Dearest Tristram

Dearest Tristram! I have done it again!

Who knows where the time goes - where lethargy's temptations lead - where the frail excuses rise, hydra-headed, to distract me from my true calling, which is to communicate absolutely everything to you, my dear friend, my only friend! But, there you go, mon frer. All discipline crumbled months ago, with an overseas' friend's visit, and the excuses cascaded down like so much shale shavings off stupidity's cliff to bury me in rubble, the rubble of ... ah me! But what's the use of all this metaphor and imagery and silly simile. I blew it again, and not the good sort of blowing. O Tristram!

The tidbits of biography I wish to relate! The nuances of every memory and hallucination! And yet I continuously abandon this blawwwg- the only constancy seems to be my flight from The Word! - continuously, I leave you in the ether. Even in this, the Ether season! All right, lousy pun. I grovel in apology.

But horrid the meanderings of one's mind (if I dare skirt Barton Fink territory, which I might as well, since it was the Coen Brothers' only half-decent movie anyway): when I sit and write, how good it feels, how calming, how out-of-body-blasting it is! Yet the effort to get myself in front of the damned keyboard and computer screen (how did you ever sit by candlelight with quill and inkwell? you saint!) and scuttle toward that wordy Nirvana is akin to torture! I now know how Dorothy Parker (have you met her out there? she's a hoot; I recommend her company) felt, dreading the typewriter that snickered like a demon in the next room, the room her friends would have to lock her in to actually sit and compose, to meet her deadlines.

Deadlines! Tristram! How I thought joining the blawwging legions would create little deadlines in my head, that I would strive to meet them, to stay constant in the eyes of those hordes of readers I would surely gain! Hordes! Thousands! Hundreds? Ha! As if I had any!

Only you, Tristram, only you! And even you, I have betrayed!

Like little Freddy Nietzsche, I boast my genius and bewail my words never to be heard, except by the higher tastes of future generations - of which there will be none! for man hurtles to extinction! extinction he's caused! - so, unlike Freddy, I have no urge to write, save to entertain you, dear Tristram. And as Freddy would do, I await that whipped horse streetside to throw my arms around and shriek to protectively, to collapse, implode, my writings consigned to the dunghill should they ever emerge from this e-drawer I've written for.

O Tristram! O anonymity! O useless efforts untaken!

... so anyway, back to the various threads of my tale ...

Somali Pirates, So Little Time 5

I awoke to find myself staring at Julie Andrews. She was dressed as a nun. At least, at first I thought it was Julie Andrews; the similarity was astonishing. Then she spoke.

“Oh! You’re awake! Thank god,” came a husky voice that sounded more like the older Lauren Bacall, i.e. that of a New York butcher who’s just swallowed his cigar.

“I …” I struggled to get up – I now saw I was lying in a small bed in some sort of tiny hospital ward. The nun put a large well-manicured hand on my chest and eased me back upon my pillow.

“No, no; rest, you poor soul,” she said, “you’ve been through quite an ordeal. We found you floating in the sea like Kate Winslet in Titanic. How your pants had come undone, we’re not sure, but …”

I blushed a bit. Then remembered. “There was … err, someone else. A guy named Angus … was he …”

“He must be the other one!” she put her hands together prayerfully. “Is he a fiend of yours?”

“An … acquaintance. Is he okay?”

“Mmm, a bit worse off than you. He was knocked about a bit more by wreckage. Looks like Bogart in the first half of Dark Passage right now, if you know what I mean.”

I digested the thought. Poor guy, swathed in bandages – I hoped he wasn’t too badly injured. I asked this nun if I could see him.

“I don’t think so, dear,” sweet concern dripped through the smoky deep voice, “you’re still a bit weak.”

“I know; even lying down I feel so wobbly – like I’m still on a boat.”

“You are, dear.”

“…oh.” I looked around a bit more. Sure enough, the window was round and sealed, and outside twinkled passing waves of a sun-drenched sea. “What happened to the Buraq? Did you rescue the Australian ferry?”

“To answer the second part first,” began the nun, “yes. We put them all off on Mauritius for transport home. As for the first part, well, that bloody little pirate ship will never raid again. It’s at the bottom of the Indian Ocean with, I assume, its entire crew.”

“You mean …”

“Yes, you two are the sole survivors. Along with a parrot,” she gestured to the corner of the room where for the first time I saw a makeshift cage. In it a king parrot acknowledged our attention by flapping its wings.

“Good morning!” it squawked. “Get well soon!”

“And what happened,” I asked, dreading the answer, “to the ship that attacked us?”

“Oh, honey,” she laughed, patting the back of my hand, “that was us. You’re on board. We’re pirates too!”

“Ah,” I sank into my pillow.

“Don’t worry, dear, you’ll find we’re a bit nicer sort of pirates than R Maitee and his ilk. You were a captive, weren’t you? Not one of them. I mean, you’re a Yank, obviously, and they were all Somalis … despite their utterly affected pirate accents.”

“Are we still near Mauritius? Can you let me off too? I’m feeling better.”

“Not dead yet,” she tittered. “Oh, sorry, it’s so easy to flash to Holy Grail references. Though really as far as Arthurian legend goes I prefer Camelot … such songs!” she reached over and picked up an acoustic guitar. “Shall I sing some of them for you?”

“No!” I said, perhaps too curtly. “I, um …”

“Not into show tunes?”

“Not really, sorry.”

“Oh dear. Well, there goes pretty much the entire shipboard digital library …”

“I’ll listen to the waves.” I said before a whistled shriek filled the room. “And the parrot,” I added.

