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]






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crossbone Bay

Long centuries ago, when no one knew where Australia was except the people who lived in it, hapless European would-be colonising world powers would stumble across it by accident. Tall ships would get blown off course, of course, mostly Portuguese and Dutch trading ships trying to find Indonesia and their arses in the bath tub, and they’d end up here.    The big winds would blow them hell west and crooked, till they landed on the coast, if they were lucky, or on rocks and reefs offshore if they weren’t. Those who managed to land in one piece took one look around, found nothing but sand, rocks and flies up their nose, pushed their boats back into the water as fast as they could, if they didn’t have holes in them, and bailed out again while they were still able to. No gold, no spices, nothing here worth killing and enslaving anyone over. Those who didn’t manage to land in one piece lived to bitterly regret it, but usually not for very long. They left a long trail of abandoned coins, rus
Read more

Remote Solitary

Crowded waves and competition for rides are the bane of the existence of anyone within cooee of a passably decent ride. Drop-ins, snakes and shitfights in the water are par for the course, or so it seems.    It certainly is that way in our home town of Eagle Bay. Proud possessor of an enviable first class longboard break, we habitually get flooded under a never-ending stream of holiday makers from the big city, all out to make the most of their few precious weeks under the sun, and determined, come rain, shine, hell or high water, to score some of these fabulous waves. As a result hostile altercations in the surf abound, and our erstwhile peaceful, quiet and low-profile town is now more commonly referred to as Ego Bay.    With one thing and another things came to a head, and I had decided to take a sabbatical. Time out from the neverending screaming arguments and occasional punch-ons. An interesting job opportunity came up, and so I took it.    I found myself way beyond the Black
Read more

The Mask

  ‘Can you please take your mask off?’      I’m sitting leisurely stretched out on a bench in the afternoon sunshine when this voice comes drifting down from above me. I’m in town getting new tyres for my car, and have got time to waste, so I’m enjoying some rare downtime. Having wandered in and out of a few shops, without stealing hardly very much at all, I’m wearing the regulation Covid-mask required now for entering premises. In spite of the big signs on all the doors and shopfront windows, politely requesting all customers to be considerate, do the right thing and cover their faces, when lining up in the post office, of all places, I hadn’t failed to notice that at least one in every four or five people were not wearing a mask. Judging from the way they were greeted casually by their first names by the staff behind the counter, they appeared to be locals.      Beware the local yokel, because they will always be above the law. Tadating-tating-tating-tating. There goes the banj
Read more

Sandy Bottom

  I turn off the tarmac into the dirt road and push as hard as I can on my mountain bike. The wheels whizz and spin, slid and slide, skip and bounce, until, inevitably, they get stuck in an expanse of lush, thick red sand, with the consistency of talcum powder.    Bulldust.    I swear at length and with feeling, get off and push. I battle through the patch, get on the bike again on the other side, and carry on through the trees, into the bushland. I hide my bike behind a big old fat boab, and start running. It is early morning, the land lies steaming under a tropical sun, and wallabies scatter before me as I run, barefoot through the sand. Black hawks circle overhead, following me from a distance and keeping a moody eye on me, in case I should show the great good grace of rolling over and carking it on the track, and providing them with a nice, juicey, fresh breakfast.    It feels a bit like I might, today. I've left it later than I would have wanted to, and the sun is beatin
Read more

The Shirt

   Bernie was an arsehole.    He was a bully. He was built like a brick shithouse, tall, wide, massive, with bright red hair, fairy skin full of freckles with a predilection to skin cancer, and no neck. In his younger days he had played rugby, and had enjoyed smashing people down, grinding them into the ground and just generically hurting them.    A serious knee injury put an end to his playing days. He'd learned the trade of diesel mechanic, and after a punch-up on a Saturday night at his local that left a bloke in a coma with brain damage, he'd pulled the pin on living in town, or at least anywhere within reach of coppers, and he'd gone bush. He'd poked around for a while here, there and everywhere, plying his trade. The one thing there is always a need for out the back of woop-woop is a diesel mechanic. People didn't ask too many questions, or even none at all, as long as he could get the engines going and fix the gear boxes on the fourwheel drives, tractors,
Read more

