classroom ceiling are authentic planes and rockets. My favourite is Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 which in 1947 became the first jet to fly beyond the speed of sound.

Cruise missiles, MinuteMen and Tomahawks are strewn about the museum like toys, which, I’d advocate, is exactly what they were. Peering up their towering coldness makes me feel very small. The Apollo 11 Command Module seems minuscule and primitive; its welding, riveting and instrumentation, less sophisticated than a modern three-burner barbeque.

Years ago in Queensland, Kerry’s Uncle Alan poured me a glass of his homebrew beer- and still my mouth hasn’t offered forgiveness. Given that he’d only just met me I was bewildered that he so clearly wanted to kill me. McDonalds’ McGriddle cakes are unquestionably worse. Naively trying one, I began convulsing; purple whirls blinding my eyes. If you’re in the US, avoid. In ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’ John Denver enthused about ‘the sun’s comin’ up I got cakes on the griddle.’ I pray McDonalds’ McGriddle cakes weren’t JD’s last breakfast before his Cessna tipped into the Pacific.

Arriving in Manhattan I immediately ticked the boxes on two distinctively New York experiences: arguing with a taxi driver and spotting celebrities. United Airlines bumped Kerry’s parents in Washington so we caught a shuttle-bus to The Beacon on Broadway, confident that our transfer booking reference would be sufficient. It would not, my Hispanic hombre assured me and thirty dollars cash was needed. Both my receipt number and I assert that the company has been paid and yet we to and fro like a grumpy tennis match – to the bemusement of a full foyer. ‘I haav theese guy ‘ere from Inglan’- or France,’ he tells his useless office. France? Now I am upset. I think, I can stand here arguing all afternoon. You’re a taxi driver. I’ll bet you can’t.

And he couldn’t so I then head out along Broadway, into the promise of Friday evening, and within a block hear some familiar voices.

Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you’d have a diamond

from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off comes to mind as I turn and see Matthew Broderick. His equine wife, Sarah Jessica Parker has her hoof in his hand and is braying about something. Probably sex. Or shoes.

I continue through Mid-Town past the bars, the Citarella market and a Barnes and Noble bookshop. A Marine approaches. His t-shirt says, ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body.’ The Marines take nothing as seriously as, well, being Marines.

Sunday morning we’re 1,050 feet up atop the Empire State Building, squinting out into the smoggy heat and disappointingly, the Statue of Liberty is shrouded. The skyscrapers and canyons are mesmerising but, for me, the deep drone, punctuated by urgent sirens and horn blasts, is also remarkable. Maybe this is what U2 meant by America’s ‘rattle and hum.’

Surely, however, Manhattan’s most handsome is the Chrysler Building with its Art-Deco aesthetic, hubcap designs and glittering gargoyles. A soaring tribute to the wonder of the motor car, it was the world’s tallest before the ESB and possesses more charisma yet little of its fame. Why escapes me.

Grand Central Station is gorgeous. Golden light, marble and space suggest infinite excitement- grand voyages and romantic destinations and in this honeyed cavern – 120 feet wide, 375 feet long and 125 feet high, the clacking of the arrivals and departures boards exaggerates the seduction.

Leaving via the sumptuous Vanderbilt Hall, we come to a street market on Madison Avenue; I have a Chinese massage that’s like eating tofu- beneficial rather that enjoyable. More amusing is the entrepreneur on Lexington Avenue sitting behind his sign

Tell me off – $2

Of course I should have yelled, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself! That’s too expensive! Why, back home folks only charge a dollar,’ but it was lunchtime and Bubba Gump’s in Times Square beckoned.

Inside is predictable but huge fun. On our table is a stand with two license plates that we flip- ‘Run Forrest, Run’ if we’re content and ‘Stop Forrest, Stop’ to grab the waiter. Sipping our drinks he quizzes us. ‘What was Forrest’s Vietnam War wound?’ We chorus like kids, ‘Butt-tocks.’ The food’s good and we buy shirts in the gift shop before emerging into the humid glare. Having paid homage to one fictitious character I’m keen to visit another mythic individual’s environs: Central Park.

Holden Caulfield is the anti-hero in JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and this 843-acre space is significant in the novel. Entering, we hear percussion and whistles as the Dominican Republic parade passes like a jolly serpent and, the cacophony evaporating, we sit by the Heckscher Ballfields.

As with all sports, baseball’s best moments occur when beauty thrillingly replaces danger. I like its egalitarianism- all ages, shapes and abilities strut about. Ball players talk constantly. Having struck out, one jogs over to first base and coaches the new batter.