She put the guitar back with disappointed sighs. Feeling bad, I tried to make conversation. “So, what’s a nun doing on a pirate ship anyway?”

“You are a heterosexual,” she heaved a bigger sigh. “I was afraid of that.”

“Wha …?”

“No show tunes, thinks I’m a real nun … you people are soooo dense.” her previous goodwill seemed to harden into frozen iciness.

Light dawned over Marblehead, as they say in Boston. “I … wait, no. The outfit was just very effective. Sound of Music, right?”

Her voice softened to its familiar rasp. “Somewhat, yes. See? You do know a few showtune references.”

“I try to earn my gay badges where I can, though I’m not good at it. My flawless diva is Yoko Ono.”

“She’s doing dance remixes now, so all is forgiven,” the nun patted my hand again. “You’re a poof! Thank Christ! Erm, in a manner of speech,” she crossed herself dramatically.

“I’d have thought my concern for my fellow refugee combined,” I added, “with my pants down would have been a strong clue.”

“You threw me quite off with the Camelot rejection,” pouted the nun, “but you’ve redeemed yourself. Just in time, I might add. We usually don’t suffer heterosexuals to live on board this ship. I was just about to have Connie come in and slit your throat.”

“Slit the throat! Slit the throat!!” squawked the king parrot. “Alms of eight! Alms of-“

“Oh, shut up,” the nun threw a small pillow at the cage. The bird danced in its prison and whistled a colourful obscenity.

“Let me vouch for Angus too,” I said, “before any throat-slittings are considered there …”

“No worries, dear,” another hand pat. “Angus will be well-looked after. What a nice Aussie name, Angus. And you being a Yank are named … what, Steve? Joe? Spanky?”

“Yuri,” I said, and to her look of confusion added, “A long story.”

“It’s the gay world, dear; we all have long stories. My name is Sister Mary Way.”

I paused to give the effect of being utterly wow’d by her clever name, as one must with a drag queen. “A Sister? As in you’re with the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence?”

“I was, sweetie, but they weren’t radical enough for me. Oh of course,” she quickly blustered as I raised my eyebrows, “they do simply wonderful community work, and social advocacy and such, in every city they have chapters, but I wanted something … more.” A glow came into her eyes as she stood up, taking on a glow of religious rapture. “And then … there I was, on a cruise around Thailand – I’d saved up my money from my nursing job – anyway, there we were, going through the Molucca Straits when they intercepted us.”

“They?”

“Us, hon. The ship you’re now on. Took us all prisoner, sifted out the gay from the straight … the heterosexuals were stripped of their valuables. A few of the more insecure ones, once they realised they were being raided by an all-gay pirate crew, tried to resist, but a few plank-walkings into shark infested waters put that down PDQ.”

“Wow.”

“Well, that was my first experience of Connie’s … fierceness.”

“Connie…?”

“Security chief here. Fabulous outfit, but don’t cross her. But there I was, seeing all this and just knowing in my heart of hearts that this was my destiny. As the captain, bless her soul, was putting us off at Phuket, I asked to sign up. I’d nearly finished my medical degree, it was obvious they needed a ship’s doctor … oh, it was just like The Circus when Charlie Chaplin finally found work and happiness under the big top …”

“You call all the crew ‘she’s’,” I broke in. “Are some of the crew lesbians as well, or is everyone … er …”

“Drag queens,” Mary Way finished as she again sat down by my side, “yes, sweetie. The Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence are fine for the land, but we’re the Sisters Of The Seven Seas! An all-gay, all-drag pirate crew robbing from the het and giving to the queer! All without breaking a nail. Well, usually.”

“This has to be seen to be believed,” I said aloud.

“Oh, honey, didn’t you learn back when you had your gay training wheels on not to mess with drag queens? Imagine a bunch of them armed and mad and taking on the world. Somali pirates … China Sea pirates … feh!” she snapped her fingers in the air. “Homophobes and faux-religious maniacs; while we’re on our mission we’re taking time to blow them all out of the water too. Giving pirates bad name, all them. Why, the original pirate republics of Madagascar and the Bahamas were all same-sex egalitar … oh, but you’re tired,” she cut herself off and ran a hand over my forehead. “Poor dear, here I am starting to rant and you need rest.”

“No, really, I’m fine. I’d love to get up and see …”

“Maybe tomorrow. Doctor’s orders!” she wagged a finger in my face as I began to protest. “I’ll have Nurse Crochet bring you some chicken soup. It’s nearly dinner time. Now, you rest, and we’ll check in on you tomorrow. Maybe we can get above deck and see the captain, bless her heart, then.”

“The captain? who’s h … she? What’s her name?”

“Wait til tomorrow. Dramatic tension, suspense, all that.” Mary Way put a finger to her lips, kissed it, and touched me on the nose. She stood up, dimmed the lights a little, and left.

I lay back into the pillow, turning to look outside. Still an endless expanse of turquoise, still obviously on the open sea somewhere between Somalia and Western Australia. I wondered about poor Angus, somewhere nearby and bandaged beyond recognition. I thought about the Buraq on the ocean floor, all hands lost, cruel pirates having crossed more ferocious drag queens on a crusade.

“Someone’s coming!” shrieked the king parrot. “Company! Company!!”

I looked over, expecting Nurse Crochet, whoever she might be, with food. If it was the nurse who stepped silently in, she’d forgotten her duties.

She hadn’t padded in nurse-like so much as slithered in, like a reptile on a predatory mission. Tall, gaunt, she’d sort of … appeared. Narrow dark twinkling eyes studied me suspiciously from beneath a wispy, straight cascade of jet-black hair. A long scar trailed down one cheek. A purple, almost black single-piece dress fell from shoulders to thighs to meet glistening leather boots. Across the waistline was a silver-sequined belt with a large machete notched behind. Utter silence filled the room.

