Moon Set

On that day the Baboon got to his home break, known colloquially and affectionately as The Hole, no one knows why, in the dark of the pre-dawn early morning. He had a look, and found it was dead flat. Not to be caught out and disheartened after checking out just one from several beaches offering surfing possibilities and potential, he ventured bravely and enterprisingly out over the hills and far away to his second home-away-from-home, a break known as The Goose, and found it to be dead flat too. Consequently, because you never-never know if you never-never go, he went back over to the Hole for a second look, just to be on the safe side, against the unlikely-but-not-entirely-impossible-because-you-never-know-your-luck-in-a-big-city eventuality that his eyesight, perfect in every way on every other occasion, had suddenly decided to deceive him.


So he made his way back down the boatramp at The Hole for the second time, and who should he find there but one of his some-time companions in crime, the Tiger, so named for her cunning trick of catching waves in a crouch, ready to leap up and pounce on any wave that might turn out to have the good common decency of walling up in her presence, as well as, of course, on anyone that pisses her off for whatever reason. She was standing at the edge of the water, looking out glumly over the bay which, in spite of having the enviable and well-deserved reputation of being a world-class surf break, currently bore a suspicious resemblance to the sheltered and protected waters inside of the Great Barrier Reef. That is, full of bleached coral, dead fish, and coal debris with Adani written on it.

   ‘Goodday Tiger, how are you?’ spake the Baboon politely, as was his custom.
   ‘Good, yourself?’ answered the Tiger in a mellow, purring voice with barely concealed hints of fangs, stripes and a strictly non-vegetarian diet.
   ‘Yeah, not too bad. Went and looked at The Goose, it’s as flat as a shit carter’s hat’, the Baboon offered cautiously, taking a step back, just in case.

They nodded companionably in commiseration and stared out over the bay. Across the water the cloud cover was hanging low, but a small sliver of light was peaking out from underneath it and painting the western sky orange, shedding its colours over the top of Mt Woolly Bum. The mountain had received its illustrious name because, due to its considerable altitude, it gets very cold up there, and early explorers in the 1900s, after having succesfully attained the extraordinary, respectworthy and laudable achievement of The First Ascent By A Whitefella, approximately 40,000 years after its first ascent by a blackfella, only just barely managed The First Descent With Frostbite On The Arse. Therefore and thereafter they named the mountain Woolly Bum, as a stark reminder and warning to any and all would-be mountain climbers to not forget their woolly underwear, lest they repeat their own dismal experience, and have half of their bum cheeks amputated afterwards. Besides the majestic bulk of Mt Woolly Bum, sharing in the eerie orange glow spreading out over the ridges, peaks and saddles, sat its eternal companion, the Cowbunga Range, birthplace of the first recorded surfboard made locally on the Australian coast. Made out of turpentine hardwood (Syncarpia glomulifera), it measured twenty-five feet in length and three feet in width, weighed in at 180 kg, and sank within five seconds of being launched in the lukewarm waters of the bay one fine summer evening 300 years ago. The local manufacturers have never looked back, and have since gone from strength to strength.

The Tiger nodded towards the orange shape in the western sky across the water and said:
   ‘Look, you can just see the sun rise.’
To which the Baboon replied, truthfully:
   ‘That’s the moon, going down.’

[Curtain]






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