Evil Kineval and the Migrant Turkeys

Like a Migrant Turkey Anne flew through the air… Anne's latest injury

Michael Davies runs a Palmetum nursery, he told us to get settled in whilst he went to town for the beers in the morning. In the meantime, he said we should "go for a swim at the Paradise Waterhole" and "make yourselves at home". After coming back from the Creek, Michal had organised our camp for us, which we were sharing with the two German guys Lander and Simon. We were to start work the next morning, working around the nursery, picking up palm leaves. Working in the golden palms

When morning came we had breakfast then Michael picked us up in his Electric Stretch Golf Buggy-cum-runaround, to take us to where we would be working that day. Promises of cold beer at the end of the day propelled our enthusiasm for the task ahead, which was to take the dead leaves from a dense row of potted palms. These were packed in two rows about 100m long, ten palms wide, and were ready to be carted off to Mount Isa, but beforehand needed to be tidied and rid of the dead leaves. We pushed ourselves into the thick of it and started to pick and prune.

We swiftly got into a rhythm, of pick and put, pick and put, trimming the dead leaves off, pushing them through the gaps to the side, moving along slowly but surely. We had the leaves trimmed before the morning smoko and afterwards cleared the dead, discarded leaves from between the rows, piling them up in stacks nearby for burning. It was during one of these forays into the undergrowth of the palm rows, raking, pulling and piling,that Phil noticed something winking at him as I bent over to pick up an armful of leaves – a pristine porcelain white buttcheek gleamed in the midday sun, my bald Albino stepchild blinking at the first light of day. He’d torn through the covering of my shorts again, and Phil found him endearing and so pointed and laughed, Anne insisted on taking pictures, and I tried to hide his fleshy white face from the scorn of the world and get on with finishing the work. Gareth splits his only other shorts

An aggressive buttcheek apart, the rest of the day was spent in a flurry of picking up and putting down (somewhere else), the job that we three have become so accomplished at. The things we’ve picked up (here) and put down (over there, in a pile) during our time on the road covers much. From horse manure, to rocks, alpaca poo, mulch, to sand and gravel, from leaves to tree branches to general household rubbish, if you’ve left it there, we’ve moved it. It’s not for everyone, this picking up and putting down, but if you have anything you want moving, give us a call.
Gareth, happy in his work like a pig in muck
Even with a ventilated arse, it was hot work in the sun, and we were dripping with sweat, but those beers were at the back of the forefront of our minds as we worked until we had put all there was to pick. Michael had left a carton of beer for us when we’d finished, back at the camp, and we sat, lathered in sweat, on the concrete platform in front of our van, and enjoyed the invigorating experience of a cold beer after a days work.

It rained all that evening, continuing most of the next day, but as we’d agreed to work over the weekend now, to take care of some fuel, we were in amongst it again, picking up and putting down the leaves from the larger trees on the property, piling them and getting soaked from the rain and slathered in mud. It was so much fun to be soaking wet, covered in mud and yet, because of the humidity, sweating due to the heat.

After another swim at the Paradise Waterhole to wash away the palm frond mess we heard the din of activity from under the roof of the giant porch by Michael’s homestead and went over to investigate, knowing that Michael was away for the weekend. It was Michael’s brother, Colin, his daughter Jody, her girlfriend Jenny, their friends CJ and Charma, her girlfriend Kat, and Brad, a friend of Jodie’s and Jack and Jye, two boys, along with Michael’s son, Jerred, and they sat around a plastic picnic table laden with empty and half drunk bottles, smokes and more beers coming as soon as they saw us. What could we do but sit and join them. And get drunk with them. Ridiculously, raucously, loudly, steaming drunk.

Jerred teaches us to shoot

They told us stories, the repeating of which would require your ears be kept in quarantine for six months afterwards. We were repeatedly warned of the Midnight Mission, an activity they have to engage in every Saturday night, an adventure, a drunken spree, but we weren’t worried – because we were so pissed we’d have agreed to anything. “Want to climb on the back of an orang-utang and go waterskiing through the cane fields?” Sure. “Hey, we’re going to go toad sniffing, want to come?” Of bloody course. So when they announced that we were driving to the beach, all of us in the back of the 4x4 Ute we weren’t even phased, just worried where the beer would fit, and who would have to be sacrificed for it. He then bangs his head on the fridge door, eager to get to the food
As the sober one, Colin drove us there, along the highway for a kilometre and then what seemed like eighty along a narrow, dirt road, so pockmarked with holes it made Bryan Adams’ face seem smooth as a baby’s behind, and so uneven it made Elton John seem straight, and with deep pools of water to traverse, and eight people crammed into the back tray, it was with screams and hoots, and not a little relief that we made it to the beach, where we were greeted by a quadbike offering rides up and down the sand.
Now it was dark, very dark, only the light of the quadbike, and headlights of the 4x4 and the dim illumination of the moon cast any light on the place, but as Anne took her turn on the quad, Phil and I stripped off and went for a swim. When I say went for a swim, what I mean is that we stripped off, then trod precariously, daintily even, like pregnant baboons, over the sharp rocks, intermittent stones, shells and other protuberances unseen to the drunken eye, but lying between us and the water, staggering there like dying men, our feet torn, our reasoning clouded, where we fell, wounded, and floated about a bit, before being called back to the 4x4. We ooh’d and aah’d back over the trepidatious terrain, like courageous buffoons, and made it to the van, buoyant by the sheer scale of our bravery, when someone pointed, just there, out to the left a bit, and said, ‘look, idiots, why didn’t you just walk across the sand, there’. Could we have answered her even if we had the power of speech?
Michael let's us try his home brew We are given the royal tour around the nursery grounds A tamarind. Michael was told by Jerrard's school not to give the kids this treat any longer as it makes them fart too much Michael
Waking up next morning pretty rotten and feeling very much as though a host of pigs had defecated in our heads, we were nonetheless offered a spin on Charma’s trail bike, a 125 Kawazaki, and before our brains reacted, said yes, ok then, why not. Phil went first, and all was good, he carefully eased the throttle and took off. Anne was next and in tribute to Evel Kineval decided, in her own mind, right before she even asked ‘how do you actually ride this thing’ to hit the throttle hard, to take advantage of the stunt-like bike lessons she never quite got round to and to take off like a cannonball, only to turn swiftly into a migrant turkey, realising it’s ability to fly is long departed, before collapsing in a heap a few metres from her attempted standing-start loop-the-loop. Laying there in a crumpled heap all fears of continuing the remainder of the trip feeding a paraplegic through a catheter tube were allayed as she laughed through a grimace, and had her badly scratched back seen to once it was ascertained that was her only injury.
The bike Anne very nearly destroyed Anne's wheely skid mark
We said goodbye to the crew then, and when Michael arrived later that day we had a quiet drink with him and set off early the next morning, with a donation to Book Aid, sore heads, wounded feet and a scabby back. Whoever said that alcohol was the cause of solution to life’s problems knew what he was on about. Next stop Townsville.
Charma
CJ