“Um … hi,” I said meekly after the pause became uncomfortable.

“You’re one of the new ones,” came a voice more like a hissed, harsh whisper. “Mary Way told me you’d come to.”

“Yes,” I said after another long pause, “… hi.” Silence. “You’re not the nurse, are you?”

“Chelsea, New York - or Soho in London?” she not so much asked as demanded somehow.

“I … what?”

“Chelsea or Soho?” a hand within a long black glove reached for the handle of the machete. Noting an East End twang in her hiss, the decision was easy.

“Soho,” I answered, adding, “I really liked the Admiral Duncan pub.” The glove on the blade handle relaxed.

“Erasure … or The Pet Shop Boys?” still suspiciously.

“The Tom Robinson Band,” I replied. An eyebrow raised on her face, nearly up to her straight black bangs.

“Judy … or Liza?”

“Peggy Lee.”

She snorted at my dodges.

“Madonna … or Kylie?”

“Exene Cervenka.”

She wasn’t about to let me get away with this most vital of questions. Her hand clutched the machete, threatening to draw it out.

“Madonna or Kylie?” she took a step forward menacingly. I unconsciously pulled the bedsheets up to my chin.

“Kylie!” I squealed. “At least she knows she’s cheap camp, and doesn’t think she’s some sort of artistic cultural innovative force!” I hoped I’d chosen correctly.

The newcomer squinted at me, stepped backward, and made as if to leave. I sighed. She suddenly whirled and lunged forward. The machete shone in the tastefully dimmed light as it swung to stop at my throat. I could feel cold, sharp steel tickling my skin.

“You know your history,” she whispered, crouching millimetres from me, “but I still don’t trust you.” She brought her face close to mine and stared at me with her cruel icy eyes. I could see no mercy anywhere inside them. She watched me for what felt like hours before the blade slowly withdrew. She raised herself to her full height once more. “But then, it’s not a security chief’s job to trust anyone.” She sheathed the machete.

“You’re … Connie, then?”

“That’s Chief Security Officer Connie Sewer to you, mate,” she snapped. “Don’t think you’re off the hook. Mary Way’s a soft touch, but not me. I’m keeping my eye on you.” She backed out of the room, nearly motionless, almost hovering, before vanishing through the door.

“Whew,” I exhaled after a long nervous wait. “She’s tough.”

“What a bitch!” shrieked the king parrot. “What a bitch!”

Somali Pirates, So Little Time 4

It was as Abd unstrapped his submachine gun once more and my blood ran cold (an odd old saying – cliché perhaps – but in this case, dear Tristram, it felt very, very true; nothing like the concept of imminent demise to put a solid chill through one’s entire body) and Angus the handsome Sydney ferry employee looked at me in dismayed horror whilst turning as ghastly pale as I no doubt was that the first distant booms were heard. I only had a moment to see Abd look past my shoulder (as I’d turned to face the Buraq’s interior during my attempt to sway the cap’n’s intentions) and his jaw drop before a loud whoosh whistled past me and a portion of the deck exploded into splinters.

The resulting shudder of the entire boat sent us all crashing to the deck. Bits of wood and wreckage rained down upon us. R Maitee barely through the door, had pivoted and returned, scimitar waving wildly in his hand, balancing precariously on his peg leg as the shock waves receded. From behind him spilled more of his pirate crew, rushing forth like a nest of ants that had been kicked.

“Arrrh! I don’t believe it! It’s … them!” the cap’n spat and waved his scimitar even higher in the air. “Them and their accursed leader!”

I struggled to my feet. Angus, already up and preparing to make a dash for … somewhere, grabbed my arm and helped me to rise. R Maitee was beside us in a second, shoving us toward his faithful assistant.

“Abd! Get these prisoners below! I’ll deal with ‘em later. We got bigger fish to fry!”

“Yessir,” bowed Abd with a salaam-y flourish of his hand suitable for a man both Islamic and piratic. He shoved me toward the entry with the butt of his gun, then stepped back and did the same to Angus. We stumbled forward as further booms, closer now, were heard. A whistle shrieked; a tremendous splash sent a spray of water from just off deck in a mist over our heads. The Buraq rocked menacingly.

“Quickly!” Abd hissed, shoving us through the door. Just as the three of us got inside, another thunderous explosion rocked the boat. I turned and, over Abd’s shoulder, saw only a cloud of smoke and dust, bits of wreckage flying through the air, and an odd sparkling red spangling through the smoulder like sparks, or gems caught in brilliant sunshine. Abd slammed the door shut before the smoke cleared. Shouts and cursings could still be heard from outside.

“Hurry, hurry,” Abd growled and forced us further inside. We clacked and stumbled down metal stairs toward the door of our former incarceration. In we went; the door slammed shut, followed by a harsh locking and bolting sound. Deep in the Buraq now, the sounds of conflict with R Maitee’s mysterious rivals were reduced to muffled thumps and hollow thuds. The ship now roared with returning fire and distant-sounding reverential calls to Allah and the Prophet and their mighty love and kindness for help in flaying alive and destroying utterly the enemy. The footsteps of Abd sounded as he stumbled away, heading for but not ascending the steps upward. Keeping an eye on the prisoners’ locked door, no doubt, seemed both important and much safer than manning the conflict-crazed upper deck.

In our cell, Angus walked over to one of the shabby cots provided and sat down with a sigh. “Well, mate,” he said, “looks a bit dark for us. Oh well … at least we’re not laying up there with a bullet through our backs.” I sat on the cot opposite him and complimented him on his cheer.