‘Come on baby.’

‘Ducks on the pond’

‘You drivin’ this bus, baby’

The innings complete, we amble towards The Lake where Holden and his girlfriends ice-skate but the dinosaur rumbling, aubergine sky splits and we’re instantly soaking. Near the Cherry Hill fountain a fire engine puts out a lightning strike and I say to Kerry, ‘Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.’ She replies, ‘it’s nothing to get hung about.’ In the tropical torrent, the Imagine Mosaic (a gift from Naples) and its flowers is a sodden John Lennon tribute so beneath the American Elms we scuttle.

And then we slosh westward along 72nd to our hotel and dry towels, laughing, like youngsters, at how wet we are.

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Ringo almost buys van Gogh’s Sunflowers: Our Scottish wanderings (2005)

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golf

Pigeon expert dies, aged 86

is why I love opening our front door each Thursday afternoon. Roxy trots down from her bed and the Hertfordshire Advertiser awaits, convulsing with similar stories. Despite this county heaving with a million folks, one lead headline blazed the engagement of a local lass to Jason Priestley of Beverly Hills 90210 fame- proving that St Albans is where Hollywood D-list dreams can come true! Time is short so I’ll just list the main narrative elements of my favourite article; this one, I swear, a genuine tale of the galactically stupid:

a video camera

secluded woodland near Hemel Hempstead

petrol-filled fluorescent light tubes (exploding)

Star Wars fans hospitalised with critical burns and lacerations.

On the hottest May day in fifty years (a humid 33 degrees) our hire car’s air-conditioning didn’t work- the vents but flatulating pigeons, we left for Scotland’s Invertrossachs. Awaking to a soggy Saturday we explored the surrounding Highlands; particularly Perthshire’s Balquhidder Church and its eminent gravestone. Rob Roy’s (1671-1734) tomb inscription- ‘McGregor despite them’ exemplifies these brusque Scots as did King Robert the Bruce at the media conference after his team thrashed the visiting opposition at the Battle of Bannockburn in the 1314 season opener. When quizzed about the victory he uttered that they’d simply sent the English, ‘home tae think again.’

Circumnavigating Loch Lomond we found acute contrasts. Whilst boats slid soundlessly across the inky depths; sky and mountains completed a staggeringly appealing canvas. However, like a reality TV show in which the public votes for the most repulsive misfits to join a freak circus, I present the village of Luss. Clinging to the Loch, this scabrous hub is infected by Special Brew lager (9%) garglers whose meaty limbs wobble with illiterate tattoos. Down on the freezing beach, gangs of these happily head-butt each other. Its pier- any waterside town’s focus – features this hostile sign

No Swimming

No Fishing

If I had a pen I’d have added

Stuff your puffy carcass with tepid snacks!

Only seven quid to buy a stylish, ‘Having a fcuking ball in Luss’ snow dome.

Now if you ever stray across the Scottish soap High Road have handy a stack of vomit bags- its exterior scenes are filmed, inexplicably, in Luss. I don’t think we’ll return.

St Andrews is superb. A gorgeous town of 11,000, it stars the university at which Prince William finished a Master’s in Geography, the ruins of a cathedral and a castle and the golf nirvana: all within three streets. Walking along the esplanade towards the Old Course my waddle became athletic, like Kevin Spacey’s Verbal at the end of The Usual Suspects. St Andrews’ golf is characterised by egalitarian openness- we wandered wherever we wanted. No security fences. No black-shirted fridges grumbling into walkie-talkies. This I liked.

Charmingly interactive, The British Golf Museum taught me that etiquette urged tee-off at eleven followed immediately by the captain’s lunch. Fines were inflicted upon members playing but then slinking off without dining; encouraging the natural order as I see it: gentle, good-humoured exercise pursued by industrial lashings of lager.

Watching behind the first tee, I was as excited as those swinging the Pings. Golfing pilgrims often win their round courtesy of a lottery and the not unreasonable 85- pound green fee- it is the world’s most distinguished walk. The awesome theatre along the 1st or ‘Burn’ (each hole has a name) is heightened by grandstands- newly erected for the 27th St Andrews’ Open. Most tee-shots tidily splice the fairway but hacker that I am takes reassurance when one Hotdot is yanked left in a violent arc to the middle of the 18th or ‘Tom Morris.’

