The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

  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 wa...

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 ...

Our town and region pride themselves on their recognition of and patronage of the arts, and as part of that spirit of appreciation of all things cultural the town lays on a film festival every year. In deference to the ground-breaking and revolutionising potential of avant-garde artwork and endeavour, the festival organisers make it a point of honour to give opportunities to new, young, up-and-coming and un-established film makers to showcase their work and reach a wider audience. And good on them, too.    Since our area here is immersed in surf culture up to its ears it’s only natural that surf movies should be featured in the festival, at times prominently. And since surfing is the thing that we, denizens of The Bay At The End Of The Rainbow, eat, drink, breathe and live for, surf movies is what we look out for and seek out when the festival is on.    There’s a loose mob of us who are possessed of such single-minded obsession, fanaticism and insanity that we ri...

Baboons are interesting animals. They are best known for having huge pink arses, shitting in their hands and throwing it at people they don’t like, and dragging their knuckles over the ground while they walk. They have occasionally been known for their penchant for exhibitionist sex. Most bafflingly among their many intriguing attributes is their uncanny ability to be able to learn how to read, that is recognise words and distinguish them from others. They share this ability with humans, and, curiously, Columbian pigeons. It is unclear whether a diet of cocaine was involved in the development of the ability in the latter. Words baboons have in the past been proven to be able to recognise include the words “surf”, “wave”, “swell”, “drop-in” and “you bastard”. Under test conditions they have been shown to be able to acquire a vocabulary of up to 308 words, the vast majority of them swear words.    One ability baboons are emphatically not renowned for being able to master is th...