“Pirate captains sentencing us to death, some sort of sea duel blasting the hell out of the boat, stuck in a locked room with a machinegun-wielding hack waiting down the hall. Not conducive to optimism, mate.”

I was about to offer some platitudes and fantasies of how things could right themselves when two loud bangs rocked the ship again. The way it shuddered, it felt like the Buraq had taken two hits from something very big.

“Yeah,” I said instead, “the phrase ‘dead meat’ does come to mind.”

Angus sprawled back on his cot, leaning on the elbows of his sun-bronzed arms, light blond hairs bristling on his forearms in the dusty low light of the cabin. His strong legs spread, also bristling curly sunbleached blond hairs below his short pants. Quite a handsome lad, I thought; can’t hurt to cop a few lecherous views a bit in the face of imminent death. There’d only be a few minutes for him to be offended, if he caught me, before we all sank to our gurgling doom. I looked up from his appealing limbs to see his staring directly at me. Oops.

“So,” he said in a suddenly huskier voice, “guess if there’s no escape, no chance, no hope, we ought to at least go out doing … something.” His bright eyes now sparkled with a different, glowering light. “Get over here.”

Rather surprised at this turn of events, and finding no cause for disagreement with his assessment of events, and quite happy to find his physical ambitions so similar to my own, I rose from my cot and, wobbling with the tremors of the Buraq and my own suddenly-encouraged lechery, stumbled over to land with an ungraceful thud next to Angus on his bed.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” I said as he began caressing my arm.

“Wot,” he asked with a playful smirk, “you thought I was just some straight boofhead or something?”

“My gaydar is completely stuffed since I got to Australia,” I explained. “Can’t tell who’s where Kinsey-scalewise, so I just pine wishfully from afar. Must say you surprised me, though. In a good way.”

“Yeah, well, why can’t a ferry crewman be a bit of a …” he smirked again, pulled my face close to his, and kissed me forcefully.

I must say, dear Tristram, that if all it takes to have a solid, blokey, bright-eyed blond decide to come on to me is to be aboard a doomed pirate ship with him facing probable destruction, it is something that I should do more often.

The ominous rocking of the lurching ship was matched by our own rolling on the ancient cot in the cell. Our lips never unlocking, I had unbuttoned shirt and was running my hands through the fine golden fuzz of his firm chest as he grabbed my own shirt at the collar and ripped it open. The Buraq tilted, I took the opportunity to pull him atop me. Pressed down on me, I could feel a quite hefty hardening bit of him poking at me through his shorts. This would be a fine way to shuffle off this mortal coil, I thought.

He nibbled lightly on my neck as my hands ran down his back, to the waist of his shorts, snuck under it, and cupped his soft buttocks, well-shaped with worktime spent navigating a ferry deck.

“Beautiful butt,” I couldn’t help but murmur into his ear.

“It’s gotten its compliments,” he whispered back. “And since we’re going out with a bang, you’re gonna find out what I can do with i-“

At that moment the world’s sense of bad timing reached an all-time high as the walls seemed to explode around us with a deafening concussive roar. For a split second I saw metal, wood, plaster flying like scraps of paper in a whirlwind as the comforting weight of the handsome Angus lifted off me and vanished in the dust cloud that enveloped us. As that split second ended and I felt consciousness blinking out, I could swear I saw sunlight, that stunning sunlight of the equatorial Indian Ocean, and again that damned glittering red sparkle – crimson spangles hanging in mid-air through the dust and destruction just out of vision, fading as the breath was sucked out of me and my mind shut down.

Kneel, Perth 4

24 November, 2008, etched forever in history as the wedding day of Nick’s co-worker, Mike, with his fiancé Anna. Bully for them! But more importantly, I’d zeroed in on a wildlife park which claimed to have a pettable, holdable wombat. This was one of my grails since arriving in Oz: not simply seeing a wombat, but touching one (without being then attacked).

This park – nay, this pilgrimage – was en route as the fruit bat flies from our b&b to the Middle Swan region, where Mike and Anna were holding their reception (the wedding itself being a refreshingly modern duck into the proper office and signing papers before fleeing boozeward). In between lay what I hoped was bush country, rural Australia, awaiting my discovery. We’d exit Perth, I thought, see some countryside, find the wildlife park, and then head deeper into the bush to the small wine-country town in which the reception was taking place.

Into our rental car went we. Yet another direction out of Northbridge was mapped out, and we turned left where we’d previously turned right, as our steadfast Tom Tom device instructed us. The low rises of Perth’s streets led us into a whole new neighbourhood that, unlike Northbridge, seemed to actually have a vibrant café culture, or at least actually-filled and well-maintained shopfronts and attractive buildings. Judging by signs and a few locative-named buildings, we seemed to be in Mount Lawley.

“Next trip,” Nick turned to me, “we’ll check this area out a bit more.” He got no argument from me. Maybe with the usual socio-seismics of urban trends, this is where what once was Northbridge (according to my co-worker) must have migrated. All conjecture, though, as we had neither time nor background information to investigate.

We drove and drove, though low urban Australian sprawl. I was waiting, like a dog with its head out the window, for bush country to erupt. But soon signs for the various Swan regions began appearing with no break in urbanity. With a sigh, I realised They had gotten here, too. Whoever They might be. The buildings got slightly lower and sightly further apart, with trees a bit more predominant; we figured we must now be outside Perth. Our path led us into Guildford, a town once far outside Perth and founded as an outpost of settlers daring to Tame The Wilderness. Guildford was now a main strip with some residential sidestreets, with more rural and older turf on the other side of the brutal railway slashing through the centre of what was once a small and cosy town. Apparently, as the railroad was being built, the decision to slice the town in two with the main station for the region being located a town away sort of killed poor Guildford, dooming it to irrelevancy and eventual de facto absorption by Greater Perth. Still, it clung to whatever shreds of historic status it could, preserving a few buildings, maintaining its not-too-landscaped parks, keeping the banks of the Swan river bucolic and olden-timesey.