A bracing breeze escorts Kerry and I as we stroll alongside the first, drawing in the air and 600 years of golfing history before we pause at the Ladies Putting Club (1867). Again St Andrews stands up exceedingly well to a socialist deconstruction as the LPC or Himalayas- likely to sneak onto your TV during the 2005 Open- is better known as Crazy Golf! A round is ninety pence. But the brisk showers and looming closing time deny us mini-golf majesty. Ours was a vivid, engaging day.

It’s heavy rain but we’re the only people under an umbrella. No surprise really as we’re in Glasgow and its harsh residents are customarily agreed upon only one point: the rest of the world is soft. Despite its regal name- George Square- local literary hero Sir Walter Scott (Lady of the Lake) and not a namby English king or pouncy politician is honoured with the most prominent statue.

The city and its shipbuilding docklands are now gentrified and the sandstoned affluence makes it seem astonishing that in its industrial past Glasgow had the planet’s highest lung cancer incidence. As our bus crawls about the wet-shiny streets the guide comments, inevitably, on Edinburgh- ‘Don’t waste your time going there, it’s one street and a castle.’ He closes with the Billy Connolly-like, ‘You’ll have more fun at a Glaswegian funeral than an Edinburgh wedding.’

As slaves to all things canal-boating we detour to the new millennium’s marvel of Scottish engineering; the Falkirk Wheel. Linking two canals separated by a drop of 115 feet, this rotating boat lift- resembling a shrunken London Eye- replaces a flight of eleven locks. Each giant pod or caisson can lift or deposit four sixty-foot boats in four minutes but uses no more power than is needed to boil two kettles.

So, suitably staggered, the wife sends me up a steep, grassy hill to take photos. Ascending towards the aqueduct I remember climbing New Zealand’s Fox glacier. Even clearer in my memory is peering below at the treacherous ice, when I wondered, if I slipped, the many angry Kiwis, mops and buckets which would be required to remove my sloshy stain. Back in Scotland, I tumbled down the knoll like a novice competitor in a cheese-rolling event. Hearing my tangled flailings, Kerry was aghast. Cried she, ‘Are your keys and wallet OK?’

Our Scottish digs were on a working deer farm by Loch Venachar. The hosts warned us, ‘Don’t be concerned if you see a wee carcass hanging on that shed wall.’ Spying a live stag on our road one afternoon, Roxy gave cute, deeply deluded chase, finishing many lengths behind Bambi but nonetheless paying a tidy quinella.

We slept in the estate’s former kennels; a canine honour roll hanging by the door- Timmy 1912-1918, Reginald 1927-1940, Jock 1942-1955 etc. Roxy wees on it. Approaching summer solstice at 56 degrees north, first light is before 4am and dusk stretches on towards 11pm and the sky becomes a curved, blue cathedral. Our backyard is a bubbling splash of brooks and springy ferns. We dine, walk and sleep well.

Oops. I’ve not yet mentioned a pub. York is The Beatles’ White Album of pub culture: classy, avant-garde but also populist and patchy too. You could lob a smelly spud from the Minster’s spire into the Three Legged Mare and if you were Ricky Ponting, hit the tap dispensing their celebrated ale, Wonky Donkey. The ‘Mare’ was chic and colourful.

Over on Coppergate, The Three Tuns was crowded by girls whose daddies or credit cards had bought them breasts so horribly pneumatic I feared that once they’d had sufficient alco-pops they’d float up from their chairs and bounce across the ceiling like helium balloons.

But our penultimate cup-house was alarming. Innocently, we waltzed in. It thumped me like a mugger. I worried for my wife but could understand it in a 1989, Oz beer-barn. But sophisticated, dishy 2005 York? Hearing

Flamingos walk, and sway in peace

Seeing this, it makes my troubles cease

The sun is hiding, leaving a pink scar

That stretches right across the sky

That’s all we’ve seen so far

And all I do is look into your eyes

For that special touch of paradise

I wordlessly grabbed Kerry’s hand and we fled that molten metal poured in your ears by John Farnham/ Beelzebub torture vortex. But yes, York is lovely.

British comedy still amuses me. This was recently on Radio 2: I’m not happy. My favourite horse broke its leg. I shot it. Now it has a broken leg. And a gun-shot wound.

I’m off to ring the local paper. I can see next Thursday’s headline-

Australian man, 38, sends email.

Best wishes,

Michael, Kerry and Roxy

light sabre

This story comes from the collection of letters I wrote from 2003 to 2006 when we lived in England. They’re on this website at https://mickeytales.com/2014/02/22/the-ringo-tales/