The Change

The rain was executing a horizontal full frontal assault. I waded through the high tide back to the shore line, where the Space Shuttle and the Reefshark stood huddled together in abject misery. The Reefshark, tall and lofty, towering a full head out above us, was copping the brunt of the rain, lashing us in the face. Ahead of us, the black ocean boiled and heaved, shrouded by a thick curtain of rain. We shivered violently.    ‘Whadda yous reckon?’ I said, peering out from the narrow crack between the top of my hood and the edge of my rain coat. Rain stung my eyes like needles.    ‘Hmmpf,’ the Reefshark grunted. ‘I guess there’s a bit of a wave out there.’    ‘Yous are insane,’ declared the Space Shuttle with feeling. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’    ‘Yeah nah ... I reckon we’ll be able to get a wave,’ I said. ‘Look, it’s breaking just there, it’s clean.’    We stared into the dark. We saw the square root of bugger all. Two pairs of eyes swivelled accusingly towards me and glare
Read more

Deja Vu

Sometimes history can repeat itself, in a bizarre case of convergent evolution. On Friday night my partner Kiana had something to celebrate, so we went and had a few quiet drinks. A few quiet ones led to a few more that were far from quiet, and the next day I paddled out with a vicious hangover. No surprise there.    As it so happened the cyclone swell had come in, finally, and the entire beach was wrapped in walls of water standing up to double-overhead high. A powerful sweep was running north to south, and huge amounts of sand had been skulldragged away into The Big Void, never to be seen again. Everywhere the earth was showing its bare bones poking up from underneath the left-over sand: rocks, ridges, ledges, stones, pebbles, shale everywhere where once the golden sand invited people to lay down and chill out.    I paddled out into the surf and got smashed comprehensively around the brains. Mountains of water stood up in front of me and crashed down on my head. I took a solid pu
Read more

First Day Of Winter

I got out of the car and froze to death instantaneously. My bare feet landed on the cold hard concrete, which immediately sucked all life blood and warmth out of me and straight into the stony uncaring world. To add insult to injury, a gale was blowing so hard the casuarina trees were laying over near-horizontally. Even though it was pitch-black dark, I could tell from the white caps on the water, the sea horses of the mythology of old, that the surf was going to be shithouse, blown hell west and crooked into nothing resembling any surfable shape. I shivered violently. The Chief arrived and bounced out of his van, dressed in a woollen beany pulled over a thermal hat, an overcoat, an under coat, a middle coat, three jumpers, his mum’s woolly vest, long shorts (a contradiction in terms, much like, e.g., military intelligence or political integrity), and, the prize piece of his collection, double-grade Explorer socks in his sandals. Dressed to impress, for sure. Dressed to s
Read more

Blind

For the past seven days I have not been able to see. Something got stuck in my left eye, some sort of dirt-piece, a bit of dust, or a grain of sand, or a smidgin of stray mitochondrial DNA, or, quite likely, a snippet of random toenail. Either way, the upshot of it was that by nighttime seven days ago my eye was bloodhot, swollen, almost squashed shut, and pissing forth liberally with fluid, presumably tear-water. I couldn’t open the eye, looking at any light source bigger than a lit match was excruciating and impossible, and I was in agony. It was like someone stabbing needles in it. So the day after it happened I spent the whole day inside the house, sitting in the dark,   wearing sunnies on my face and a towel over my head to block out the light. I pulled any and all blinds I could find, squeezed my eyes shut and whiled away seven hours straight playing music with my eyes closed. I played the bagpipes, the whistle, the banjo, the mandolin and the guitar, comprehensively pissin
Read more

The Medewi Four-by-Two

Medewi, west Bali. Far from the insane crowds of Kuta and Uluwatu. The village of Medewi is all of 450 m across, as the crow flies, between two coastal rivers, dividing it from the village before and the village after.    The vibe is low-key. Off the congested road that connects Denpasar and east Bali to the west and, eventually, the ferry across to Java, there is just one little narrow street that slopes down to the beach. Along that, two board-hire places, a surf school, and a cafe, ominously called “The Bombora Cafe”. No prizes for guessing where the mob that set it up came from. “Bombora” is an Australian Aboriginal word that refers to a partially submerged rocky reef in the surf, not far from shore. Usually affectionately known as “the bombie”, they are found in their dozens between Eden in the south and Fingal Head in the north of NSW. It’s a home away from home, straightaway.    The beach is a shelf of dark grey-blackish sand that slopes down steeply to a veritable rock gard
Read more