We figured that this was the best shot we had, this time around, at seeing older Australia peeking out through the suburban veneer, so we crossed the railroad tracks to the harder-to-reach and therefore historically-preserved other side of Guildford. We walked into the visitor’s centre, stared admiringly at the blown-up photos on the wall and glass cases containing dead people’s stuff (a dress! a saw!!), grabbed a walking tour map, and set off.

The most exciting thing for me on our brief stroll to the Swan was seeing a galah up close near a Catholic seminary. Nick keeps telling me how omnipresent they were in Sydney in his childhood, but I have yet to see any anywhere within Sydney limits. So it was good to see at least one casually going about its birdy business in the lawn of some death cult’s programming centre.

We got to the Swan, watched the river calmly loll past, listened to some unseen cattle moo in the distance, and made our way back to the Berlin Wall of the railway line. Realising we’d need to drive a bit to get back to the two or three blocks of shops and a place or two that had seemed likely to serve food, we retreated to the car and made tracks.

We parked in what we figured was the middle of the commercial stretch. After inspecting a rather oddly-stocked “antique” store (I did buy a nice handmade doily; I mean, c’mon, it had a nice aqua shade to it), we found a modern and yuppie-esque lunch café to have a quick bite. We walked another half-block and, realising we’d seen all of Guildford worth seeing, headed back to the rental car. Destination: Wombatward! as Ken Kesey said. Well, spiritually. I’m sure that’s what he meant by “Farther”.

Thanks to the might of Tom Tom, all praise Tom Tom, we wended our way down some finally genuinely-bush looking roads outside Guildford and were led to Caversham Wildlife Park and its promise of antipodean animals there for the petting.

All happy wildlife parks are happy in the same way, and having cooed over Koala Park in Sydney elsewhere, I’ll spare the details of wandering past pens of Aussie birds and huge contained fields with nonchalant kangaroos and wallabies sighing as they deigned to let you pet them whilst they sprawled in the sun.

As the time approached for the wildlife show, I was off having a wonderful time interacting with twin pens of cockatoos – one sulfur-crested, the other black red-tailed cockatoos, both pens’ avian pairs at the wire, crawling about, cawing at me and bobbing their heads in my direction. I couldn’t tell if they were hinting at “hello!” or “ATTICA! ATTICA!!”, but I felt like we were bonding.

I heard Nick calling me. How dare he interrupt my mildly St Francis moment, I grumbled, what could possibly grr grr grumble etc. as I stomped toward his voice. Him being the Nice One in the marriage, of course his intentions were good: he’d been talking to one of the staff as she held … a baby wombat. Figuring it might be best to call Yuri The Wombat-Mad over in such a situation, he generously did so. The employee was very mellow and informative, despite obviously seeing the OUT OF THE WAY GIVE ME THAT glint in my eye as I stared at the already rather large wombat nestled sleepily in her arms.
“Go see the show,” she said a little nervously. “It’s on in a few minutes.” Off we went.

The “shows” of smaller wildlife parks are, as we saw in Caversham’s fine example, basically staff carrying out torporific specimens of the park’s non-human population for the gathered hairless apes’ cooing and amusement under cover of a large open shed. This was fine; I wasn’t looking for koalas jumping through flaming hoops or anything. Being able to sit next to a chipper park staffer holding a somnambulant wombat and being directed where exactly I could pet it without annoying said marsupial was fine by me. All I knew was, I was accomplishing one of my life’s highest current ambitions. Like any human poisoned by acquisitiveness, I hadn’t actually experienced something unless I had touched it and had my photo taken whilst doing so. Thus, I hovered at the bench, where snoozing wombat sprawled on keeper’s lap, accepting rubs on its lower belly and dreaming of sunset and feeding time.

Eventually Nick, after taking a few pics, whispered in my ear, “Er, maybe we might want to go see the parrot or the baby wallaby and give other folks a chance to pet the wombat,” as I was snapped out of my reverie of marsupial-bothering to see a small weave of sun-hatted camera-laden tourist sorts milling about.

“Ohhhhhh, all right,” I huffed, knowing of course that the wombat was about to stir any moment and, realising how truly I and I alone loved wombats, would have followed us to the car amidst the staff’s astonishment and permission to keep it forever, since obviously This Was Fate. But alas, the moment was lost.

Pictures of this near-moment exist. You would be able to see for yourself the look in the wombat’s eyes and our imminent bonding. Well, you would have. Except that the wombat’s eyes were closed. But honestly, the look was there. Spiritually.

The only other unique (for me in a wildlife park) moment was when we entered the Tasmanian Devil enclosure. There they were, the little devils! Um, actually larger than I’d thought. Sort of small-to-medium-dog sized. And solid, muscular little beasties. Another crepuscular/nocturnal species, they were laying in the grass, one or two snuffling about, mostly lackadaisical. After a few minutes among them, perched at the low wall separating them from us, I was surprised as all of them – about a half dozen – leapt up and began pacing madly in circles around the open enclosure. Usually when you’re at a zoo or park watching Aussie animals in daylight, they do nothing and you snap a few pictures of what could just as easily be stuffed animals, or whatever portions of them are visible in their exposed nests and nooks. But here we had a good bunch of Tassie Devils snuffling and circling around, noses to the wind.

