Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 2, 2004


DESERT BOY GOES TROPPO


HERE I am driving to Queensland on holiday and none of it, so far, has been wasted because I never consider the time spent in my own company a waste - you are a long time dead. Through Broken Hill, still prospering despite forecasts to the contrary, to Wilcannia, security meshed against Aboriginal raiding parties, where the petrol costs $1.11 a litre compared to the 97 cents at the Hill and 94 cents in Adelaide at the time. Swirling willy-willies left and right, the highway hereabouts is littered with fresh roadkill. For fear of hitting a ‘roo, I want to make damn sure I am off the road by dusk. Feral goats are already out for a feed in the lengthening shadows but I have yet to see any goat roadkill. Smarter than your average ‘roo. An enormous wedge-tailed eagle, perched atop a kangaroo carcass by the side of the road, glares back defiantly – “Mine, all mine, find your own!” – unmoved by the cars whooshing past only metres away. I love wedgies. With a full moon rising, I drive into Cobar thinking a margarita would be a perfect end to the first day. Only Cobar is not a margarita town. Cobar is a Bundy and beer town where a Magnum is not an ice cream but a brand of chemical for treating sheep lice and blowflies. A sign in the Great Western Hotel reads: “If it wasn’t for guns we’d be speaking Japanese by now.” I settle for a quiet beer and leave. Next day, across the flatlands of thirsty cotton fields in northern NSW where the roadside is littered with cotton balls, and into Nyngan where the parking signs read: “Rear to kerb 45 degree angle parking.” The proverbial old cockie in a hat trying to park back-back-back causes traffic gridlock in the main street. Then to Gilgandra - “Home of the Cooee” – and the sign, Brisbane 787, and other signs warning of speeding fines up to $3300 plus loss of licence. Good grief, how much is the fine for parking the wrong way around? Through a spattering plague of locusts, to Narrabri and other towns with unfinished names that could do with an “-ng” or a “-de” or “-nt” added to their tails. Also in Narrabri, the cars are required to park at 45 degrees facing the kerb … I give up! Across the border to Goodiwindi for the night, feeling out of place for not wearing a giant stockman’s hat, I order a XXXX beer in the Victoria Hotel and – this is embarrassing – enjoy it. I can only offer in my defence that beer usually tastes better under local conditions brewed using local water suited to the local climate. Next day, I hit a kangaroo that hops out of nowhere from among the prickly pears. Lucky for us both, it’s a glancing blow and, in the rear vision mirror, I am relieved to see him bounce back across the road although I expect he will have a sore rump for a few days. Serves him bloody right. Through Millmerran, “Camp Oven Country” – not enough incentive to make me stop, I am afraid – and then to Toowoomba, and through Brisbane on the freeway without stopping. Bless freeways. And after 2200km I flop into the lukewarm Pacific Ocean at Noosa Heads and, floating on my back, realise I really am a desert person at heart but, in keeping winter at bay, for the next four weeks heading north I will have to put up with rainforests, coral reefs and sandy beaches. Do not think I will be enjoying myself.






Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 26, 2004


HEADING UP THE COUNTRY


THE world today has revealed itself to be pretty much what it was yesterday and the day before that, which means I need a holiday. Indeed, as you read this, I will be driving across Outback NSW towards Far North Queensland. Three days should be plenty, cross-country through Broken Hill, Bourke, Walgett, Goondiwindi to Noosa. Something like that anyway. And then head up the coast until it is time to come back again. With Australian tourists now being compulsorily fingerprinted in the US and the rest of the world a damned dangerous place, FNQ seems a far more pleasant option despite Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin and the XXXX beer. The lack of a real itinerary reflects the state of my mind lately. I seem to be losing control over life's direction and purpose. I might as well go with the flow, come what may, on this journey as well. I like road trips. The whole world contracts to the horizon and nothing matters beyond the distance of a day's drive and a quiet beer at the end. Wandering into the wilderness can be a liberating, purifying experience. Detached from your usual life, losing all connections, it can make you reflect on the stuff hidden deep in your soul. Your existence is reduced to thoughts. Here's a thought: Scientists have traced the DNA of modern man back 50,000 years but the female DNA reaches back 150,000 years. How is the discrepancy to be explained? Why is Adam so much younger than Eve? I am travelling light - a bottle of water and a change of underwear - although I have made sure the first-aid kit is stuffed with all manner of potions, pills, powders and bandages. Every time I go on holidays I seem to catch a cold, cut a foot or become infected in one way or another. I even considered arranging for phials of my own blood to be left at depots along the route in case of emergency. Don't scoff. Visiting the UK in the 1950s, Charles de Gaulle took with him bottles of French blood so he would not be contaminated with British blood if he required a transfusion. And whenever George W. Bush travels, he is accompanied by his own medical unit and a supply of American blood, which is said to be kept in a fridge in his armoured car among the cans of Coke. Fear of blood contamination is possibly carrying paranoia too far. I mean, what possible damage could a litre of Queensland blood do to me? Then again... Moving right along, by the end of this trip, blood could be the least of my worries. Psychiatric care might be more in order. In seeking to distance myself from my everyday existence, alone with my thoughts, I may get too close to my insecurities for comfort. Only to re-emerge later, even more disconcerted than usual, to resume the same old life. Or not. We shall see. Keep in touch.






Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 19, 2004


TAKE YOUR PHOBIAS LYING DOWN


ANOTHER week, another funeral: This time, standing at the back of the chapel in my funeral tie, which is overdue for a dryclean given half a chance, I was distracted by an old chap trembling with Parkinson's disease. The carpet under him was littered with yellow petals shaken loose from the rose stem he was holding. For some reason, it made me think of RSI. Remember RSI, as in Repetitive Strain Injury, which swept through Australian offices in the 1980s like a mass of hysterias? RSI was said to be an occupational injury resulting from excessive keyboard use, particularly affecting the forearms. Some journalists had it, coinciding with the introduction of computers to replace typewriters. Splints and slings suddenly appeared on editorial floors. Sufferers sought relief in drugs, physiotherapy and acupuncture. The unions quickly latched onto RSI, blaming inhumane working conditions. At the same time, other people using the same keyboards and doing the same work suffered no ill effects whatever, and saw RSI as a fake disorder by malingerers and malcontents. And, as they always do, lawyers made a killing, as did ``occ health and safety'' officers who were virtually unheard of until then. RSI was a bit hit-and-miss. A good friend of mine, a woman who has devoted her life to hypochondria, failed to catch it, to her great regret. Nor did I. But, then, I dared not. As a kid, I was never allowed to be unwell and, even now, taking a sick day still makes me feel nauseous with guilt. My mother, a nurse who insisted the beds had to be made with hospital corners, required a death certificate, at the very least, before a sick day was allowed off school. I carried the mumps around with me for years. As for RSI, from memory, more men than women complained of it, which possibly said more about the male embarrassment of not coping with new technology whereas females had lower expectations of themselves. Yes, men and women are hard-wired differently. At work the other day - between funerals - some of us were running our eyes over the newspaper photo of a bikini girl leaping in the surf with a panicky grimace on her face. "She looks like she stepped on a puffer fish," a female colleague said. Odd, because she looked to me as if her bikini bottom was being ripped off by the undertow. Just goes to show. I predict the office espresso machine will become the next RSI. I know of one legal firm that has disabled the milk frother on its espresso for fear of someone catching a killer disease from an unhygienic spout. Add FIH - Froth Induced Hysteria - to the long list of human phobias. Topping the list is having to give a speech, said to rank even higher than the fear of dying, which means the bloke lying in the coffin up front is feeling better than many first-time public speakers.






Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 12, 2004


TERROR IN WORDS OF BEHOLDEN


A SLACK and easy pitfall in journalism is to use "hot" words to spice up news reports: "Council slammed by outraged residents - crisis talks" ... when the only thing at stake is a traffic roundabout. Many grim hours of my life have been spent grinding back the purple prose and breathless beatups of young journalists. An editor's life is generally short and brutal. Even so, the most lurid journalistic excess comes nowhere near the bloodthirsty prose of al-Qaida. Here, in al-Qaida's own words, is its definition of diplomacy: "...written with blood and decorated with body parts and the smell of guns". This is not how people talk in normal conversation, not in my world anyway, not even among overwrought journos after 10 schooners of beer. And here is Saddam Hussein, with the Infidels at the gates of Baghdad: "With the help of God, their bellies will be roasted in the fires of hell forever. Our martyrs will go to Paradise." Normal everyday language apparently is inadequate for the purpose of holy war rants. Perhaps there is an al-Qaida University where students write essays on "The role of colourful adjectives in waging Jihad". In the US, an Arabic Language Analyser program is available for defence and security agencies to scour the Internet for websites written in Arabic in the hope of finding potential terrorists. It need only look for a handful of key words. Trusting instead in Google, I entered the sentence. "We have to turn the land of the Infidels into hell" - one of al-Qaida's milder threats - and 18,700 Web entries popped up. A bit of digging soon uncovered the ravings of anti-government loonies, militia weirdos, doomsayers and the amensayers of fundamentalist Christianity with a persecution complex. No Muslims, though, interestingly enough. Digging further, the Koran made increasingly frequent appearances - often written by the same Christian suspects preaching their own brand of hellfire and hatred. I wish everyone would leave Allah and God out of it. No religion advocates the murder of innocents. The Koran contains much the same "slay the idolator" language as the Bible although neither is quite as chilling as the US bumper sticker: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my paranoid, cold, dead hand." Ahhh, how I long for the simple days of the Cold War when the worst of it - "western imperialist running dogs" - now sounds like comforting nostalgia. Not for a minute do I under-estimate the seriousness of the threats made by terrorist groups but, as both an Infidel and an editor, I am deeply offended by their extremist, undisciplined language. Al-Qaida needs a good sub-editor.