And sure enough, we heard a rattling outside the pen and a staffer walked by, pushing a cart laden with what was obviously Feeding Time goodies. Sadly for our Devils, it was for some other inmate of the park, and they snuffled in vain. We contemplated holding out for Devil-feeding time, but a guesstimate of distances indicated our time at this glorious inner circle of Paradise was coming to an end. Off we went after a teasing stopover in the gift shop, in which I as always collected about a bamillion things that I Absolutely Needed until, after a few minutes’ contemplation, put back on the shelf and never again missed.

Off to the wedding! Off to the wedding!

Kneel, Perth 3

We awoke to our second day in Perth. Well, Nick awoke. I grogged in bed a bit as he walked past the closed storefronts and Vietnamese markets to the nearby car rental place to pick up the auto that was to expand our sightseeing range beyond the café-soaked cultural hub of Northbridge. I showered myself into, at last, a semblance of unjetlagged glory and upon my husband’s return, off we went for a busy day of seeing what’s to see, or at least as much of greater Perth and the Indian Ocean as we could.

I grew up in the countryside of Pennsylvania (or peeA, as I in a fit of retro-juvenile spite abbreviate it), and by my teen years hated nature. I’d had the idyllic Huck Finn life, in many ways, as a child – woods and creek right across the road (only recently paved) from my home, long humid summers dawdling with tiny crayfish or creating adventures with my GI Joe dolls – err, “action figures”, winters sledding and snowfort-building in the huge field behind the house – alongside the neighbourhood boys who luckily came in a large clump in my age range, so we had peers … anyway, quite idyllic. But by the teen years, when I – unlike pretty much the entire population of my home town – discovered books and poetry and the weird fringes of rock and roll, bucolia had shrunk from paradise to prison. I had no interest in either 4H or cross-burnings, which were basically the only cultural outlets in the town. I retreated inward, like any good sullen teen might, and waited for the day when I could flee cityward. And I did! And from the age of 19 onward was an urban wonder … until a spree in rural California reignited the little nature boy within me, and I realised the countryside was more than illiterate Klansmen and fundie creeps. If one just ignores humankind (as one learns to do in the city), the surroundings out there can be gorgeous.

So, here I am in Australia, completely indifferent to urban offerings or mad nightlife, and more interested in the land and animals of this continent. Long way of saying, we got in the car and tore away for Kings Park, the big reserve in Perth with swaths of left-alone bush and a grand botanic garden to boot.

And what a beauty of a park! Perched along the banks of the Swan River, it gives you some wonderful views of Perth’s faceless but prettily shiny and glassy skyline, along with the wide gentle river. We made for the untouched section of the park, skyline disappearing behind thicker growth of spindly twisting eucalypts, parked the car by a suitably abandoned-looking path, got out, and took a stroll.

The weather had opened up to a patch of bluesky and heat and humid sunlight. We walked down the quiet path, no city sounds reaching us, just bird calls and breeze through the native flora of Western Australia. As usual, I was snapping away with my digital camera at this plant or that tree as Nick forged ahead. It’s always a problem – I want to get all these pictures! for to preserve the memory, as mine is so bad – yet by engaging in that process, and seeing everything only through a lens, I fail to actually, you know, engage in what surrounds me and I fail to collect any actual memories. Eventually I realise this, put the camera away, clear my mind of subconscious music tracks playing in my mind, and try to breathe and see and listen. Which I eventually did this day.

My racing mind now slowed down a bit, we returned to the car and decided it might be best to, rather than wing it, actually hit the visitor’s centre and get a map and some pointers for what to see. As we drove past another entry to a pathway leading deep into tangled scrubby bush, Nick noticed a man leaning against his car, lolling languidly in the heat.

“That’s a beat,” Nick decided.
“Oh, come on,” I snorted, “every spot in a park that has a man lingering around a bit isn’t a beat.” I was rather proud of myself for unselfconsciously using Aussie slang for once – having grown up as a Yankee poofter, “beat” meant little other than rhythm or Jack Kerouac or something. But say “cruise park” to an a gay Aussie and they’ll just blink at you. Nefarious hidden spots among nature or highway stops where men furtively gather to forego the acceptable urban-nightlife pretense of “hanging out to dance or drink and – oh! here’s someone with whom to have sex, why I didn’t expect this!”, in Australia, are called beats. Which I assume would make Allen Ginsberg happy.

Anyway, to my snide scoffing, Nick insisted that the path we were slowly driving past was a beat. As I prepared to say something else wise and derisive, a lithe young lad with fashionable hair and well-maintained large sunglasses strolled up the path toward the road, chatting nonchalantly on his mobile phone. He stopped at the path entry and pointedly Didn’t Notice The Man At The Parked Car.

“Okay,” I grumbled sheepishly, “it’s a beat.” We drove on.

All happy Botanical Gardens are happy in the same way, so, since I’ve already gone on about Sydney’s gardens, I’ll forego repeating myself. In short: we got a map, wandered the landscaped paths of the gardens, ooh’d and ahh’d at all sorts of greenery, and hid in a small grove of bottle trees as the spittypoo squall system that was hanging over sunny, sunny Perth decided to cloud over and harass us again.

Nick was tempted by the DNA Tower, which sounded neat-o. As we exited the park we made a detour to check it out. All we found was a small observation tower whose winding stairways twisted around like a strand of DNA. No signs of any sort of high-tech exhibit or modernity as we’d expected, but with a sigh we climbed it and enjoyed the view anyway, since the sky was in a sunny phase again.

Next up was a major goal of mine for the trip – dipping my toes in the Indian Ocean, which I’d never seen or been to before. How much further from peeA could I get? What glee! Armed with maps and our Tom Tom GPS device, we headed for the area called The Sunset Coast.

The clouds were gathering and looking more menacing than ever. It looked like more than just a quick squall was on its way, so our plan to head to Cottesloe Beach on the recommendation of my ex-Perthian co-worker was ditched in favour of making a run for the nearest decent-sized beach we could find. This turned out to be Scarborough, where the highway on which we’d landed during our swoop out of Kings Park led us as we beelined for the coast.

It was marginally warm enough for swimming – I’d nearly worn short pants that morning, but wasn’t sure of the weather’s changeability, and so left them (and the swim trunks I was going to wear beneath) back at the b&b in favour of jeans – and the beach, once we got down to it past a wasteland of parking lots and Albert Speer-like decorative architecture, had a decent smattering of beachgoers. They were the usual preening, giggling teens and eye-candy surfer blokes; I snapped a few furtive pics of the latter and gave the former wide berth since they’ve annoyed me even back when I was a teenager.

I handed Nick my camera and leaned down to Prufrock myself and wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, at least for the photo op.

“The water’s going to be cold,” Nick said authoritatively. “Always is. Straight from the Antarctic currents.”
“Well, there’s a few folks in the water, so it can’t be too bad, at least for my feet for a few seconds. Take the picture quick, then.”

I waddled barefoot on the tepid sand down to the water’s edge. The Indian Ocean! Big vast never-before-seen thing! Sailed over by pirates, far-flung explorers, gold-laden Ottoman fleets, submarines crewed by hostile lemurs! The five year old within me that spent hours poring over world maps, scouring for names of distant exotic places, thrilled as my feet hit wet sand, I turned to face Nick, braced myself for the cold cold Antarctic-chilled trickle up the beach … and felt warm water lap gently at my ankles, surround my toes, and welcome me to the farthest end of isolated little Australia.

“Hello, Yuri.”
Hello, ocean.

Nick waved me back to him. I motioned for him to take another one, in case the first one had me hunched up and grimacing in expectation of imminent refrigeration. He raised the camera, seemed to click, beckoned me up. I wandered back, wet feet caked with sand. I checked the photos and thought ahhh, not enough water! He needed to snap it right at the moment the wavelets hit my feet!

For someone who is definitely not a visual act, I get very picky when composing a photograph. To Nick’s eye roll and sigh, I asked him to try again, and wait til the water has washed in.

I walked down to the wet sand once more, turned around quickly and stood facing Nick. He waited for the proper moment. I waited for the gentle lapping of the wavelets from the welcoming Indian Ocean and the perfect photo op.

Next thing I know, a boom of water rushes past my legs, submerging not just ankles but calves and knees. My Prufrockian measures were a bucket of Fail – I could feel soggy denim pressing into my legs as the larger-than-expected wave barrelled up the beach well past the border of wet sand to pause inches from the rapidly-backing-up Nick, consider dry land for a moment, then whoosh back in retreat. A strong pull tugged me backwards as I resisted the Indian Ocean’s amorous advances. For a split second I thought I was about to lose my footing and kasplash beneath the water, but I hobbled and wobbled but didn’t fall down. I swear I could hear aquatic snickers burbling from the swirls around my slowly-emerging feet. This is what happens, I thought, when you encourage an ocean. It just tries to take advantage.

I squished Nickward, slapping at my soaked jeans, trying to squeeze some water from them.

“Didn’t anyone tell you,” asked Nick, “never to turn your back to the ocean?”
“I had to!” I protested. “A photo of my back and my heels in the water wouldn’t have worked.”
“I got the picture.”
“I don’t want to see it.”

We got to the car, where I tried to discreetly remove my jeans and wring as much water as I could from the soaked legs. I know people change in their cars (or just under towels wrapped ‘round their waists) all the time, but having only tighty-whiteys on as underwear, it was difficult to be too subtle. Luckily there were few passersby, as I had no choice.

“The water just rushed me from behind – kept coming!” I grumbled, squeezing a stream of water from denim leg to trickle onto the parking lot. “Then tried to pull me back – good god! DON’T TELL ME I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE TSUNAMI WAS LIKE,” I continued as my husband shook his head.

Pants back on, Nick at the wheel of the car, we figured to make a break for Cottesloe Beach, since my co-worker had rhapsodised over how much she’d loved it as a little girl. Occasional spats of drizzle on the windshield added with the bleak black clouds overhead to warn us it was a race against time.

“I have to pee,” Nick suddenly announced. We pulled into another nameless beach’s parking lot, and up to its restrooms. Nick went in, I sat damply in the auto and waited. Suddenly a loud gust of wind battered the car and some leaves and small branches skittered against it. Three or four fat drops of rain splattered the windshield, and then the downpour began. So much for Cottesloe Beach, I thought. We’d never have made it even without this stop. And now my husband will be wetter than me, even running those few steps to the car …

Luckily Nick made it between bursts of rain. Only a little rain-spattered, he got in, started up the engine, and with a defeated sigh we chose to skip Cottesloe and head for Fremantle, the port town founded to serve Perth, now as the metropolis expanded it’s become more a coastal suburb (but don’t say that to Fremantlers). One goal was, of course, to simply see it. The other more mundane purpose was to just give up and buy a new pair of pants for damp little Yuri.

I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for Freo (as it’s nicknamed) since I became enamoured of Aussie Rules football, and come to know its team as the one with the horrid team colours that is bitter rivals to the Perth-based West Coast Eagles, who, after two years of hard-fought matches with my Sydney Swans (including two Grand Finals) have become Sydney’s big rival as well. The Eagles are also a cocky, swaggering, American-sport-acting bunch of knobheads who I despise. So, any foe of theirs is a friend of mine. Hello, Freo.

We pulled up to another store unique to the Perth region, marking it out as a metropolis with its own special flavour: Target. I bought a pair of cheap short pants and changed in the car whilst flashing my hott manly well-packed tighty-whiteys to the world again. Dry and relaxed, I could now listen to Nick as he pored over the map trying to find Freo’s “historic district”.

Freo lucked out in the Australian urban growth sweepstakes. Whilst big cities like Perth and Sydney went through various booms and simply bulldozed entire blocks of beautiful old colonial and Victorian townhouses to make room for shiny new pillars of faceless glass and gleaming steel, Fremantle was a backwater, a failed old port that had seen better days and was ignored as it declined and decayed. Then as artists and outcasts were driven from overpriced reborn Perth, they discovered Freo was not only cheap, but swaths of its original architecture had been left untouched as the plague angel of Progress had swooped past, uninterested. Thus Freo was reborn not as a Prosperous Business Hub Of Might And Steel like poor Perth or Sydney, but as a beautiful, spirited little place to live. Once one got past the newer district and its Targets, of course.

Still, with little time and no real guide to lead us to anything historic or picturesque, we drove along an old street or two, got sidetracked into a wharfy wasteland, and tried frustratedly to get back on track to the good stuff. Eventually we gave up on historic and settled for picturesque: we found a marina full of locals’ sailing boats sheltered by a seabreak that looked out into the ocean and a nearby island or two. The schizo weather had cleared again, so we strolled down the seawall to watch small craft go calmly past and listen to the sea and the birds and the creak of docked boats.

“I’d definitely,” I said to Nick, “like to spend more time in Fremantle the next trip out here.” He nodded in agreement. But more time was exactly what we didn’t have this day, so back to the car with plans to return to Northbridge, some rest, and then dinner.

We crawled slowly up a seaside boulevard, past wharf restaurants with a view, hotels looking out onto the edge of the Indian Ocean just across the road. The boulevard was cut in two by a wide centre walkway decorated with huge anchors from ancient vessels plunged into the golden gravel and sand that filled it. We drove past one anchor, another, another, a statue of some guy who, Nick noticed out of the corner of his eye as we passed it, was standing atop a base shaped like an amplifier …

… waitaminnit.

“BON SCOTT!” Nick shouted and pointed over his shoulder. “That was the Bon Scott memorial statue!”

If our tyres didn’t shriek and squeal as we u-turned and rushed back for a second glimpse, they should have. Parking in front of a posho restaurant, right next to its sign warning that this lot was for CUSTOMERS ONLY and everyone else would get towed (oh, such scallywags are we; Bon would surely have been proud), we ran across the road to the walkway and up to the statue of a longhaired lad clutching a microphone and standing on a large amp.

Ahh, Fremantle, I love you all the more. Amid the tourist wharfs and musty anchors, here you plop a memorial to your greatest export: Bon Scott, come to Fremantle as a wee child with his Scotsborn family, the first and best singer for Aussie chug-rockers AC/DC, who died young and of course tragically. Here stands the most fitting memorial to the true Australian character.

I mean, sure, every city has about eight hundred statues of sad soldiers or monoliths proclaiming unfading remembrance of those who fell in The Great War, Gallipoli oi oi oi and all that, and to be sure, the losses of Australia in World War I to other countries was horrific when numbers killed are adjusted to size of population, but really, to claim that as the great symbol of Australia’s national character? I dunno, I think Bon Scott is far more apt.

Which says “Australia” to you: a frowning soldier representing swarms of gullible but courageous troops who blindly, obediently followed the ever-strategically-inept Winston Churchill’s orders that they storm into a disastrous attempt to take the Dardanelles for an imperialist cause dreamed up a million miles away; or a charming, winking, leering larrikin who caroused through life and ended it drunk and freezing in the back of a car as he tried to sleep off a boozy binge? If Oz truly prides itself on its independent streak and hardy individuality, the choice is easy.

So rock on, Bon, wherever you are. And entertain those other older Aussie ghosts wondering what they died for, far from home in Churchill’s (first) bloody folly.

Full of grace from this accidental pilgrimage, we floated back to Perth and our b&b on wisps of rock-and-roll heaven’s hardassed ether, barely noticing yet another meteorological shift and raindrops pittering upon the auto roof. I took a quick hot shower to exorcise the last chills from my tsunamic ordeal from my bones, and we contemplated dinner.

In a daring move that someone like Churchill never would have thought up, we figured that since what we’d seen of Northbridge seemed a bit light in the vibrant café-culture department, we’d head in the opposite direction up our street to the left rather than the right. We’d seen a large hotel a block in that direction that looked a bit better-maintained; surely it was worth a shot.

And lo, we won. Well, the hotel was a bust; its menu was a little steep and seemed to offer little, but the place was purty. Luckily directly across the street was a Vietnamese restaurant that looked both good and affordable. In we went, feeding was accomplished and food appreciated, and an impossibly hot wholesome Aussie blond lad was healthily, subtly ogled as he sat a few tables away. I tell you, the wholesome country Aussie look could make me forget the all-American boy look any day of the year. Surely Fate summoned me to Oz to do a beneficial sampling of the population here. It is a duty I would not shirk.

Sated, fed, exhausted, we retired to Richard’s Of Northbridge just in time, as rain returned with nightfall, and we settled in for a night’s rest. Tomorrow was to see an even wider arc out of Perth as we plotted an edifying path from town toward Mike and Anna’s wedding celebration which was to take place in the evening. We’d need our energy for wombat-whispering.